Best of The Program ｜ Guests： Dave Isay & Spencer Coursen ｜ 5⧸10⧸21
Episode Stats
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Summary
Spencer Corson, Glenn's former head of security and author of a new book, The Safety Trap, talks to us about all the threats that are going on right now and what is wrong with the advice we are getting from all the "quote-unquote "authorities" about how to keep yourself safe.
Transcript
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Welcome to the podcast. Today, we go into the economy. What is going on with it? Why did we
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have such a disappointing jobs report? Is it because the government is shoveling money at
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people who would otherwise be back at work? We get into that today. Spencer Corson joins us. He's
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a Glenn's former head of security and also has a new book out called The Safety Trap,
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a security expert's secrets for staying safe in a dangerous world. He comes in and talks to us
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about all the threats that are going on right now. What is wrong about the advice you're getting
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from all the quote-unquote authorities and how to keep yourself safe. We get into that today and we
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get into the new woke world we all live in, including an update on what's going on at Disney,
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which is incredible. We'll get into that today. Also, that's going to be our focus on
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Stude Does America tonight. You can get that podcast right here in your podcast app. Make
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sure to click subscribe, rate, and review that podcast, this podcast, and any other podcast
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you like because they tell us it helps us. I have no idea if it's actually true or not. I mean,
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I don't know if rating and reviewing actually helps us. Subscribing certainly does and listening
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does as well. We really appreciate it. Here's the podcast.
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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
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This is the Glenn Beck program. I want to introduce a friend of the program and a friend
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of mine, Dave Isay. He is the founder of StoryCorps. StoryCorps is this really cool thing that started
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years ago collecting stories of Americans and then they are kept at the National Archives so we are
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able to preserve the voices of today. And there's some amazing moments that happen. He has been
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he's been working on not only StoryCorps, but he has also been working on one small step, which is
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bringing people of different ideologies together and letting them find their way to each other. And
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it's an amazing healing kind of thing that's going on. We were supposed to have him on a Friday
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because of the buildup to Mother's Day, but I thought, you know, we can still use some good news.
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So Dave, I say welcome to the program. How are you? Glenn, I'm doing great. How are you doing?
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Thanks for having me on. I'm good. I'm good. So how was your Mother's Day, first of all?
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It was great. Thanks. Yeah. No, my we my mom is thankfully still alive and we celebrated with her
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and with my my wife and my kids. So we had it. We had a great day. And how about you?
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Good. I know a year ago we were talking about your your son being very, very sick and, you know,
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grandma saying, you know, giving kind of some hope there. Yeah. Everybody's healthy.
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Everybody's fine. Yeah. My kid had a long haul case of COVID. He was one of the earliest
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people diagnosed, but he he's fine now. Thanks for asking. He's doing good.
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OK, so we went out here in Texas. Everything is so different around the country. We went out
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yesterday and nobody was wearing a mask and it was almost back to normal. I know.
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I think it's Wednesday of this week that New York opens up and still people are, you know,
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a little bit in a panic about it. We're handling this really differently all across the country.
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So, Dave, why don't you share with us the mom's Q&A? Set this up for us, will you?
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Sure. So we'll share a couple of stories, Glenn. And, you know, again, it's always great to be on.
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And I appreciate how deeply you believe in StoryCorps and One Small Step. And as you said,
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you know, StoryCorps is families coming together, everyday people to talk about their lives.
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And one small step is a new project that we've developed partly in partnership with you
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that deals with the issue of the toxic polarization in this country. But we're going to listen to a
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standard StoryCorps story. And, you know, it's OK to stretch out, like you said, Mother's Day for
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one more day. Yeah, I think we're going to start with this is this is an interview between a mom
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and her and her son. He actually brought her to a StoryCorps booth. We have these booths all across
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the country. And he was 12 years old at the time. His name is Josh Litman. And he has Asperger's
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syndrome, which is, you know, everybody knows at this point, a form of autism where where people
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can come across as eccentric and often develop obsessions. You know, a lot of times in New York
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City, a lot of kids who have Asperger's develop obsessions with the subways, for instance.
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In Josh's case, it's animals. And he came to StoryCorps with his own questions. Usually people
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use the kind of standard StoryCorps questions to ask. He came with his own questions to talk to his
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mom. And you'll notice actually an interesting thing. He was born in England and he moved to
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the United States when he was one, but he still has a British accent, which is one of the things
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that kids, kids with Asperger's, yeah, often hold on to accents. So let's listen to Josh Litman,
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again, who has an obsession with animals, interviewing his mom, Sarah at StoryCorps.
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From a scale of one to 10, do you think your life would be different without animals?
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I think it would be an eight without animals, because they add so much pleasure to life.
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How else do you think your life would be different without them?
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I could do without things like cockroaches and snakes.
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Well, I'm okay with snakes as long as they're not venomous or it can constrict you or anything.
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But cockroach is just the insect we love to hate.
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Um, when I was a teenager, I was very depressed. And I think that can be quite common with teenagers
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I would say my worst enemy is sometimes myself, but I don't think I have any mortal enemies.
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Hmm, I probably have, but I try not to lie to you, even though sometimes the questions you
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Like when we go on our walks, some of the questions I might ask.
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Yeah, but you know what? I feel it's really special that you and I can have those kind
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of talks, even if sometimes I feel myself blushing a little bit.
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Have you ever thought you couldn't cope with having a child?
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I remember when you were a baby, you had really bad colic, so you would just cry and cry.
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It's when you get this stomachache and all you do is scream for like four hours a night.
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You were pretty loud, but Amy's was more high-pitched.
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I think it feels like everyone seems to like Amy more, like she's like the perfect little
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Well, I can understand why you think that people like Amy more, and I'm not saying it's because
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of your Asperger's syndrome, but being friendly comes easily to Amy, whereas I think for you
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But the people who take the time to get to know you love you so much.
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Like, I have better quality friends, but less quantity.
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I mean, like, first thing is, like, Amy loved Claudia, then she hated Claudia, she loved
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The important thing for you is that you have a few very good friends, and really that's
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Did I turn out to be the son you wanted when I was born?
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Because, you know, sure you have these fantasies of what your child's going to be like, but
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you have made me grow so much as a parent, because you think...
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You were the one who made me a parent, that's a good point.
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But also, because you think differently from, you know, what they tell you in the parenting
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books, I really had to learn to think out of the box with you, and it's made me much
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more creative as a parent and as a person, and I'll always thank you for that.
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And that helped when Amy was born, but you were just so incredibly special to me, and
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And that is such an amazing, frank conversation that you just don't...
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You're listening to a very personal conversation with a very tough kid.
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On real life, you know, and again, I mean, we've talked about this before, but what I like
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to think StoryCorps does is just shake us on the shoulder and remind us what's important,
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because we're stuck in so much nonsense, Glenn, and we've talked about this before.
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She told me a story that Sarah had a column in a newspaper in Connecticut on education,
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And after that story aired, someone wrote her a note and said, you know, I've read your
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column for years, and I haven't agreed with a single word you've written.
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But after hearing this, I realized that we agree on all of the most important things in
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life, you know, and that's really what One's False Step, this effort under StoryCorps that
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you and I are working on together, is just trying to remind us about, you know, this...
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I know it's Monday morning, and like, who wants to jump right back into the mystery of
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You know, more than half of Americans say the greatest threat to this country comes from
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You know, we've gone from disagreeing with one another to hating one another.
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You know, we can't remember why we like each other or why we live in the same country anymore.
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I don't think it comes from our fellow citizens.
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We have to stop thinking about the greatest threat coming from our fellow citizens and
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And one way or another, no matter which side you're on, we're...
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In many ways, we're doing the same things to each other.
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I mean, I think COVID helped me and my family out a great deal.
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We are a much stronger family than we were a year ago.
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So, and I don't know if you know this about me, Dave, but I'm a painter, and I have been
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painting these different heroes of our past, and one of them is Lou Gehrig, and I call
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it Lucky with an asterisk, because the actual name of the title of the painting is Grateful.
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Because as I'm painting these people, I really, I listen to their words.
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If anything was recorded, I try to get to know them.
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And as I was painting Lou Gehrig, I thought, here's a guy who, as he's, he knows it's a
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death sentence, he's going to be dead in two years, and he gets up to the microphone, he
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says, I feel like the luckiest man in the world.
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That's gratitude for what you have instead of focusing on what you don't have.
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It's, it's, and, and, you know, things are not going in the right direction.
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You know, I've been, I've done StoryCorps for all these years, and, you know, it's families
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talking to each other, and it's incredibly successful.
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But I'm obsessed with this, with One Small Step, with this Across the Divide piece, because,
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and I know, you know, you and I have had a lot of on, you know, face-to-face, and also
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That, you know, this, this is, this, this kind of intractable conflict, the high conflict
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that we're seeing in the country is an existential threat.
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And, you know, it's easy, again, on the Monday morning after Mother's Day, I don't want to
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And, you know, I was, the crazy thing about it is your audience, you and your audience,
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I mean, you could single-handedly, your audience could, could, you know, set us on the road
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I, I really believe that, you know, and, and we just, we have got to take the first
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step towards, you know, recognizing that the people we disagree with, you know, that we
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have to, you know, not treat them with contempt, but just see them as human beings.
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It's when we start to see each other as less than human, and it's easy to do that.
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So the StoryCorps, what we're doing with StoryCorps with, with one small step is putting people
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across the divides together just to talk to each other, just like Sarah Littman would
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talk to the guy who read her column about their lives, just to remind us, you know, it's
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It's just one small step just to remind us that, God, we share so much more in common
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So, so we have, if you go to takeonesmallstep.org, and again, I hope everybody listening will
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do this, takeonesmallstep.org, and you sign up for newsletter, and you can also sign up
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to be a part of One Small Step, where we will partner you with someone across the political
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You take a quick, you take, you, you fill out a quick survey there, you know, there's
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no, it's completely safe, everything is locked down, and there's no risk whatsoever, and
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we put you for 50 minutes to have a conversation with someone different than you.
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And again, like, look, this is just, it is just one small step away from this abyss, but
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the only thing we know for sure is that if we don't start dealing with this problem of
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hating each other, things are just going to get worse.
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So you go to the website, takeonesmallstep.org, sign up, fill out a questionnaire, and as
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soon as we can, we'll match you with someone across the divides, and you have that conversation.
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And more than that, just talk to people around you, post it on Facebook, let people know,
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If people can see that, like, what's normal is to treat each other with respect, not to
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treat each other with contempt, that kind of norming can spread like a virus, like wildfire,
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a good virus, you know, and remind us that this is not okay.
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And, you know, like you said about Lou Gehrig, that we can focus on who we are at our best.
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You know, we live in a country now that is unforgiving, that none of us are, all of us
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are the worst things we've ever done, and doesn't, doesn't, you know, if we can't, you
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know, see the best in others, if we can't recognize the best in others, we're just in
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I just did a podcast with Jordan Peterson last Thursday, and I was re-listening to it again
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today, and most of that conversation is about that.
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I mean, he's deeply, deeply concerned about what we're going through as well as you and
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Axios reported last week, a job report for the ages.
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April could see more than 2 million jobs added.
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Reuters, U.S. economy likely created nearly a million jobs in April.
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CNBC, April jobs expected to top 1 million as consumers boost the economy.
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That's how many Wall Streeters think the U.S. created in April.
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Barron's, get ready for a blockbuster jobs report of 1 million or more.
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New York Times, jobs report is expected to show a big gain.
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And so that's, um, that's, that's, that's, we were well under expectations.
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There was still some growth, Glenn, but it was just, they just missed it by, you know,
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I mean, what, what, it was a few hundred thousand jobs among friends.
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It was, it was, uh, unemployment rate increased in April.
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I thought they were expecting about a million new jobs and they got 225,000, uh, new jobs.
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Contrary to the bullish expectations, the unemployment rate, uh, actually ticked up a tenth of a point
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The economy did add 266,000 jobs, far fewer than the, uh, the 770 revised number added in March
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Uh, this, uh, this jobs report actually, uh, is a job report of the ages.
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You know what this is, is that, um, you know, I was going to say it was, uh, you know, a misfire,
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but this president wants us to look at this differently.
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Here's the audio of Joe Biden talking about the jobs report.
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This month's job numbers show we're on the right track.
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Stu, would you say that this jobs report shows that we're on the right track?
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Well, the, the track has, as you mentioned was what, uh, increasing for, it was January,
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I would not, I would, I would not consider that on the right track.
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We should also point out that, um, that all of the job, uh, gains were in the hospitality,
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um, areas, which again, you know, look, it's good to see.
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We like to see that the restaurants are coming back a little bit and, and hospitality's popping
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But I mean, that doesn't, that doesn't make things that we can sell to other people.
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I look, the service industry is an important part of our economy, no doubt.
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But, you know, the fact that that, you know, restaurants are opening up because restrictions
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are being lifted in certain areas, but then we have really reactive of policies from,
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yeah, and then we have minus, minus jobs in all of the other areas outside of hospitality
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And then you add on to the fact that we're in an era where we're spending multiple trillions
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We haven't spent enough, but I want you to listen.
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So first of all, we're on the right track, according to this president, uh, we're on the
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right track and there's even more this month's job numbers show.
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As I said, my laser focus is on growing the nation's economy and creating jobs.
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My laser focus is on vaccinating our nation and we're making continued progress.
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My laser focus is on one more thing, making sure working people in this country, hardworking
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They're going to get a share of the benefits of a rising economy.
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We're still digging away out of a very deep hole we were put in.
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No one should underestimate how tough this battle is.
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He had laser focus, I know, on COVID and vaccinations.
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I don't know if he's a cyclops, so he only has one eye.
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But if so, his laser focus should move towards the economy.
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Because without the economy, we really don't have anything.
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And, you know, there's some simple things he could do.
00:21:11.880
Like, hey, cut the extra $300 from unemployment that people are using as an excuse to not go back to work.
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We can call it an excuse all we want, but people are making a pragmatic cost-benefit analysis on whether it's worth going somewhere for 40 hours a week to make less money.
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I can't blame them for saying that's a bad return on investment.
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And, you know, they know exactly what they're doing.
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The Chamber of Commerce just came out and said, can you cut that?
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Because after the jobs report, I think it's pretty clear that's not the way to go.
00:21:59.140
Yeah, two states now are going to abandon it already.
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And I think it's going to continue to pass, especially in red states around the country.
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Red states are recovering faster and will continue to lead the way and then be blamed for everything.
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The other thing is that he missed on his laser focus was the cyber attack of the gasoline pipeline.
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Kind of a big deal, you know, seeing that it is, what was it, 50% of the East's gasoline and jet fuel?
00:22:36.840
Just, it was just, you know, somewhere between 40 and 60%.
00:22:44.560
But they say if they don't have this solved by Tuesday, then it's going to really skyrocket prices.
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And fortunately, it's the most populated half of the country.
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And if you're looking at the map and you go right.
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You might have some problems with some oil and gas prices.
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Maybe, you know, because there's going to be a shortage.
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It's not like the driving season starts in a couple of weeks, you know.
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If it's 50% of the gas, just drive half as far.
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These are, they're easy solutions that we can, common sense solutions.
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I don't know why people don't listen to you more often, Sue, because that is really, really, really true.
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Here's the thing, Glenn, and you walk me through this because you're the historian around here.
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You get this whole museum right across the walkway here.
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And my impression of the job of president of the United States was you needed to focus on multiple things at once.
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You came in and kind of laser focused on one thing and let everything else go to crap.
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No, it's, you can't laser focus on just one thing.
00:24:04.660
But now it's, you know, you need a nap at three o'clock.
00:24:08.760
Take a nap, you know, after dinner, which is at two.
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So to have some dinner, go to sleep, wake up maybe 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning.
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Do you remember how many times they said that Donald Trump is going to bed early?
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All he does is watch TV and then he goes to bed early.
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This guy, I think, I think at least Trump was watching the news.
00:24:31.940
I think Biden maybe at two o'clock in the afternoon is watching Matlock or murder.
00:24:40.380
I have a 16 year old pug that his entire day is just sleeping, waking up, eating, going
00:24:51.100
He's only up for, I think, legit an hour a day.
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If you combine all the times he's actually up with his eyes open, you're at about an hour
00:25:06.560
Let's pretend your dog was president of the United States.
00:25:14.100
And I find out that Russia, that Russian hackers for the second time in just a couple of months
00:25:23.100
have now given us a cyber attack where they cut, quote, the jugular of our oil and gas
00:25:38.500
And we knew about the, you know, the, the, the, the hack in on Thursday because they took
00:25:47.900
And now they're holding this pipeline hostage for ransom.
00:25:52.220
And I come over to your house and I say, is president, is president miles available?
00:25:57.220
I've got some really, they've just cut the jugular of the oil pipeline.
00:26:04.600
Here's the thing with miles is he's mostly president.
00:26:09.820
He's mostly blind and basically completely deaf.
00:26:15.420
So if you try to wake him up, he's always completely stunned.
00:26:25.060
Like if he's awake and he's facing away from you, he never hears you coming.
00:26:28.520
So he always is, you know, scared and stunned and jolted every time.
00:26:34.880
So a lot of times I don't, I try not to wake him up or try not to, because I don't want
00:26:40.440
This is the cutting of the jugular of gas for the entire East Coast.
00:26:51.900
So maybe wait a little while to tell him about this incredible international incident that's
00:26:59.080
So you would give the, you would say, wait until he's awake the next day?
00:27:03.440
Wait until he's awake and you're in front of him.
00:27:05.440
Don't walk from behind him because then he'll be scared.
00:27:08.180
But if you kind of are already in front of him walking toward him, he'll see kind of
00:27:14.760
So you would give, if your dog Miles was the president, you would give the same advice
00:27:23.320
that apparently was given to, you know, colonial, the colonial oil pipeline people or, or the
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NSA or anybody who should have seen this one coming.
00:27:36.120
They didn't brief the president until Saturday.
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Like if the missiles are in the air, you just say, we'll let him know if one's coming here,
00:28:04.980
And every country that was afraid of us just recently, they're now, they're like, Hey,
00:28:19.640
Let's, let's go ahead and, uh, and just hack into all of their financial stuff and their
00:28:28.080
We can shut them down within a week and they're not going to do anything.
00:28:33.340
Uh, maybe, maybe we have a problem with our stance in the world.
00:28:40.080
Seeing that Hunter Biden keeps losing his dog tags at his Chinese secretary's apartment.
00:28:51.360
He might have been getting something for president.
00:29:01.180
Well, I never thought the day would come when I would welcome Spencer Corson to the radio
00:29:10.980
Uh, Spencer is, if you've ever been, if you've ever been to any of our shows, especially,
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you know, gosh, it has a long, how long has it been?
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Uh, you would see Spencer, uh, Spencer was the, uh, chief of my detail for security in
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Um, so you, you started your own security group course and security group.
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Uh, and, uh, you're a threat management expert.
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Now, uh, I can't be more pleased for your success.
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You, you were, let me, let me just say this and see if you know, is see if you can respond.
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Uh, I thought you were going to say when we were all sitting around the table and I would
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just be like, boom, winning every time a card got thrown down.
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And that became the, uh, the mantra of the weekend, which I almost got fired for.
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No, uh, you were with us and the family and our kids.
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We have, you know, we measure everybody and the kids wanted me to put my height there
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and mom's height and everything on the doorframe.
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You are about a foot higher because the kids said, I remember Mr.
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Anyway, you've, you've written a book called the safety trap and I wanted to have you on
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because I think it's really important, uh, that people understand, I mean, Spencer, we
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have had, uh, in incredible time, you know, that we still have great security.
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We've had all kinds of stuff, uh, happen to us and you know, us, we are really prepared
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and really secure, but I think that goes to what you're talking about called the safety
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I mean, as, as seriously as you take your security, I, I, you know, I take my own security
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very seriously and I had an attempted home invasion in my house on Monday.
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I know, I know, went to bed around midnight, one 10 AM.
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Uh, I have a service dog just goes from zero to hero.
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And I look over and I see that my motion lights are turned on outside.
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My alert notifications on my security system are going into overdrive.
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Ronan is just like begging me to let him through the door.
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I see that there's a bad guy trying to get in through my back fence.
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I grabbed the shotgun and go out the front and I was like five seconds too slow.
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And, and the guy got a lot, but, uh, made a report.
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They wound up catching the guy about a half a mile down the road.
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Cause he was trying to bring into other houses in the street too.
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So the next morning, of course, all the neighbors start talking and he had attempted to get
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into the apartment complex, which is to the left of me, hit my house, hit the house
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And we all just, you know, I got immediately on the phone right after I cleared the, cleared
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It was like five, 10 gray shorts, black shirt, tan cap, red backpack.
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And he had obviously known what we, what security, like I always talk about how you want to just
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like, you know, present yourself as having a strong protective posture, you know, to sort
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of make that a deterrent factor, which is the first level of, of, of deterrence.
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And some people take that as just putting the sign in their yard with nothing else.
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And the problem with that is that 85% of home invasions is because the guy can just walk
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And on the security cameras, you see the brazenness of the, he see, he knows that I have the lights
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and he knows, so he puts the, like his arm up to cover his face, but has no problem just
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trying the front door to see if he can just walk right in.
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Just, you know, drug seeking behavior was looking for, to raid a medicine.
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You have to be really careful because people who come to, you know, during the day are typically
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coming for your stuff, but people who come at night, good chance they're coming for you.
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So you really need to be of the mindset that you're willing to participate in your own protection.
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That's the one thing that I learned from you and others is that robbers don't want to meet
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you just as much as you don't want to meet them.
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They come when the house is empty and they don't do it at night.
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Like you see in the movies, generally speaking, they do it.
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During the day, somebody comes to your house at night, they got a problem.
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You know, they're either a drug person that's desperate or they do want to harm you or they're,
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they're doing something more than stealing your stuff.
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Of course, there's always exceptions to every rule, but yeah, more often than not.
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And especially when they don't come to the front door, which I think this guy was trying
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to do is by coming in through the back is if you hear, if your neighbors hear one loud
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crash, they're probably gonna go, oh, well, that was strange.
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But if they hear a second loud crash, then they may investigate.
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But if your front door is open or if it's a weak door that they can just get in with
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one quick kick or, you know, just one break of a window.
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You know, you cannot expect your neighbors to be willing to protect you any more than you
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Yes, we all have a neighborly responsibility to look out for one another, but we no longer
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live in a world where we can simply hope that nothing will happen and then solely rely on
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the first responders to save us once something does.
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That is something that came actually out of the Carter administration.
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He's the one that started calling police and fire first responders.
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Up until Carter, we all believed we were the first responders.
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So talk to me about the paradox of the safety trap.
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So the safety trap is a turn of phrase that I came up with a few years ago to explain to
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my clients the false sense of security that tends to hide behind our own outlook when our
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So if we take a school shooting, for example, tragic event happens, there's this rush that
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The politicians, you know, say we're going to, we're going to ban guns and, you know,
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public safety officials say we need to do something about mental health, but then, you
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The fear has abated, but the risk is still there.
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We have done absolutely nothing to, you know, maybe we'll do some things that will help to
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mitigate that risk once it has been realized, but we don't do anything.
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We don't put any kind of like preventative countermeasures in place to prevent that bad
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And that is the very essence of the safety trap.
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We are sometimes the most at danger when we feel the most safe, because when we have just
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a little bit of fear or when we're a little bit hesitant or we're a little bit aware, we
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have our guard up, we're looking around, we're present, we're very much in the moment, but
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then, you know, things, things go on, nothing else happens.
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And we have this, this, this swinging of the pendulum between hyper placency and, and hyper
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And everyday safety is really about finding that happy middle, a healthy sense of skepticism,
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a moderate dose of vigilance, very simple strategy.
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You know, I have a story that probably very few can relate to, but I tell it for a reason
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because you don't appreciate the skills that you actually have, these warning signals, these
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things in you that you, you will see without, without recognizing that you're not consciously
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Because you just notice things and that gives you that sense of, I should be a little hesitant.
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When you were the head of my detail, I had gotten so used to, and I think we may have
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I got so used to always 24 seven having protection with me.
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And usually it was more than one guy in the bad times.
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And, uh, and so I just knew that I was safe no matter where I was and, or at least I felt
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And I remember distinctly, maybe 10 years ago, the first time I went out again, just
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by myself, just to go to the store, Spencer, I was so freaked out because I didn't have that
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I mean, it came back, but it was so foreign to me.
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It's, it's this weird balance of still sensing the danger, but not living in fear.
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And I, and I use a couple, I cite a couple examples in the book.
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One of the way I structured the book was I identified these like 16 quote unquote safety
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traps that all of my clients throughout the years kept falling into, whether that be complacency,
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whether that be avoidance, whether that be false equivalents.
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And what it really always comes down to is everything in our normal everyday life.
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Like most of us are never going to experience a terror attack or be in an active shooter situation
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or, or experience a home invasion or, or any other like horrific incident.
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But that doesn't mean that the risks aren't real.
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The, you know, one of the things my global experience has, has always shown me is that
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There are always warning signs that come before the bad thing happens.
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And staying safe is about training ourselves to see them.
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When we drive our cars, we are looking for the person who's flying up behind us.
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We're looking for the person who's erratically changing lanes.
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We're looking for the person that may be, you know, in, in leadership, they always talk
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Safety is about anticipating the idiocy of others.
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Is this person going to like, and if we could just like apply those same, um, safety defense
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strategies that we employ when we're driving to our everyday life, we would have that ability
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to notice, Hey, you know, this person, even when I was on your security detail and we had
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all of the advanced teams and the overwatch and the counter surveillance and everything,
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you would still very often come up to me and be like, something just doesn't feel right
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And all of that, and we would absolutely take that into our, into our route planning or our
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threat matrix or whatever, because you not negotiating against your own survival instincts
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Um, Spencer, I thank you for all of the years of service that you gave my family, uh, and
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kept us safe in some really terribly frightening situations at times.
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So the, the, the two things, Spencer, I want to talk to you about is why is it in the book?
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You, you answer the question, why is it so many emergency response plans do more harm than
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Those are both things that we're told we have to pay attention to.
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And you're saying, nah, bad ideas, horrible ideas.
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So on the evacuation protocols, why you don't want to go where everyone else is going.
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Let's say that, um, one of the reasons, okay, let's just accept the premise that everyone
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who calls in a bomb threat is, there's no bomb because to get the components for that
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bomb, to build it, to construct it, to then breach security, to get it in place, to do,
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But what you do have readily available is where is that evacuation zone?
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And that's typically outside of the security zone.
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So I can put it and I can go on, I can put in hashtag fire drill or hashtag a bomb threat.
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And I can see on social media where everyone's gathering points are.
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I can very easily put an explosive device there.
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There's a movie called, uh, the kingdom where they, they put a, a small, uh, diversionary
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explosive device inside a building to get everyone to the evacuation point.
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And then that's where the real, the real bomb goes off because schools, buildings, office
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places are all these like interconnected compartmentalized pockets of protection.
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And then you give all of those up to, you know, to all move to one centralized, collective,
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well, we're all going to go to the parking lot.
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If there's ever a fire drill or an evacuation drone, or even if it's just a rehearsal, go
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anywhere else than where they're telling you to go.
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If the, if the crisis is so severe that they had to stop what they were doing and get everyone
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out, they have bigger problems than getting you back in, go just participate in your own