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Summary
Glenn Beck and Stu discuss the impact of Hurricane Florence on the North Carolina coast and the impact it could have on the financial system. Plus, a new report from the Financial Stability Oversight Council raises concerns about cyber warfare and the possibility of a global financial crash.
Transcript
00:00:06.160
It is Stu along with Glenn Beck. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:18.100
What would you say if I could give you four giant crashes in the economy?
00:00:28.300
It looks like Hurricane Florence is about to hit North Carolina.
00:00:32.580
We'll get into some of the details and how you can help.
00:00:40.160
He's talking a little bit about the hurricane as well.
00:00:44.960
We also go into, we have Mike Rowe on today, which is pretty cool.
00:00:51.200
He had a hugely viral response to the Colin Kaepernick ad.
00:00:56.300
And also, his mom is basically besting him in life, and we discuss how he deals with that.
00:01:03.820
I don't know how we're going to contain all of the good stuff in one hour, because we had Andrew Heaton talking about Norm MacDonald and what happened with Jimmy Fallon.
00:01:20.720
Talking about, at the time, he was the competition against Elvis.
00:01:28.580
It's an amazing walkthrough history on today's podcast.
00:01:30.880
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:01:47.720
Exactly 10 years ago this week, all of our lives changed.
00:01:51.020
On Tuesday, our attention, rightly so, was focused on what happened 17 years ago, the week of 9-11.
00:01:59.940
But seven years later, on September 15th, Lehman Brothers collapsed, kicking off the 2008 financial crisis.
00:02:08.440
New York City, again, ground zero for another tragedy.
00:02:12.440
The shockwave reverberated across all of the globe.
00:02:15.620
We were told, and I believe, that the entire financial system of the Western world was on the ropes.
00:02:23.920
The question that we should be asking ourselves this week.
00:02:28.720
One, when it comes to Islamic extremism, are we better or worse than we were 17 years ago?
00:02:45.620
Two, after a decade of trying to fix the banking system, could this happen again?
00:03:00.120
Some people say the record amounts of global and corporate debt will trigger the next crash.
00:03:05.700
Some say a global currency crisis is about to explode.
00:03:11.880
Others fear that it's protectionism and tariffs.
00:03:14.740
To be honest, all of these things could trigger a next crash.
00:03:19.280
Each scenario has the potential to make what happened in 2008 seem like a slight road bump.
00:03:26.020
Imagine if all of these scenarios happened one domino at a time.
00:03:30.440
It would be a catastrophe beyond anything the world has ever experienced.
00:03:36.180
But I haven't even mentioned the biggest scenario.
00:03:50.180
There are so many scenarios out there and experts are even more worried about something that I really didn't take seriously.
00:04:00.540
I didn't think anyone else was taking seriously.
00:04:09.280
They provide clearing and settlement for financial markets here in the U.S.
00:04:14.440
They released a report outlining their number one fear.
00:04:26.180
All of the scenarios I've just laid out are all likely.
00:04:33.440
And on the last one, there are not just a few people worried.
00:04:36.480
A few months ago, the government published a similar report drawing the same conclusions.
00:04:45.300
These findings came from the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury.
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This isn't some kooky, you know, harebrained conspiracy theory.
00:04:56.740
Both the government and private business thinks a cyber attack will be the root cause of a global crash.
00:05:05.700
How is this information not being reported all over the country this week?
00:05:13.300
The report details how a nation-state cyber attack will begin by targeting what's called systematically important financial institutions.
00:05:23.080
These are banks like the Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, or the bank formerly known as Lehman Brothers.
00:05:29.560
But they can also be giant hedge funds or insurance companies like AIG.
00:05:34.900
The Lehman Brothers collapse was the first shot of the 2008 crash.
00:05:39.200
And experts are now saying something similar will happen during the next one.
00:05:47.120
A hostile country like China, Russia, or even North Korea would trigger a run on one or multiple systematically important institutions.
00:05:56.860
From there, the global system would begin to unravel just as it did before.
00:06:01.080
But this time, it would happen as a global and corporate debt scheme is at record levels.
00:06:09.200
As global currency crisis brewing, with a trade war escalating, all between the two largest economies in the world.
00:06:20.300
We should probably take a moment and talk about things that are real.
00:06:37.120
And it will be profoundly devastating and or profoundly marvelous.
00:06:52.280
Some of it is going to be horrifying and extraordinarily destructive.
00:07:08.600
So some good news for South Carolina, kind of, and North Carolina.
00:07:13.140
The hurricane has been downgraded from yesterday.
00:07:20.260
We were thinking yesterday at this time it might be a Category 5.
00:07:25.280
However, the storm surge is what they're worried about now.
00:07:33.820
And it's a storm surge of anywhere from, what is it, 6 to 16 feet, something like that.
00:07:45.980
If you can help, yesterday we sent out a couple hundred semi-tractor trailers.
00:07:53.360
I think we had about 250 of them on the road yesterday.
00:07:56.340
They had supplies, water, you know, chainsaws, heavy equipment, everything that you would need
00:08:01.620
to be able to start to dig out of something like this.
00:08:06.100
Those trucks are already parked and out of the way of danger, but ready to go in as soon as things settle down.
00:08:14.420
We also have, we have Operation Barbecue, which is this great charity that we've done all kinds of work.
00:08:20.680
They just got out of California for the wildfires.
00:08:23.480
And now they're headed over for the opposite, for too much water.
00:08:37.160
If you would like to help, please make a donation to mercuryone.org.
00:08:44.040
We are always, you know, the first in and the last to leave.
00:08:53.780
We have Aaron Watson on the phone because he's doing something for still the hurricane victims in Texas
00:09:03.720
But a lot of people in Texas have not been able to move on yet.
00:09:14.280
I hear your voice all the time because I listen to your music.
00:09:16.580
But, you know, you could listen to the show and you could hear my voice.
00:09:19.620
Well, I was just trying to be friendly, you know.
00:09:28.800
Because you just put out a new CD, if you even call them that now.
00:09:33.920
Um, and it's your, uh, it's your rodeo CD, right?
00:09:39.860
So we recorded our performance at the Houston Rodeo, uh, back in 2017.
00:09:48.260
Uh, about the time that the hurricane hit, uh, the, the, the Texas coast.
00:09:57.200
We just didn't feel like promoting an album while, you know, such a large part of the state
00:10:05.640
So we, we really just kind of put it on the back shelf.
00:10:08.360
And at some point I thought we would never even put the album out.
00:10:13.820
But then we thought, you know what, we could put this album out on the one year anniversary
00:10:18.740
of when hurricane Harvey hit Houston and all along the South, uh, Texas coast.
00:10:25.040
And, uh, we could use that to raise some money for those 41 counties that were affected.
00:10:30.280
You know, when there's billions of dollars of damage and millions of people affected 12
00:10:35.000
months later, you know, the mess isn't cleaned up.
00:10:38.120
So we just thought it'd be a great opportunity for us to, uh, to give back.
00:10:42.920
So what are you doing here for every, for every download sold?
00:10:49.680
And we, we did the dollar 41 just to let people know that there's, there's 41 counties that
00:10:56.560
I mean, I don't think people understand just how big Texas is, but those 41 counties are
00:11:04.140
And, um, so, you know, we were, we did a show down in Houston, um, a couple of weeks
00:11:10.660
back when we released the album and just, it's crazy.
00:11:13.640
There's still people who have not got to move back into their homes.
00:11:16.540
So we're trying to raise some money and also raise awareness and, uh, let people know there's
00:11:23.740
So Aaron Watson, if you, if you don't know who Aaron Watson is and you're a country music
00:11:34.120
Uh, and his music is, I mean, right from the heart.
00:11:38.900
My, I was going to say, I want to make sure I'm accurate on that.
00:11:43.440
My favorite country music artist is Aaron Watson.
00:11:47.700
And, uh, and this is a great, um, uh, recording of, of, I mean, if you're in country, you know,
00:11:54.900
the Houston rodeo is the best and we applaud you for doing this, uh, Aaron.
00:11:59.560
Well, man, I tell you what, you know, when, when I got to play your, your Mercury one event,
00:12:06.240
I mean, it can be overwhelming that the world has so much need out there, but, uh, you guys,
00:12:12.220
uh, you guys, uh, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,
00:12:13.440
you never flinch, you just keep on giving back and you keep on finding ways to help people out.
00:12:18.060
So I just want to commend you guys for the example that you're setting for all of us.
00:12:27.720
You can buy it on, I assume you can buy it on, you know, iTunes or wherever else.
00:12:31.360
iTunes, Amazon, you know, it's got, uh, it's got 14, uh, tracks.
00:12:38.300
There's one song on there, Glenn, that's not live.
00:12:41.100
Uh, during the hurricane, um, I wrote a song called Higher Ground because while there was
00:12:46.920
all this, you know, controversy a year ago and there still is of, you know, whether it's
00:12:53.060
politics or whatever, there's all, you turn on the news and it's bad news and bad news
00:12:57.940
I wrote this song Higher Ground because I was, I was really inspired by the way people
00:13:04.520
were coming together down in along the South Texas coast and helping each other out different
00:13:10.160
colors, races, religions, you know, they, they were showing each other kindness and it really
00:13:15.840
set a great example for all of us to like, you know what, we're all on the same team here.
00:13:22.880
So that's, I wrote that song just kind of in honor of everyone who's been through these
00:13:34.440
You know, it's amazing that it was a, a year ago, isn't it?
00:13:40.340
I mean, in some ways it seems like yesterday, in other ways, it seems like 1400 years ago.
00:13:47.020
It's, you know, and you know, one, the next, next week there's another hurricane or another,
00:13:58.300
Um, if you also would like to donate, we could really use your help at mercuryone.org.
00:14:10.080
Uh, and, uh, it's all because of you, mercuryone.org.
00:14:40.160
Uh, you know, man, if he just would, if California would have banned straws a couple weeks earlier,
00:14:48.860
I was, uh, I decided to go over to the New York Times, see how their coverage was going
00:14:57.020
Now, every time a snowstorm comes in, they say, you can't, it's no storm in a time where
00:15:03.680
They say, well, of course you can't blame any individual storm on global warming.
00:15:09.220
But every time there's a hurricane, there are stories blaming that individual storm on
00:15:18.200
15 years without hitting any major hurricanes really hitting the United States.
00:15:22.320
Uh, but now that, you know, we've had a couple of years now with, with big ones, we're going
00:15:29.360
And by the way, this is going to hit ground likely as a category too.
00:15:35.500
You know why this is causing so much damage is because the federal government said that they
00:15:41.000
would start to cover insurance for homes on the water.
00:15:47.320
Before then you couldn't have, you couldn't get sure insurance.
00:15:54.320
If you were really, really wealthy and you were like, ah, if I, my home is destroyed, I'll
00:16:03.340
But as soon as we said as taxpayers, I'm sorry, as soon as the government said as taxpayers,
00:16:10.260
we will just take the money from them and give it to the people who are building their
00:16:15.720
homes right on the water, all kinds of communities sprung up and we're on the hook for it every
00:16:24.720
Now we have to be there to help people, but please don't tell me that when a category two
00:16:31.420
comes ashore that this is because of global warming.
00:16:42.440
And in the last 117 years, since 1900, okay, from 1900 to 2017, the trend of both hurricanes
00:16:50.820
hitting the continental United States and major hurricanes, because the concept, both
00:16:58.900
It's about, it's not a huge, huge decrease, but it is a decrease.
00:17:04.320
The concept is, of course, that it's not that at first they said they were going to be larger
00:17:10.000
Then when they realized the science didn't support the more frequent thing at all, they
00:17:14.920
And this is what they were doing with Florence.
00:17:19.800
And the reason, you know, that means it's going to get strengthened all the way to the coast
00:17:24.680
Now we're seeing the opposite happening where it's actually breaking apart and it's going
00:17:31.260
This does not mean, hey, okay, I guess I'll stay at home on the coast in the Outer Banks.
00:17:37.100
But the point is when it comes to global warming is now they're saying, well, now it's the extra
00:17:41.820
They just keep picking up these different arguments when the last one fails.
00:17:45.880
Well, even major hurricanes are down since 1900.
00:17:50.040
If they were getting stronger, then they would not have that as true.
00:17:57.980
And of course, the cost is solely because, as you point out, people are building on the
00:18:03.240
They're not only building on the shore, they're building on the shore in large homes that are
00:18:07.820
obviously waterfront property, so very expensive.
00:18:11.120
And then when those things come in and they do have problems, the cost is astronomical compared
00:18:18.280
There's a graphic that's been floating around social media, which is amazing, just showing
00:18:25.740
the difference in development of North Carolina.
00:18:28.340
From when 1954, the hurricane hit and what it is today.
00:18:33.120
When people used to have things on the beach or, you know, on the waterfront, they used
00:18:41.920
Now they're these giant, you know, multi-million dollar structures.
00:18:47.520
And they're really expensive and they're bigger and there's more stuff in them.
00:18:51.280
For example, since the 1970s, the average home, not just the ones on the water, but the
00:18:55.760
average home in the United States has increased by 1,000 square feet.
00:19:00.580
Now, back in the day, the home I grew up in was about 1,000 square feet total.
00:19:05.500
The average house now is over 2,500 square feet.
00:19:18.020
So all of these things combined to, of course, when these things hit, there's a lot more
00:19:23.140
The insurance shouldn't be as cheap and subsidized by the government.
00:19:27.060
It should be more difficult to acquire because if that were true, people would take more risk
00:19:33.340
assessment into their decision to move to the water.
00:19:36.520
And look, I think it's totally your right to go to the water.
00:19:38.820
But, you know, the idea that the government should be subsidizing people's multi-million
00:19:57.000
Well, I mean, I know somebody who bought something down in Galveston a year before the storm came
00:20:04.540
I mean, they were flooded a couple of weeks ago.
00:20:13.260
I shouldn't be taking money from your paycheck for you to pay for my insurance.
00:20:38.360
If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes?
00:20:43.200
If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time.
00:20:52.620
Much of America is getting outraged for outrage's sake.
00:20:56.740
And with all of the nonstop outrage coverage, we're actually missing out on the stuff we should
00:21:03.000
It's time to put the bottle down and end our bender.
00:21:06.440
In my new book, Addicted to Outrage, I talk about how thinking like an addict or a recovering
00:21:20.560
He is the author of the book, My Father's Business.
00:21:23.180
And his father's business is the Dollar General stores.
00:21:31.460
I want to start right here on page, I think it's 38.
00:21:34.840
I was 15 when my dad took the step that changed everything.
00:21:38.660
It involved the kind of creative leap that comes all along too rarely and ultimately left
00:21:53.880
And he, being from the country, thought he should stay on top of what was going on in
00:22:00.520
And he noticed that in Nashville and Louisville, a lot of expensive newspaper advertising was
00:22:07.840
done monthly to promote dollar days and everything priced at a dollar.
00:22:15.160
And he thought, wow, wouldn't that be a wonderful opportunity for us in our stores in the country
00:22:24.280
to have dollar stores and it would be a way to give real value to people at prices they could
00:22:36.960
So you, because you write in the book that, you know, he saw what he saw was the expense
00:22:46.060
So if you've got dollar days going on, they must be pulling in a ton of business to pay
00:22:55.260
Um, and when he went to his staff, they said, tell you, the unanimous Glenn, they were unanimous.
00:23:10.780
Uh, your father said, uh, we have to sell everything in the store for a dollar.
00:23:15.260
I know in some cases now I'm thinking, you know, you're how, what are you going to get
00:23:22.200
It has to be multiples like three plates or two pairs of socks for a dollar, but nothing
00:23:30.040
Well, he had some things that were actually 20 for a dollar, but I can't remember the
00:23:48.460
Uh, and so he said, let's just take our worst store, right?
00:23:54.120
And if it becomes a winner under this new format, we've had something to build on.
00:24:02.980
I mean, your grandfather sounds a lot like my grandfather.
00:24:05.920
He was just a dirt farmer, third grade education.
00:24:08.820
Um, you know, uh, came up all through the depression.
00:24:14.520
Your grandfather became a, uh, an entrepreneur.
00:24:17.520
Mine became a machinist for Boeing, but, uh, I mean, they came from simple people.
00:24:22.380
What was, what was it that made your dad different?
00:24:25.360
Well, what I celebrate is what was the same in those, in the wonderful grounding of my grandfather
00:24:37.060
and of my father, which translated, uh, to my generation.
00:24:51.720
I think it is a believing in other people and the opportunity to build something with
00:25:08.760
I think the, um, the discourse at large is, is largely negative, but that spirit exists
00:25:22.660
out there, certainly in the heartland of America, where those Dollar General stores are.
00:25:30.940
The, um, uh, tell me about the mission statement of, uh, Dollar General.
00:25:35.600
Well, we came up with a mission statement that really got the company going, and it was only
00:25:54.420
What can we do to make a difference in the lives of others?
00:25:59.460
What do these small stores in these rural areas afford us as an opportunity to serve struggling
00:26:10.900
And, uh, we do have salt of the earth people who shop in the Dollar General stores, and we
00:26:22.320
Genius is, is not in the cities, it's out there in the countries, and it's in, in the heart
00:26:29.460
You know, the, the number one, um, I, I've talked to people who teach at Wharton, and
00:26:38.400
they have said, they're having a hard time teaching ethics, because they will lay out
00:26:43.800
these case studies, and they'll say, this company made this, and they made this decision,
00:26:47.620
and, um, and they're, they're trying to teach ethics, and they'll say, they'll turn it over
00:26:56.660
And invariably, the first question is, well, did they make money?
00:27:02.600
And the professors are starting to, are starting to be a little frustrated because they're like,
00:27:09.060
no, no, no, no, no, we're talking about ethics.
00:27:11.100
Ethically, whether they made money or lost money, ethically, is this right?
00:27:25.840
I think you learn it from life and from others.
00:27:29.580
And when we adopted that two-word mission statement, Glenn, serving others, we had the basis of
00:27:49.760
What, what has inspired you to write this book about your dad now?
00:27:52.860
Well, it, it took me two years to be convinced to do it, and then doing it took six years.
00:28:04.620
But, um, it, it has dawned on me as I do my retrospective on life that there are very few CEOs
00:28:15.780
who have over 30 years in that job in the same company.
00:28:22.860
And, and perhaps sharing the lessons learned from all of that can help others.
00:28:31.780
And it, we went through so many different cycles in the company.
00:28:39.800
What's the biggest, what's the biggest thing, Cal, that you learned in all of the ups and downs,
00:28:45.580
everything that you have seen from your dad and from you,
00:28:49.120
what is the biggest thing that an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur needs to learn first?
00:28:55.480
Well, an entrepreneur needs to understand his own core values.
00:29:03.180
And, and, and what, what his greatest opportunity in life is to serve others.
00:29:19.140
Your greatest opportunity is in serving others and partnering with others in doing that.
00:29:27.380
And my, my dad, as an entrepreneur was of the old school gland.
00:29:33.620
And it, it was more retailing was more of a dog eat dog world back then.
00:29:39.400
And his belief was that he should only expect the competition to do just everything to him
00:29:53.000
And I came into the business, um, pursuing my calling and, um, excuse me.
00:30:07.360
There's nothing worse than somebody coming into the, into the room, distracting you in your middle of a point.
00:30:18.280
Yes, that was, that was, that was, that was Margaret.
00:30:27.460
I came into the business gland, um, pursuing my calling because I wrestled with whether to go into the ministry.
00:30:37.480
And I, I discerned that the greatest ministry opportunities in the real world, perhaps not in the church, at least for me.
00:30:46.560
And it was in that business where we could help struggling people to have a better life.
00:30:52.620
And, um, I, I was very moved by the customers that came into a dollar general store.
00:31:00.060
Um, I waited on, uh, an old, smelly, dirty farmer who was making a sacrificial purchase of a pair of 39 cent panties for the old lady.
00:31:14.500
And, and, and I, I got a real message, uh, from that farmer that, um, there are a lot of people out there who are having a hard time making hens meat and they could use help.
00:31:36.840
You remind me so much of my, uh, my grandfather and my family.
00:31:45.120
Uh, Cal Turner Jr., author of My Father's Business.
00:32:01.600
I'm, I'm a little confused because my phone screen says that it's Michael Rowe that is on the phone.
00:32:14.880
Uh, I've, I, I've never had to call him Michael before, but I don't know if he, that's, it is his assistant.
00:32:36.960
I'm just thinking of the times, you know, uh, early on in our relationship when you were sitting in my studio and you said this Facebook thing, should I have a Facebook page?
00:32:48.320
Actually, you, you, you literally leaned in and kind of looked over your shoulder just to make sure nobody was listening and said, I would if I were you.
00:32:58.600
So, uh, you just on Tuesday had, I think it was like 280,000 likes on a posting where, you know, I guess it could be portrayed as, uh, your takedown of Kaepernick, but that's not what it was at all.
00:33:18.940
Um, it was, it was, it was instead a look at a hero.
00:33:24.800
You want to explain how this happened and, and what you did?
00:33:27.540
Well, as you know, you, you get a sort of a critical mass of people at some point and the tail starts to wag the dog vis-a-vis social media.
00:33:37.800
And, uh, you got 5 million people there and they look at the headlines and a lot of them assume that I'm sort of standing by to weigh in on anything that's remotely controversial.
00:33:46.860
And of course you can't really run a foundation and be that guy, right?
00:33:51.360
So I'm not, but you also have to say something at some point, uh, if the thing really bubbles up.
00:33:59.020
So the thing with Kaepernick and Nike was what it was, but of course everything sort of landed on 9-11 and people were saying, you know, say something about this already.
00:34:10.800
And I looked at the ad, really looked at it for the first time.
00:34:13.920
And look, I don't, I, Colin Kaepernick is free to protest whatever he wants, however he wants.
00:34:19.620
And Nike is certainly free to elevate any opinion they feel like.
00:34:24.120
It's, it's still America, but, uh, it was the, it was the words on the ad.
00:34:31.800
And I just thought, hmm, landing on 9-11 is that's, that's a hell of a thing.
00:34:36.840
And, uh, and the question that I answered wasn't, you know, what do you think about the underlying protests or anything else?
00:34:43.680
It was from a marketing standpoint, what do you think of the ad?
00:34:47.760
You know, is it a, is it a good idea from a marketing standpoint?
00:34:51.780
And I said, well, I, it's a confusing idea from a marketing standpoint because you've chosen a guy that half the people in the country, uh, don't really relate to in terms of what a hero could be or ought to be.
00:35:05.340
And, uh, especially this time of year, you know, that ad came out early in September and here we are at September 11th.
00:35:12.360
And I just thought of Tom Burnett, you know, I, the guy that was on flight 93, who was instrumental in, uh, in leading that, that revolt.
00:35:22.700
And I remembered the transcripts I had read years ago between he and his wife and I Googled them and there they were.
00:35:29.400
So I posted his final conversation and just politely said that if it were me, I might've gone another way.
00:35:37.920
And, uh, for whatever reason, you know, I went out, I went to work, I came home and yeah, uh, 10 million people had seen the thing.
00:35:48.880
And, and, you know, I, I'd read that years ago, but I had forgotten how intense, uh, that conversation was and how his wife said, no, please don't, no, sit down.
00:36:06.360
And, uh, he said, honey, I've, uh, we've got to do something.
00:36:10.000
Uh, and we're just waiting for a, an open space and we're going to rush.
00:36:18.200
I mean, you know, you're, you're talking about a Nike campaign that's built on a slogan that says, just do it.
00:36:23.960
His last words to his wife, we're, we're going to do something.
00:36:40.060
Remember when the guys on the train took down the terrorists unarmed, they charged a man with an automatic weapon.
00:36:47.160
And the thing about these moments is it's, it's, it's not the enormity, uh, of the tragedy.
00:36:53.560
It's the, it's the, it's the micro element of it.
00:37:04.800
And anybody who's ever been on a plane or a train, uh, needs to think about that question because it's the ultimate personal question and it's horribly relatable.
00:37:17.880
We've all been in that circumstance, if not that exact situation.
00:37:21.960
And we should ask, especially on nine 11, you know, who are we?
00:37:36.300
Bob Woodward has now, uh, broken all kinds of sales records, uh, biggest, uh, fastest selling book, I think in 93 year history of the publishing company.
00:37:47.200
Um, uh, and, uh, but there has been a, there has been a slight glitch on the radar screen.
00:37:55.180
Your mother, there was, it was your mother was actually beating.
00:38:01.080
Him in sales for a few hours, uh, for the better part of a day.
00:38:06.860
My mother, what happened is I, I, my, my mother's been writing these stories for years.
00:38:11.660
And a couple of years ago, I started reading them on Facebook.
00:38:14.940
And one of those stories reached 128 million people.
00:38:19.880
Publishers obviously called and said, look, if your mom writes a story about raising the dirty jobs guy, it's a guaranteed bestseller.
00:38:29.960
I told her, she said, you know, I have two other sons.
00:38:37.300
She's like, well, let, let, let me noodle on it.
00:38:47.780
They're all about her mother and they're delightful, but it's not what a publisher would want.
00:39:02.980
My mom's book is going to hit the stands in November.
00:39:07.840
I announced this a couple of days ago over the weekend and the Amazon site crashes.
00:39:14.900
She went from number 2 million to number 25 and then they couldn't take any more orders.
00:39:21.760
So the Barnes and Noble site was still working.
00:39:25.220
And so everybody went there who wanted her book and her book, which is fundamentally about hope.
00:39:32.000
It's called about my mother beat a book called fear.
00:39:36.160
I'm not sure what it's about, but I'm pretty sure I can.
00:39:44.080
Glenn, I, I, I took a picture of it and I sent it to my mom and then I called her on
00:39:48.440
the way to church and I filmed our conversation in the car.
00:39:58.240
And I put that up on the Facebooks and then off we go.
00:40:03.500
Well, I just wrote a book and it's all about you.
00:40:07.460
Um, and you have to read between the lines to find the parts about you, but it's all
00:40:24.140
You live in a, you live in, you walk a tightrope every day because things, everything now is
00:40:37.380
You have done such great stuff way ahead of, of the news cycle where we're all looking at
00:40:46.860
The, you know, if Apple, uh, even Google now saying we don't need a, uh, we don't need
00:40:58.840
Uh, and you were on this and called a madman for so long on top of that, everything now is
00:41:07.180
about politics and you just refuse to get involved, which I, I commend you.
00:41:16.080
I, I've done it as successfully as you're saying.
00:41:18.520
I think I, I get a little on me because you can't talk about education and you can't talk
00:41:23.840
about work, uh, without being completely immune, right?
00:41:27.600
I mean, work leads to labor, labor is unions, unions is, is politics.
00:41:32.640
So that, that, that's a pretty quick trip, but, but in a very general way, it cuts the
00:41:38.100
other way to, um, everyone understands work because work is one of the few truly relatable
00:41:49.520
And the value we assign to various forms of education is completely within our control.
00:41:55.700
So micro works turned 10 this, uh, I swear, Glenn, I remember talking to you about it.
00:42:05.340
And, um, and it's still modest by foundation standards.
00:42:09.260
We've done about 5 million in work ethic scholarships, but the, uh, the opportunity to use social
00:42:16.020
and the opportunity to keep the conversation moving.
00:42:19.500
I get a kind of tired of hearing people saying, you know, we need to have a conversation.
00:42:25.100
Uh, in this case though, we have to talk about debt.
00:42:28.960
We, we have to talk about 1.5 trillion in college loans.
00:42:32.940
We have to talk about 6.6 million jobs still open, 75% of which don't require a degree.
00:42:39.400
And we have to stop with this idea that following your passion is the only way to wind up passionate
00:42:49.280
And, uh, look, the millennials are a fun target, right?
00:42:53.020
I mean, the, the, the crying closets and the safe spaces and all these other things, but
00:42:57.600
we're the, uh, like the whole snowflake mentality.
00:43:01.100
I said to somebody the other day, we're the, we're the clouds from which these snowflakes fell.
00:43:06.940
And it's kinda, it's kinda on us, you know, we're putting pressure on 18 year old kids
00:43:14.560
to borrow money that we don't even have to lend them, but we give it to them anyway, knowing
00:43:19.240
they're never going to be able to pay it back, educating them for jobs that don't really
00:43:27.660
Mike, I'd love to have you back sometime, uh, and, uh, spend just a, you're free tomorrow.
00:43:32.960
I'm not, I'm not, but, uh, maybe your mom is, maybe your mom is something you're, you're,
00:43:41.340
She's, oh, I bet she's sassy and highly caffeinated.
00:43:44.500
How would she, and highly caffeinated, is she, is she, how is she as an, as an interviewer?
00:44:00.320
We, we, we, we might, we might, we might ask her to come on.
00:44:03.560
Is that a good thing or that'd be too shameful for you?
00:44:08.700
Well, it would be deeply humiliating for, I think, all of us.
00:44:16.500
No, she's got, she's got a publicist now, Glenn.
00:44:22.620
There may be some, there may be some maneuvering.
00:44:24.920
Well, if my people can talk to your people who can talk to her people, we can maybe work
00:44:31.620
You know, if somebody writes a book about your book, send it to her.
00:44:46.180
We should totally talk to the real talent in the Rowe family at some point.
00:44:53.400
And we should just keep him on on hold while that's going on.
00:44:58.880
Can you imagine having your mom on national radio?
00:45:13.860
I'm going to move this forward with Andrew Heaton, who is with us now, who's from Reason.com.
00:45:19.960
And I think one of the funniest guys on the internet.
00:45:44.060
But Austin is this wonderful human that sort of embodies smoldering anger.
00:45:51.220
And so we do well working together because I've got this almost like I'm going to sell you life insurance optimism thing going for me.
00:45:59.360
And we took – I mean, I think the operative word in that particular episode was grandstanding.
00:46:03.860
As I mentioned to you guys earlier, when I am Senate Judiciary Chairman, I think two or three years from now,
00:46:08.000
I'm going to call on people in the order they're not running for president.
00:46:10.780
I'm going to scrap seniority because it was very apparent to me who was running for president and who wasn't.
00:46:17.180
Do you think that they have – I mean, this is not the role of the Senate.
00:46:28.380
We're getting this guy who I honestly think if they throw him out, Trump's the kind of guy who's like, oh, yeah?
00:46:38.580
If that were the actual gamble, I would be in favor of him.
00:46:42.800
But they – yeah, they might put in – he might put in Gary Busey.
00:46:45.520
He might – if you're a Democrat, there was, what, four final contenders that he had up there?
00:46:51.740
And one of them was a very socially conservative lady from, I think, Minnesota or something.
00:46:55.840
And, like, that one I think would be far – Kavanaugh, he's – you know, if you're trying to, you know, assess where he's at,
00:47:02.880
he appears to have a lot of respect for precedent, so I understand why you think Roe versus Wade might be overturned,
00:47:08.800
but that's not what he's blaring in with, although there were a couple other people that wanted to do that.
00:47:13.100
He's not great on privacy rights and things like that.
00:47:16.080
But otherwise, you know, he's a qualified jurist.
00:47:27.000
And, you know, I just keep thinking, I don't even understand your strategy other than I'm just trying to get elected.
00:47:36.320
I think there was a Hail Mary pass going on where, you know, if I were a Democrat,
00:47:41.960
I would be very worried about the swing seat going to, like, the hardcore conservatives or whatever.
00:47:50.600
And I think that there was some idea of maybe we're going to get this postponed long enough
00:47:56.480
and then somehow we'll pick up 20 Senate seats and then we can postpone this for two years.
00:48:02.020
But I think the main thing, though, is I think that senators, not even Democrats or Republicans,
00:48:05.780
senators all want to live in the speech scene from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
00:48:09.780
They all believe that they are the righteous little guy fighting the good battle,
00:48:13.820
and they want to live in that moment, and they want to be surrounded by applause.
00:48:22.980
When Elizabeth Warren got that hashtag, he was like, oh, I want that so bad.
00:48:33.800
They all want to have that moment that they can later fundraise on for their presidential campaign,
00:48:38.220
which, by the way, they're all going to be announcing in like three or four months,
00:48:42.800
We're almost in the middle of the 2020 election.
00:48:45.420
And they're all just auditioning, trying to get their little donor email.
00:48:48.580
I think he was hoping that he would be expelled from the Senate because what a great position to be.
00:48:56.140
You're fighting the secret crypto racist and an illegitimate process to get him in,
00:48:59.880
and you got kicked out from the Senate because you believe.
00:49:01.840
He was like, Senator, I'm also stealing copy paper at night.
00:49:08.540
You're wondering where all that paper is going to.
00:49:17.840
So I want to turn it to Norm MacDonald and this chilling of speech.
00:49:24.640
You know, you said, you know, there could be a lot of, you know, really, you know, hardcore conservative appointed to the court.
00:49:41.320
All of our arguments would go away if we were just using a hardcore constitutionalist.
00:49:46.640
Somebody would stand up for freedom of speech, no matter who is saying it.
00:49:52.480
We're going into a world, and you have to feel it with comedy, where I don't know how this ends.
00:50:04.900
You know, I hope that eventually we kind of burn out, although I will say in the world of comedy, stand-up comedians almost to a person will back up the other stand-up comedians when somebody's getting, you know, railed for political correctness.
00:50:24.680
This is our home if we're in a comedy club, and we're allowed to kind of say whatever we want.
00:50:28.740
And it's very rare to find a stand-up comedian that will throw another stand-up comedian under the bus.
00:50:32.200
On a broader level, I'm worried that we seem to have this kind of Orwellian two-minutes hate thing in our culture where we have this deep need for catharsis to ruin someone every day.
00:50:45.740
And then I guess our goal is to get them to hang themselves or something, and that I find very disturbing.
00:50:48.940
Well, by the end of the day, we won't pay attention for two days.
00:50:51.760
We won't actually know what happens tomorrow because we will move on to somebody else.
00:50:56.620
I'd say from my vantage point, you know, I want to live in both legally a country that has freedom of speech but also culturally has freedom of speech.
00:51:06.140
But if there's any two realms in it that I'm particularly concerned about, it's college campuses, which that's not a thing anymore, and comedy clubs.
00:51:16.520
I mean, like comedians tend to be the jesters that are allowed to really poke at the edges of things and go to whatever the sacred cow is.
00:51:22.660
And every group has different sacred cows, and comedians go in and slaughter them.
00:51:26.460
And we are important for that reason because we can actually shake things up.
00:51:30.480
So I'm going to take a break, and we'll come back.
00:51:39.820
And also, I'm kind of, you know, restricted to where I go to the bathroom.
00:51:44.420
No, I want to talk to you about Norm MacDonald and our comedians rallying around him.
00:51:48.560
He wasn't saying anything—I didn't think—it's not the way I would have phrased it, but I didn't think he was saying anything controversial.
00:51:55.160
And he's basically saying, can we talk about things?
00:52:01.720
Yeah, I mean, he did—the two things that I'm aware of is he used—he, on a follow-up to the first statement, said you'd have to have Down syndrome to something, something, something.