Robert Lowe and Dana Austin

[00:01] DANA AUSTIN: So I've had two no-gos and this will be the fourth time I actually get to have a conversation.

[00:11] ROBERT LOWE: Oh great. Well, I'd like to hear about your experiences so far, but I guess we're supposed to start with some structure. I'm Bob.

[00:24] DANA AUSTIN: I think we're supposed to read each other's bios there, so.

[00:29] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[00:31] ROBERT LOWE: You want to read first? Sure.

[00:34] DANA AUSTIN: Let's see. I think what they do is put them up here. Okay, here we go. Read bio. All righty.

[00:48] ROBERT LOWE: I'm.

[00:51] DANA AUSTIN: Gonna put on my specs. Readers. Okay. I love hiking. I've lived. I've led Sierra Club outings. I'm very engaged in my Jewish faith and love to talk with people of other faiths to find the commonalities. For example, a dear friend is an evangelical Christian minister and I've helped to lead interfaith services with Christians and Muslims. I have a really bad sense of humor. we're gonna get along just fine with that.

[01:21] ROBERT LOWE: I read about your pun.

[01:23] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[01:24] DANA AUSTIN: Hello, Bob. Here, 68 years old, retired physician, researcher, married for 30 plus years to another physician. She and I have one adult daughter. My Jewish faith is very important to me. I take seriously exit. Exodus 23 9. Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers. in the land of Egypt. My father was a stranger to a refugee from Nazi Europe. So welcoming the stranger drives a lot of my core values on immigration policy, racial equity, and more. Excellent.

[02:06] ROBERT LOWE: Thank you. And it speaks to how long ago I signed up because I'm 73 now. So I guess I signed up five years ago.

[02:17] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, I just turned 70 in ####. One of those milestone birthdays.

[02:25] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah. Okay, Dana in Palmyra, Virginia. Pretty far toward conservative on the scale. Interest singer-songwriter, inveterate punster, I'm interested. I'm using my three granddaughters. You are a Marine Corps veteran or sergeant. I keep myself extremely fit. My grandpa taught me to shoot at age 10. I have two full CDs of original music online. My YouTube channel has live performance videos, recordings of live performances, studio work, some silly stuff. I truly enjoy the food of many cultures. I arranged my daughter's marriage to a man from India, kidding. My son-in-law is from India, engineer by day, gourmet, Indian chef by night. Happy me. I enjoy reading, boating, plain old worm fishing. And looks like you've got a bachelor's, an MPA, which is master of public administration.

[03:31] DANA AUSTIN: It's kind of like an MBA, only it's for government.

[03:35] ROBERT LOWE: Got it. So next question I guess is.

[03:47] SPEAKER D: Why.

[03:47] ROBERT LOWE: Are you doing One Small Step? What do you do it?

[03:51] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, well, it's great to meet other people, but in your case, I recently, well, it's been a few years now, found out that I have an awful lot of blood relatives in Israel. and I'm not Jewish, but they are.

[04:09] SPEAKER C: And.

[04:10] DANA AUSTIN: And what happened? See if I can make a long story short. When I was 26 or so, my mother told me that childhood mumps had left my father sterile. And so they didn't know anything about DNA, particularly in 1954. So Yale Medical students were donors for the Turkey Baster. Now along comes 23 and Me and Ancestry and my sister and I expected that we would have different biological fathers, but we went, the thing we didn't expect was to find additional half siblings. And so I now have two half brothers I didn't know about. and one half sister I didn't know about. And of course, my sister with whom I grew up, of course, is also a half sister. So, but anyway, my, and they're both named Amy, my two daughters. So, Amy is Jewish, and I think it was a great aunt who was a Holocaust survivor. moved to Israel and evidently had a passel of children who had a passel of children. So there's, there's a bunch of them over there. I don't know. I don't know how many. And they gave Amy some firsthand reports about October 7th. Most of it is. horific.

[05:51] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[05:51] SPEAKER C: And.

[05:53] DANA AUSTIN: And there are a couple of heartwarming stories as well, mostly about people in the bomb shelters. The, the one. Well, there were two things. Amy said that a lot of people did not believe that it happened. Yeah, they, they just didn't believe it, despite all of the evidence. they just, they couldn't believe it for whatever reason. I don't know if they eventually did, but anyway, so that was kind of bizarre. And then there's a story about, of course, a lot of the men were called up for the defense forces, so there were, there were mostly women and children in the bomb shelters and. they knew from the sound.

[06:49] SPEAKER C: When the.

[06:49] DANA AUSTIN: Iron shield, iron dome, I can't remember what it's called, would get an incoming missile that made one sound. And if one didn't get shot down, that made another sound. But anyway, to calm the kids.

[07:11] SPEAKER C: Because.

[07:11] DANA AUSTIN: It, you know, pretty traumatic for them. I'm sure if they knew old enough to know what was going on, the mothers would sing and, you know, and keep the children calm by doing that.

[07:26] SPEAKER C: Sure. So.

[07:29] DANA AUSTIN: So that's what, uh, that's what I know.

[07:32] ROBERT LOWE: Uh, do you know the last name of the, uh, Oldest relative in that branch of the family?

[07:45] DANA AUSTIN: Not offhand. Amy's last name is Singer. That's her husband's last name. I can find that out, I imagine, by asking her.

[08:01] ROBERT LOWE: It would just be really interesting if we were related.

[08:05] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[08:08] ROBERT LOWE: Back in Europe. Anything else?

[08:17] DANA AUSTIN: Well, not for now. Let's see how the conversation goes. Tell me about you. It's always fun to hear physicians anecdotes about that.

[08:28] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[08:28] ROBERT LOWE: So what drew me to One Small Step? There's another organization called Braver Angels, which was, you know about it?

[08:41] DANA AUSTIN: I've heard of it. I've explored it.

[08:44] ROBERT LOWE: Oh, all right. Founded in 2016, kind of recognizing the polarization that was plaguing our country. And I think it was started by a man and a woman who were a couple and were family therapists. who said, you know, this polarization that is you're seeing all around politically, you know, that's our day job in terms of families that are polarized like that. But see if we can use some of the same tools. And they put, you know, put together a program and groups and their chapters all around the country. And I have done a few things with it. I'm not super involved, but this seemed like something else that was a way to connect on a personal level with people who I wouldn't normally encounter. who'd have different opinions. Portland, Oregon, as you can probably imagine, is a pretty homogeneous place in terms of social and political views.

[10:07] SPEAKER C: And.

[10:11] ROBERT LOWE: Honestly, in my network of friends and colleagues, I know one person who's a Republican. She's in Connecticut. I'm gonna see her in October, I think.

[10:29] DANA AUSTIN: She's out of place in Connecticut.

[10:34] ROBERT LOWE: It's really easy to stay in once on bubble and, you know, other people who might not agree, which kind of sucks.

[10:55] DANA AUSTIN: Close the door. Excuse me. Okay. So my wife isn't distracted because she's got a lot of things going on herself.

[11:09] ROBERT LOWE: And I just read your t-shirt. I love it.

[11:12] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[11:15] DANA AUSTIN: It'S probably covid based. It's certainly how I feel about that. You know, we can't trust the science. I've got a. A meme that I really love. It's a woman dressed very properly in, like, late 50s, early 60s Garb, you know, holding a. A China cup. And she says, just to be clear, the experts weren't wrong. They lied. There's a difference.

[11:50] SPEAKER C: So.

[11:52] ROBERT LOWE: Interesting. That's not something I would agree with. But I don't know if that's where we want to go right now or not. I'd be really interested in a couple things. One is your faith, and that could lead to a discussion about overlaps between your branch of Christianity and my understanding of Judaism, and also maybe to how we have the values we do about social and political things.

[12:41] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[12:42] DANA AUSTIN: Well, I, I would say I was a classical liberal, not today's left. When I was growing up and it was Unitarian.

[12:59] SPEAKER C: So.

[13:03] DANA AUSTIN: And it was a refuge for fallen Jews. A lot of non-practicing Jewish people in the congregation, for whatever reason.

[13:18] SPEAKER C: And.

[13:24] DANA AUSTIN: I was too young to have it inform my values in any particular way. We lived in a pretty white town where Penn State is. But my parents made sure that, you know, I got to meet people from different faiths and different ethnicities. I played chess with a man from India a few times.

[13:54] ROBERT LOWE: Invited over.

[13:58] DANA AUSTIN: You was Sikh, I think. Anyway, and got some of the horrors of a black family who had moved in. This was in the 60s, and they were basically chased out by racism. even a small town like that. They just, you know, it was, okay, we can't stay here. We're getting too much guff that changed, you know, so 10 years later or something, there were. It was a lot less homogeneous, which was. Which was very good. I. I just. I never understood that kind of. That kind of thing, you know?

[14:46] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah.

[14:47] DANA AUSTIN: Racism and so forth. So I consider myself now to be, I call it spiritual.

[14:57] SPEAKER C: And.

[14:59] DANA AUSTIN: I never ask for anything, but I give thanks a lot for little things, you know, all the time, you know, thank you for not dropping that safe on my head, you know, to thank you for, you know, not making, you know, I came close. Oh, I didn't spill the coffee on my lap. Thank you. You know, I think sometimes, of course, that the ask is implicit in the thanks, if you know what I mean.

[15:29] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[15:30] DANA AUSTIN: Please don't let other safes almost fall on me or something. I don't know.

[15:34] SPEAKER C: So.

[15:35] DANA AUSTIN: So that's. That's my. My sense of spirituality, I believe. there's a driving force and that.

[15:46] SPEAKER C: We.

[15:47] DANA AUSTIN: Can'T know about it in our earthly life. I don't think we can. I mean, for sure, you know.

[15:56] ROBERT LOWE: I'm gonna pull down a book here. Come on. Here we go. The Path of Blessing by Rabbi Marsha Prager.

[16:34] SPEAKER C: And.

[16:36] ROBERT LOWE: She begins it by talking about people who come to her and say, you know, Rabbi, I hope this doesn't offend you, but I don't believe in God. I'm not really religious, but I'm spiritual. And so when you said exactly that, it's like, oh, yeah. And somehow I had the impression, and I just. It's not in your bio, but I somehow had the impression you were either Catholic or in a conservative Christian faith.

[17:11] DANA AUSTIN: I didn't think I was all that far conservative, and I probably overdid it a little bit, but.

[17:18] ROBERT LOWE: Well, I don't know, but where was I going? I grew up. Unitarian.

[17:25] DANA AUSTIN: Oh, really?

[17:27] ROBERT LOWE: Both of my parents were Jewish, and both of them were alienated from Judaism. My mother grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and there was a my interpretation from things she said was there was a very insular Jewish community. of people who one felt they were better because they were Jewish and two were surrounded by antisemitism. And, you know, that was not for her. My father was born in #### in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

[18:13] SPEAKER C: And.

[18:17] ROBERT LOWE: His family moved to Vienna when he was about six years old. And after World War I, they were pretty impoverished. His father worked as a academic high school teacher, but did not earn a lot of money. And they could really have used some help. from the Jewish Relief Organization. But an uncle of my father's had converted to Catholicism, which is what you had to do if you wanted to advance in civil service. And because of the Catholic uncle, the Jewish Relief Organization refused to help my father's family.

[19:08] SPEAKER C: And.

[19:10] ROBERT LOWE: He was turned off. And so they sent me to a Unitarian Sunday school. The first time I was in a synagogue, I was probably about 13, and it was the bar mitzvah of a friend of the family. I just felt totally uncomfortable and out of place. And it wasn't until college that I very gradually began exploring Judaism. And over the last few decades now, I've gotten much more interested in it, connected to it. And Judaism is a really diverse faith. I mean, goes from ultra-orthodox who, you know, do their best to observe a very strict interpretation of 613 commandments and.

[20:17] SPEAKER C: To.

[20:20] ROBERT LOWE: You know, reform or reconstructionist Judaism.

[20:24] SPEAKER C: Which.

[20:28] ROBERT LOWE: Is much looser.

[20:34] SPEAKER C: The.

[20:41] ROBERT LOWE: Were part of what's called Jewish renewal, which takes a fair amount of the traditional stuff in terms of the prayers, ritual, but makes it much more accessible so that, you know, the first time I went to a Jewish renewal.

[21:01] SPEAKER C: Service.

[21:03] ROBERT LOWE: You know, for example, there's a prayer, Ahalav Raba, talking about God's abundant love. And we sang it with this really lovely tune. in Hebrew and people were, you know, singing animated and, you know, I had no idea what the words meant. I could kind of sort of sound out the Hebrew letters if I went slowly enough. But, you know, I could follow along because the music made it easy to remember it. And then gradually over time it's like, oh, yeah, okay. I know what those words mean. I can read them without music. And now, you know, it becomes. I start understanding it at deeper levels. As I wrote, some of my favorite experiences have been interface. I was at, you know, a couple of times I've been at events with the Muslim community. And there's a Muslim line that I think is core to their faith, La ilaha illa Allah, there's no God but God. And a core line in our prayer ritual is Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Same thing. And that kind of experience is what's really fun for me. One thing that's tough now is what's going on in Israel and the antisemitism that it's fostering in the US. because people sometimes don't understand the difference between being culturally Jewish, practicing the religion of Judaism, believing that there needs to be a safe haven where Jews can live, and believing that all the policies of the current Israeli government are justified. And those are four very different things. I don't believe that what Netanyahu is doing is right by any means.

[23:51] DANA AUSTIN: I recall reading something about the Orthodox are really right wing and as part of the coalition they, they do have enough influence to drive some of the.

[24:07] ROBERT LOWE: In Israel.

[24:08] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[24:09] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[24:11] DANA AUSTIN: It's, it, it's all, it's all fascinating. We, my, my new sister, as I call her, don't really talk that much about it.

[24:25] SPEAKER C: Though.

[24:28] DANA AUSTIN: She can come up with some pretty funny stuff. My wife is Catholic, so we've been married for 45 years and I've been to weddings and funerals and services. And my children were baptized in the Catholic Church. neither one of them stayed with it. They both did, you know, catechism and all of that. But my, my daughter is a different kind of Christian, and my son is probably more like I am sort of spiritual. They've kind of been there. They live in Southern Virginia and Suffolk, and they've really had a hard time finding a congregation that they're comfortable with. They thought they'd found it when they first moved to Suffolk, Virginia.

[25:25] SPEAKER C: And.

[25:26] DANA AUSTIN: More and more Christian nationalists were making them very uncomfortable. And so they sought a different church and then a different one after that. And they seemed to be comfortable. you know, where they are at this point. So that's good. But, you know, it surprised me. And I. I didn't realize that, you know, the Christian nationalists were so nationalistic. Kind of a scary combination, I guess.

[26:05] SPEAKER C: So.

[26:08] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, I. I know Christians who say that's not Christianity.

[26:16] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[26:17] DANA AUSTIN: Terrorists. That's not possible.

[26:22] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, yeah.

[26:23] DANA AUSTIN: You know, it's the same. Same kind of thing.

[26:31] ROBERT LOWE: Starving people in Gaza is not Judaism.

[26:35] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, well, now what I've been. reading a lot of is that, and then again, I've seen, you know, videos driving by with there's huge amounts of food on the other side of the fence, but the UN won't move it. And both the IDF and some other organizations will give you armed escorts, you know. and the UN won't move the food. It's there.

[27:08] SPEAKER C: Really? Huh.

[27:09] DANA AUSTIN: And, you know, I, and there was, I can't even think of their name, but the, the, what released hostage would talk about, and they were, left pretty hungry that their captors would eat, you know, stolen food in front of them, just as, you know, part of the abuse that they gave.

[27:43] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[27:44] ROBERT LOWE: So I had not heard what you said about the UN being the bottle. I had more of the impression that it was. Israel's willingness to deliver food that was a bottleneck or to allow food to be delivered. Do you know where you read that?

[28:11] DANA AUSTIN: I think you could probably find it online. I don't think it was faked. It just didn't sound that way. I've heard it a number of different ways.

[28:22] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[28:25] ROBERT LOWE: You said you actually saw a video showing this.

[28:27] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, they were driving by and miles practically of, you know, there's the flour, there's the sugar, there's, you know.

[28:39] SPEAKER C: And.

[28:43] DANA AUSTIN: Of course, I don't have my phone down here. Probably saw it on, boy, I'm really drawing some blanks today. Instagram. Well, I don't want to do that while we're talking, but, you know.

[29:21] SPEAKER D: Do.

[29:22] ROBERT LOWE: We have a way to communicate afterwards?

[29:24] DANA AUSTIN: Yes, yes. You know, if we, if we so desire, we can, you know, exchange contact information.

[29:33] ROBERT LOWE: Okay, good, because that would be a good way for you to send it to me.

[29:36] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. Um, my email is long, but it's easy to remember. My last name is Austin, like Austin, Texas. and I have my own website. So it's ####@###############.### so you know it's long but fairly easy to remember Dana Austin music.

[29:56] ROBERT LOWE: So writing that down and mine is.

[30:05] SPEAKER C: Long.

[30:07] ROBERT LOWE: Just ###### ### # ### ### #-#-#-# ### #-#-# #### ##### ##### X-ray which is the airport here.

[30:20] DANA AUSTIN: Okay, just a second. I didn't have pencil and paper, so. ###### ### #. Yes.

[30:31] ROBERT LOWE: Let's see, it looks like I can send you a message.

[30:37] DANA AUSTIN: Your pictures disappeared I don't know okay never mind okay so ######.# ### ###.

[30:46] ROBERT LOWE: #-#-#-# ### #-#-# ##### ##### #-### ###@#####.###.

[30:59] DANA AUSTIN: At ##### good old Gmail I have a Gmail account in addition to my, I hesitate to call it professional one.

[31:10] SPEAKER C: But.

[31:12] DANA AUSTIN: For lack of a better word, I played in the bars, frats, parties, restaurants, you know, just about any place that would ever want to Live music.

[31:29] SPEAKER C: One.

[31:32] DANA AUSTIN: Of my favorites were outdoor concerts, you know, standing on a roof or something with lots of people outside. Oh, cool. Yeah, I enjoyed that a lot. Usually, I'm sorry, I interrupted.

[31:49] SPEAKER C: No, no.

[31:51] ROBERT LOWE: What kind of music?

[31:53] DANA AUSTIN: Well, when I was playing for a living, it was, you know, popular music, if you will, not top 40, but, you know, songs that people knew, Harry Chapin, more upbeat stuff, like Rocky Top or something. I mean, those are the kinds of things that people really like to hear. And if we were playing in.

[32:24] SPEAKER C: A.

[32:25] DANA AUSTIN: Roadhouse kind of place, I don't know if you're familiar with the rodeo song, but that would usually be required three times a night at least.

[32:41] ROBERT LOWE: So where should we go in our conversation here?

[32:44] SPEAKER C: Well.

[32:50] DANA AUSTIN: We could do a Second Amendment.

[32:55] ROBERT LOWE: Okay.

[32:59] DANA AUSTIN: Part of my upbringing was familiarity with firearms. Of course, I was in the Marine Corps, and I really love. I really love my. My M16. I still remember my. number of things. I can forget all kinds of things, but you know, it was kind of drilled into me.

[33:22] SPEAKER C: I.

[33:24] DANA AUSTIN: Enjoy competitive shooting, but I can't do it as much as I used to because I have what are called being Dr. You're on a kinetic tremors. The, um, a neurologist. just made sure it wasn't the start of Parkinson's. And then he said, congratulations. If it gets worse, we can try propranolol. And that, you know, so, yeah, some, if I, if I grip things really hard, I don't tend to shake, but if I'm eating and I'm not paying attention is something, something like that. And then so. I used to really enjoy a competition called Rimfire Steel, which is done with.22 caliber semi automatic pistol and semi automatic rifle and, you know, different stages, targets you had to hit in a certain order, things like that. But pistol is just out of the question anymore for me.

[34:30] SPEAKER C: Sorry.

[34:31] DANA AUSTIN: But, you know, I do okay with a rifle. So what I've started doing is, is more you know, Clay Bird kind of things. Because you got 40 chances to hit something, I guess. But I, so that's up in the.

[34:53] ROBERT LOWE: Air and you're shooting it while it's moving. Yeah.

[34:56] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[34:57] DANA AUSTIN: So, you know, it's going like this. You learn to how to aim. there are several different, you know, there's trap skeet and something that's called wobble, which I haven't done yet. In fact, I haven't been out very much with my shotgun. I should go, but I'm crushed with work on my property, so I just am not getting out very much. so.

[35:32] ROBERT LOWE: I'm sorry. What's on your property?

[35:36] DANA AUSTIN: Well, I've. I've got a 275 foot Culvert that was washed out in a very heavy rainstorm. It starts at the top of my property with an 18 inch pipe. coming in under the street that has all of the drainage for, you know, everybody who's uphill. I mean, it's very, it's a lake, you know, and it's just, it's very steep, probably about a 60-foot drop from the street down to my dock. 110 stairs, 86 from the house down and 24 from the street to the house. and, well, I. And I go up and down them all the time without, you know, get getting out of breath, which I tell my cardiologist about. I had, like, the world's tiniest little heart attack in 2019. I thought it was hiatal hernia. That's what it felt like. Oh, it's great to tell the doctor these things. and, you know, it took my wife about three or four hours to talk me in to at least go to the primary. And, and the primary probably took him, you know, 20 minutes to half an hour to talk me into going to the hospital. Do you want me to call an ambulance? Ah, no. Maryland. Maryland can drive me.

[37:10] SPEAKER D: So.

[37:11] DANA AUSTIN: So he had called ahead, so they were expecting me, and I can't remember. what they try to measure with someone who's had a heart attack in the blood.

[37:24] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[37:26] ROBERT LOWE: CPK.

[37:28] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, something like. Well, you know, mine was so low. I mean, a serious heart attack, I guess, whatever it is, can be like 300 or something. And mine, you know, never got even close to three digits. I think it was. you know, very well, it was very little. Like I said, the world's minus most minor heart attack, it was more like a freak accident than a medical emergency.

[37:56] ROBERT LOWE: Did they open up the argument?

[37:58] DANA AUSTIN: Well, here's the thing. They did the cath and the artery was so small, it was not, you know, some people don't even have this little thing going on the outside of their heart. and so when they got there, it was too small. They couldn't do anything with it. They couldn't poke it, they couldn't stent it. Well, you know, we'll put you on blood thinners for a year and a half. And, you know, and so I'm, I'm, you know, always at odds a bit with my, with my cardiologist. And, you know, I say, well, here's, you know, because I'm making videos. of, you know, going up the 110 steps and at the top, I'm not out of breath going down. I carry a lot of rocks. So I've got, like, 120 pounds split between two buckets, and I'm carrying them down where I need them without getting out of breath. I mean, I'm very fit.

[38:58] SPEAKER C: And.

[39:00] DANA AUSTIN: Like I said, the heart attack just a freakish accident.

[39:04] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, good job. Yeah, mine was the year after that, 2020. And fairly similar story, actually, that I did have problems with my esophagus, similar to a hiatal hernia. And, you know, was having pain that was very much like the pain I had when my esophagus was acting up. I have an Apple Watch, which has this EKG function, and I'm just lying there drinking warm water till the esophagus pain goes away, and I look at the watch just playing around with it, and oh my gosh, and it was hard. and, you know, four days later, I was in the hospital, got the cath, and I had a. An artery that could be stented. There is still a little one like yours that's too tiny to do much with, but, you know, the senses, you.

[40:19] SPEAKER C: Know.

[40:21] ROBERT LOWE: Lord forbid it would catch off, but if it did, it. it wouldn't be that bad. It's just probably similar to yours.

[40:33] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, I haven't had any problems since.

[40:37] ROBERT LOWE: Good.

[40:39] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[40:39] ROBERT LOWE: And I, you know, I hiked six miles a couple days ago, a thousand feet vertical, and that's less than I like to do.

[40:49] DANA AUSTIN: That's great.

[40:50] ROBERT LOWE: So, yeah. but I can't carry 120 pounds while I'm doing it.

[40:56] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, I'm not usually carrying it uphill. I'm carrying it from the street where the rocks are down to where I need them. Sometimes making a rock bulkhead, sometimes reinforcing the culvert, you know, and it's just taken a long time to make sure I don't have to do it again in this lifetime. Yeah, to do it absolutely right. So, yeah, it's been.

[41:26] ROBERT LOWE: Wow, I'm impressed. So we were kind of heading towards the Second Amendment.

[41:35] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah. I'd be interested to hear your views.

[41:45] SPEAKER C: Well.

[41:48] ROBERT LOWE: You haven't told me your views. You've told me you like guns.

[41:55] DANA AUSTIN: I think it's crucial. I do. If you read the Federalist Papers.

[42:03] SPEAKER C: And.

[42:03] DANA AUSTIN: The Anti-Federalist Papers, you get a better sense of what the, as they call them, Founding Fathers had in mind.

[42:13] SPEAKER C: Because they.

[42:17] DANA AUSTIN: Had been living under tyranny. and they didn't want to have that happen again. And that was the purpose of the armed citizen.

[42:29] SPEAKER D: And.

[42:31] DANA AUSTIN: People often say, well, you know, Geez, all we know, all they knew back then was muskets. And the fact of the matter is, for 20 years before the revolution, the Austrian army was using a rifle, lethal something, I think it was like 52 caliber, lethal up to 150 yards that could fire 22 rounds a minute.

[42:57] ROBERT LOWE: Wow.

[42:58] DANA AUSTIN: There was a musket that would fire up to eight rounds. And at George Washington's behest, I think Benjamin Franklin tried to strike a deal. and the inventor and manufacturer of that rifle, well, it was they hadn't have rifling then, but of that firearm just saw a big fat government contract coming and they, you know, the Continental Army couldn't afford what he was asking.

[43:30] SPEAKER D: So.

[43:33] ROBERT LOWE: Sucks.

[43:33] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[43:34] DANA AUSTIN: So, but, you know, there have been Multi-shot firearms since the 16th century. Some of them were pretty crude, but there have been revolvers for a very long time.

[43:53] ROBERT LOWE: This is tricky for me because I'm looking at the clock, five minutes and 58 seconds remaining, and it leaves me feeling like, oh, I got to get my point in.

[44:04] DANA AUSTIN: So go for it.

[44:06] ROBERT LOWE: And when that happens, I tend to overstate, say things more strongly than I want. So let me try to resist that and ask you forgiveness if I fail.

[44:20] DANA AUSTIN: Here you go. Forgiveness.

[44:23] ROBERT LOWE: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I can only see one arm, but I'll just infer. I liked when I was in summer camp when I was probably about 10. We had a shooting range with 22 rifles and it was fun. And I have nothing against guns. But I've also worked in an emergency department. And I've seen people die because they got shot.

[45:09] SPEAKER D: And.

[45:12] ROBERT LOWE: We all know about seven-year-old kids who pick up a gun that's not locked, not secured. And ooh, wham wham bam bam bam. And there goes the brother by accident.

[45:38] SPEAKER C: So.

[45:40] ROBERT LOWE: I'm looking for a balance there. Do you see ways of preventing those things or preventing, you know, a stolen gun from being used.

[45:56] SPEAKER C: Well.

[46:00] DANA AUSTIN: One of the things that had me scared about, I didn't vote for Trump either. I couldn't stand either of them. I went libertarian for Chase Oliver. I didn't agree with him 100 on everything, but Anyway, that helped. Harris was on record of being willing to abrogate the first and fourth amendments, the unlawful search. She said, well, if we know you own firearms, and, you know, we will come in and make sure you've got them stored properly and all of that.

[46:46] SPEAKER C: You know.

[46:49] DANA AUSTIN: And, you know, I mean, so it's, it's incumbent on the, the person who owns firearms to do that. And when a kid gets hold of one like that, but, you know, first, first child protective services and second criminal action against the person who's supposed to keep that weapon secure. And I guess a lot of judges and prosecutors prosecutorial discretion is something that makes me crazy. Well, the person suffered enough, so we're not, you know, wrong.

[47:32] SPEAKER C: So.

[47:36] ROBERT LOWE: We've got two and a half minutes left.

[47:38] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, we can run over, but, you know, but.

[47:41] SPEAKER C: Oh, yeah.

[47:41] ROBERT LOWE: Oh, okay.

[47:42] DANA AUSTIN: They don't really care.

[47:43] ROBERT LOWE: Sure, if it just shuts down. So those are things that can happen after the tragedy. You can prosecute the parents and so on, but what about preventing the tragedy?

[48:12] DANA AUSTIN: I honestly am not sure how that could be done. If the consequences were better published.

[48:31] SPEAKER D: That.

[48:31] DANA AUSTIN: Might convince some people to be a little more careful. I mean, a three news hanging in the public square, you know, well, you know, maybe not that extreme, but.

[48:46] ROBERT LOWE: Okay. What about, um, safe use? So that if I pick up my.

[48:58] DANA AUSTIN: Gun, I can, you know... Fingerprint, bio...

[49:05] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, yeah, fingerprint or I have to enter a four-digit code.

[49:10] SPEAKER C: If.

[49:12] ROBERT LOWE: A thief picks up my gun, they can't use it. Would you go for that?

[49:20] DANA AUSTIN: As long as it doesn't take very long. Yeah, I think that would be one of the things to do. I prefer some sort of biometric thing rather than punching in a code. So I can pick it up since my fingerprint is correct, sort of like the double validation that, you know, people are doing now on different sites. I would not be averse to that.

[50:03] ROBERT LOWE: What about I don't know much about it, but it seems like there are impoverished groups where so many people have guns and it's like a rite of passage to carry around a gun and shoot people in the other gangs. What can we do about that?

[50:39] DANA AUSTIN: Get conservative mayors. I mean, it's, it's almost all, you know, Democratic mayors. That's, you know, you know, they.

[51:03] SPEAKER D: I.

[51:03] DANA AUSTIN: Guess there's plenty of evidence that they run their cities into the ground.

[51:10] SPEAKER C: But.

[51:18] DANA AUSTIN: You know, the guns are probably not held legally.

[51:25] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[51:26] DANA AUSTIN: Number one. And, you know, we use the phrase law abiding citizens. which is, you know, rather opposed to people who buy guns out of the trunk of some car.

[51:45] SPEAKER D: Right.

[51:46] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah.

[51:51] DANA AUSTIN: Stop and frisk was the thing in New York City for a long time because you could pretty much, you know, tell if somebody had a It's not like they were wearing concealed shoulder holsters or some of the other things you carry concealed. They're, you know, stuck down the back of their pants. And I can't remember what happened to stop and frisk, but it, you know, they caught an awful lot of people with illegal firearms, felons who really shouldn't have them at all. you know.

[52:26] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[52:27] SPEAKER D: So.

[52:30] ROBERT LOWE: So you would go with not allowing felons to carry to have guns?

[52:37] DANA AUSTIN: Oh, absolutely. I think that the privilege is that.

[52:42] ROBERT LOWE: A.

[52:47] DANA AUSTIN: Convicted felon loses our are commensurate. I mean, you know, if it's a white collar felony, well, you know, still, yeah, you're a felon, so.

[53:05] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah.

[53:13] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[53:13] ROBERT LOWE: What do you do differently than what you're saying? I guess for me, guns that have a purpose.

[53:32] SPEAKER C: That.

[53:35] ROBERT LOWE: Is consistent with what's good for our society, you know, let people own them. you know, if it's target practice or skeet shooting or hunting, you know, any of those things, yeah, guns that are really designed for military use, you know, mass killings. I would take those off the market.

[54:14] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, I can understand that, but again, it wasn't Afghanistan's superior air power that chased us out of Afghanistan. It's the graveyard of empires, I guess it's called. and again, the founding fathers wanted to make sure that there was a way to fight tyranny. And people say, well, you know, you can't fight F-15s. And my point is that almost everyone I knew when I was in the Marine Corps supported the Second Amendment, and I doubt very much they get 100% of the American military.

[55:04] SPEAKER C: To.

[55:09] DANA AUSTIN: Quell that kind of rebellion.

[55:16] ROBERT LOWE: I'm not sure I follow you.

[55:18] DANA AUSTIN: Oh, well, basically.

[55:22] ROBERT LOWE: If.

[55:27] DANA AUSTIN: Somehow those kinds of weapons were, were banned. I think the people of the United States who own those weapons would be prone to fighting it. And of course, you hear about sheriffs who say, yeah, I'm not gonna do that, you know, to. which again is, I think, as it should be.

[55:56] ROBERT LOWE: The.

[56:00] DANA AUSTIN: If you look at firearm death statistics, number one, most mass shootings are done with, you know, pistols, not rifles.

[56:17] SPEAKER D: The.

[56:19] DANA AUSTIN: Virginia Tech mass shooting. The perpetrator had, I can't remember, one or two semi-automatic weapons, but he had, you know, lots of magazines and, you know, very, very few firearm fatalities are that, you know, mass shooting variety of, you know, of all of them, the vast majority of firearm deaths, of course, suicides, which I think is awful.

[57:00] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[57:01] DANA AUSTIN: You know, your, your children, your spouse, your parent, you know, I have to clean up the, the brain matter and blood if you do it inside, which people tend to do.

[57:13] SPEAKER C: Do.

[57:15] DANA AUSTIN: And I've got, I think that, well, Oregon basically says, hey, you have a right to end your life, as I recall.

[57:30] ROBERT LOWE: With a lot of caveats in.

[57:33] SPEAKER C: Terms of the process.

[57:34] DANA AUSTIN: Ah, well, anyway, I think people should be allowed to check out whenever they want, but it should be now you stop at Walmart, pick up your ten dollar suicide kick kit, call a participating mortuary, set a date, you know, invite your friends and family, you know, to have a going away party, maybe an open bar, you know, and they don't, you know, if they want to, they can be there for the event itself or maybe the closest family or something like that.

[58:10] ROBERT LOWE: I'd like to, I mean, what I like about Oregon is that it requires a lot of medical screening so that, you know, someone who's just depressed, who could benefit from some therapy and antidepressant, rather than suicide kid, you know, gets help. And, you know, maybe they lead a decent life for another 30, 40 years. Maybe they don't abandon their children and their spouse. But, you know, someone I had someone I worked with who had Parkinson's disease that had progressed to the point that she was pretty badly disabled.

[59:04] SPEAKER C: And.

[59:07] ROBERT LOWE: I was invited to an event honoring Terry and, you know, went and I somehow I hadn't been told the context and I saw Terry there and I said, hi, how you doing? And she said, well, I'm about to drink the Kool-Aid. And you that involved, I think, pretty extensive evaluation. Maybe more than one physician has to sign off that you've got a terminal illness. At that point, you can get a prescription for medication that will knock you out and stop your breathing, which she did about a week later.

[59:56] DANA AUSTIN: Yeah, but.

[59:58] ROBERT LOWE: You know, if I'm having a bad week, you know, just lost my job, had a bad argument with my wife, and on impulse, you know, want to go do this thing. Let's have a few safeguards.

[01:00:16] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[01:00:16] DANA AUSTIN: And again, if there's too much rigor, morale. just like, okay, well, I'm gonna blow my brains out.

[01:00:25] SPEAKER D: So.

[01:00:25] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[01:00:26] DANA AUSTIN: You know, yeah, there's. As. As you have said, there's a balance.

[01:00:32] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah.

[01:00:32] DANA AUSTIN: That should be observed as far as that's concerned. So, yeah, but you can just to sign up if you look at. firearm deaths to the extent that they know what weapon was used in the context of the death. It's sort of interesting to look at that and see, well, we should have better reporting as far as that's concerned.

[01:01:07] SPEAKER D: But sure.

[01:01:12] DANA AUSTIN: Better information. Now, I need to tell you about how we solve the border problem. It's very simple. Everybody still has to register for the draft. We call it a national emergency.

[01:01:28] SPEAKER C: And.

[01:01:30] DANA AUSTIN: All of the lawyers and judges are can be called up. So I'm thinking maybe four thousand. lawyers and 500 judges always there for people seeking Asylum. I don't have a lot of sympathy.

[01:01:47] SPEAKER C: For.

[01:01:49] DANA AUSTIN: Again, because my son-in-law did it the right way, and it took years. Yeah, but, you know, he ended up getting his citizenship and knowing an awful lot more of American Civics and history than I have. in order to pass the examination. But, yeah, I mean.

[01:02:15] ROBERT LOWE: Go ahead.

[01:02:16] DANA AUSTIN: I was just gonna say, I don't have a lot of sympathy for, you know, people who are just trying to sneak into the United States and, you know, just. they should go to the end of the line. And, and, you know, basically, Obama said that, you know, every president has said, we just can't have people coming in. Man, the other thing is that there are something like three billion people.

[01:02:47] SPEAKER C: In.

[01:02:47] DANA AUSTIN: The world who make less than two dollars a day. They can't all come to America. They just can't. I, there was a, a wonderful demonstration. This, this guy did it with gumballs. And he said each gumball is a million people. And so here's, here's a million people that, you know, we, we took in last year. I Make it 2 million. And then he starts bringing out these huge tubes of gumballs.

[01:03:21] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[01:03:22] DANA AUSTIN: We're never gonna make a dent in it, you know.

[01:03:27] ROBERT LOWE: Well, here's a year. Here's where, sorry.

[01:03:36] DANA AUSTIN: Oh, I was just gonna say what we need to do is help those.

[01:03:41] SPEAKER C: Countries.

[01:03:45] DANA AUSTIN: You know, pull themselves up. the people can.

[01:03:50] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, I certainly agree with you there.

[01:03:52] SPEAKER C: That.

[01:03:54] ROBERT LOWE: And that was something that Biden was trying to do was to.

[01:04:00] SPEAKER C: Reach.

[01:04:01] ROBERT LOWE: Out to Latin American countries and figure out what can the U.S. do to help you so that people don't want to leave. My attitudes there are really colored by my family. As I told you, my father grew up in Vienna and he had two older brothers. A few years ago, a relative sent.

[01:04:33] SPEAKER C: Me.

[01:04:35] ROBERT LOWE: A box full of 165 letters written by my father's parents from Vienna to their three sons, as the three sons managed to make it to the US. And the letters are from 1938 to 1941.

[01:04:58] SPEAKER D: And.

[01:05:02] ROBERT LOWE: There are, I think, 65 references to the US Consul. and trying for my grandfather and grandmother to get visas so that they could come into this country.

[01:05:17] SPEAKER C: And.

[01:05:19] ROBERT LOWE: The council would be closed for several months. They'd finally be in line to get a medical assessment, but the appointment would be a year and a half from then. A document that they had filed would expire because it had been so long and they'd have to get another one. And we now know that this was a deliberate effort on the part of the US government to take the Jews out.

[01:05:50] DANA AUSTIN: They turned away an entire ship and those people did that.

[01:05:55] SPEAKER C: Right.

[01:05:55] ROBERT LOWE: St. Louis. And it was a deliberate strategy. to keep people out. And, you know, my grandfather died in Vienna when he had diabetes and Jews could no longer get insulin. And my grandmother was deported to Theresa and Staudt and then on to one of the death camps. We got quite a bit of family history that I and other relatives have been working on. And one relative just sent me this book. And this is a photo of relatives who died in the Holocaust. And not all of the ones who were described in this book, but the ones for whom he was able to find photos.

[01:06:51] SPEAKER C: And.

[01:06:54] ROBERT LOWE: We can't solve all the problems in the world, but.

[01:07:01] SPEAKER C: When.

[01:07:03] ROBERT LOWE: I'm seeing the same thing now, you know, people from Latin American countries, Middle Eastern countries, Haiti, who, you know, fled here for.

[01:07:18] DANA AUSTIN: Their lives, Haiti is done by criminals now, you know, it's.

[01:07:23] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, horrors.

[01:07:26] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[01:07:27] ROBERT LOWE: And, you know, do we really want to take a Haitian who is already in the US, who's working, who's been here for several years and say, nope, you gotta go back there. Sorry if you get killed. If my father had been told that in 1943, I sure wouldn't be here.

[01:07:57] DANA AUSTIN: And again, that's where you have the 4,000 asylum seekers. I feel very strongly should be processed because not all asylum seekers are really asylum seekers and they're, you know, the research.

[01:08:13] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, yeah.

[01:08:13] DANA AUSTIN: But that's where the 4, 000 lawyers and 500 judges should be enough to.

[01:08:20] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, that's not a crazy idea. I mean, if we could really move people through the system efficiently.

[01:08:29] DANA AUSTIN: You know, I'm not saying they have to do it for, like, you know, years and years, you know, they just have to, you know, rotate them in and out. you know, learn from the experience of the people who are leaving, you know, all that kind of stuff. They don't have to necessarily be immigration lawyers, but they can learn an awful lot about it.

[01:08:53] ROBERT LOWE: And I've talked to another friend who's actually, although he's a Democrat, is quite conservative and would you know, share a number of your feelings about immigration, I think. And he has good solutions, too. And the problem is those solutions aren't being implemented.

[01:09:16] SPEAKER C: And.

[01:09:19] ROBERT LOWE: What'S happening now, I think, is really pretty awful.

[01:09:26] DANA AUSTIN: Little pendulum has swung too far the other way.

[01:09:30] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, I agree. There was a guy who was from, I think Mexico, had been in Oregon for a number of years, was not a farm worker, but I think managed vineyards or served as a consultant in some way. and, you know, he got grabbed and deported. And, you know, that's just one story of so many.

[01:10:09] DANA AUSTIN: Well, it's a very real concern because my son-in-law is darker than most black people. And he's an engineer. He goes all over the world.

[01:10:29] SPEAKER C: To.

[01:10:30] DANA AUSTIN: Plants for his company, especially in Mexico, Japan. His last trip was to Chile. And, you know, there's. There's a real fear. that, you know, even though he's an American citizen, he's going to, you know, run into some kind of problem when he comes back to the United States. So one of the things that he and my daughter are doing is going out of the country a lot, getting their passports stamped, you know, they, they did Canada. They're going to Paris soon. And just to get their passport stamped so that, you know, our family goes all around the world all the time kind of thing. It's not just my son-in-law. And, you know, I don't know how effective that'll be, but I'm hoping that, you know, it will assuage some of their fears.

[01:11:39] SPEAKER C: About.

[01:11:40] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[01:11:44] ROBERT LOWE: Well, I had better sign off, Dana. Thank you for this.

[01:11:49] DANA AUSTIN: Oh, you're most welcome. I enjoyed speaking with you, and we can, you know, exchange ideas.

[01:11:57] ROBERT LOWE: I will be checking out your YouTube channel, and if you can send me documentation of food lined up at the Gaza border, I'd be really interested.

[01:12:11] SPEAKER D: Yeah.

[01:12:11] DANA AUSTIN: And yeah, I'd be happy to research that and find it. I can send you a link to my YouTube channel, if you wish.

[01:12:22] ROBERT LOWE: Oh, good. Good. And take care.

[01:12:27] SPEAKER C: Take care.

[01:12:27] ROBERT LOWE: Stay healthy.

[01:12:28] SPEAKER C: Yes.

[01:12:29] DANA AUSTIN: It's been great talking with you.

[01:12:32] ROBERT LOWE: Yeah, so likewise. Bye for now.

[01:12:34] DANA AUSTIN: Bye for now.