Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Susan Bennett, Jeff Allen & Brad Meltzer ｜ 1⧸15⧸19
Episode Stats
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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.
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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
00:01:06.620
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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Triad Mobile is a phone service that will give you all of the great coverage that you want.
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But most of these sell companies, they give all kinds of money to crazy, crazy causes that you work hard against.
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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
00:13:53.220
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
00:14:42.680
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?
00:15:40.960
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
00:16:04.160
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
00:17:59.880
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
00:18:12.180
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.
00:18:48.200
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
00:19:15.900
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.
00:19:47.840
Nope. I'm done. I've had my, I've had my stint at Siri. It's over.
00:19:52.000
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
00:20:07.340
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
00:20:24.160
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
00:20:42.100
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.
00:21:21.620
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
00:21:38.660
had a little brain damage during that. Well, I bet you did. But you had no idea who was actually on
00:21:44.840
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
00:22:04.000
ourselves in this position of, of having our voices used, uh, in a lot of different places, uh,
00:22:11.220
basically without our permission. Um, it, um, it's a complicated thing, but the way I look at it is we
00:22:17.460
sort of, we sort of were in the middle of that, uh, transition period between doing business as
00:22:26.100
usual and doing business with, you know, at the speed of technology. So we really had no idea
00:22:32.320
exactly what we were doing. Um, I will have to say it was a, you know, it was a little troubling
00:22:36.940
at first to realize that. And then it's sort of like anything else in life that you're surprised
00:22:42.380
by something you don't expect. And you have to figure out a way to, uh, to deal with it, adapt,
00:22:47.680
adjust, and spin it to the positive for yourself, which is what I've done. And it's turned out to be
00:22:53.020
really, uh, an incredible thing. It's, it's really, it's really been a very fabulous thing for me,
00:23:00.620
especially at this particular time in my life. So I want to talk to you, take a one minute break,
00:23:05.560
Susan, then I want to come back and I want to talk to you about, um, because you didn't record it,
00:23:10.800
you, you, you basically handed one thing that is uniquely you, your voice, and it's saying things
00:23:20.780
that you never said and, uh, and how that plays, uh, in a person's head. And, and also, um, uh,
00:23:30.320
should there be a law? Uh, should there be something that says, Hey, a voice is unique. I mean,
00:23:37.540
I think this is the future actors, old actors, anybody, if you don't own the rights to yourself,
00:23:44.020
um, you can now be manipulated and, and you could be a movie star, but it's not you. So Susan,
00:23:51.440
I don't want to talk specifically about Apple. I want to, I want to talk about this in theory. Um,
00:23:57.780
you had your voice, you know, you, you signed the contracts and the personal everything,
00:24:03.060
but you had never thought of this technology and how it could be used. And your voice was
00:24:09.840
in some ways taken from you. Did that play games with you? Yes. Yeah. It was a, it is kind of a
00:24:18.960
troubling thing, but I think even more troubling than that is because of just the ability, uh, with
00:24:26.800
technology now, they can basically, basically make you sound like you're saying anything. They can
00:24:32.300
change, you know, the tone, timbre, pacing of your voice. And, uh, even recently I put together,
00:24:38.720
um, I do a lot of, uh, Siri appearances and speaker events and I wanted to put together a
00:24:44.100
speaker demo and I was working with, um, a video editor and all of a sudden he said, well,
00:24:50.740
you're saying this, but we can fix that. I'm going, what? Oh no. So you mean we can't,
00:24:55.940
so we can no longer trust anything we hear or see this is not good. Yeah. So, you know,
00:25:01.500
basically, uh, you know, I try not to take it personally because it's, it's sort of just the
00:25:06.980
way our culture seems to be going. I don't necessarily think it's a good thing. Yeah,
00:25:11.980
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
00:25:24.140
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
00:25:35.640
able to tell. I mean, like, wait, I never, I never said that. When did I say that? Um,
00:25:40.500
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
00:25:53.380
done so many interviews and I appreciate doing a live interview because, uh, many times, uh,
00:25:59.760
interviewers take a direct quote and just sort of make it their own and end up saying something that
00:26:06.380
I didn't actually say. And, you know, I, I just really try to, to not think too much about it because
00:26:13.540
it's, uh, it is very troubling. And, uh, and, and I feel very bad for really famous people,
00:26:20.440
you know, the, uh, the George Clooney's and the Jennifer Aniston's of the world, because
00:26:24.420
God only knows what, what, you know, people are saying about them or, or, or attributing,
00:26:30.300
you know, things that they have said to them that were not true. So that's one of the things,
00:26:35.260
that's one of the strange place in our culture. We are. That's one of the things deep fakes are doing.
00:26:39.360
They're taking celebrity faces and they're imposing them, um, on, um, you know, on, on,
00:26:47.380
on sex acts and, and, and X rated videos. And you can't necessarily tell that's not George
00:26:53.800
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
00:27:09.000
to just the general culture and to TV and media, uh, and, you know, social media, particularly
00:27:15.440
just in general. I think that, that people that in a way with all these digital devices that we have,
00:27:23.780
you know, we just, we just tell Siri or Alexa to do this or do that. And we don't really have to
00:27:28.920
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
00:27:45.460
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
00:28:01.740
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?
00:28:17.280
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,
00:28:34.040
it's a wonderful experience. I've actually had a chance to go to some pretty exotic places like
00:28:38.840
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.
00:30:17.800
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
00:30:57.260
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.
00:31:42.020
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
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.
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
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,
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
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
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