Best of the Program ｜ Guest： Brad Meltzer ｜ 6⧸24⧸26
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about socialism, the World Cup, and how we are going to become a socialist nation. Also, Brad Meltzer joins me to talk about his new book, Teddy Roosevelt: My Life and the Idea of a Socialist Nation .
Transcript
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Oh, there are so many good highlights from today's show, and we can only get to some
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I want to start with something that, you know, I started with the fact that New York has
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Good Democrats, they threw out, you know, and these were all, when I say good Democrats,
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But people who were like, I led the rally to get Trump out of office.
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I did all these things, but you're not socialist, are you? Now the socialists are coming in and
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they're eating their own. And the problem with this is, is no one is teaching in a understandable
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way what socialism is and what capitalism is. You can't defend it if you can't teach it. And so I
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modeled how you teach what socialism is and what capitalism is. And I start with the famous pencil
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story. Um, also the world cup, I am in love with all the people coming here, um, because they have
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a, they have a skewed idea. They've been told by their media and their politicians, America bad,
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um, America, just a killing field. And then they come here and they're like, Oh my gosh, no,
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this is much better than our country. And they're expressing it. We're seeing it now because of
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social media. So I, I talk about that, um, the world that came to see and now how politicians
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are twisting it because everybody's talking about the world cup. So let's take a world cup story
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and make it into immigration. It's what the wall street journal did. And it's a lie. And I expose
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it today. Also one of my favorite guests, Brad Meltzer is with me. Um, he's got a new book out
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for kids. Uh, perfect for the two 50. I am Teddy Roosevelt who, and we talk about this. Teddy
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roosevelt is one of my favorite presidents and one of my least favorite presidents um because
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i mean i'm it's weird i i cut him a break and i don't know if i should cut him a break but i cut
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him a break on some really bad stuff um and at the same time i love him on other things and despise
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him on the other half of his personality you decide uh all that and so much more on today's
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okay i want to help out the homeschoolers i want to help you out if you can't defend
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capitalism you can't explain why it's better than socialism because i'm telling you we are
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going to be a socialist nation if we don't stop this soon and that is going to require us
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to be stronger people better educated people um and there was something that i read when i was
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kid and i and i think it was eye pencil i can't i can't remember exactly um and so i'm going to
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bastardize it horribly but i'm holding a pencil yellow six sides little pink eraser at the top
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and we've used these our whole life i mean you don't know use them now but we use them our
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whole life. Everybody had one, okay? Nobody on earth, even though you have these, nobody on
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earth knows how to make this thing. Not me, not even the man who runs the pencil factory. I mean,
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he knows what it takes, but he's not the guy doing all of it. Not the CEO, not his best engineer,
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not the genius three cubicles down who corrects everybody's grammar. Not that guy. It's a pencil.
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the cedar comes from uh comes off a mountain in the pacific northwest it's cut by a steel saw
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that steel came from iron ore in minnesota smelted with coal hauled by the rails by people who are
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long dead okay the graphite comes out of the ground in sri lanka and it's mixed with clay
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from mississippi the little band up at the top it used to be copper from chile zinc from canada
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the yellow paint the rubber that never once met a rubber tree in its life all of these things
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thousands of people on five continents that don't speak the same language who never met
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who probably crossed the street to avoid each other you know if they did all of them somehow
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or another without even knowing it have conspired to put this perfect little writing machine in a
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child's hand for less than a quarter these people couldn't agree on lunch and they built the pencil
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and here's the key no one was in charge there is no pencil czar there's no department of pencils
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in a marble building deciding how much graphite Sri Lanka needs to mine this year nobody on the
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planet wakes up at three o'clock in the morning in a cold sweat thinking dear god does ohio have
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enough racer erasers nobody does it just happens every day it's a miracle so ordinary we walk
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right past it on the way to complain about something so here's how you explain capitalism
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and socialism if no one is smart enough to plan a pencil nobody it doesn't take anybody it just
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happens who exactly do we figure is smart enough to plan an entire economy
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you know this person right you meet the man who flunked the pencil but i think he's probably
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pretty good at running health care or energy or lunch for 300 million people? No, no.
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There's this economist named Friedrich Hayek. He spent his life on this one idea.
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The knowledge that it takes to run an economy doesn't live in any one place. It's scattered
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across millions and billions of heads. It's the welder who can feel a batch of steel running
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brittle. It's the grocer who notices that young families are starting to move in, and they're
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starting to move in, and they got all these kids, so I better stock up more diapers. It's the farmer
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that can read the sky. None of them could write down what they know. They couldn't fill it out
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in a form they'd lose the form but they act on it every single day and the price tag is how they
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talk to one another copper jumps and a man in a workshop who has never spent one waking thought
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on the nation of chile suddenly figures out we should use less copper he doesn't know why i don't
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think he even wants to know why i don't want to know why but the number told him hey slow down
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on the copper somebody else in the world is using a lot of it and they need it worse than you do
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right now so slow down that message races around the planet at the speed of light without one human
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being saying i'll put out the warning on copper they're not there's not there's no forum there's
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no there's no phone call nobody's scheduling a meeting about it but then we introduce a central
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planner. Let's just say best heart in the world. It's Mother Teresa with a PhD and a spreadsheet
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and the most sincere Mother Teresa desire to help the poor. And she stands up and she says,
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we don't need all this messy haggling over prices. I'll decide. I'm going to set the prices. You love
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me. I love you. You know my heart. We'll just plan it. How hard can it be? And the second Mother
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Teresa does that, she turns off the lights. She blinds herself to the one thing that is telling
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everyone what everybody else knew. She's not stupid. She's not greedy. She's been handed
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the job. No human, no computer can pull off because the information she needs doesn't exist
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in any form that they can hold. It's in the lives of the welders and the hands of the farmer's gut
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and it dies the instant that you tell them to stop deciding for themselves
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Then the farmer's like, well, I got to tell you, my gut says this,
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but the memo says do this, and that's when the breadline happens.
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Breadlines are real, and it happens the same way every single time.
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It's honestly, it's like a band that only knows one song.
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and we split it down the middle with a wall
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same grandmother's recipe same family sometimes they were on different sides of the wall
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one side became one of the richest places on earth and the other side bugged its own citizens
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ran out of coffee and built a wall same people what happened and by the way notice which direction
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people were climbing over that wall in all of history all the history of that wall not one man
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ever risked the searchlights and the machine gun towers
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to sneak into East Germany for shopping or the good food.
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The south of Korea, South Korea, it is a blanket of light.
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The north is a black hole with one lonely pinprick
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So let me spend a second being the kind of man I always ask you to be
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and give you the strongest thing the other side says.
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Because I can't just hand you an easy version of the argument.
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I would be flattering you. And I don't want to do that. I hate when I ask a question of ChatGPT
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or some one of these AIs, and they're like, that is a very smart question. Shut up. Just give me
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the facts, okay? The socialists will look at my pencil and say, beautiful story, Glenn. That's
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really not, I mean, that's really Hallmark movie stuff. It's great. I'm going to cry in the end.
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Oh, and do you end up together? Okay. But your market made that pencil, and the market can't
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make a single thing that it can't slap a price tag on. It can't price clean air. It can't price
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a stable climate. It can't price the quiet dignity of a man who has built something with his own
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hands. So it just ignores them. It runs clean off the cliff with those things and calls it
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efficiency. Here's the thing about that argument. It's not wrong. And any honest defender of the
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markets has to own that he's not wrong and then i could go harder uh the wealth doesn't stay polite
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it doesn't sit in the corner glen sipping water it buys senators it writes the rules of the very
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game it swears it's it's playing fair a kid born in a dying town with a worn out school you're
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gonna look him in the eye and tell him you know his reward is tied to his effort when the race
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was three quarters run before he put his shoes on? Absolutely fair. Absolutely fair. That is
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correct. So if you want to be honest, where do you land? Well, you don't burn down the engine
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that lifted more human beings out of crushing poverty than anything else in the entire history
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of the world. This is why I'm a conservative. You look at the whole situation, you go, what worked,
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what doesn't. Okay. The engine is good. The corruption is bad. Okay. That's what you have
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to do. When China and India finally quit trying to plan every single pencil and let the markets
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breathe, a billion people climbed up out of the kind of poverty that kills your children.
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A billion. No charity, no revolution, no five-year plan ever came close a thousand miles
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What it did was let ordinary people own things,
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trade things, keep a little of what they earned.
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You don't put out a house fire by knocking the house down.
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And the part that has almost nothing to do with money,
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When the government owns the work, the government owns the worker.
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You keep saying, well, the capitalist owns the worker.
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Well, the government will too because it's humans that are involved.
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A man who can take your living can make you say almost anything.
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He can make you applaud until your hands bleed when all you want to do is weep.
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in a free economy if one boss fires you for what you believe you just walk down the street to the
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next one unless the government is involved the government is supposed to be the policeman
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if a powerful man hates your idea somebody else prints it they might even just print it just to
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make a buck off the controversy that grubby profit hungry marketplace is the very same thing that
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keeps the dissident fed. The freedom of the spirit and freedom of the wallet were never
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two things. They were always one thing wearing two coats. So let me quickly end where I started
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with the pencil. The reason why this little miracle works, the reason a quarter's worth
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of cedar and Chilean copper assembles itself in a child's hand with nobody in charge,
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is that it trusts something that no planner ever can or will.
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know more than any genius in any capital ever could.
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Capitalism at its best says something much humbler
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and the very sincere face, not Mother Teresa, nobody.
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because that's the country that figured out how to make a billion of those pencils
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Keeping yourself and your family safe means being prepared for situations
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It means being prepared for all the situations, you know, even those situations where deadly force is not needed.
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And if you're a gun owner, it's unfortunately easy to think a gun will provide you all the safety it needs.
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But you never pull a gun unless you're prepared to kill somebody.
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And I'm not in all situations, you know, but they can go bad fast.
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It's a non-lethal alternative to safeguarding your home that will teach somebody a very painful, non-lethal lesson.
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It's legal in all 50 states, no permits or background checks required, and it can be used by all age groups over 18.
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You'll be confident that you are prepared to defend yourself against potential threats.
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Try before you buy it at a sportsman's warehouse located near you.
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You can find that location at Berna, B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash Glenn.
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this is the best of the glenbeck program and don't forget rate us on itunes
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all right there is something really glorious that is happening in america and i can't believe it's
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happening with soccer in the world cup i mean i am not interested at all in the world cup and
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finally, I am fascinated, suddenly fascinated by the World Cup. And I think why is because the
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world came and they didn't lecture us. They came to play. And somewhere between the kickoff and
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the final whistle, the people who came to watch, the visitors watching, are discovering something
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the people who sell them opinions never wanted them to see. They're seeing the actual real
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America. They arrive here and they have expected to see the caricature, the cruel, broken down,
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dangerous, you know, cops riding on the hood of a car, shooting people. And instead they find a
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barbecue or a stranger waving to them into a parking space, you know, 70,000 people in a
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stadium who really don't care, you know, what flag you arrived under. Just can you play or not?
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for years these people have been told america is the villain you don't you're not gonna like
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americans and america is a bad place instead have you noticed how many of them are like i would live
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here in a heartbeat and all because of soccer soccer has everybody's attention and because of
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that politicians are reaching for soccer too and i was really disgusted yesterday before i get to
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that let me just play a couple of things that i think are a really cool that what people are
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actually saying uh about us um let's play uh but but um let's play cut 16 please have you got a
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message for the scottish fans that i can't remember that i soon did yeah absolutely stay here never
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leave dude this is new glasgow now don't leave i just want to say thank you to the fan base you
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guys are absolutely electric you brought an energy to boston that we've been missing so thank you
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very much. And it's now added Scotland to the list of places to visit because you guys are a great
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crew. Please don't leave. We're going to miss you guys when you're gone. This was the best
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thing that happened to this city. These Scots, all these Scots here, man. I love these people
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and Uncle Fern. I'm saying right now, a year from today, I'm going to Scotland and I'm going to do
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videos over there and I'm going to have a hell of a time. I'm going to go for 10 days over there.
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okay those are boston people who are like i just love these people and i feel the same way i don't
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care i don't care what country they're from i don't care what they look like i don't care what
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flag i don't care what team they're rooting none of it none of it they're coming over and they're
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discovering i love america and we love them it's great it's great now let's wreck it with politics
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when we started winning the u.s team started winning the narrative machine kicked into gear
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wall street journal now the editorial board has published a piece titled america's immigrant
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soccer team and then of course the weasel john cornyn amplified it arguing the team's success
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really reflects america's historically welcoming immigration system okay all right this is not
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about soccer this is all about politics the article is clearly aimed at the ongoing debate
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over birthright citizenship and the supreme court case that is expected to rule on it okay
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soccer is just the vehicle so let's take their article let's count the journal noted that six
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of the 26 players on the roster were born outside the united states technically true but birthplace
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is not the real question now is it the questions the question is how many of those players became
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americans five of those six were born to at least one american parent so i don't care where you were
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born if one of your parents is an american you get citizenship at birth that's not immigration
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in any meaningful sense of the current political debate that is not being debated so you remove
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those five and you're left with one actual immigrant on the roster. He was born in Mexico.
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Zendayas, I guess. I don't know. He moved to the United States as a child. He became a citizen
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when his father was naturalized, when his father stood up by every public account, lawful, ordinary
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immigration story, the kind that very few people object to. He stands up and says, I will protect
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to defend the Constitution of the United States.
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And every player representing the United States
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Then you have another one who was born to parents
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Then you have a couple of others that were born in the United States,
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the foreign-born parents whose status at the time is not publicly documented,
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But if you grant everyone the benefit of the doubt, that's four of 26.
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What the players demonstrate is something else entirely, Wall Street Journal,
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that people from around the world want to be a part of America.
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there's so much slight of hand in this story it is crazy take a true statement that ambitious
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people from everywhere strengthen this country quietly substitute a different claim that border
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citizenship ship and legal distinctions no longer matter that's what's happening here you're watching
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a magic show they're not the same argument and then you get john cornyn coming in john cornyn
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john cornyn republicans already made their judgment on you in in 2026 in the primary
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yeah oh my gosh it was just this year wasn't it it seems such a long time ago
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he lost his party's nomination ken paxton won ken won despite being outspent by cornyn
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10 to 1 you couldn't buy the voters okay why because people are done with the republican
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establishment and people like john cornyn what makes moments like this so striking is here's
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a politician rejected by his own voters who is still trying to shape a conversation they've moved
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beyond maybe it's conviction maybe it's habit maybe maybe it's something else hmm i wonder what
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that could be either way the larger story is not about one senator it's about the political and
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media establishment just making mistakes in volume for influence for forever for my whole life they
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just assumed they were the referees and for my whole life they generally were the referees
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but today you're discovering wait a minute i'm just an ordinary participant participant in the
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game i'm just i'm in the bleachers here how did that happen and i think that's the most encouraging
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part of this whole story a new generation is coming up behind these weasels in the media
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and these weasels in washington people who are tired of the stale arguments the broken trust
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the endless attempt to divide americans into competing camps we're done with it they all want
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i don't care who they vote for i actually do if you're a socialist you don't want this
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but generally speaking everybody who's joining in now they want a country confident enough to
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welcome visitors proud enough to be admired clear enough about what citizenship means
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look at the listen to the people in boston a country we want a country that is open to those
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who want to contribute if you come here legally raise your hand take an oath commit yourself to
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the nation's future generally speaking we're happy welcoming you okay because
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america does not owe anyone a place here but because citizenship means joining a shared
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project we want you here if you want to share in it the question in oh man the question is not what
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america can do for you the question is what can you do to help build america that's the country
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millions of visitors are seeing right now a group of people who are like they love their country
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they're nice they don't want to hate people that's not who they are and maybe someday the
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united states lifts the the world cup trophy it would be sweet but this year the trophy is not
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the most important thing to me. What's remarkable is that the people who were told to fear America
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spend 90 minutes at a time seeing it for themselves. And they're discovering that
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the country they were warned about is not the country they found. So who's been lying to them
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the whole time and why? By the way, Cornyn, we're not going to miss you. It's sad. It's really sad
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and pathetic to see you've lost and now you're doing everything you can to burn the house down
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on the way out. It's really sad. We should have seen how much you really, I mean, how it's almost
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psychotic. If I can't have you, no one will. It's psychotic. You're a really bad boyfriend or ex
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husband, really bad. And I for one, not going to miss you. I'm glad they threw your ass out the
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door in Texas. All right, back in just a second. There is so much going on. If you're trying to
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teach your kids or yourself about American history, I mean, this is the summer to join
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Torch. I mean, there is so much going on. And on July 1st, I think that's next week,
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we're doing a live special. We have a new doc that is coming out, America 250 doc,
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and it's called The Golden Door. And it's really, really good. We take you from New York
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to the White House. And it is, I mean, it's really well done, really, really well done.
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I'll be there live. We'll be taking questions and things. Jason will be with me and we'll be
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doing it from Washington, D.C. It is on July 1st, 8 p.m. only on Torch. You're really going to love
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this because of the history and inspiration and quite honestly, the truth. Here is a trailer
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from Golden Door that premieres on Torch next week. Now on the base of the Statue of Liberty
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is a poem, and it's called The New Colossus. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled
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masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the
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homeless tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. For more than a century,
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Americans heard those lines as an invitation to the world's dreamers, the fighters, the people
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who looked at tyranny and said, I'm going to go to a place where a man can rise, where
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And that's why I say this with zero apology, zero new immigration, until we can get this
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Because you can't understand immigration if you first don't understand its purpose.
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We'll take a tour through history from some of the historic sites that wrote the immigration
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And speaking of stories, I'm going to tell you the story of a young woman who stepped
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One generation later, her child achieved something I can guarantee you she could have never dreamt
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You think this kind of success happens in Somalia?
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it begins uh next week uh you'll see it live with me june uh july 1st 8 p.m let me just play a
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little montage of the people who are coming in what they're saying about america let's remember
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this listen here are the things i love about americans first of all amount of patriotism
00:30:29.420
flags everywhere and i absolutely love it nobody on this planet can come even close to the amount
00:30:37.540
of patriotism Americans have, especially American South. Another thing that really stands out is the
00:30:43.760
amount of water Americans consume daily. Believe it or not, nobody else drinks so much clean water
00:30:50.120
as Americans. At first, I thought, oh my God, this is so dumb. Nobody needs so much water. And to be
1.00
00:30:56.040
honest, the only dumb one in this situation was me. I decided to give it a try and started drinking
0.98
00:31:01.340
water on regular basis and i've never felt better headaches went away skin cleared out it's
00:31:08.140
absolutely amazing thing i love small talk it makes you feel so much better of course nobody
0.95
00:31:14.540
gives how are you really doing that your day is crap no that's why you put a smile on your face
0.90
00:31:18.940
you leave your problems at home when a cashier tells you hi how are you doing with a smile on
0.98
00:31:23.100
her face it automatically brightens your day and i love it okay i am just walking around randomly
00:31:30.700
no idea what's ahead of me but i gotta show you these houses and these places
00:31:39.500
gosh no 10 foot fences no rabid people trying to burgle rape and murder the citizens
00:31:49.660
in washington my goodness look this is wow look at this they really used to build
00:32:01.480
beautiful buildings look at that that would be a death trap in south africa imagine walking
0.99
00:32:07.760
through there in the middle of the day or the middle of night i can also basically guarantee
0.97
00:32:13.500
you'd have your throat slit in South Africa.
0.99
00:32:17.820
This is the land of the free, ladies and gentlemen.
00:32:37.540
This is honestly why the French made the Statue of Liberty for us.
0.59
00:32:42.380
It's why Washington Crossing the Delaware, that painting was painted in Germany for the Germans by a German painter saying, look, America has it.
00:32:51.180
We have beat our chests and we're like, we're going to make everybody free.
00:32:56.740
You're going to we're going to come in and bomb you and then we're going to give you our your freedom the way we like to give it to you.
00:33:04.100
No, the way to change the world is live the example, just live the example.
00:33:09.920
and then when people come over here they do what they're doing my gosh you would not believe
00:33:14.440
america they have it down look at what they're doing now we don't have it down you know that
00:33:19.720
i know that imagine how bad it is over in their countries that they think we've got it down
00:33:23.980
we don't need to get arrogant we need just to to recognize yeah this is a special place
00:33:30.200
this is a place that is different than everywhere else in the world and it's good it's good do we
00:33:37.660
have problems to fix? Yes. Can we fix them? Yes. Why can we fix them? Because we're Americans.
00:33:43.380
So let's fix it the American way, not the European way. European way is government will fix it. You
0.98
00:33:49.380
just sit down, stay out of it. We'll fix it. We'll tell you how to live your life. It's not the
00:33:53.780
American way. That's not how we got here. This is the greatest example I have ever seen in my
1.00
00:34:00.860
lifetime of just live your life the way you're supposed to people will notice and they'll say
00:34:08.660
my gosh we got to be more like that what makes them special that's how you take real freedom
00:34:14.340
the real principles of our country and share them with the world not through the state department
00:34:20.360
not through USAID not through any of that live your principles America and people will notice
00:34:38.320
We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth
00:34:55.300
to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth.
00:34:59.600
This is a movement, and you're part of it, a big part of it.
00:35:03.060
So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up,
00:35:24.500
Your neighbor worked for the factory in the town and was proud of the work they did.
00:35:28.480
American Giant is doing their part to bring that back.
00:35:31.640
They use cotton that was grown by a neighbor, milled by a neighbor,
00:35:35.060
sewn and finished by a neighbor, all here in the U.S.
00:35:38.620
American Giant makes quality clothes that are 100% American.
00:35:45.780
When you go to the American Giant website and look at the clothing,
00:35:51.720
Not many companies make products like that today.
00:35:58.520
It's made overseas by cheap labor and it'll last you a little while.
00:36:01.260
Or you can buy clothing that's made in America with lasting quality.
00:36:05.500
Clothing that will be passed down from generation to generation.
00:36:12.440
Buy American today at American-Giant.com slash Glenn.
00:36:17.220
Get 20% off your first order at American-Giant.com slash Glenn.
00:36:21.900
probably not probably definitely top five probably either one or two favorite guest of all time
00:36:30.800
is brad melzer um we are like brothers from another mother we both love love love history
00:36:36.540
um we love exploring the things that nobody knows about and learning them just for ourselves even
00:36:42.580
if we don't share them and then we bore everybody to death by sharing them and strangely if you
00:36:47.880
catch us on a good day. We don't bore you to death. You're fascinated by it. Uh, Brad Meltzer
00:36:52.500
is the King of this. Uh, and he has written a new book. I am Teddy Roosevelt. He has this whole
00:36:57.120
book series out for kids, um, about, you know, heroes of American history. And this one is about
00:37:03.720
Teddy Roosevelt who I have a love hate relationship with. Um, I love the guy, but he was also,
00:37:09.460
and I give him a break and maybe I shouldn't, but I give him a break because it's, he's before you
0.83
00:37:15.360
start to see the results of what deep progressivism does um and you know eugenics and everything else
00:37:23.600
but he was deeply into all that stuff but he also at the same time is a monstrous hero i mean just
00:37:30.520
he belongs on mount rushmore because he is a giant sized hero a man like no other brad is
00:37:38.220
going to talk to us about that and then we're going back to the news here in just a second
00:37:40.880
brad how are you my man i miss you so good to see you oh so good to see you thank you so for
00:37:47.200
joining us on zoom um so i want to talk to you i want to talk to you about teddy roosevelt but
00:37:52.420
let's start with the news the um the fight that happened at the white house i thought of theodore
00:37:58.820
roosevelt the whole time everybody is freaking out theodore roosevelt that's his kind of thing
00:38:06.740
don't you think uh well here's what i think i actually was not a fan of the fight of the white
00:38:11.880
house because i just felt like it was um i think what i love about the teddy roosevelt is teddy
00:38:18.660
roosevelt would fight teddy roosevelt was the guy who got in the ring yes he had fights there
00:38:24.740
but also wanted to fight there um i just don't like the money making part of it right like i
00:38:30.100
like the fighting part i get i you know teddy roosevelt has this nixon has bowling everyone
00:38:34.660
president has their thing i just didn't like the cash value of it but of course how could i not
00:38:39.720
think of teddy roosevelt when you're thinking of fighting it's the guy who truly you know was was
00:38:45.900
the guy who had fights at the white house how do you how do you reconcile him as a as a parent
00:38:53.440
because i there's parts of me that absolutely loves him as a parent and there's parts of me
00:38:59.580
that go you would be in jail today he used to take his kids out and i don't remember the age
00:39:04.400
you probably do but he would take them out they were very young and he would just take them out
00:39:08.560
in the middle of the forest and say find your way home and yeah they'd have to find their way home
00:39:13.760
because they he taught them how to survive in anything listen he's complicated every hero and
00:39:22.780
and i listen i owe you a huge thank you this whole series started i came and launched it on your show
00:39:28.940
it was to give people better american heroes to look up to we started with the obvious
00:39:33.640
I am Abraham Lincoln. I am Amelia Earhart, people we love. I am Rosa Parks. We've done together on
00:39:39.260
this show. And every book I've done, Glenn, someone has written to me and said, that person
00:39:45.060
has this wrong with them, that wrong with them. They shouldn't have done this. They shouldn't
00:39:48.200
have done that. And they're right. Every person we've written about is complicated. The only
00:39:53.100
person that's perfect is, of course, God. And everyone else take a number, right? We're all
00:39:58.520
flawed in some way. And Teddy Roosevelt, the reason why it took me so long, this is our 39th
00:40:03.840
book in the series is he was most complicated, maybe the most complicated person we've written
00:40:09.720
about. And yes, I don't, I don't feature, you know, some of the things he's done that you've
00:40:15.220
talked about. I don't feature problematic things he's done as his presidency goes on,
00:40:20.320
but you know what I do feature? I love the fact that when he's a little kid, his father doesn't
00:40:25.340
like bullies. And his father says, when you have money, and you have power, that doesn't make you
00:40:32.420
fantastic or strong or terrific. What it does is it gives you a responsibility, a responsibility
00:40:38.780
to help other people. So you see those orphans that are in the streets that have no place to
00:40:43.480
live, we got to help them. You see these workers that are suffering under bad conditions, we got
00:40:47.640
to stand up and make sure they're not being taken advantage of. And that's what he does with the
00:40:51.560
environment and the great outdoors, our mutual love, right, has always been, is he goes to those
00:40:56.480
great outdoors and says, we have to protect them. And we have a responsibility to the environment
00:41:01.240
too. And those are the parts, of course, that I picked to feature in the book. You know, my editor
00:41:07.000
was like, maybe we shouldn't talk about the later parts of his life. Maybe we shouldn't talk about
00:41:11.100
these parts, but maybe we don't talk about abandoning your kids in the wilderness. But that
00:41:15.880
doesn't mean he doesn't have amazing, amazing things to teach us. No, I know. But I mean,
00:41:20.620
you're writing a kid's book and i i get that and you you cover all the important things that make
00:41:25.700
him a great guy um but i but he is so i think he's probably the the president that is he's probably
00:41:35.940
the most complicated president since jefferson i think those two i have a hard time reconciling
00:41:42.480
i like both of them i like and i can understand both of them um and maybe because um
00:41:50.360
um roosevelt is closer to me and i don't even know if this is right you know he was a big
00:41:55.540
eugenics guy i mean we have some documents where he is like look we wouldn't do this with our
00:41:59.880
cattle just let him breed with anybody we got to pick and choose who we breed you know who we let
00:42:04.900
have children um but i i look at that and think he's at the beginning of this science he doesn't
00:42:12.020
understand what it's going to turn into um and you you could have made that case back then because
00:42:18.420
you didn't have any negative. Am I being too kind on that? I don't think you're being too kind on
00:42:25.860
eugenics. I mean, that's a huge issue. I think as we all look, that's a moment in time where
00:42:33.780
I certainly don't think he knows what's going to happen in the future and what it's going to be
00:42:37.520
turned into. Of course, what I focus on very strongly is how he gets there. And as you said,
00:42:44.120
he's a complicated president, but as a person and as someone growing up, it's an incredibly
00:42:50.460
great hero to give to my kids and all that. Let's talk about why, because it is important.
00:42:55.240
I think today, Teddy Roosevelt is sometimes held out as being that strong guy, the macho guy,
00:43:00.420
look at him, he's the big stick, the whole thing, but that's not who he is when he's growing up.
0.71
00:43:05.700
He's actually sick a lot. He's smaller than everyone else. He gets picked on. He's so scared
00:43:10.620
when he's little that his mother used to read to him to go to bed because he was so scared to go
00:43:15.300
to bed. He used to get bullied. And that's when he takes boxing lessons because his dad is like,
00:43:21.060
listen, fighting's a last resort, but if you're being picked on, you got to stand up. And I can
00:43:26.060
tell you, my editor wanted to take that part out of the book. And I was like, no, no, no, no, right?
00:43:31.640
We have to put that in. I learned the same thing from my dad. I remember being picked on and my
00:43:36.460
dad teaching me how to throw a punch. And not that that's the answer, but listen, when you're
00:43:41.740
pushed around and someone picks on you, you have to stand up and say no. And that was a key part
00:43:48.480
of the book that we put in there. And what I love is, go ahead. Do you think that's his turning
00:43:53.800
point? I think the turning point is this. And it's the part that I think you and I, I'm going
00:43:58.840
to wager just knowing how much we know each other is your favorite part of his story, which is his
00:44:04.680
turning point he's not the great outdoorsman he loves animals his whole life he you know he had
00:44:09.700
like mice and and and spiders he used to keep in his room he was a weird kid he'd keep like
00:44:15.100
animals in his pockets and he you know called his bedroom the roosevelt museum of natural history
00:44:19.520
that it's a weird kid but here's the turning point his father dies and then soon after his
00:44:26.080
mother and his wife die on the same day glenn on valentine's day and on that day he's devastated
00:44:34.000
loses the great two women in his life and he can't get over it so he moves in that moment he can't
00:44:41.380
he's suffering in new york he moves to their ranch out in north dakota and in north dakota
00:44:48.000
he just sits under the stars and he listens to the wolves and it's there that he really develops
00:44:55.100
that need and that and that truth what i can call his experience in the great outdoors
00:45:01.700
He's never a great writer until he gets out there.
00:45:04.140
And then he starts spending 12 hours, 13 days in the saddle.
00:45:08.940
In degrees that are crazy below zero temperatures.
00:45:11.960
And what I love about him when he does that is he's not the best writer.
00:45:21.840
And if being out in nature teaches him anything, it's like success doesn't come from having natural gifts.
00:45:28.200
it comes from how hard you work those gifts and that's where he falls in love and starts
00:45:34.180
protecting the outdoors and on this one july 4th as we come up to july 4th ourselves
00:45:39.520
he gives this speech they ask him to speak and he says this quote and this is his speech he says
00:45:45.360
like all americans i love big things big prairies big forests big factories but we also have a
00:45:52.520
responsibility to protect things that can't take care of themselves and that's when he starts
00:45:56.820
protecting yellowstone and yosemite and niagara falls and he creates five national parks those
00:46:03.220
national parks that you and i love so much they exist because of teddy roosevelt that's who gave
00:46:08.800
us the national parks and federal lands and wildlife bird preserves and that's why he's on
00:46:14.300
mount rushmore not because of you know even the big stick or the freedom fighters or anything else
00:46:19.280
it's all because of what he does to our national parks so next time you're in a national park this
00:46:24.660
summer say a prayer and thank teddy roosevelt for that one and to me that is the lesson i wanted for
00:46:30.260
my kids to teach them that love of the great outdoors i love mount rushmore i love around
00:46:36.000
mount rushmore um but i i find it i find it so ironic um that they carved his face in a mountain
00:46:45.460
and he was the guy who was protecting and saying leave everything
00:46:49.760
leave the mountains alone and they carve his face into it so ironic great is when you every when i've
00:46:57.820
been to mount rushmore there's an i can't even tell you every time that i've been there i have
00:47:04.760
someone because i can't help but listen on everyone and someone says oh yeah there it is
00:47:09.160
washington lincoln jefferson and fdr and i'm like it's not fdr i can't help myself i'm just like
00:47:15.140
it's not it's the other roosevelt there's another roosevelt i know and and that is the irony of
00:47:19.080
Of course, my favorite part of Mount Rushmore, you know, there's a secret room behind Mount Rushmore, which I spent a lot of months trying to get into.
00:47:29.080
But the fact that there's a secret room behind Mount Rushmore, come on, baby.
00:47:35.640
um one thing that um the story to me that defines him and his just inner strength to go on
00:47:47.920
is he is going over um to accept the nomination to run for president um and he's going to run
00:47:56.840
against Wilson and he's trying to get the nomination of the progressive party blah blah
00:48:00.360
law which he starts um and he's going to give this speech and he talks so long he's so long-winded
00:48:06.060
he talks so long he folds this speech up and he puts it in his pocket he has then his glasses and
00:48:11.080
he puts his glasses into his pocket into a shirt pocket he puts a heavy coat on he goes across the
00:48:16.080
street somebody shoots him the bullet goes through his glasses then through the speech which i have
00:48:22.000
the speech i know you have the speech that was what trust me i was waiting all day because i
00:48:26.120
know you told me you have it i don't know if i was supposed to say it or not yeah yeah listen
00:48:29.960
it's a great bullet hole in it speech the speech saves his life saves his life protects him in the
00:48:37.240
assassination attempt i debated putting that into the book because it's so good but it goes through
00:48:42.120
it goes through i love the fact that a politician is protected by his own words i know i know so it
00:48:48.680
goes through the speech it's slowed down so much that it just lodges between his ribs and it stays
00:48:54.100
between his ribs forever but then he goes on to give a 45 and he's saying right and he's saying
00:49:00.580
please i you know you gotta there's no microphones or anything there's thousands of people there
00:49:04.280
and he has to project and give this speech and at one point his coat kind of opens up and everybody
00:49:09.840
sees all the blood on his shirt and and they laugh or they like gasp and he's like i told you i was
00:49:14.640
shot but nobody believed him nobody well that's the best part is i'm finishing the speech because
00:49:22.000
i'm not done right and that it is i know again he's complicated but he has these hero moments
00:49:30.980
that you're like oh my goodness like you can't know if i get if i put that in one of my thrillers
00:49:36.840
my editor would say no one's gonna believe that no there's no one that's gonna believe that but
00:49:41.880
he over and over has these moments like he even when he's younger he has these moments when bullies
00:49:47.960
come and pick on him he goes and gets the boxing lessons you can hear the rocky theme being played
00:49:53.840
in your head oh yeah and he then fights back and beats up the bullies and you know again it sounds
00:50:00.480
like something that's just made up but the fact that this guy rises and and when he goes to run
00:50:06.320
for the for his first office he loses he comes in third he runs for i think mayor of new york
00:50:11.200
and i love the fact that he loses and i love the fact he won't stay down on the mat and keeps
00:50:17.760
getting back up that's why i wrote the kids book for him is i want my my sons i want my daughter
00:50:24.000
to have that lesson that you can be it's what it says in the back of the book you know every every
00:50:28.440
kids book we do yes they're history books but they're value books so on the back of i am amelia
00:50:34.400
erhart it says i know no bounds on the back of i am abraham lincoln it says i will speak my mind
00:50:39.580
and speak for others on the back of i am teddy roosevelt it says you know become a force in
00:50:45.380
nature and right now i am america 250 i'm a force of nature on the back and and i as america 250
00:50:52.440
approaches we obviously time this book for that is i wanted to give my kids a lesson of what kind
00:50:58.560
of american they should be at america 250 and teddy roosevelt complicated as we all are as the
00:51:03.900
man yep uh brad i love you thank you so much thanks for sharing the book it's a great book
00:51:09.340
for your kids make sure you get it i am uh teddy roosevelt i am teddy roosevelt and the whole
00:51:14.160
series by Brad Meltzer. Thanks, Brad. Appreciate it.