6.2.2025 -- NLS -- Destruction Bay Dispatch & Ukraine Clash

On this episode with Neal and Julie, he's broadcasting from a beautiful yet ironically named Destruction Bay, sharing their journey through Canada and into Alaska. They chat about the stunning scenery, the slow travel pace through tiny hamlets, and the oddities of Canadian cuisine like poutine. Neal mentions how this trip has been an adventure filled with frost heaves and sparse cell coverage, while Julie notes the eerie, horror-movie vibes of camping in a trailer by a lake named Destruction.

Then, they dive into a discussion about the recent strike in Ukraine and whether it might push Putin to the negotiating table. They explore Trump’s potential role in those peace talks, talk about Europe’s shifting political climate, and debate whether the European Union’s control has weakened the identity and resolve of individual countries.

Finally, they’re joined by Bill from Wealth of Health, who shares insights on Ukraine and Russia, while also talking about supplements and staying healthy on the road. The conversation touches on the differences between cultures and how growing up in the Soviet Union shaped Neal’s perspectives on freedom and national identity.

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Transcript

Well good morning. On Newstalk 179, I hit. Just warn Neil Larson that with. That is the one hiccup we do not have fixed here. On the clocks while Neil is on vacation in Alaska. That music cuts off a little bit quick, but, big happy. Good morning to Neil Larson in Canada. How are you, Neil? Good morning and good morning to the road noise to hearing in beautiful Canada.

I'm in a place called destruction Bay, which is so inappropriately named because it is a beautiful I swear we've had like one car every two hours, and now there's a caravan of people driving by. But, no, we're just, along the Alcan highway. Julia, it's been a beautiful trip, and I, I, I didn't know what to expect, but I will tell you, coming up through here, there is so much country in on this continent.

It is it is unbelievable. Okay, before you start telling us about the last four days, I just want to say camping in a an enclosed trailer with no firearms on a lake called Destruction Lake or Destruction Bay is like a 80s horror movie lore. Like, what? Are you trying to write a movie script by doing this? Oh, it feels that way.

And oddly enough, and I hope everybody has this thought once in a while that if I were going to murder someone, this would be a good place to do it. And like, there's that it it really is a sparsely traveled highway. And there's stretches where we would go miles, several miles and not see a car either behind us or coming, towards us.

And it really is. Now, I do understand that it does speed up, as you get a little bit later in the summer, and there's more of a tourist season up here. But it's never like the tourism that we imagined going to Jackson Hole or Sun Valley. But but yeah, it's it's been, it's been a fun and exciting trip.

So tell us all about it. You started out Thursday afternoon, slept right before the border. What was it like getting across the border? The you know, it was it was an interesting experience because you had sent me this video of a young woman getting across the border, and it took minutes for her of being interrogated. And we had a little bit of that, but it wasn't it wasn't even close to that.

We went through a little place called Car Way, which is just north and east of Glacier National Park. And, and maybe they just maybe it's just different in a smaller, border crossing. But we were we pulled up and we were into Alberta in less than two minutes, just 2 or 3 questions. So I looked at our passports, made sure we were legitimate, but they didn't search our car and our luggage and our vehicles and all of that.

So it really was, about as easy as you can imagine getting across the border. But there's still. We'll see. One, two. We have three more. Well, I have three more border crossings to get through, so, we'll we'll see how they go. Let's hope you about 1000 on that, that they're all that good. Okay. What's been your favorite thing so far?

I know you've seen some bears. You've stopped in some cities. Tell us what has been your favorite thing. Well, we, let's talk about the bears first. I, we started counting the black bears, and it seems like in British Columbia, the bears like British Columbia. And, we, we got up north and we counted probably 6 to 8 bears.

Black bears. In, in just a few hours. We're now up to, I think, 12 black bears. But last night, as we were kind of rounding the corner a few miles before destruction Bay, there's a grizzly bear. There was one car stopped looking at it, and I of course, I stopped to end it. It could not have cared less that we were there.

It was just munching on grass on the other side of the road. And I took some really good video and and I'll send it to you. But it, it just it was, it was there just about 30 or 40, you know, feet away maybe, maybe 20 yards away or so. And it was just a, it was a very gentle, docile bear.

Of course, I didn't get out of the vehicle until after it got farther away, but it it was right there, kind of a light brown cinnamony color and, and just a, just a beautiful kind of it's still kind of shaggy, but just a beautiful bear. That's what I was going to ask. Has he lost or she. We didn't know if it was a boy or a girl bear.

But has the bear lost their winter coat yet? It's still a little shaggy. Yeah, still. Still pretty darn shaggy, as you'll see in the video that I send you. Wow, wow. Okay, what about cities? What's been your favorite city that you've gone through? Well, the thing that surprised me is I. I went to Calgary when I was a kid, and we passed through Calgary on our way up, and I thought, I wonder what the population is of Calgary, Alberta.

It's 1.4 million people. It's a it's a huge city. I had no idea. And, I thought, Boise sized, it might have 2 or 300,000 people in it, but no, it's, it's got a, it's got a big share of the population of Alberta right there in, in Calgary. So that's been great. But most of the places that you'd call cities or towns, they called them hamlets up here, they're just these small places that you drive by, not unlike when you travel through Island Park and you go through a little stretch, like where Maxine is, or Last Chance or Pawns Lodge, like they're these little places that may have a gas station and a

few houses or cabins around. That's what most of the municipalities are up here along the highway. All right, I know you tried a Canadian. Well, a couple of Canadian delicacies. Cheese. You had fries with gravy, and you had, ketchup flavored Pringles. Tell us what you think. So, yeah, the first one and many of our listeners probably know this, but it's called poutine, which I'm like, they should have consulted with me when they were deciding what to name that food.

Well, I wanted you to see. I wasn't going to say it. I would never want the first syllable of my food to be through, so I. I would have come up with something else. But, anyway, it it was fine. Like it was these chunks of. I don't know if it's mozzarella with gravy with fries. And so it's good.

There's certain foods you that are more likely to give you a heart attack that you say it's worth it, and I wouldn't say it's worth it. Okay, you take on poutine six out of ten. Yeah, but if you're eating gravy and cheese and fries together, it's got to be a nine out of ten. So so I and again, I'm probably offending people who absolutely love poutine, but I, I yeah not so much.

And then what was the other the other delicacy. The other food. Ketchup flavored chips. Oh yes. Okay. I'm a fan. Like when I first had had it, I'm like, okay, this is okay. 6 or 7 out of ten. But no, especially after trying the Pringles version of the ketchup chips up here. It's more like an eight and nine out of ten.

They're they're very, they're really good. Really good for you. Good. I had had ketchup flavored chips before. I had a Canadian roommate when I was in college, and so I had tried those. That was my first introduction also to, salt and vinegar chips, because she brought those after, I think she went up there during the semester and came back, I don't remember for what holiday.

And, it might have been Canada's version of Thanksgiving, which is earlier than our Thanksgiving, but, she brought those back. And that was my beginning of falling in love with salt and vinegar chips. And I remember the ketchup chips, and I was like, oh, these are these are pretty good. They're okay. So I'm glad you liked them.

All right. How much further do you have to go? Well, we the map, the map app tells us we have about ten hours to go, but we look there, there's a whole very active Alcan Highway community. Online. And they said that there's a stretch where you get these frost heaves and you have to slow way down, especially if you're pulling a trailer like we are.

And and so we're, we're planning on probably 11 or 12 hours to get to, Anchorage area today. So we've got another full day of travel. We've been going probably 14 hours a day or so, kind of depending on the day. And so it'll be maybe a little bit shorter, but it's it's going to be this evening by the time we get to our destination in Palmer, Alaska.

And are you back into full cell service? Because I know a good share of yesterday. You were not in cell service at all. Yeah, we were in kind of a data black hole for most of the day from here on out. It's it's hit and miss. And so, I think as you, as we get closer to Alaska, you get more population.

And based on the Verizon coverage map, it looks like we're going to have, more frequent data. I think we'll probably go through another, area where we won't have data for maybe 2 or 3 hours, but it's not going to be anything like yesterday. Yesterday was the. Yeah. And and it's a weird feeling when you, in ways good.

But but it's also a little disconcerting to just not have any data at all. No way to contact anyone if there's a problem. And, and so, it I guess it is comforting. And I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but it is comforting when you see those bars on your phone. I'm really glad that you made the trip with someone the first time, because in just a few days you're going to turn around and make the trip back alone in a car.

So you'll be in that that data black hole all by yourself for a little while. So I'm glad, you know, at least. Yes, you've been through it one time to kind of know how long it is and where the stops are and everything. Have you had any close calls with having enough gas from getting place to place? No, I think, Steve, my buddy I'm traveling with said it best last night.

He said you you could run out of gas, but you'd have to be pretty stupid to run out of gas. So. Okay, I know jokes to be made right now. Like, there it. If if you're paying attention, you can always keep your tank above a quarter of a tank. Like there are a few stretches where you go, oh, I don't know how many miles, because everything's in kilometers up here.

But you'll go a ways and you'll be like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to stop here and top off. And what that means is you're you're probably going to pay more in a little remote, tiny hamlet somewhere. And we did make one stop where the gas was insanely expensive. So we just we just got enough to get us to our next larger destination, so.

Well, great. Well, thank you, Neil, for joining us. We are very grateful that you've been safe so far. I hope that safety continues. Is there anything else you wanted to tell us before we we hang up? Yeah. And no, I miss everyone. If you ever get the chance to take this trip and hop in a car and take a few days and travel the Alcan Highway, absolutely do it.

The scenery is indescribably beautiful. It is, the route we took. We came up through Banff and Jasper National Parks. It'll take you a little bit longer to go through that, but it it is breathtaking every for I would say gosh, probably 200 miles, maybe more every turn. It is a new mountain range and peak that is just stunningly beautiful.

And, and I just would encourage anyone who gets a chance to, to take up this opportunity and, and come and see this part of the continent. Well, good for you. I'm so glad. It's been wonderful so far. All right. We will check in with Neil again as time permits as as he continues his trip up through Canada and then to Alaska and back.

Thanks, Neil. Good luck. Thank you, Julie, and thank you everyone. I miss you all. All right. Let me know what you think about Neil's trip or any questions that you have. You can text me on the Stones Automotive Group call and text line. That's (208) 542-1079. And, coming up next, we have got Bill O'Reilly and Wall Street Journal on Newstalk 1079.

Yeah. I'm here. I just didn't know if you had turn down my slider, so I didn't want to say anything. Can you hear me? All right. We're back on the Neil Larson show. I'm Julie Mason, and I'm joined this hour by Bill from Wealth of Health. I started thinking this morning, Bill, I don't even know if people know your last name.

It's Bill, and then the last name is from Plus Health. It's classified. Yeah. Well, great. How are you this morning? I'm great. I just worked out so, you know, got my endorphins going. Good deal. Good. Yeah. Good. Good deal. Okay. So, you couldn't have joined me to. Well, I should remind everyone, those who haven't been listening all morning.

Neil is out of town. He's on his Alaska vacation. He did join me last hour. He is still in Canada. Almost to cross over into Alaska. Stayed at a place called destruction Bay overnight, and I said, that's not a good omen, but go right ahead. Do you know, while in Canada, nothing obviously happened overnight. He seems to be all right.

Yeah. So I, I texted you last week, said, hey, you want to join me? You said Monday's the only day you could do it. You're about to leave the country for a little bit. So I said, I will snag you for Monday. Let's get you on. And so thank you for being here. Yeah. It's my pleasure.

And, I could never feel into Neil's big shoes made to his bathroom slippers. I could feel him. And just a disclaimer. If I say something inappropriate as a non professional radio head, Neil gets to pay the FCC fine. He will, he will. He'll cover it. He. Because he signed off on this. He said you could be on.

So yeah it's it's his it's his. Yeah. Okay. Well let's talk about what happened over the weekend. The Ukrainians had been planning this attack on Russia for months. Like some people are saying, longer than a year. They had over 100 drones they smuggled them in on. There were trucks with these mobile fake cabins on them. Then when they executed the whole entire operation, the roofs to the cabins opened up, like you would see in a movie.

Like a missile launcher. Yep. Yeah. Drones flew out and the attack began. So tell us what you I mean, this is obviously near and dear to your heart, so give us your opinion on this attack. Right. There's so there's so many angles to address. Number one, not a single Ukrainian was involved in this. They contracted Russian humans, Russian vehicles.

They work with the Russian truck rentals. So the the depth and the planning, the strategic planning for this operation is incredible. I've been to one of the airfields that they bombed right outside of Vladivostok. It's the base of their, strategic bombers, B-1 bombers. So they reached into the Far East, they reached closer to Moscow, they reach closer to the North Pole.

They reached a vast geographical area. Again, the logistics of this were incredible. So that's number one. Number two, think about, when we used to have these conversations in 22, right after the war started, and Will and I were traveling in there and I've mentioned many times, you probably have it recorded here that if the Europeans and the Americans, loosened up the limits on what Ukraine can do and give them the right tools, this thing would have been over a long, long time ago.

But somebody wanted protracted long term conflict. Drip drip drip drip drip. I remember telling you, imagine if NATO put out a bunch of airplanes into the skies with the flags of France, Italy, UK, US. Putin wouldn't have dared shoot those. And those planes would have just given cover to the Ukrainian territory to prevent these bombers and prevent the missiles being launched.

So why did it take three years for UK and Germany to say, we have no more limits anymore on how deep Ukraine can strike? This just happened this weekend as well. So you start looking at this and it's again disgusting, dirty politics that are playing with hundreds of thousands of people's lives. And most of those people's lives are civilian lives.

I still communicate with, we call them our girls from Poland. They went back to Ukraine. They're fortunately the ones we've communicated with and continue to communicating. Every week I get text messages and we communicate on WhatsApp and telegram. They're good, they're okay, and they're saying that their areas are relatively quiet. Although one of them lives outside of, Dnipro, across the river from the nuclear power plant.

So once a month, once every two months, she'll send me videos of you know, massive, massive attacks. She could video from her apartment building. She's up on the high floors. So it took three years for whoever decided to loosen up the controls in the limits on what Ukraine can do to retaliate. And the Ukrainians took out the bombers and the missile sites and launches that are attacking their civilians.

So they didn't really go for the human element. They went for the purely military element. Where we see Putin constantly going after apartment buildings and hospitals and schools and whatever excuses and pretenses he's giving. It's the demoralizing, effect where people want to say to Zelensky, we're done. Let's settle the deal. We're, we're we're tired. We're fatigued. I'm tired of innocent people dying with that.

Yeah. Okay. So I have a twofold question. Do you think this, attack that occurred over the weekend actually will push Putin into some peace talks because it was so rabid? And have you seen watching what Trump has done, trying to to navigate and negotiate these peace talks between Putin and Zelensky? Are you seeing good effects there? So is the attack going to help?

And are you seeing good effects with Trump as the president? Oh my God. Everything I've said in the last three years, nothing has played out. I mean, I thought that Trump was going to be able to stop it within literally weeks or months after the election. He's, underestimating Putin from the standpoint that Putin all along wanted back the Soviet Union.

So Ukraine is part of the Soviet Union, Baltic republics are part of the Soviet Union, Georgia is part of the Soviet Union. Armenia. So you constantly see these skirmishes, Moldova constantly so I don't know why Trump has not gone in strongly with the sanctions. Russia is one big gas station shut off the flow of oil or, drop the price of oil.

And he can do that together with the Middle East. Trump can, to the point where basically Putin is where it was during 2016 to 2020, where their money was not flowing, there was nothing there to support the military. The country was broke. You can do that. For whatever reason. Putin is not doing it. You also have to look at and I'll come back to your questions too.

But, we're talking about the why, you know, the Trump side. I look at countries like India, countries like, China, obviously, the goal of every president and prime minister of the country is the well-being of their own country, India needs oil. India doesn't care that the United States is disputing with Russia. Russia is disputing with Ukraine.

They need oil. Where's the cheapest oil? Russia is giving them the deals. Where is European gas coming from? Russia. Why did that happen? Biden let four years of you guys take care of yourself. We could have given you the cheap gas in the cheap oil. Instead, they shut the spigot. Here in the United States, we saw the prices go up.

They obviously cannot export it out at the price Trump was doing in 2016 through 2020. So those countries started looking for alternative sources. Trump comes in and he says, we're going to give you natural gas. We're going to give you, LPG, LNG and oil at substantially better prices. I don't know how that's going to work as far as subsidies go or how they can force that right now, the price of oil at about 61, $62 is probably the lowest we've seen it in a number of years.

Trump is also getting a lot of support right now from the Middle East to keep that oil low. You saw over the weekend, Saudi Arabia says we're going to increase the production. What was happening during Biden? They were tightening the spigots. Yeah. Okay. So it's taking longer. Ultimately, I think Trump is going to succeed in this.

And both Putin and Zelensky have said Trump has to be in the negotiations. It's not going to happen without Trump. Did we ever hear this for four years with Biden? Did they say unless Biden sitting at the table with us, this isn't happening? Well, Biden couldn't sit at the table. He was in the lawn chair on the beach.

So I know that were asleep. Yeah, but there is definitely you can see the movement in the right direction. It's just taking a lot longer than I anticipated. And a lot of other people in despair. Now. And I think that he anticipated, I think Trump thought he could do it faster as well. Yeah, he could step. He thought he can, you know, maybe throw a couple of grenades, quote unquote, to Putin and say, okay, let's stop this.

Let's settle down. You want to be welcomed back into the world community. So that's that's the one side, the other side is this attack from Ukraine. So, you know, Russia can outlast Ukraine, no question about it. In a prolonged, protracted war without the drip, drip, drip help from the West. I have said this for a long time, that the European Union is no longer the Europe of the freedom and what it used to be.

The West, when the Cold War was around. Part of it is the European Union coming together many, many years ago, where Brussels has the control of individual countries and part of it is the shift globally of people electing, I don't want to say morons, but the people without any brass balls, pardon the French, who, there are no Margaret Thatcher's.

There are no Ronald Reagan's. You've got Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, you've got Trump. Now, Bush was nothing like this. You need some of these people to put the foot down and say, the decline of the civilization of the human Western civilization as we knew it in the 70s and 80s and 90s, has to stop. And so this brings us into the Colorado attack.

This brings us into the Washington, DC museum attack. This brings us into universities. We've talked about universities in the propaganda and the brainwashing, going back to the 70s and 80s, when the Soviet Union warned us this is going to happen. We all watched, the video that I've played at many meetings and pre-election stuff and tried to tell people without firing a shot, they will convert the United States into what they wanted it to be.

You look at the Koran that says dictate the destruction of the Western civilization. It's a commandment. It's a commandment for them. Right? Christianity doesn't have that. Now, do you have lunatics on the right? Absolutely. Do you have white supremacists who are idiots who will throw a bomb into, black church? Absolutely. But as a systemic institutional proclamation, the Bible doesn't talk about it.

The church. And I'm not a religious person. But there is no such thing as, go kill the West, and we want to convert the West to the, you know, Middle Eastern thinking, mindset. And if people here in the United States, in the West don't see that by now, and how many more years do they need and how many more examples do they need?

If they don't see that, then they're really living under a rock, right? I mean, you say you're not a religious person, Bill, but this is a religious war. Absolutely. And and Ukraine and Russia has religious not not to the level that Israel and Hamas have, but they're all of these things have a portion of this deep core belief.

They're foundational beliefs, and that's why they'll die for what they're doing. Yeah. The Ukraine, Russia, I would disagree, because there is no religion playing and it's not, different denominations of the religions. You've got again, Putin wanting Soviet Union back as a bloc. He cannot tolerate being the former KGB agent and being part of the Soviet Union.

He cannot tolerate the separatist republics all standing on their own, and a lot of them leaning towards the West. Yeah, the way I would say it is a religious wars. There isn't a direct religious tie between Russia and Ukraine, but absolutely. Will Putin use the religious ties of others people to weaponize and get control like he wants to?

I believe he will. Yeah, yeah, but it's a territorial to me. That's a territorial war. Yeah. Not not in the classic definition terms. It's not a religious war. Right. Because a lot all of them are Christians and a lot of them are Protestants. And there are some Catholics and there are some Jews on the Ukrainian side and the Russian side.

So there's there's not they're not pointing fingers, for example, at the Jews, like Hitler did the, where Jews are all the evil in the world, and they're the source of your problems that are for let's destroy the Jews. Putin hasn't said that. Hey, Ukrainians are all the sources of our problem, so let's destroy him. He hasn't gone there yet.

So again, it's a territorial just. Let's bring back the power of the Soviet Union. Okay, so back to my second part of that question. If do you think that this attack that Ukraine was able to pull off, which was by all standards, pretty phenomenal. Yeah, yeah. Do you think that it will help in the long run to to creating peace or at least a cease fire between the two?

Maybe Putin sees that there is a possibility of Ukraine striking deeper and more successfully in. But on the other hand, he doesn't care how many people he loses. So I don't know. But but back to what I was saying is that that Russia can outlast Ukraine in a protracted war. If Trump is willing to walk away and basically say, that's enough with United States, money going in, is the European Union willing to go a long distance?

And we're now seeing the comments from Germany and England that they're getting ready to fight Russia, to the end. So this is a very interesting dynamics where Trump comes in as a peacemaker. The new European leaders are almost warmongering. The prime minister of UK over the weekend said we're going to build more factories to produce military equipment because we anticipate war with Russia.

So I, I am a little bit puzzled and I don't understand where the people of Europe are standing. At the same time, you just saw a historic election in Poland last night where the guy says, no, Ukraine should not be a member of NATO. And we want to separate from the EU because EU is tying our hands.

Yeah. So you're starting to see the eastern countries or the ones who want sanity brought back to their cultural richness of their countries. These were independent countries. And what happened is the EU basically put a blanket over their heads and said, you're all EU and you're going to play by EU rules and EU courts and EU sanctions and EU money contributions.

In EU, everything. And some of these countries are now pushing back Meloni in Italy. Yeah. You you have a very interesting coalition. This was a fascinating time. I mean, I'm glad we're going to Italy, so we're going to a friendly country. I told Dasha, I said I would avoid at this point Netherlands, UK, France because they let their stuff completely out of control.

You can't recognize their countries walking on the streets, you just can't recognize them. Yeah, I was, I was listening to a news report, I believe it was this morning. It might have been yesterday morning, but it was in the morning hours. And they were talking about how France is basically unrecognizable at this point. If you're on the streets of France around, you're going to hear of if it wasn't for the architecture, you would be unsure of where you were at, right?

Right. And, I saw that ten, 15 years ago, as a matter of fact, when we were flying to Ukraine, even four years ago, we were stopping either through Amsterdam or through Frankfurt to connect to Poland. And what you see at the airport is there's very few white people and I'm like, I'm not a racist. But those were cultures.

They were in existence for thousands of years as the Dutch, as the French, as the Brits. They've lost their identity. Yeah, they've been eliminated right by immigration. Right. And I think I told Neil this story many, many, many years ago, Dasha went to school in, Austria, and she met an Italian gal. She was a friend to this day.

They remained friends and, we and we see them periodically. This Italian couple, they said that one of their relatives was in an Italian Catholic hospital, and a muslim patient complained about a pope and a cross on the wall. Every room in this Italian Catholic hospital had a picture of a pope and a cross and a muslim patient.

This is 20 years ago complained and they took it down. This is a degradation of those cultures and societies has nothing to do with racism. It has nothing to do with coexisting bumper stickers. This is those countries have existed for thousands of years, hundreds of years, you know, as long as almost the Middle East has, the Roman Empire and they've given up their identities.

And that's the freaky, scary thing to me. Yeah, yeah, we're we're in real time witnessing a shift, right, of what's happening. And if you take the immigrants in, you know, most of the places would conform to the original countries laws, rules, language. They all have official languages. But when you have this one religion that says, no, no, no, we're not going to do that, you're going to conform to us, even though we're immigrants to your country.

Something is wrong with the society as a whole. Yes. Yeah. Well, in the expectation that you give up what your culture is for somebody else's culture, for some people, but some people don't seem to care. Yeah, some people are like Kumbaya, let's coexist. We can all be together and all but I do 100% of the changing and we obviously cannot.

So I know you said that, you feel like you've been wrong about multiple things over the last. Geez, what are we at, three, 39 months? Three years plus? Yeah, with the war. With the war. So you said you've been wrong. What do you see Europe doing? Do you think that, like, Italy can be strong enough to persuade other countries to do?

Or do you think that this is a pathway that's already blazed and we're just we've got to walk down it. I think each country individually, if they're interested, if they elect the right leadership or the right people, appear just like Trump. They're just like this guy did in Poland. And even, the president who was before the current one, dude, if they basically say we need our identity back, we need to, number one, separate from the European Union.

Number two, strengthen the borders. We don't want the illegals coming in and all of a sudden changing our cultures. And we've seen that done in Hungary, in Romania, in certain countries where they said we don't want to be overflown by and over, overtaken by the illegals. And down there, southern Italy is unrecognizable because Libya and Syria are very close.

So the Libyans were running and are still running across the med, into the southern tip of Italy. When you go to the north of Italy, those were the real Italians. There's a hatred for the southern Italians right now because that culture has changed drastically and dramatically. We're actually going to be there. So it'll be very interesting to observe the dynamics.

But if each individual country is going to threaten the European Union and say, we're out, we have the leadership, we have the local parliaments or whatever the structures who are willing to separate from the European Union. Maybe, maybe the European Union is going to change. But again, what what is all this all about? Money and power. Power grab.

You've got unelected bureaucrats in Brussels controlling 39 countries of the European Union. They're making decisions for the Belgians. They're making decisions for the Pollocks and for the Czechs. They have very little in culture. They have nothing in culture. One is a Slavic country, one is a German country or Germanic one was built on the French history. One was owned by Russia and Ukraine on the border.

I mean, they're completely different entities and they're all under this one umbrella. And I was against the European Union from day one, and this goes 20 years back. I'm glad UK was kind of like with a duck with a pound and the euro. There was some pushback and they were little individual. They were 5050 split there. You've got still right now you've got a good possibility that somebody may get elected in the UK who's a pro Trumper or Trump leaning.

That would be massive. But I don't know. I mean it's very difficult to, to, to understand the mindset of the people when they see their own cities in their own countries change and they continue going coexist. And we're let's invite everybody in under one umbrella. And we are we're welcoming to everybody. You know, I, I just don't get it.

It doesn't make a lot as an immigrant, as a legal immigrant, as a person who was vetted very seriously before I was allowed into the United States. I don't understand it because you willingly changed. Absolutely. And I didn't go in to the motor vehicles department and say, hey, change it to a Russian language because I don't speak English.

For me to take a test, I made my own accommodations to figure out how to pass the test. Yeah, yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break here on Newstalk 1079. If you have a question for Bill from Wealth Health, go ahead and send that in on the Stones Automotive Group call and text line. That number is 208 5421079.

I just about forgot the my very own phone number. And hey, we're going to talk about more than Ukraine. We want to talk about wealth of health and, like your choice of supplements, things like that. You know, how about Covid? Were we right about Covid or are we right about so right about Covid? I would love to talk about that as well.

All right. We'll be back on Newstalk 1079. All right. We're back on Newstalk 179. I want to take a quick moment to talk about town and country gardens and how beautiful their products are, all the needs for your lawn and your garden. They're available at town and country gardens. They have beautiful hanging baskets and you don't want to sleep on that.

I looked at some hanging baskets at a different place the other day, and it's like they don't even compare. They're so gorgeous at town and country gardens. Plus, if you're if you're right on that edge of planting your garden, make sure you get on down there. Get all your needs at town and country gardens there, south of Idaho Falls, across from the malting plant right there on Yellowstone Highway.

Okay, we're joined this hour by Bill from Wealth of Health, who gave us quite the history lesson on Ukraine and Russia. Right. And actually the European Union. Before we left, let's talk for just a minute before we get into wealth of health. Let's talk for just a minute. About this attack in Colorado that happened. Yesterday is when it was the FBI came out pretty quick and said that this 45 year old year, Egyptian nationalist who had an expired visa, that it was a terror attack.

So he's illegally in the U.S., illegally in the U.S, the FBI is confirming that they confirmed his age. They knew his name. They talked about the eight victims. They, the FBI said it's absolutely a terror attack. He was, screaming free Palestine. He was screaming. And all Zionists, these were loaded. This was loaded language that he was using.

Well, just minutes after that, the Boulder police chief comes out and says, yeah, it's too quick. We're not calling it a terror attack. So tell me what you thought of that. Well, first, it's the interesting shift from Kash Patel being an FBI director and everything that flowed down to the FBI and how to handle these situations, to what we saw four years ago or three years ago.

That would have been a very similar drip from the FBI. Came from the Boulder. Chief. So again, this is my view. And I'm looking at it as an immigrant, as a legal immigrant into this beautiful country of the United States that gave me a chance to come in and become my home, even though I speak Russian, even though I have, still some relatives spread around the world, I am not out there propagating my beliefs that, hey, Russia is the greatest and the United States is a piece of crap.

As you're hearing from a lot of United States citizens, I love this country for what it is. Do we have some faults and mistakes and some crazies on all sides? Absolutely. But those of you who haven't traveled into some other countries in the world, you really don't know where you live and how beautiful the places, particularly the place like Idaho.

So I always thought of Colorado as being a reasonable common sense place. Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana. We were this sort of this beautiful mid America, sort of a Northwest America, eliminated washing down in Oregon, obviously because of their crazy policies. But the city of Boulder, we seen what happened to it. It's a sanctuary city. The moment a city becomes a sanctuary city, all kinds of things change.

The attitudes change, the police views change, how they treat criminals, change how they treat minor crimes changes, which leads to the greater crimes. And so, it's insane. So interesting thing is that very small group of walkers or runners, whoever they were, I think that they said only, a few of them were Jews. It was people just wanting hostages free hostages free?

Yeah. And and there are still people. There's still U.S. citizens who don't recognize the evil that Hamas did on October 7th. Yeah. They're still like, no, no Israelis who are oppressing the, you know, the Gaza citizens and the Muslims. And they don't see that the Hamas is grabbing the food shipments that are coming across the board. So they're screaming, the children are starving, but they don't see Hamas soldiers coming in and raping those shipments.

And obviously what they did to the Israelis I mean unprovoked attack. So one thing, you know, I always approach and I always think why am I thinking this way and why somebody else is completely opposite. We all have our views and our opinions and our opinions are worthless because they're like dog crap. They're free and they're everywhere, but they're based on our experience.

They're based on our family and your parents bringing you up. And certainly I have experiences that a lot of people don't from being born in a totalitarian, controlled Soviet Union to seeing, religious minorities oppressed by the White Russians. We and on one of my trips is probably not classified anymore. But back many, many, many years ago when the wall collapsed, I flew to Vladivostok, which is on a far Russian front, when the Russian, the United States decided let's become friendly.

And so we had an exchange, trip with a Navy, US Navy from San Diego and, Russian Navy came to San Diego and we did this exchange. We had a tour of the at the time, brand new Russian, surface ships and submarines. And we walked as they lined up the the sailors and dress uniform to American military for the first time ever in a closed military city of Vladivostok, because it was a big naval base.

And we watched where the officers are all white, educated in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and a lot of the lower cruise sailors are all minority republics from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia and how the white white officers were treating the, Muslim. I'm going to call a muslim because a lot of them lean Muslim populations. It was like you're talking about discrimination.

You're talking about discrimination and healing. Here in the United States, reparation for something that never happened versus people treating same crew on the same ship, on the same submarine, where they have to live for 60 days, 90 days a year together. Pierce. Pierce. Well, there are obviously. Yeah, there's rank and file, but Pierce completely different than what we see here in the United States, where our officers know that the crew is what runs the ship.

Yeah. Remind people we had somebody text and remind them about you just your past when you left and came to America. In 1979. We legally immigrate. It took about a year process and we were vetted in Austria and in Italy by the FBI before they gave us a choice of countries that we can go to.

And we chose the United States, the, you know, shiny beacon lighthouse on the on the cliff. And so, 79, I finished high school in New York City, graduated Merchant Marine Academy, and then because of my knowledge of the Russian language, which was fluent and, having, security clearances working at General Dynamics submarine building, U.S. Navy snapped me into the Intel program and said, hey, we have some things we want you to do.

I was very happy to oblige. And so, I had a chance to travel and do some things outside of the health foods environment. Yeah. And, you know, that's the it's kind of a completely different world. And, I got to see some things, as they were happening back in the 90s and, and of course, continued then through the years doing some work at the site when the site was training, former Soviet republics about their nukes and safeties, they would bring him to Argonne Laboratory, in the desert.

And I would help interpret and and help, you know, escort, the visitors for one week or two weeks at a time, multiple, multiple times. And it was fascinating experience. It just opens your eyes and it gives you the perspective that a lot of people never see. Right? Right. So that's how you it was still military. You came to Idaho because of the AML.

I came to Idaho as a civilian. I was a Navy reserve, but in a completely different, Merchant Marine Academy. I would my primary job at the time was to teach the Navy cadets graduating the Annapolis how to run a ship. And on one of the trips to Annapolis, I met a Navy Intel CIA spook over dinner.

And he says, you're in the wrong program. We need to bring you into our program. And so I said, you learn. Okay. Yeah. I said, okay, let's let's let's do it. And now you sell vitamins and health supplements in East Idaho. But fortunately, I'm, I'm I'm connected. And I have a lot of friends who keep me up to date.

This Ukraine strike was interesting because I was, hearing from people, some of the logistics of what the news was breaking a couple of hours before it actually came out, before it came out. And I'm like, are you kidding me? They were able to do this with not a single Ukrainian citizen crossing the border of pulling the trigger.

I mean, that's phenomenal. That's pretty phenomenal. They found the Russians. Obviously the money talks. Yes. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's take another quick break. We've got, bottom our news to get to. And we'll be back on Newstalk 179 and we're back on Newstalk 179. We're joined by Bill from Wealth of Health. Like I said, you don't have a last name.

It's bill from Wealth of Health. Tell us about, Wealth of Health and not necessarily you said, I don't need a commercial. And I said, I know you don't need a commercial, but you're a very healthy man. So what led you into that realm as a business? And just tell us a little bit about your regimen.

So, interestingly enough, I was just a regular, average Joe the Citizen. I, I was getting pretty chubby, healthy. Every young person is basically healthy. You get old enough, things start showing up. But when you're young, you think you're invincible. So I was in my mid 20s. I was gaining a lot of weight. Mendoza at the side right now.

And she is the one really who, pushed me into the healthy lifestyle. I don't know where I would have been if I hadn't met her, if I met some Russian gal from New York City. Like another immigrant, probably overweight, pasty white person, not physically active. And so she and her mom owned the health food store. The Wolf, of course, at the time.

And I was around cooking from scratch, eating healthy as I was gaining weight. She was working out. She was teaching aerobics at the old, downtown athletic Club that used to be on West Broadway first and then in the old kid studio, on, 717. Yeah. So, she, she is the force behind me because, she's a little bit older than I am.

And I look at her and I say, she's in a one percentile, maybe top five percentile for overall health and physical. Oh, she looks great. Yeah. Thank you. And she works at it very, very hard. But it comes down to eating. Eating is 80% of the success overall of your health, of your physical, of your mental. We're at the gym five, six days a week.

We cycle a lot. We cross-country ski in the winter. We, you know, we travel because that's our passion. We spend a lot of time in the sun. Were never worried about getting cancer from the sun. We worried about getting cancer from the lack of vitamin D, which all of it sort of plays out into the Covid thing.

We talk about it. RFK Jr yeah, but she you know, she cooks from scratch. We eat a ton of salads. I am the shopper in a family. So three days a week I am bringing in fresh veggies. We don't do a lot of starches. We don't do a lot of carbs. Our desserts are fruit, fresh or frozen.

We've eliminated, a lot of the junk out of the house. And so I went from, you know, I can tell people at my worst, about 24% body fat, which, if people understand that is pretty nasty in the 38 inch waist. And once I went heavier proteins and lower carbs and, you know, common sense food, I went down into the 15 to 16% body fat, but there is nothing that I don't eat, and there's nothing that I don't drink.

A glass of wine, a little occasional ice cream. I'm not going to tell anybody, don't do this or don't do that unless you have an illness or an allergy. So you either going to pay the doctor, or are you going to spend money on the gym membership and more expensive cleaner foods? There's there's there's no two ways around.

You can choose which way you go. What is the one before we take the commercial break? What is the one supplement you recommend to everybody? So I personally live on curcumin turmeric extract because I've had my shoulder redone. I've had my knee redone. I do not touch ibuprofen, Tylenol, Advil. So for me, curcumin is an anti-inflammatory and a pain med is going to be for the rest of my life.

Every morning I take it. And sometimes multiple a day. If we're riding 60 miles or doing a long cross-country ski that I know my knees are getting hammered on, my shoulders are getting hammered, I'm going to take a lot more of curcumin, on those days. All right. Bill, thank you so much for being here this hour. We appreciate it.

And safe travels. You're welcome. Julie and I will report on you. Had an interesting text from one of the listeners on situation in Italy. I'll report to you. Yep. We'd love to hear from you when you get back. Okay. All right. Thanks. Okay. Perfect. Right on the thing. Right, I appreciate it. Absolutely. Put that on, and, I'll reach out.

All right. In our last minute here, I want to just make sure I remind everybody about Grand Peaks, primates. I'm going to admit to something. I cheated on Grand peaks, primates. I wanted a roast for dinner. I didn't have another one in the freezer, so I picked up one at a big box store. It was such a mistake.

It was not yummy. It was not the level of grand peaks. Lesson learned from here on out. I'll roast, get purchased by Grand Peaks Primates and you can go there and see all of their choices. It's GG Prime primates.com. I would highly recommend using them if you're planning a party or just stocking up your freezer for several months.

They're wonderful. They have free delivery in Idaho Falls, and if you're out of Idaho Falls, it's just a small surcharge, to get that order delivered again. That's GG Prime meat.com. All right, quick reminder tomorrow, 9:00 hour while Neil is in Alaska, representative Barb iHeart will be joining me. We're going to talk all about the major breaking news over the weekend of the the transgender track star in California who took away two titles, over the weekend.

It's caused quite the stir. So we'll get that update from her and also the local politics scene and how the, legislative session went in 2025. All right. And thanks for being here with me. Will be back tomorrow on Newstalk 100.