Podcast 567-Western Legends

Podcast 567-Western Legends. The first thing one learns on a big road trip of the Western US is that it is vast. That sky. Those mountains. The desert. The border. In the Southwest these features take on mythical proportions. It’s fertile ground for two of the greatest legends of the west. One of them dates by to 1881. The other is new by historical standards, dating back only to 1947. Each legend features a town. A town seemingly in ‘the middle of nowhere’. Tombstone Arizona developed quickly as a silver mining and ranching center. Tombstone quickly attracted gamblers and fast women interested in separating cowpokes and miners from their hard earned money. It also attracted a legendary western lawman from Dodge City, Wyatt Earp and his two brothers. It didn’t take long for trouble to find the ‘retired’ Earp. The gunfight at the OK corral is the kind of legend that spawns myth, and Hollywood loves legends that spawn myth. What really happened on October 26th, 1881 in Tombstone will be debated for many years to come. In modern day Tombstone the gunfight replayed everyday in a life-imitating-art-WestWorld kind of way. A new legend has captured the attention of the world in a completely different kind of way. In another desert near another lonely town something happened in June and July of 1947 that has never been completely resolved. The incident at Roswell is truly a modern legend. Podcast 567-Western Legends  takes you inside homespun museums and reenactments in two different towns in two unique places in the American Southwest. These are not National Parks. In their own way, the people of Roswell, New Mexico and the people of Tombstone, Arizona are paying tribute and still trying to make some sense of the events that made their towns famous across the world and influenced the thinking of generations of Americans. Sponsored by X Government Cars.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:00 — 75.5MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Podcast 566-BobDavisRadioShow-50

Podcast 566-BobDavisRadioShow-50. October final State By State Poll roundup. Podcast 566-BobDavisRadioShow-50 covers the hysteria around polling these days and what to watch for in the final two weeks of campaigning. Charlatans abound in the political world. Almost everyone telling you one candidate, or the other, is going to win has a hidden agenda. Some want to make themselves famous. Some are shilling for a candidate. Ignorance on what political research actually is has now commingled with Trump’s claims the polls and thus the election are rigged. My response to a subscriber email about push polls is typical. Someone, somewhere talked about push polls so now everyone thinks the polls are push polls. Or, the John Podesta email suggesting internal polling over same democrats has everyone convinced all the pollsters are in the tank for Clinton. Sigh. The polls used on Real Clear Politics, and the polls I use for Podcast 566-BobDavisRadioShow-50 are polls taken by media organizations or university political science departments. A push poll is a poll designed to ‘push’ a respondent into voting one way or another. Usually there is very little polling data collected in so called Push Polls. Are the polls right? A good poll isn’t right or wrong, it is reliable. Listen to this show and you’ll know more about polling than anyone on your block. Listen to the other podcasts about polling I have done and you’ll understand more about what is going on. First, it is not a popular vote that elects the President of the United States. The US Election is an electoral affair so all the action is in the state by state polls. You can aggregate these polls. You can average these polls. However, you cannot aggregate and average them and place a probability on whether one or the other candidate will win. All the poll averaging does is give you a birds eye view of the battlefield. The must win electoral states change election cycle to election cycle. No predictions will be made here. I will give you a truthful and honest analysis of where the mainline campaigns stand on the eve of election day, 2016. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance, Ryan Plumbing and X Government Cars.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:18 — 117.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Podcast 565-Lost Desert Civilization?

Podcast 565-Lost Desert Civilization? Adventure and Travel in Arizona at Casa Grande On The Road in at the Casa Grande ruins in the Sonoran Desert, in Southeastern Arizona. From the first century AD, to the mid 1400’s a people flourished in the Sonoran Desert. In Podcast 565-Lost Desert Civilization? I toured Casa Grande. Descendants of the Huhugham (translated incorrectly as the Hohokam because Huhugham is pronounced Ho Ho KAHM) are represented in many of the Native American tribes of this region. They were hunter gatherers who mastered irrigation from the Salt and Gila rivers. Their villages extended all along those river valleys and into this desert. You often hear from Europeans that there are no ruins in America as old as those in Europe. Of course the ruins in Greece and Italy and across Europe are amazing. America, though, does have ruins dating to a different culture and different people, much older than the United States itself. Some academics believe there were hundreds of thousands of people in this desert. They lived in villages stretching from what is now Southeastern Arizona to California, down into what is today Mexico. These villages flourished for many centuries before the 1400’s producing sophisticated art and trading as far west as today’s California and as far south as today’s Mexico. Think mastering irrigation is no major feat? Today, when you drive through this part of Arizona, all kinds of crops are cultivated year round because of irrigation. What makes the story of the Hohokam so interesting is their dispersal, which archeologists believe began sometime around 1450. What caused these people to break up and leave the area? Was it an overly rainy season? Wars? Disease and perhaps famine as the result of an oscillating climate? What makes Casa Grande so important and unique? Or, did they become victims of their own success, with too many people to support for even their advanced agriculture of the time? It makes me wonder what people will say about us someday. We think we are different but how many know that once there was a people who probably believed they were pretty advanced, and in the course of half a century or so, it all came crashing down. While we argue about something as petty as who said what about whom in these final days before election 2016, the message of Casa Grande might be one we should hear. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and X Governmentcars.com.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:00 — ) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS