The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Hugh Ross & Bret Weinstein ｜ 5⧸15⧸24

00:00:00.220 Welcome to the podcast. Quite an adventure today. Glenn joins us as well as Pat Gray and myself.

00:00:07.140 And we were talking about all sorts of different things, including the fact that Joe Biden kind of proposed a debate out of nowhere,

00:00:14.740 seemingly trying to dissolve the Commission on Presidential Debates, which by the end of the show, he succeeded in both.

00:00:21.420 We have now two debates. We'll give you the details as we go through this.

00:00:25.200 Also, we talked about how our society might be wiped off the planet due to solar flares.

00:00:28.580 So it was really, we hit the entire spectrum. Today, it's all coming up on the podcast.

00:00:34.500 It was a sad day, it really was, when the little McDonald's down the street lost their best burger flipper.

00:00:39.720 I mean, it was a real tragedy, but young Braden, he was moving up in the world.

00:00:42.820 He ditched his wagon to a distant star and would ride his way on to fame and fortune.

00:00:47.580 No burger flipping for me anymore, said Braden, shaking the dust off the friolator grease from his shoes

00:00:53.740 as he ambled to the parking lot towards his bicycle.

00:00:56.560 From now on, I'm going to be a real estate agent.

00:01:00.360 Now, if that story kind of terrifies you because you're thinking about buying or selling a house

00:01:05.980 and you don't want to end up with Braden, I've got good news.

00:01:09.680 I started a company a decade ago.

00:01:12.080 It's called Real Estate Agents I Trust that actually pairs you up with actual experts

00:01:16.560 who will not only work their butts off trying to help you on both the buying and selling in,

00:01:22.040 but who also know that the people that they trust, you'll be able to trust.

00:01:27.600 The things that you have to get done, they'll have that Rolodex to be able to say,

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00:01:36.440 Real Estate Agents I Trust dot com.

00:01:38.480 The name says it all.

00:01:39.400 Go to Real Estate Agents I Trust dot com.

00:01:41.540 That's realestateagentsitrust.com.

00:01:45.120 Now, back to the podcast.

00:01:53.520 You're listening to The Best of the Glenn Beck Program.

00:01:58.260 I want to say hello to my good friends, Pat Gray and Stu Bergeer,

00:02:03.100 who for some reason have been with me now for almost 30 years.

00:02:07.840 No one can explain it.

00:02:08.980 No explanation.

00:02:09.480 I know, it's really, I mean, science is looking into it,

00:02:12.240 but I don't know if we'll ever find the answer to it.

00:02:14.920 We've got a couple of, we've got a couple of things going on.

00:02:17.760 By the way, the reason why they're with me today is I had eye surgery

00:02:22.040 and still I'm not really able to, everything's a little fuzzy.

00:02:27.700 So, you know, I usually get the stories wrong and the names wrong,

00:02:32.440 but in the next few, for a couple more days,

00:02:35.380 probably it would be a very bad idea just to fly solo.

00:02:38.920 Anyway, there's a couple of things I want to talk about today.

00:02:41.980 One, we have a couple of experts on, I think, next hour.

00:02:46.220 Stu, correct me if I'm wrong.

00:02:47.920 I've been really concerned about the magnetic field of Earth

00:02:53.740 and the solar flares.

00:02:55.900 Yesterday afternoon, we had one of the biggest solar flares happen again.

00:03:01.060 It was like an, I don't remember, X5, which is a severe solar flare.

00:03:08.620 It wasn't aimed at the Earth, and so we, you know,

00:03:11.480 we're not going to be affected by that.

00:03:12.780 But we're at the peak of solar activity.

00:03:15.840 Our magnetic field north and south poles are moving at the rate of,

00:03:22.940 I think, 40 miles a year, which is extraordinary.

00:03:27.520 And there's a lot of things going on,

00:03:29.200 and we're going to try to figure out what we should worry about

00:03:32.420 and what we shouldn't worry about.

00:03:34.360 That's coming up, I think, next hour.

00:03:36.480 Also, I want to get into the Trump trial.

00:03:39.720 It looks like it's really falling apart.

00:03:41.680 We'll get into that.

00:03:42.820 But I was listening to Pat this morning

00:03:45.320 as I was getting ready for the program,

00:03:47.100 and Pat was talking about this new study from, I don't know,

00:03:51.780 University of Colorado and I think UCLA, Pat, right?

00:03:54.460 Yep.

00:03:54.880 And Pat, you have a show of your own?

00:03:56.300 I do.

00:03:56.760 Now, when does that occur?

00:03:57.540 Where would I find something like that?

00:03:58.780 It happens immediately before this show, live, 6 to 8 Central,

00:04:02.600 so it's 7 to 9 Eastern, or anytime and anywhere you get your podcast.

00:04:06.620 Wow, that sounds almost like a promo.

00:04:09.540 Almost.

00:04:09.900 Might have to charge you for that.

00:04:11.480 No, it wasn't a promo, but it was almost like one.

00:04:14.900 Oh, okay, okay.

00:04:15.840 I'll almost charge you for that.

00:04:17.500 But they say social distancing and a few other measures,

00:04:21.680 like lockdowns and school closures,

00:04:24.620 that saved 800,000 lives.

00:04:28.340 Now, may I just say,

00:04:30.000 if we could have saved 800,000 lives by the lockdowns and the distancing,

00:04:38.480 imagine if Obama were president and we could save 800,000 jobs at the same time.

00:04:45.460 Wow, the old created or saved thing from Barack Obama's day.

00:04:49.100 So 800,000 lives created or saved by social distancing.

00:04:54.420 Well, if you're going to put created, I think it's 800 million at that point because, yes, yes,

00:05:01.660 800 million people were either created or saved during the social distancing.

00:05:10.500 Isn't it crazy we haven't had, well, I don't think we have.

00:05:14.640 I've never heard about it.

00:05:15.960 We didn't have a baby boom, did we? 0.96

00:05:17.900 We didn't have a COVID baby boom. 0.88

00:05:19.920 Not that I know of.

00:05:21.880 Isn't that bizarre?

00:05:24.600 You're locked in your house for a year and you're like, no, not interesting.

00:05:30.540 No, what can I binge on Netflix?

00:05:32.460 That's what we were worried about.

00:05:33.720 That's exactly right.

00:05:34.260 We were in the Tiger King period and it was not firing people up. 0.61

00:05:38.640 That is amazing.

00:05:39.500 By the way, I don't know how, just knowing the physics of how life is created,

00:05:43.880 I don't know that social distancing is necessarily the thing that would bring people.

00:05:48.260 I don't know.

00:05:48.960 It seems like the farther you are apart, the more difficult it is.

00:05:51.940 You had a lot of people who were, you know, living together and married and everything else.

00:05:56.920 And they were, you know, I understand after two years, you're like, mm-mm.

00:06:01.080 Right at the beginning?

00:06:02.800 Yeah, right at the beginning, we should have had a boom.

00:06:05.820 That's interesting.

00:06:06.440 I do remember people predicting that, but I don't remember seeing the research on how that ever turned out.

00:06:13.120 I mean, obviously, all the dating kind of went away for a while.

00:06:15.880 So you lost a lot of those just out of wedlock, whimsical babies that may have come.

00:06:21.120 Okay.

00:06:21.440 I was going to say, I don't know if you know this, dating doesn't cause pregnancy. 0.98

00:06:25.760 But it does lead to the thing that does, Glenn.

00:06:28.200 Yes, it does.

00:06:28.720 Yes, it does.

00:06:30.140 Often.

00:06:30.960 Yeah.

00:06:31.320 So, but I mean, if you're not, you're not finding a new partner, if you happen to be alone, I mean, certainly that could be a little bit of a factor.

00:06:39.360 But generally speaking, the baby boom comes from established couples.

00:06:43.860 Yes, yes, yes.

00:06:44.140 The other thing is that, you know, they said that the measures they took before the vaccine are what saved all these lives.

00:06:53.940 And then the vaccine came in and saved more lives.

00:06:56.760 No, it didn't.

00:06:57.500 Did it?

00:06:58.120 Yeah, it didn't.

00:06:59.440 People still died.

00:07:00.660 Everybody got it anyway.

00:07:02.260 Anyway, we were told that if you got the vaccine, you weren't going to get COVID.

00:07:07.520 And that turned out to be a complete and total lie.

00:07:10.500 And people got it anyway.

00:07:13.260 So, I don't know that any of the measures they took, actually.

00:07:16.380 Let him have it, Stu.

00:07:17.180 Let him have it.

00:07:17.860 Go.

00:07:18.180 Go ahead, Stu.

00:07:18.940 I know Stu's on the offensive side of this.

00:07:21.420 No, I'm just going to tell you, no COVID baby boom. 0.99

00:07:24.320 No widespread baby boom during the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:07:27.720 In fact, many countries experience a significant decline in birth rates.

00:07:31.280 How is that possible?

00:07:35.060 How is that possible?

00:07:35.760 Again, that's the distancing.

00:07:36.760 We have a few explanations if you'd like to hear them.

00:07:41.660 Yes, I do.

00:07:42.740 Okay.

00:07:43.320 Economic uncertainty was one of them.

00:07:45.320 People not wanting to have more kids because they were worried that the economy was going to fall apart.

00:07:49.500 Maybe understandable.

00:07:51.380 Health concerns.

00:07:52.680 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:07:54.880 Have we suddenly, you're telling me, with all the logic that is happening in the world today, where everybody is just dumb as a rock, you're telling me, they were like, I don't know, financially, when people came back from World War II, and the whole world was destroyed, and unemployment was through the roof because nobody had a job because all the men that returned, 0.85

00:08:21.400 they just were, they just didn't think about it, the people who built America were just like, you know, we're going to have a baby, I don't really care.

00:08:30.340 I don't know, it's a totally different thing, though, right?

00:08:32.600 Like, you had a long period of downturn and devastation that seemed like a big victory, right?

00:08:39.480 Like, you know, it's a different vibe than we were relatively, you know, prosperous, and all of a sudden, everything just evaporated overnight, and it was a short period of time.

00:08:51.480 Right?

00:08:51.620 Like, it was, you know, I mean, how long did that really last?

00:08:54.460 Can I tell you what I really think this is?

00:08:57.060 Mm-hmm.

00:08:57.340 All these people are like, I don't want to bring a child into a world like this.

00:09:02.740 I just can't imagine with all of the things going on, I could bring a child into a world like this with global warming and all of these things with conservatives.

00:09:13.780 Mm-hmm.

00:09:14.000 I can't do it.

00:09:15.540 With Trump as president, how could we bring more babies into this world?

00:09:18.800 Exactly right.

00:09:20.260 There's some of that.

00:09:20.760 They talk about also social restrictions, health concerns, delayed marriages and relationships, and access to family planning services.

00:09:29.440 Oh, that's an important one right there.

00:09:30.920 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:09:31.780 If you can go to Planned Parenthood, then they can prevent you from having children.

00:09:36.460 That much is true.

00:09:37.900 That's true.

00:09:38.680 Yeah, you know, we want to have a baby.

00:09:40.180 We went to Planned Parenthood, and they cut the baby out of her for some reason.

00:09:45.620 We were just going for help.

00:09:47.520 By the way, United States' birth rate declined by about 4% in 2020.

00:09:53.100 Wow.

00:09:53.540 Which is incredible.

00:09:54.660 Also declines in France, Italy, Spain, and some Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea, which already had low birth rates, saw further declines.

00:10:05.160 The world will weep when the Western world falls.

00:10:09.500 They have no idea what the Judeo-Christian Western world has done for humanity. 0.83

00:10:18.920 And when it's gone, they will weep.

00:10:21.560 They're going to be sorry.

00:10:22.700 They're going to be sorry.

00:10:23.280 And right now, you know, you're talking about rates of reproducing.

00:10:29.400 We're below replacement right now.

00:10:32.880 Are we significant?

00:10:33.980 Did we just hit another milestone?

00:10:35.780 We're significantly behind now.

00:10:37.640 Child-bearing women are having 1.6 children per family.

00:10:43.580 The replacement is 2.1.

00:10:46.660 We're half a percentage point under it.

00:10:48.700 When you have that 0.6 baby, I hope it's the head and the arms.

00:10:54.420 I know.

00:10:54.900 You know?

00:10:55.940 It's going to be horrible.

00:10:56.800 And I hope they're all attached.

00:10:58.700 You know, you at least get the full upper torso.

00:11:01.700 Could we get the 1.6 and take the 0.6 from one person and the 0.6 from another and sew them together?

00:11:10.700 Because they'd be super people then.

00:11:12.740 I don't know if they tried that, but they should.

00:11:14.560 They should.

00:11:15.100 Because then you'd have 1.2 as an individual, which would be great.

00:11:20.080 All right.

00:11:20.740 Let me take a quick break here.

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00:12:00.040 If they have families that are left behind, can you imagine, you know, your husband dies, you're at home with children, you're just barely making it, and you now have this mortgage.

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00:12:42.400 Ten seconds, station ID.

00:12:52.400 Okay, I'm sorry to play such a fool here, but I have not been watching TV or anything because I can't.

00:13:02.400 And honestly, I just can't listen to it because it's driving me out of my mind.

00:13:06.520 Can you guys tell me what's happening with the Trump trial now?

00:13:09.420 Well, he's been a very bad boy, and I have him in front of a court to try to see how bad he's been.

00:13:16.740 Michael Cohen was testifying yesterday, and he continues, I believe, today.

00:13:21.880 They're trying to basically show that he's not a credible person, highlighting all of the things he said about Donald Trump in the past,

00:13:29.240 which really has run the gamut of every possible opinion you could have on Donald Trump,

00:13:33.680 from the greatest man of all time who should be king of the universe for eternity all the way down to he's the worst person of all time and should be taken out back.

00:13:44.260 That's kind of the Michael Cohen approach.

00:13:47.080 Whatever benefits Michael Cohen at the time, it's important to note that what benefits him at the time right now is to be very calm and balanced and give, you know,

00:13:55.880 very respectful testimony in front of the court.

00:13:59.640 Of course, every major media, you know, institution is just lapping this up as if he is a credible witness,

00:14:06.740 when really there couldn't be one that is less credible.

00:14:10.640 Was there a tape that came out yesterday that?

00:14:13.220 Well, it's that secret tape where...

00:14:15.440 It's not new.

00:14:16.400 It's not new.

00:14:17.180 Yeah.

00:14:17.360 And we know what's in it.

00:14:18.720 And it's never been very incriminating in my mind.

00:14:21.960 I don't think it proves the prosecutor's statements at all.

00:14:28.800 It doesn't seem to back up what they're trying to prove about Trump.

00:14:31.580 You know what's amazing is, this is how rigged this thing is, and correct me if I'm wrong,

00:14:36.000 but the judge, I believe, denied the former Federal Election Commission chairman to testify to show that this was not a campaign expense.

00:14:51.900 Right.

00:14:52.160 That's true.

00:14:52.820 They wanted an expert witness to come in and say, hey, this is not a campaign finance violation.

00:14:57.700 Someone who's an expert in that field, they denied that as a potential witness.

00:15:01.900 But he wasn't really an expert.

00:15:03.880 He was just a chairman.

00:15:04.760 Right, right, right.

00:15:05.820 Okay, all right.

00:15:06.780 Now, it's interesting because they haven't actually said that it's a campaign finance violation.

00:15:15.120 To remind people who may have been bored out of their mind about this,

00:15:18.980 they basically have to tie what they say is a crime to another crime to get over the hump of making it a felony,

00:15:27.640 number one, and number two, getting over the statute of limitations.

00:15:30.580 So, they have to say crime A, which is this records violation, is tied to crime B, but they won't tell us what crime B is.

00:15:38.660 They're insinuating it has something to do with campaign finance, but of course, they haven't actually said that.

00:15:43.960 So, it's almost, you can't defend yourself against a claim that hasn't actually been brought.

00:15:48.140 This is so Declaration of Independence, isn't it?

00:15:52.700 I mean, this is just like everything that's in the Declaration of Independence that the king was doing.

00:15:57.820 You're like, I think they're doing that to Donald Trump.

00:16:01.000 How do you defend yourself about something that you don't even know what the crime is?

00:16:06.040 Yeah.

00:16:06.360 Well, it's impossible, and that's the point, right?

00:16:08.600 Right.

00:16:08.820 So, that's what they want.

00:16:09.640 So, the jurors, what do you think they're thinking?

00:16:16.600 Hopefully, there's somebody there that's just not a New Yorker.

00:16:19.800 I hate the guy.

00:16:21.360 Yeah.

00:16:21.800 Which is what Michael Cohen is all about.

00:16:23.960 We do have some of the highlights from his testimony, if you can call it that.

00:16:28.200 Some of what he said yesterday.

00:16:31.240 Cut one.

00:16:31.940 They say I'm Mr. Trump's pit bull, that I am his right-hand man, and I care about Mr. Trump.

00:16:42.480 This is what he was saying in the past.

00:16:44.300 Mr. Trump truly cares about America.

00:16:46.580 He loves this country.

00:16:48.060 He cares about the American people.

00:16:50.020 He knows what it's going to take to fix it.

00:16:52.220 But one thing Donald Trump is, he's a compassionate man.

00:16:55.420 I've been saying that to you since the day that he made the announcement.

00:16:58.380 He will ultimately go down in history as the greatest president.

00:17:02.220 Now, in a plot twist worthy of Shakespeare, the fixer has flipped.

00:17:06.020 I am done with the lying.

00:17:07.220 I am done being loyal to President Trump.

00:17:11.000 My loyalty to Mr. Trump has cost me everything.

00:17:14.660 My family's happiness, friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my honor,

00:17:23.380 my reputation, my freedom.

00:17:25.920 He is a racist.

00:17:27.580 Oh, wow.

00:17:27.940 He's a racist.

00:17:28.920 He's a con man, and he is a cheat.

00:17:32.000 And the guy is a narcissistic sociopath who doesn't care about anyone.

00:17:36.220 This is the most embarrassing thing that I have ever seen a U.S. or a former U.S. president

00:17:42.860 ever do.

00:17:43.700 It's actually even embarrassing for the former guy himself.

00:17:47.260 So Ben Franklin had a saying a long time ago that we're all born ignorant, but one must

00:17:52.300 work hard to remain stupid.

00:17:54.480 Well, I'm talking about, yep, yours truly, Donald the dope.

00:17:59.140 How dangerous Donald Trump legitimately could be.

00:18:04.280 Don't take my word for it.

00:18:05.760 I want you to Google it to all of your listeners, Brian.

00:18:09.100 And I want you to understand this is not my words.

00:18:12.060 These are the words of the deranged former president who said if he wins the presidency, the first

00:18:20.300 thing he's going to do is he's going to rewrite the Constitution.

00:18:24.480 He comes out of the courtroom.

00:18:27.700 Unreal.

00:18:28.040 And goes right into that little cage, which is where he belongs, in a f***ing cage like

00:18:34.340 an animal.

00:18:35.480 Okay.

00:18:36.200 On and on and on and on.

00:18:37.200 Just a few of the things he's said over the years.

00:18:39.420 First of all, obviously, when he was a shill for Donald Trump, and now he's the biggest

00:18:44.320 hater on the planet.

00:18:45.600 He had no credibility in either time frame, by the way.

00:18:48.440 And he's so unlikable.

00:18:49.620 Have you ever seen a person less likable than him?

00:18:52.500 Or less of a connection to the English language?

00:18:54.840 Right.

00:18:55.040 Like yours truly, somebody else.

00:18:59.740 Like what?

00:19:00.820 More unlikable?

00:19:02.080 Yeah, I think anybody in the Cuomo family.

00:19:04.540 Ah, okay.

00:19:06.020 You're preaching my language right there, Glenn.

00:19:08.820 You know, I mean, I like it.

00:19:11.000 I like where you're going there.

00:19:12.200 The Cuomo family.

00:19:13.000 By the way, Cohen was in direct contact with Chris Cuomo throughout all of this stuff.

00:19:20.220 And, you know, going back all the way to 2016.

00:19:23.580 In fact, some of the texts that came out in the trial, this is sort of a side point, but

00:19:27.480 he was texting Chris Cuomo to figure out a way out of the Access Hollywood tape going

00:19:32.040 back all the way back to those days.

00:19:34.260 So, a little connection there that we didn't necessarily know about.

00:19:38.740 CNN does business in an interesting way now, don't they?

00:19:41.640 Yeah, they do.

00:19:42.040 But, like, Cohen has no, I mean, anything that he says that you don't have multiple other

00:19:48.360 witnesses to is just completely worthless.

00:19:50.880 I mean, the man has no credibility.

00:19:53.200 Yeah, you'd have to have more than one witness.

00:19:55.100 Yes, but if you are somebody who hates Donald Trump, you could so easily just say, oh, he

00:20:03.120 was lying back then, but he's telling the truth.

00:20:05.160 I mean, he had to do what he had to do.

00:20:06.520 He wanted a job.

00:20:07.420 He was, you know, a good guy trying in there to stop Donald Trump.

00:20:11.340 And, you know, he just couldn't take it anymore.

00:20:13.520 I mean, that's the kind of games we play now, instead of saying, I don't know when you were

00:20:20.360 lying.

00:20:20.960 You were lying then, you're lying now.

00:20:22.700 I don't know.

00:20:23.720 Hopefully, the jury will come to that conclusion.

00:20:26.000 Yes.

00:20:26.840 But we'll see.

00:20:28.200 We'll see.

00:20:28.660 I mean, they certainly should.

00:20:29.980 This all seems to be working in Trump's favor right now.

00:20:33.460 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.

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00:21:30.460 Now back to the podcast.

00:21:33.480 Hugh Ross, astrophysicist.

00:21:36.240 He is also the founder of Reasons to Believe and senior scholar.

00:21:41.660 He's an amazing guy.

00:21:43.100 He's been on with us before.

00:21:44.360 I did a podcast a few weeks ago with him.

00:21:46.000 He found Christ.

00:21:48.940 He found God through looking at the stars.

00:21:54.440 An astrophysicist is somebody who looks deep into the past and tries to see what creation was,

00:22:05.720 what was happening millions of years ago.

00:22:08.500 Hugh, thank you so much for being on the program.

00:22:10.920 Oh, my pleasure.

00:22:11.580 So there was something that, and I've been reading stuff about this for, I don't know, 30 years.

00:22:18.360 It's always fascinated me, but I'm not a scientist or anything like it,

00:22:25.940 and so I have such a base understanding of it.

00:22:30.140 Last week, we had a major solar flare.

00:22:35.180 Solar flares can affect, like an EMP, can affect our power grid if they're bad enough,

00:22:42.240 and we're also going through a time period where, while the sun is at its peak activity right now,

00:22:50.280 our magnetic field is weak because our poles are drifting at about 40 miles per year,

00:22:58.520 which is pretty extraordinary, isn't it?

00:23:01.100 Yeah, the pole shift is moving.

00:23:04.800 It's quite a bit faster than it was the previous century, but it's not out of the ordinary.

00:23:11.000 And so when you do get a reversal of the magnetic pole, you do get rapid motion.

00:23:18.520 We're nowhere near that degree of rapid motion yet.

00:23:22.100 And that could be 1,000 years, right?

00:23:24.560 I mean, rapid for the Earth could be 1,000 years from now.

00:23:28.200 Yes, it could even be 1,000,000 years from now.

00:23:32.820 And there have been hundreds of pole reversals in the past,

00:23:37.180 and none of them have done serious damage to life.

00:23:41.380 But it is true that when you approach a pole reversal, the magnetic field weakens,

00:23:48.220 and our magnetic field has been weakening by about 6% per century.

00:23:53.100 But again, that's not out of the ordinary.

00:23:55.060 Our magnetic field always varies, either goes down slowly or up slowly.

00:24:01.300 Right now, it's going down slowly.

00:24:03.920 And it may actually turn around and start to go up a little bit.

00:24:07.840 So the variation of the magnetic field, the movement of the magnetic pole,

00:24:12.520 none of that's out of the ordinary.

00:24:14.600 On the other hand, we can't rule out the possibility we're heading towards a magnetic reversal.

00:24:19.620 So what does that mean?

00:24:20.720 The North Pole becomes the South Pole?

00:24:22.440 Yes.

00:24:23.700 Well, what actually happens is you can think of the Earth's magnetic field like a bar magnet with a North and South Pole.

00:24:31.200 That's called a dipole field.

00:24:33.680 What happens is when the magnetic field begins to weaken,

00:24:37.460 it transitions from being a dipole to being a multipole, where you've got more than two poles.

00:24:43.920 And that could last for a period of, say, a century or two or thousands of years.

00:24:49.080 Then it flips around, and it then becomes North and South.

00:24:53.000 But what was North is now South.

00:24:54.780 What is South is now North.

00:24:56.960 What does that do?

00:24:58.980 I mean, that whole shift, what, you know, and let's use a thousand-year timetable, because we don't know.

00:25:08.780 Could it happen quickly, first of all?

00:25:12.500 It could happen quickly, but that's rare.

00:25:15.000 Usually it's a rather slow, gradual onset.

00:25:18.340 Okay.

00:25:18.800 And, I mean, physicists are watching this to see what's happening.

00:25:23.760 Right.

00:25:24.400 But right now we're not seeing anything that's really outstanding or out of the ordinary.

00:25:29.580 Okay.

00:25:29.940 So what happens as it starts?

00:25:32.520 I assume they drift, and they're not connected, per se, because I think the South Pole is actually moving slower than the North.

00:25:40.520 But as they go towards, like, East and West, right?

00:25:44.620 Well, right now it's moved past the North Pole, the axis.

00:25:51.020 It used to be in northern Canada, and over the past 150 years, it's moved a little bit past the North Pole.

00:26:00.420 And it could switch and go East and West instead of North and South.

00:26:05.160 You know, physicists have been mapping this polar wandering of the magnetic pole for quite some time.

00:26:11.800 There's been over 100 reversals in the past history of the Earth.

00:26:15.100 And we do know that the magnetic field weakens when it happens, weakens by about a factor of 10.

00:26:21.960 But even a factor of 10 weakening is not devastating to life.

00:26:26.580 We can't document a single extinction of a species during a magnetic reversal.

00:26:32.740 But it could impact health.

00:26:34.720 I mean, when you've got a weaker magnetic field, you've got more cosmic radiation coming in.

00:26:40.060 And it's like if you live in Denver, you get exposed to more cosmic radiation, and your average lifespan gets lessened by three months.

00:26:49.400 And is that because of all the progressive laws that are there?

00:26:52.680 Well, it could be.

00:26:55.940 No, you do get a few more cosmic rays if you live at high elevation.

00:26:59.700 Right.

00:27:00.720 Okay.

00:27:01.080 But, hey, you've got healthier lifestyles.

00:27:03.420 I might counteract it.

00:27:04.660 I know that we are – they've had to adjust the GPS system.

00:27:12.220 And is that because of the poles shifting?

00:27:17.440 Well, you do have to adjust the clocks because the Earth is very slowly spinning down.

00:27:23.760 And so, you know, every New Year's, physicists celebrate New Year's Day by adjusting all their atomic clocks by a few microseconds.

00:27:33.220 But that's all it is, just a few microseconds.

00:27:35.940 So, okay, but I've heard that it used to be – anyway, the end of the story is that they're now adjusting them every six months.

00:27:46.680 Is that true?

00:27:47.780 Well, that's true.

00:27:49.360 I mean, and we're going to have a new set of GPS satellites that will know where you are to within one or two centimeters.

00:27:57.140 Jeez.

00:27:57.500 In which case, they're going to have to be making even more frequent adjustments.

00:28:00.840 But the adjustments are tiny.

00:28:02.900 So, when I was probably 25 years old, I read this great book, and I have no idea if it's scientifically sound or not.

00:28:11.020 But it talked about a catastrophic polar shift that the crust of the Earth, that some of the continents may have moved.

00:28:21.880 And their theory was that Atlantis was Antarctica, et cetera, et cetera.

00:28:26.800 But what fascinated me, and I know you're a religious guy, when it comes to, you know, end times, it says, and the stars will fall.

00:28:36.380 Well, the only way that I could think of in God's, you know, magnificent math to make it look like stars fall would be some sort of a shift in the continents.

00:28:51.780 As we would look up, we would be moving, but it would look like the stars are falling.

00:28:57.700 Have you ever thought of that, or is that nonsense?

00:28:59.800 Well, the continents move very rapidly.

00:29:03.740 It would wipe out all life.

00:29:05.860 And so, the continents move by a few centimeters per year.

00:29:10.160 So, I don't think that's what's happening.

00:29:12.560 The word there for star in Greek is aster, and that could include meteors.

00:29:18.420 So, maybe the stars falling is referring to a meteor shower.

00:29:22.440 Okay.

00:29:23.260 Or it could be referring to the stars dimming in light, like if there is widespread forest and grass fires.

00:29:29.800 That would cause all the stars.

00:29:31.980 In fact, that text says the sun, moon, and stars dim by one-third.

00:29:36.840 And that dimming would happen if you were surrounded by smoke.

00:29:40.740 You know, we're talking to Dr. Hugh Ross, and the thing I don't like about this interview is he's so smart, he makes me look like an idiot, which nobody usually does.

00:29:53.080 But I usually do that on my own.

00:29:56.460 Hugh, so tell me all of the stuff on the Aurora, the lights that we're looking at.

00:30:06.500 There is, I've read a lot, and I don't know if this is true, that because of the magnetic field, and if we have a massive, I think we had a, I don't even know, an X5 solar flare yesterday.

00:30:21.800 It was not headed in our direction.

00:30:24.680 That kind of stuff could blank out everything.

00:30:29.420 It's like an EMP.

00:30:31.960 Yeah, that could happen.

00:30:33.680 In 1859, there was a huge solar flare that struck the Earth and knocked out telegraph systems.

00:30:41.820 If that were to happen today, it could knock out most of the world's power grids, and that would mean you'd be without electricity, not just for a few hours, but for weeks, months, maybe even years.

00:30:54.820 And that would be catastrophic, because today we're very dependent on electricity.

00:31:00.320 Think of refrigeration.

00:31:02.100 You got no refrigeration, what does that do to your food supply?

00:31:05.160 Right.

00:31:06.040 So, and that kind of a flare happens about once every one or two hundred years, but hey, it happened in 1859, and I've written a book making the point it would be wise for us to protect our power grids.

00:31:21.300 Amen.

00:31:22.620 There is one that's protected, and that's in Quebec.

00:31:26.200 It got knocked out in 1989 by a flare like the one that happened, you know, just this past Friday.

00:31:33.380 But that's the only protected power grid in the world.

00:31:38.660 In the world?

00:31:40.540 Yeah.

00:31:41.080 I mean, they were close to the geomagnetic pole, so they took the most damage, and it was $11 billion of damage.

00:31:49.440 But they now have a surge protector on it, so it's protected.

00:31:55.060 But if we were to get a flare like we had in 1859, the damage to the U.S. alone would be over $2 trillion, and you would have millions of people dying.

00:32:07.260 Jeez.

00:32:08.460 The sun is reversing its poles as well, but that happens like every 11 years?

00:32:16.840 Yes, we're at solar maximum right now.

00:32:21.000 Every 11 years, you get more flaring activity, more sunspots.

00:32:26.040 And so, yeah, for the next year, we can expect to see more aurora displays like we had last Friday.

00:32:32.940 And hopefully we're not going to get a flare hitting us like what happened in 1859.

00:32:37.240 When does the sun start to go into solar minimum?

00:32:44.300 It'll start going into solar minimum in about a couple of years.

00:32:48.020 I mean, it's an 11-year cycle.

00:32:50.220 And so for about a two-year period, you're at maximum, and then you head towards minimum, and then we go back to maximum again.

00:32:57.760 And is there any correlation in your mind between the solar activity and maximum and minimum and global warming?

00:33:08.540 No, there's really no connection between what's happening with the sun.

00:33:12.320 The sun is getting brighter, but it's going to be a few million years before you notice a difference.

00:33:18.120 So even if the sun is very active, it doesn't affect our temperatures or anything?

00:33:25.280 It has no effect.

00:33:26.480 But what's happening here on Earth is what you've got to watch, not what's going on in the sun.

00:33:31.580 You're listening to the best of Glenn Beck.

00:33:35.220 Check out the full show podcast to listen to the rest of this interview.

00:33:39.420 Welcome to the Glenn Beck program.

00:33:42.300 I read a great article late last week by Brett Weinstein.

00:33:50.240 He's an evolutionary biologist.

00:33:52.580 He's the co-host of Dark Horse.

00:33:54.760 And he was writing about the solar flares.

00:33:58.980 Hey, look at the pretty lights in the sky.

00:34:01.920 And he, thank God, was one of them that actually said, hey, yeah, those pretty lights can put out all of our lights.

00:34:10.460 What are we thinking?

00:34:12.640 Brett, welcome to the program.

00:34:14.000 How are you?

00:34:14.380 I'm well.

00:34:16.060 It's good to be with you, Glenn.

00:34:17.120 Thank you.

00:34:18.300 Wasn't it yesterday?

00:34:19.540 Didn't we?

00:34:20.700 Wasn't there a solar flare yesterday that was, I don't know, X6 or I don't even understand the classifications, but it was a big one.

00:34:28.540 They said it was the 17th largest on record.

00:34:31.920 But it wasn't headed our way.

00:34:34.640 It was an X 8.8, which makes it larger than all of the storms that we took last week or over the weekend combined.

00:34:45.040 It was a very large flare.

00:34:49.000 And the dynamics work this way.

00:34:51.800 The sunspots are actually rotating around the sun.

00:34:55.420 And there was a very large, very active cluster that fired seven blasts of plasma at us.

00:35:03.480 And what happened yesterday happened from that same sunspot group as it was rotating away from the Earth-facing side of the sun.

00:35:11.960 So a lot of plasma came off the sun, but it will not hit the Earth.

00:35:16.140 What would an X, first of all, can you explain X 8.8?

00:35:20.440 Yeah, it's a non-linear scale that measures essentially the hazard from these solar flare ejections.

00:35:36.580 It's like a Richter scale.

00:35:38.140 It doesn't go 1, 2, 3, 4.

00:35:41.900 Its magnitude is...

00:35:43.640 Yeah, okay.

00:35:44.880 It's been compressed so that it can cover a much wider range of events.

00:35:48.860 And X is the most dangerous, right?

00:35:52.640 There are different categories.

00:35:54.360 But once you get into the X category, that's really bad.

00:35:58.360 Yeah, that's really bad.

00:35:59.380 Now, there's a lot of uncertainty in any given flare and coronal mass ejection, the amount of material that's flung off.

00:36:06.340 You know, if you had a photograph of an explosion, it'd be very hard to predict who in the crowd was going to be hit by shrapnel.

00:36:16.740 And the Earth is sort of in that condition.

00:36:20.060 We orbit around the sun.

00:36:22.680 Coronal mass ejections happen all the time.

00:36:24.700 Mostly they miss us.

00:36:26.260 Sometimes they hit us, but most of the energy and plasma does not.

00:36:30.640 Sometimes they hit us square on.

00:36:32.520 It's a roll of the dice every time.

00:36:34.200 So, when we have a mass ejection from the sun and it's headed our way, this is akin to a global EMP?

00:36:48.120 Yes, it can be.

00:36:49.620 It could be.

00:36:50.360 It can be.

00:36:51.140 So, you know, there's a lot of subtlety in the way these things are measured.

00:36:56.060 When we have a flare, there's an immediate burst of electromagnetic energy, X-rays, radio waves, microwaves, that sort of thing, that hits the Earth just like light does in about eight minutes.

00:37:10.660 It travels at the speed of light.

00:37:11.940 And then there is plasma, which is not always ejected during these flares, but often is.

00:37:18.560 And that takes days to travel the distance between the sun and the Earth.

00:37:22.920 And so it's that second cat.

00:37:24.840 Both things are important.

00:37:26.060 The X-rays can knock out communications almost immediately on the Earth, on the sun-facing side of the Earth.

00:37:32.920 But it's these coronal mass ejections of plasma that threaten to take out the grid.

00:37:38.320 But they last for days.

00:37:41.480 Like, I think we're out of this last solar storm that hit us over the weekend.

00:37:48.000 But it took days, did it not?

00:37:50.540 Well, it did, but it was the result of a series of coronal mass ejections emerging from the same highly active large group of sunspots

00:38:02.480 that happened to release these plasma bursts while they were facing the Earth.

00:38:09.540 So it's now just about rotated out of view, and it released this last largest burst right as it was on the horizon.

00:38:19.640 It may not survive to point back at Earth again.

00:38:23.880 We won't know for another two weeks as it's on the far side of the sun rotating around.

00:38:28.120 It may disintegrate.

00:38:29.360 It may return.

00:38:30.280 It could be less active.

00:38:31.540 It might be more active.

00:38:33.040 We don't know, and we won't know anything about it until it's back in view.

00:38:37.680 So this is the most perplexing thing I have ever seen because it's in the range, I think, of about $10 billion to protect our infrastructure.

00:38:51.560 And there's, for some reason, nobody wants to do it.

00:38:56.140 Why?

00:38:56.560 Why?

00:38:58.120 I've never been able to answer that question.

00:39:00.440 It is, if you understand the risk we are taking, the threats that we have prioritized above this one, the relatively small amount of money it would take to make us much safer.

00:39:16.100 And the one that really gets me is I can't figure out who would profit from us remaining vulnerable.

00:39:24.720 It seems to me that essentially everyone on Earth would benefit from fixing this problem, and nobody would notice the small increase in required revenue necessary to cover a large piece of debt.

00:39:41.180 Is that estimate that I gave you?

00:39:43.500 Is that accurate or close?

00:39:45.700 You know, it's a little hard to say because there's a question about what exactly you're going to do.

00:39:52.680 Nothing will make us perfectly safe.

00:39:54.440 But hardening the grid, which is largely a matter of making the transformers on which the grid depends robust so that they don't fry during one of these solar storms.

00:40:09.720 And the problem with them frying is not only does that take the grid down, but these transformers are not something that you, it's not a commodity.

00:40:18.540 You have to order them.

00:40:19.460 And they take something like a year, up to three years to be delivered.

00:40:24.460 So it's bad enough if you lose one.

00:40:27.260 But if the Earth suddenly needed many of them, there would, who knows how long the wait would be.

00:40:31.880 And many of us believe it's likely the lights would simply not come back on over large segments of the continent or worse.

00:40:38.740 So this is one of those low probability problems, but massively high impact.

00:40:44.660 I can't think of something that is a higher impact than, you know, a solar flare that knocks the Earth's electricity grid down.

00:40:55.300 Yeah, I think this is as dangerous as nuclear war.

00:40:58.140 But I do want to correct one thing you said.

00:41:00.220 Okay.

00:41:00.560 It's low probability in any individual instance.

00:41:04.080 It is actually extremely high probability on a scale of decades.

00:41:08.740 Over a decade, we take something like one in eight chance of a large piece of the grid going down in an unrecoverable way.

00:41:21.160 That's enough to create chaos.

00:41:24.060 And why we would take a one in eight risk every decade is hard to fathom.

00:41:29.620 Last week, how close was that?

00:41:32.080 Can you explain the Carrington event for anybody who doesn't know?

00:41:35.180 And, I mean, it hasn't happened in 150 years or whatever.

00:41:43.140 I mean, it sounds like we could be due for one again.

00:41:46.580 Can you explain that?

00:41:48.280 Sure.

00:41:49.000 In 1859, an astronomer named Carrington noticed flaring activity from sunspots.

00:41:57.180 It was correlated to auroras and a spectacular breakdown of the electrical systems of Earth, which at the time basically meant the telegraph system.

00:42:12.100 What happened with the telegraph system is that the solar storm induced currents in the wires that were enough to shock operators sitting at their desks, start fires, and in fact, allow people to send messages, though the grid was not energized because the energy that had been induced by the solar storm was sufficient to transmit.

00:42:36.140 So, because the Earth was not a highly electrical place at the time, that was a highly manageable, though interesting, event.

00:42:48.240 The problem is, if that happens again, and really it's not an if, it's a when, we now live on a planet in which everything depends on electricity.

00:43:00.040 Everything from the distribution of food and water to communications, all of our lives have electrical components.

00:43:08.920 And what's worse, they're not even just electrical anymore.

00:43:11.960 They're electronic, which means they're highly sensitive.

00:43:14.380 So, a solar storm that is like the Carrington event of 1859 would create catastrophic disruption of our systems.

00:43:26.200 And while, as I said before, we can't be perfectly safe, we could be a great deal safer than we are, and there is very little movement in that direction.

00:43:36.180 Is there anything that the individual can do?

00:43:38.160 Like, I have, you know, my own power source and everything else, I'm, you know, off the grid.

00:43:45.920 Is there something, like, can you, EMP proof, is that enough for this?

00:43:52.800 Well, it depends, because the significance of the EMP ranges.

00:44:00.460 So, there's probably nothing you could do about an absolute worst case scenario, but there are many scenarios that are far less dire.

00:44:14.660 And what one discovers when you try to prepare for such things is that you should probably ignore the absolute worst case,

00:44:26.800 because you could spend every dollar you have and every hour you have trying to make yourself safe from it, and you probably wouldn't.

00:44:33.540 So, it's not worth it.

00:44:34.920 But the much more likely scenarios involve things that you can do.

00:44:38.880 So, you know, how many, can you go a month if the grid were to go down?

00:44:44.240 That's a good start.

00:44:46.000 Can you go a year?

00:44:47.560 Do you have a plan to establish communications with the people who are, you know, let's say within 100 miles of you, your friends and family,

00:44:59.160 who you would gather with in such a circumstance?

00:45:03.140 All those things are worth doing.

00:45:05.000 But the primary thing would require us to act collectively.

00:45:11.640 We need to harden the grid.

00:45:15.420 And I would argue we have compounded the danger of a grid failure with the way we have treated our nuclear reactors and the spent fuel that sits in the fuel pools.

00:45:28.940 That spent fuel has to be actively cooled to keep it from catching fire.

00:45:35.900 Oh, geez.

00:45:37.040 Once it's been in those pools for something like five years, the rods can be removed and they can be put in what's called a dry cask.

00:45:45.980 And a dry cask does not require active cooling.

00:45:48.280 But it's expensive to do, and so there's been resistance to moving that fuel into these stable containers, which means that if the grid were to go down, all nuclear powers require active electrical inputs to keep them from melting down.

00:46:06.740 If you were to get a meltdown, you would lose control of the nuclear material in these reactors, and that would include all of the decades of spent fuel that's accumulated in the fuel pools.

00:46:21.640 Oh, my gosh.

00:46:21.900 So we could greatly reduce that hazard by simply taking the stuff that is cool enough to put in a dry cask and getting it there as quickly as possible.

00:46:31.000 And from the point of view, I know when people hear this kind of information, they panic.

00:46:37.960 That's not the right reaction.

00:46:40.580 We have been running this risk and getting lucky for many decades.

00:46:45.680 We are probably going to get through this 11-year solar maximum.

00:46:54.820 What I would do, if it were mine to say, is I would focus on being prepared for the next solar maximum in something like 11 years,

00:47:07.260 so that when that one comes, we are in a much better position to endure whatever the sun throws at us.

00:47:13.020 Brett, I thank you.

00:47:14.940 I felt your article last week was really eye-opening, and thank you for briefing everybody on that.

00:47:21.360 I appreciate it.

00:47:22.760 All right.

00:47:23.120 Thanks so much, Glenn.

00:47:23.980 Thank you.

00:47:24.280 Bye.

00:47:24.380 Bye.

00:47:24.420 Bye.

00:47:24.480 Bye.

00:47:24.960 Bye.

00:47:24.980 Bye.

00:47:25.040 Bye.

00:47:25.060 Bye.

00:47:25.080 Bye.

00:47:25.100 Bye.

00:47:25.140 Bye.

00:47:25.180 Bye.

00:47:25.200 Bye.

00:47:25.240 Bye.

00:47:25.300 Bye.

00:47:26.100 Bye.

00:47:26.800 Bye.

00:47:27.200 Bye.

00:47:27.240 Bye.

00:47:27.300 Bye.

00:47:27.680 Bye.

00:47:28.240 Bye.

00:47:28.300 Bye.

00:47:29.240 Bye.

00:47:29.300 Bye.

00:47:29.340 Bye.

00:47:29.400 Bye.

The Glenn Beck Program - May 15, 2024

Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Hugh Ross & Bret Weinstein ｜ 5⧸15⧸24

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