Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Susan Bennett, Jeff Allen & Brad Meltzer ｜ 1⧸15⧸19
Episode Stats
Words per minute
177.95305
Harmful content
Misogyny
14
sentences flagged
Hate speech
19
sentences flagged
Summary
Glenn Beck is joined by Siri to talk about the Women's March, the anti-Semitism at the march, and the controversy surrounding Tamika Mallory's relationship with Louis Farrakhan. Plus, a new book from Brad Meltzer about the first conspiracy theory.
Transcript
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Hey, podcasters, today is a great show you don't want to miss.
00:00:05.420
I mean, the actual, the woman whose voice, unbeknownst to her, was Siri.
00:00:12.720
And it's a fascinating story, especially when she's talking to us.
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A couple things she says, you're like, oh my gosh, that's Siri.
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We have another update on the Women's March, which happens this weekend.
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And there's a little, it's a Women's March with a dash of anti-Semitism.
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It's more like an anti-Semitic march with a dash of feminism.
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When you have the person who created the movement say, okay, guys, I think this is an anti-Semitic organization.
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Also, universal praise from this program on Donald Trump bringing fast food to the White
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He's got a brand new book out called The First Conspiracy all on today's podcast.
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And it's a big week this week for Blaze TV because Steve Dace has a book out this week.
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You can check and catch his podcast anytime as well.
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And the return of Louder with Crowder is Thursday.
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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
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PatriotMobile.com slash Blaze or 1-800-A-PATRIOT is the place to go.
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So, I mean, it's really diverse, the women's movement.
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Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour, and Bob Bland.
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You're not going to be, like, on American Idol.
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Like, that's not your future if you were born Bob Bland.
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Like, you're either an accountant or you're managing some organization.
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Anyway, we've learned about the anti-Semitism and that it is very common among these women.
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Teresa Shook, who founded the Women's March, has repeatedly asked these people to step down.
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The co-chairs, quoting, have steered the movement away from its true course.
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I have waited, hoping that they would right the ship, she wrote.
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But they have not, in opposition to our unity principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQIA sentiment.
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And hateful racist rhetoric to become part of the platform by the refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist and hateful beliefs.
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This is the creator of the movement, talking about the leadership of the movement.
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And Tamika, you came under some fire for your relationship with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.
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Now, he's known for being anti-Semitic, for being homophobic.
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But you do attend his events and you posted, I believe, a photo together calling him the GOAT, which means the greatest of all time.
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And you are running an organization that says it fights bigotry.
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Do you understand why your association with him is quite problematic?
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You know, I think it's important to put my attendance, my presence at Savior's Day, which is the highest holy day for the Nation of Islam, in proper context.
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You know, as a leader, as a black leader in a country that is still dealing with some very serious unresolved issues, as it relates to the black experience in this country, I go into a lot of difficult spaces.
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I didn't call him the greatest of all time because of his rhetoric.
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I called him the greatest of all time because of what he's done in black community.
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Here's a little taste of what he's done in the black community.
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White folks are going down and Satan is going down and Farrakhan, by God's grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew.
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So, I mean, you know, that's quite an accomplishment there.
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We are going to be looking into the Women's March on Thursday's television broadcast.
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You want the truth about, you know, the people who are running the Women's March movement?
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The mainstream media won't give you all of this.
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They will talk about, if you're a deplorable, how Hitlerite you are.
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Even though you don't like Hitler, you like the Jews, you support Israel, whatever it is,
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they'll still tell you that you're a white supremacist and yada, yada, yada.
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But Louis Farrakhan can say these things and they don't mind.
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We do, and we have the expose coming up on Thursday's television program, only on the Blaze TV.
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Okay, so I watched Mad Men and it's like, I can't believe the world was like that.
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And if you are like that, you're a throwback and you just don't have any place.
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It's showing these images of, you know, comedy shows.
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First of all, it's one of them is from like the 1950s.
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You know, we still have that happening with the women ogling the construction guy drinking a Diet Coke.
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But, you know, it shows stuff that we all know.
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It's showing a lot of Gillette ads from the past.
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Allegations regarding sexual assault and sexual harassment.
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But she says we don't want to talk to the audience.
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There's nothing you would disagree with in this.
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Like, pandering is something you say that no one can disagree with because you're trying to kiss the butt of your audience, right?
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And then I was taught, no, don't do any of those things.
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Don't you stand when a woman comes to the table.
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If a woman would like to stand at a table when I arrive, I don't mind.
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I just, I was just talking to my son this, uh, this weekend, a man stands to shake another
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If you're kind of sprawled out on the couch and somebody comes by and they're like, Hey,
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I think most American men have grown up with that, but let Gillette tell us what it's really
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Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow.
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How dare you, how dare you lecture me about bullying, about bullying.
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Well, boys will be boys calling each other names.
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Now, because we at this stupid razor company, we want you to know that we're pulling for
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What the hell do you think the American ethic is?
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Why do you think our armed military is different than the rest?
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We go in and we set them free and we try to set things right and we try to show there's
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We go in and rescue people because that's what men do.
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Say a razor commercial, just in case you were wondering.
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You got around, you sat around in a boardroom and like, well, what can we do to really
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And by the way, for the people who like this Gillette commercial, all the women who are
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cheering, aren't you the ones that are telling us about the evil corporations?
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You're kind of missing it on this one, aren't you?
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It is so, first of all, I want to get into your history, but just, just answer this.
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You didn't even know you were going to be Siri, did you?
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And when you actually got a phone call from a friend who said, I just got this new Apple
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Yes, it was an email and a fellow voice actor, so he recognized my voice and he said, yeah,
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So I went on the Apple site and listened and I said, well, that's because it is me.
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I want to get into this, this whole story with you, but let's, let's start at the beginning.
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You've been a voice actor for a long time, which is quite honestly, my dream job.
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You don't have to think, you don't have to, all you have to do is just read the words and
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You don't actually have to come up with like stuff you can roll in and, and do it.
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Why do you sound like Siri talking down to me when you say that?
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So you were, you were actually working in studios and the voice actor didn't show up
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No, actually, um, the owner of the studio at the time said, Susan, you don't have an accent.
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So I, I read it and said, Oh yes, I can do that.
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And as a, you know, a true freelancer, I was excited to find another avenue to pursue to
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Because you were, because you were a backup singer for Roy Orbison.
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Oh, and I got to sing a duet with him in concert.
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Um, my husband and I had a band together for close to 25 years.
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And right now, the only consistent thing we do actually is we're in a band called Boomers
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And we play nothing but 60s and 70s rock and soul music.
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So we take requests and we, we even play songs we don't really know.
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I mean, we have calls for bands from time to time.
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So you started doing, uh, commercials and can you give us any things that you've said
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Um, cause you did stuff for McDonald's and it's just, you know, and, and in the past,
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um, when we, you know, before technology allowed all voice actors to just work from home and,
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and it's basically up to the engineers to put the commercial together.
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Back in the day when we would all get in the studio together, it was, it was a lot more
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And actually you were talking about the fact that, oh, you just have to show up and read
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Well, sometimes that wasn't the case when we all got in the studio together because
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sometimes we would, you know, improvise things and they would actually say, oh, that's, that's
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So, so, so, so you did, uh, you know, you did the loudspeaker announcements over for Delta
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Um, you did a Macy's, McDonald's, Goodyear's, Papa John, IBM, Coca-Cola.
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You also were, you were the voice of a lot of GPS is where you're like at the next, go
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People do people ever like get into a car with you and just be like, that's weird.
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Well, some people, you know, it's amazing that some people really, really don't hear, um,
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as acutely as you might think, because when they, they actually altered the original Siri
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voice with the iPhone five S. And I was one of the few people that really thought that
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it was different. Most people didn't recognize the change at all. And it turns out that it,
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they did not get another actor at that point. They actually just manipulated my voice, you
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know, with computers and manipulated audiologically to sound just a little bit different.
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And, uh, finally, uh, the only, uh, really acknowledgement from Apple that I've had is
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if you ask Siri today, who I am, she will say, Susan Bennett is an American voice actor
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and the original voice of Siri up to OS 11, which, you know, was last year. And now suddenly,
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Okay. So your voice is not being used at all for Siri now.
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Nope. I'm done. I've had my, I've had my stint at Siri. It's over.
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Wow. So now this is the, this is the really interesting part to me. Um, because you didn't
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like when you, when you did GPS or you did loosen technologies and, you know, for the operator
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Uh, yes. For, for Susan Bennett, please press one.
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And when you did things for the GPS, like at the next, you know, next light turn, you
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Well, no. Um, any, anything that was recorded for the Nuance company, which is, uh, the biggest
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IVR company in the world. And from which Apple got all the Siri voices and people go, wait a
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minute. All the Siri voices. Well, you have to remember that I do not speak every language in
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the, in the world. And so they had, uh, other voices doing different language, languages for
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different, um, countries. And so we didn't, we really had no idea. Uh, the recordings were done.
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My recordings were done in 2005. I've spoken to some other people that started even earlier than
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that. Wow. But we recorded all of these sentences and phrases that were recorded, that were created
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just to get all the sound combinations in the language. For instance, can you remember any
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of those? Oh, of course. Cow hoist in the tub hut today. What? Wait, wait, wait, say them again.
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Cow hoist in the tub hut today. Say fossa, ask fossa, ask fussy. You could hear from the sound.
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Now they're just trying to get the sounds. Oh, wow. And we read just thousands and thousands of
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those phrases. And it was actually very, very tedious. And, and, uh, you know, I think I actually
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had a little brain damage during that. Well, I bet you did. But you had no idea who was actually on
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the other end buying this. And no, we were sort of told that we were just doing generic phone
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messaging. But, you know, we were doing recordings for phone systems and, you know, I guess it's a
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combination of naivete and, uh, just, uh, the, the, the desire to do a lot of work that we found
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ourselves in this position of, of having our voices used, uh, in a lot of different places, uh,
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basically without our permission. Um, it, um, it's a complicated thing, but the way I look at it is we
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sort of, we sort of were in the middle of that, uh, transition period between doing business as
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usual and doing business with, you know, at the speed of technology. So we really had no idea
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exactly what we were doing. Um, I will have to say it was a, you know, it was a little troubling
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at first to realize that. And then it's sort of like anything else in life that you're surprised
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by something you don't expect. And you have to figure out a way to, uh, to deal with it, adapt,
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adjust, and spin it to the positive for yourself, which is what I've done. And it's turned out to be
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really, uh, an incredible thing. It's, it's really, it's really been a very fabulous thing for me,
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especially at this particular time in my life. So I want to talk to you, take a one minute break,
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Susan, then I want to come back and I want to talk to you about, um, because you didn't record it,
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you, you, you basically handed one thing that is uniquely you, your voice, and it's saying things
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that you never said and, uh, and how that plays, uh, in a person's head. And, and also, um, uh,
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should there be a law? Uh, should there be something that says, Hey, a voice is unique. I mean,
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I think this is the future actors, old actors, anybody, if you don't own the rights to yourself,
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um, you can now be manipulated and, and you could be a movie star, but it's not you. So Susan,
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I don't want to talk specifically about Apple. I want to, I want to talk about this in theory. Um,
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you had your voice, you know, you, you signed the contracts and the personal everything,
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but you had never thought of this technology and how it could be used. And your voice was
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in some ways taken from you. Did that play games with you? Yes. Yeah. It was a, it is kind of a
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troubling thing, but I think even more troubling than that is because of just the ability, uh, with
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technology now, they can basically, basically make you sound like you're saying anything. They can
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change, you know, the tone, timbre, pacing of your voice. And, uh, even recently I put together,
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um, I do a lot of, uh, Siri appearances and speaker events and I wanted to put together a
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speaker demo and I was working with, um, a video editor and all of a sudden he said, well,
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you're saying this, but we can fix that. I'm going, what? Oh no. So you mean we can't,
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so we can no longer trust anything we hear or see this is not good. Yeah. So, you know,
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basically, uh, you know, I try not to take it personally because it's, it's sort of just the
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way our culture seems to be going. I don't necessarily think it's a good thing. Yeah,
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I don't either. I mean, as somebody who, um, I watch technology, um, and I've been concerned
00:25:18.380
about deep fakes, uh, that are, that are, are going to be a problem starting, I think in 2020 real
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problem. Uh, and that is the manipulation of video and audio. So where you cannot believe
00:25:29.940
your eyes and ears, they can make, make me say anything and you won't know. I wouldn't even be
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able to tell. I mean, like, wait, I never, I never said that. When did I say that? Um,
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and the deep fakes are getting so good that that just changes our whole world. Doesn't it?
00:25:47.880
Yeah, it really does. I, I, I find it quite appalling. I mean, even to the point where I've
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done so many interviews and I appreciate doing a live interview because, uh, many times, uh,
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interviewers take a direct quote and just sort of make it their own and end up saying something that
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I didn't actually say. And, you know, I, I just really try to, to not think too much about it because
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it's, uh, it is very troubling. And, uh, and, and I feel very bad for really famous people,
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you know, the, uh, the George Clooney's and the Jennifer Aniston's of the world, because
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God only knows what, what, you know, people are saying about them or, or, or attributing,
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you know, things that they have said to them that were not true. So that's one of the things,
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that's one of the strange place in our culture. We are. That's one of the things deep fakes are doing.
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They're taking celebrity faces and they're imposing them, um, on, um, you know, on, on,
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on sex acts and, and, and X rated videos. And you can't necessarily tell that's not George
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Clooney. Uh, one of the things I think is a problem is that, you know, that a lot of people believe this
00:27:01.380
stuff because I think that too often we've given over our own, uh, brains and our own individuality
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to just the general culture and to TV and media, uh, and, you know, social media, particularly
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just in general. I think that, that people that in a way with all these digital devices that we have,
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you know, we just, we just tell Siri or Alexa to do this or do that. And we don't really have to
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think about it. I, I think it especially, um, uh, affects children. I have a friend who has
00:27:36.340
grandchildren. She says, Oh my God. She said, they tell Alexa to do everything. She said,
00:27:40.940
Susan, these, these girls don't even know how to turn on a light bulb. You know, they tell Alexa
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to do it. And, and I think that we're losing a lot by not going through the process of learning
00:27:52.720
things or the process of doing things. Yeah. You know, uh, even, even the dark ages when I was
00:27:57.900
growing up, you know, you would go to the library and you'd look things up. That's right. Now you just
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ask Siri. There, there's no, no process of, of, of learning when you're doing these things. So I,
00:28:11.140
Susan. So what's up for you next? Uh, what do you, what do you hope to do next?
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Well, I just hope to do more of what I'm already doing, which is, uh, uh, Siri appearances and
00:28:22.660
speaker events and, uh, which I really enjoy. And it's not something I ever envisioned. I mean,
00:28:28.440
that's something that Siri created for me. So I'm grateful to that very much. Uh, it's a,
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it's a wonderful experience. I've actually had a chance to go to some pretty exotic places like
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Croatia, um, to do, uh, the speaker events. And so I would just like to do more of those.
00:28:44.520
Well, maybe we should, uh, find out. We have you do some, uh, uh, this is the Glenn Beck program,
00:28:55.800
No, I know. No, no, no. I think that's what I said. We'll have to talk to you about that.
00:29:00.120
Let me, let me give you the number of my agents.
00:29:02.440
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I'm very well aware of that.
00:29:08.760
I know. Believe me. I know. Susan, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
00:29:25.800
Hi, it's Glenn. If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate
00:29:34.120
us on iTunes? If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time.
00:29:41.700
Jeff Allen is calling in. Hello, Jeff. How are you?
00:29:48.200
Well, you know, I just, I'm trying to keep my blood pressure down and, uh, and this nonsense
00:29:55.800
Yeah, it doesn't. It keeps going. So I, I was talking to Tammy, um, and, uh, I realized
00:30:00.560
this all began, uh, with the 19th amendment. There's a way we could repeal that and start
00:30:06.360
The way it started with the 19th amendment and you want it repealed?
00:30:10.340
Yeah, you can. And Tammy, Tammy said, well, it's probably not going to happen because
00:30:14.000
there's too many women in Congress, but, uh, it's just a thought.
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By the way, should we say that's a joke? So we should, we, we put that out there as a joke.
00:30:21.980
No, I don't think he is joking. Did you think he was joking? I heard it.
00:30:25.240
My way, you know, I, I heard it myself. I don't think he was joking. My gosh.
00:30:30.620
Exactly. I, you know, I just, isn't that what you taught your son, Jeff?
00:30:35.880
Oh, I sat my boys down when they hit that age, when they started dating. And I said, that's
00:30:41.040
somebody's daughter, somebody's future mother. And I said, if you had had a sister, would
00:30:46.120
you want some, uh, kid manhandling them in the backseat of a car? And no, it was a, it's
00:30:51.900
a, it's a common sense discussion. Right. And there's a difference between married to
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a woman, you know? Yeah. The, the guys who don't do that are still boys. They never grew
00:31:06.520
And there's boys who shave, you know, there's, there are little boys who shave is what I call
00:31:10.720
them. Yeah. And, uh, they're out there, but, uh, I don't think it's, um, you know, the majority.
00:31:17.520
So is this, like you said, I don't need to be lectured by a commercial.
00:31:21.000
I know. Is, is, is Gillette just trying to sell razors, more razors to women? Or do they
00:31:28.540
Well, most of the men that I know are growing their beards, uh, every last one of them.
00:31:33.460
Yeah, I know. And there's a reason to grow a beard now.
00:31:36.600
And maybe they're going after the, um, the, uh, transgender, um, the, the, the changeovers.
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I don't know. Yeah, it could be. Uh, uh, uh, Jeff Allen is a comedian. He has been, uh,
00:31:47.620
out on the road, uh, for CRTV and the blaze on make comedy, uh, great again. How's the tour
00:31:54.700
Well, we're off until February 1st. We're going into New York.
00:32:00.940
What are we, is this like some sort of sacrificial, uh, animal that you guys are
00:32:09.120
Yeah, exactly. Well, that's what I, I thought that was odd. Go to the Northeast
00:32:12.740
with a car with a tour called make comedy great again.
00:32:17.040
And it's a non-political, um, uh, tour. So I, I, I, I didn't understand. It's not my
00:32:25.680
Right, right, right. Okay. Okay. Um, did you see that, uh, Tim Allen's show has, uh, has
00:32:35.560
And it's on our queue, man. We record it every week.
00:32:38.420
See, I didn't even know that it was back on. Uh, I just don't watch enough television
00:32:42.140
to get the commercials for all of that stuff. Um, I knew that he was going to, but I didn't
00:32:49.140
Yes, it should. It's a very good show. Um, and, uh, it's funny because it's one of the
00:32:55.280
few sitcoms in, in history where there's a strong male lead. Um, back in 2001, I did
00:33:02.360
a pilot for Castle Rock. And one of the reasons they were going to do the pilot with me is
00:33:07.040
because we pitched a strong male lead in a sitcom and the, um, the head of the studio,
00:33:12.240
he was 55 years old at the time. And he said to me, he goes, you know, it's so unusual.
00:33:18.340
Uh, and he said, it's, it, it used to, yeah, sitcoms used to have strong male leads that he
00:33:24.100
remembered years ago. I guess he started with all in a family and that's when things started
00:33:28.420
getting kind of absurd. But yeah, I said, I can change a diaper. I can do all that other
00:33:32.500
stuff without looking like a bumbling idiot, you know? And, um, obviously it didn't get picked
00:33:38.020
up. Right. But you know, Tim is one of the guys who is, uh, I mean, you would say almost
00:33:46.660
the, the stereotypical guy that Gillette should be preaching against his, his act has been that.
00:33:55.200
Um, and yet he hasn't been affected by this at all. In fact, if anything, maybe being made
00:34:01.160
stronger. Right. Because there's a, there's a, a, a desire, I guess the desire for,
00:34:08.020
I mean, whether they want to come out and publicly admit it, but it's, it, I think strong
00:34:13.260
men are attractive. I really do. Okay. We have that on tape. Yeah. You got that on tape.
00:34:18.760
We have that on tape now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm attracted to strong men. If I went that way,
00:34:27.420
Mike Rowe, I'd grow. Right, right, right, right. Uh, Tim, uh, or Tim, uh, Jeff, it's great
00:34:34.080
to, no, no relation to Tim Allen. That's kind of sad.
00:34:37.080
I get that all the time. I had a guy get me a job somewhere and the guy comes over to me and he
00:34:42.200
goes, uh, so how's your brother Tim doing? I go, what, who told you that? And he goes,
00:34:46.940
your friend did. I, and I, and this guy was a pastor. I said, you lied to a pastor.
00:34:50.680
You'd never deny the reality. Jeff, you just say, yeah, he's doing great. He's doing great. He's
00:34:59.420
thinking about playing here. You know, if you book me a few more times, so I appreciate it.
00:35:03.780
Exactly. All right. Uh, Jeff, great to talk to you. Jeff Allen.
00:35:12.020
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:35:14.680
Brad Meltzer. Uh, welcome to the Glenn Beck program. Brad is the number one New York times
00:35:30.540
bestseller of the inner circle, the book of fate, nine other bestselling thrillers, including
00:35:35.320
10th, just the first council, the millionaires, the president shadow. Uh, in addition to fiction,
00:35:42.500
he is one of, uh, the only authors ever to have books on the bestseller list for nonfiction
00:35:46.840
advice, children's books, uh, and comic books. I think I'm the only one on that list with you,
00:35:55.920
except for comic books. You beat me with comic books. You have the love for it. So that counts.
00:36:00.380
Yeah. Yeah, I know. Uh, I, you know, I didn't until my son. Sure. Because you can give your kid
00:36:06.580
that first hero. Yeah. And it's, and, and I think in the nineties, it felt like we didn't need that
00:36:13.740
hero. Well, I think that's what, that's what happens is in all times. If you look historically
00:36:18.440
at the time of the great depression, uh, the heroes that we look to were heroes that were
00:36:24.500
Tarzan and Flash Gordon were the most popular because we would, they were designed to take us
00:36:28.060
elsewhere. We wanted to escape the great depression. And then world war two starts encroaching
00:36:32.360
on our shores and we get scared as a country. And we don't even know how to fight. We don't
00:36:37.120
know how to fight. We're scared. We need someone to come save us. And Superman gets invented,
00:36:40.780
sells a million copies. And in 9-11, same thing happened. We were once again, a country,
00:36:46.020
America, we were scared, worried that someone's coming after us. And the first movie that broke
00:36:50.580
through the public consciousness was Spider-Man. And right now, even a decade later, 15 years later,
00:36:55.720
we're still a country that's, we're starving for heroes. There's no politics about it.
00:36:59.540
Whatever side you're on, we are looking for a hero. And all times throughout history,
00:37:04.140
it's not just there's a need for hero, that's why they're created too. And so I actually, um,
00:37:09.640
this is, as you know, my, my nerd study of it. And I think it's, it's no coincidence why,
00:37:14.160
um, we look to whether it's Neil Armstrong or Mr. Rogers this year, or even George Washington,
00:37:18.840
where once again, a culture that's starving for humility, um, for modesty. Those, all of those
00:37:25.280
three have something in common. There's a reason why they're, they're people are looking to
00:37:28.380
them again. We have a need. You've written a new book called the first conspiracy, the secret plot
00:37:32.860
to kill George Washington. Um, you read enough history to know, for instance, Edison was not a,
00:37:40.420
he was a bad guy, did some good things, but also did some bad things. Um, and you can look at people
00:37:46.180
and you can pretty much find that with almost all of them. Uh, and people say, well, I don't believe
00:37:54.020
in any of these heroes and that these people were, you know, actually really good. Cause a lot of
00:37:58.460
times the history is wrong and only tells one side, but you can find it. If you look. Sure. I
00:38:05.160
cannot find the dark side of George Washington. Yeah, no, the, the, the George Washington lives
00:38:11.720
up to the hype. And I always say, but people will always write to me. Right. One of the few. I mean,
00:38:16.000
I, every time I do one of the kids books, everyone always writes to me, well, this one did this
00:38:19.800
and this one did that. And this one had an affair. And I say, listen, I'm just telling
00:38:24.120
you right now, if you're looking for perfection in people, the only person that's perfect,
00:38:27.860
the only thing that's perfect is God. So there's your standard. Yeah. And I feel like George
00:38:32.920
Washington sets that standard for us at a different level, which is why the thought of a secret
00:38:38.160
plot to kill him begs the craziest question of all is what happens to us if it worked?
00:38:43.680
Right. So tell me that we don't exist for one. Oh, I agree. Um, tell me, uh, about the plot.
00:38:51.020
Cause I, I mean, I've written a book on George Washington. I love George Washington. I've studied
00:38:55.140
him. Not really familiar with it. Yeah. This is a, I found this story Glenn in nearly a decade ago
00:39:01.500
in a footnote where all the great secrets always wind up hiding. And I was like a secret plot to kill
00:39:07.580
George Washington. Is this real? Is this fake? Is it internet nonsense? What is it? And I was so
00:39:13.900
struck by it. There was in 1776, just to be clear, let's talk about it up front, a plot to kill
00:39:18.400
Washington. Some say to kidnap him. Some say to kill him. Um, either way he dies because back then
00:39:23.320
if you kidnap someone at the lower level, we would trade you back to the British, but at his levels
1.00
00:39:27.600
that you got hanged. And they caught that guy. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very quickly. And so they round
00:39:33.000
them up. George Washington gets wind of it. They round them up. They build a gallows. They take one of the
00:39:37.320
main co-conspirators. They hang them in front of 20,000 people. The largest public execution at
00:39:42.800
that point in North American history. George Washington brings the hammer down. It's like,
00:39:46.760
do not mess with me. I'm George Washington. I'm going to be on the money one day. Right?
00:39:50.920
That's a, that's an actual historical quote. But, but, but what I couldn't shake is why don't I know
00:39:56.880
this story? And there's two reasons. One, I went to Pulitzer Prize winning author, Joseph Ellis.
00:40:02.520
And I said to him, you know this story? Cause I never heard this story. You wrote the biography on him.
00:40:06.360
And he said to me, this is a story about George Washington spies. That's why it's secret. That's
00:40:12.540
why you don't know it. He said, you can find the exact number of slaves at Mount Vernon that George
00:40:16.620
Washington owned. You'll never find all his spies. He said, by its nature, Brad, what you're searching
00:40:21.740
for will forever be elusive. And the other reason why you don't know it is because of when the hanging
00:40:27.860
took place, June 28th, 1776. Now guess what else is going on in the world on June 28th, 1776. You're a
00:40:37.440
week away from the Declaration of Independence being signed. June 28th is when the first draft,
00:40:43.840
The British are literally coming. And with headlines like that, when you're studying that period,
00:40:49.920
this gets obscured. It just becomes a footnote.
00:40:52.860
So his, his secret, um, and you make this point in the book, his, uh, his, uh, spies really go on
00:41:01.880
to inspire us. And we don't know anything about them, uh, or very little, um, but they go on to
00:41:06.880
inspire even the CIA. Yeah, no, that's my, one of my favorite parts is we thought we were investigating
00:41:12.040
this secret plot to kill George Washington. But what we realized is we found something far bigger,
00:41:17.260
which was, we found out that George Washington, one of the first things he did is he created his
00:41:22.480
own secret committee. And the secret committee was called, because if you have a secret committee,
00:41:26.800
you've got to give it a cool name, right? So it was originally called the Committee on Intestine
00:41:31.220
Enemies. That's a terrible name. Um, and then they settled on the far better name, the Committee
00:41:35.660
on Conspiracies. And the Committee on Conspiracies, as you saw in the book, uh, is run eventually by
00:41:40.500
John Jay. It becomes eventually at the end of the war, the first Supreme Court justice. But what
00:41:45.440
John Jay does, and is researching this plot, is he slowly, you know, they go in the middle of the
00:41:50.760
night, they're pulling people out of their houses, they're interrogating them, they're shaking them
00:41:53.860
down for information. What they're really doing is they're building America's first
00:41:58.240
counterintelligence agency. And you ask any historian today, you say, you know, what's the precursor to
00:42:03.540
the CIA? And people say, oh, the OSS. And that's the formal one. But the real precursor to it all
00:42:09.580
is this moment in 1776 in the plot to kill Washington, because that's where it all starts.
00:42:15.780
And they're using civilians, just like the CIA did. They're using civilians, not always military
00:42:21.420
Was this, was this uncommon though? I mean, weren't kings doing that forever?
00:42:25.140
Yeah, but we weren't. You know, George Washington, when we started, he wanted a good offense,
00:42:29.200
wanted a good military, and he knew he needed a good offense. But what he learned in this period of
00:42:33.440
time, right at the beginning, and this is 1775, 1776, at the start of it, we always think of the
00:42:39.180
end. We think of George Washington 2.0 as the war goes on. But in the beginning, this is where he
00:42:43.940
realizes that, wait, I just don't need a great offense. I need a great defense. There are people
00:42:48.300
coming at us. We need information to see what's coming that we're not going to see on a battlefield,
00:42:53.020
that there's a whole other battle being fought. It's this moment that inspires his later building
00:42:57.040
the Culper Ring, his later expanding the Committee on Conspiracies. In fact, right now,
00:43:01.840
in Langley, Virginia, at CIA headquarters, to this day, there is a room dedicated to John Jay,
00:43:08.800
who they call the founding father of counterintelligence. It all starts here,
00:43:12.760
in this moment. And so I love, and you see these parts of things that I, and again,
00:43:17.360
you and I have talked about this offline and on air plenty of times, but there were so many parts
00:43:21.240
I didn't know. George Washington had his own private bodyguards, which I never, I'm like,
00:43:26.640
how did I not know this? And what he had done is, he asked all of his top regiments,
00:43:31.620
he said, give me your four best men. And he narrowed it down. He wanted what they call
00:43:36.600
drilled men. And drilled men were the best of the best. They were just, they were actually even a
00:43:42.040
certain height, a certain build, a certain moral character, the kind of person you really want on
00:43:46.940
your side, you can trust. George Washington personally narrows it down to about 50 people.
00:43:52.580
And these become what they call the General's Guard. They call them the Commander's Guard,
00:43:57.020
but the name that sticks are the lifeguards. Because one of their jobs is guarding George
00:44:02.000
Washington's life. It's also amazingly where we get Baywatch come from. That's where it comes from.
00:44:07.520
I don't know if that's the official term. I haven't, trust me, I thought, and I got to look
00:44:12.200
it up. But that, I honestly do think it may be where the term comes from, but it comes from
00:44:16.220
the lifeguards. They guarded his money, they guarded his papers, and they guarded his life. These are the
00:44:20.460
ones that went home with him. These were the original Secret Service, but these are the men who turn on
00:44:24.900
him. That four of the men on the lifeguards accept bribes and want money, and basically decide we're
00:44:32.520
You know, when you have Alexander Hamilton, you can, you kind of can see why he turns. You don't,
00:44:39.580
you don't necessarily agree with him, but you can see, oh man, what a stupid mistake that was,
00:44:45.780
Yeah, just a series of human errors where he turns.
00:44:55.100
No, it's not, you know, it's not a, it's not a Benedict Arnold where I feel slighted and I'm
00:45:00.420
Yeah, I know you meant though. I know you meant, yeah. Um, Benedict Arnold, uh, you know,
00:45:05.100
has this, you see all the slights. And so, you know, it's ego and hubris and all the other
00:45:09.800
things that go along with any great fall. With this one, it's not that at all. It's nothing
00:45:13.720
personal. Um, you know, and I think it's, you know, we in America, as you know, we take
00:45:18.940
our heroes, we dip them in granite, we build statues of them and we do them a disservice
00:45:23.960
because they're not human anymore. They become these lowercase g gods and which is horrible.
1.00
00:45:29.760
And we're worshiping the wrong thing when we do that. And these people, anyone you look
00:45:34.100
up to, as you know, I've talked many times, whether it's George Washington or Rosa Parks
00:45:37.860
or Dr. King had a moment, any hero you've ever loved had a moment where they were scared
00:45:43.200
and they were terrified. They didn't think they could go on and they keep going forward.
00:45:47.260
They choose to go forward. And, and what happens in this moment, what we also do with the
00:45:51.720
revolution, as you know, is we tell the story that we all gathered around democracy. We held
00:45:56.380
hands. We marched forward as one and we beat the greatest fighting force, the British that the world
1.00
00:46:00.920
had ever seen at the time. And again, it's a great story. It's not the real story. It was so
00:46:05.980
much more complex. Um, we weren't, you know, we think we're divided now. We were so divided back
00:46:11.720
then that there were nearly in New York city in 1776, there were nearly as many loyalists on the
00:46:17.020
British side as there were on the Patriot side, on the American side. And it was the same in our
00:46:21.840
own military, our own military. You had, you know, all these different regiments. So one of my favorite
00:46:26.340
scenes in the book is you have the Massachusetts regiment is meeting the Virginia regiment for the
00:46:30.740
first time. It's in Harvard yard. George Washington is there. And, you know, these guys from
00:46:35.460
Massachusetts, they look at the uniform of the, of the Virginians. They have some frilly thing on the
00:46:39.940
uniform. You know, we don't even have a one uniform that we're fighting. And some guys are showing up
00:46:43.860
in work shirts and some guys don't even have shoes. So they're not unified. A fight breaks out
00:46:49.500
and George Washington comes racing him and grabs two of them by the neck and he's shaking him and
00:46:55.020
basically saying, stop fighting with each other. We're on the same team. And when you have, you know,
00:47:02.240
and if ever there were a metaphor for where we are today, there it is. But to me, what you have back
00:47:06.920
then is you have allegiances always shifting because here's the one thing that happens is
00:47:11.100
it's not a sure thing that we're going to win in those early days of the war. In those early battles,
00:47:15.300
we're getting crushed. And in those moments, the one thing that's true then and is true now is no
00:47:20.740
one wants to be on the losing team. And so you have the governor of New York at the time, a guy named
00:47:25.520
William Tryon, who basically is mad he's lost his job as the British governor. He was appointed by the
00:47:30.500
British. He basically starts bribing people and seeing who can, who can he turn? And when you have,
0.87
00:47:35.160
as you know, when, when it looks like America is not going to do well and you may not pull it out
00:47:39.220
and you got no gunpowder, you got no shoes, guess what? They go, you know what? I might take that
00:47:45.140
money to switch. And the, and the plot was exactly that. Their big grand plan. When you read the first
00:47:49.860
conspiracy is you'll see there, and it got, we don't know every single detail because of course the
00:47:53.780
plot was thwarted, but their plan was they're going to blow up bridges. They were going to steal our
00:47:57.600
cannons and they were going to come for Washington. And it was all going to happen just as the British
1.00
00:48:02.200
arrived in New York. That end that moment, they were going to give whatever the signal was going
00:48:05.900
to be. And you know, it sounds like something out of episode three of Star Wars, right? But they
00:48:10.620
were literally going to turn and switch. And the people who were on, that we thought were on the
00:48:15.380
Patriot side, were going to be revealed as traitors and kill everyone there. The name of the book is
0.92
00:48:20.640
The First Conspiracy, The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington. Brad Meltzer is the author,
00:48:27.020
and he's going to be doing a podcast with us as well. So you'll be able to hear the story and grab
00:48:32.180
the book. It's available everywhere right now. Brad, thank you so much. The Blaze Radio Network