Best of The Program ｜ Guests： Tristan Harris & Danielle Rabkin ｜ 9⧸11⧸20
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Summary
Osama bin Laden's niece, Kayleigh McEnany, wrote an open letter to America. She says that with President Trump at the helm, she stands a chance of restoring her principles, pride, independence, and true place in the world as a beacon for liberty and hope for all.
Transcript
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Hello America and welcome to the Glenn Beck Program. Today, a lot on our plate. It revolves
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around 9-11, who we were and who we are. What are the problems? Why are we so divided? We look
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at a new documentary that is out, The Social Dilemma. It's a movie that you should watch
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with your kids from Netflix this weekend. It's a powerful, powerful documentary with the people
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who invented the thumbs up button on Facebook, the people who brought advertising to the
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internet, and they explain how you're being watched, monitored, how the numbers are being
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crunched, and how we're actually being divided intentionally, no matter what Zuckerberg or
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anybody says, oh no, we're trying to stop it. No, you're not. No, you're not. Because your
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whole model is built on that. We have that and so much more. You don't want to miss a
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second of today's show, the Glenn Beck Program.
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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
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I want to make a small correction. Earlier, I was telling you about the words of Osama bin
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Laden's I said sister, it's actually niece. She wrote an open letter to America. And I
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want to read more of it because I find this amazing. Now, this is Osama bin Laden's niece.
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The bin Laden family, you know, they are very successful. Osama bin Laden was really the black
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sheep of the family. I don't know if I would still carry around the bin Laden name myself,
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but that's such a Western perspective. But she's written this letter and she lives in Switzerland.
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She is known in Switzerland as somebody who wears a MAGA hat all the time. So she's wearing really
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yeah, this letter says in full with President Trump at America's helm. She stands a chance of
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restoring her principles, pride, independence and true place in the world as a beacon for liberty and
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hope for all. To me, this is what makes America great again. Looking back at your country's foundation
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and preserving what truly made it great, but also knowing that the best is yet to come.
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All of the achievements will be torpedoed with a bin Laden Harris presidency and the dream of
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America's enemies to see her weak and on her knees will be fulfilled. Probably a Biden Harris
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presidency, right? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Biden Harris. She said, stand for your flag and your
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anthem. Defend your fist, your history. Don't relent in the face of those who seek to rewrite it and serve
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their narrative and justify the destruction of your nation. You have so much to cherish and protect
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for your sake and ours. She said, Trump has made the world a safer place since taking office.
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I'm quoting to name a few achievements. He stood up to China. He's kept us out of new wars,
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made Europe comply with their NATO requirements, solidified ties with Israel, overturned the disastrous
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Iran deal, obliterated ISIS, took down other key terrorists and facilitated a historic peace deal
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between Israel and the UAE. Now, if anybody in the media would ever report this story, they'd say,
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yeah, well, look, of course, Osama bin Laden's niece, his family is all for Donald Trump. What is she
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saying here? She's saying obliterated ISIS, got out of the Iran deal, has ties with Israel,
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made historic peace with Israel. And that doesn't sound like her brother at all. I mean, her uncle.
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She said his administration has also made Christian persecution worldwide a top priority with the
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State Department instituting the ministerial to advance religious freedom, the first of its kind.
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Trump shows that he protects America and us in Europe by extension from foreign threats by
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obliterating the terrorists at the root before they get a chance to strike.
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Wow. I mean, it's amazing. That could have come from Kayleigh McEnany.
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Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It's really amazing. And I, I honestly, I, I, I want to try to reach out to,
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to, you know, liberals and Democrats, not progressive Marxists, but liberals,
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people who, who believe in the constitution. They just may believe in a bigger welfare state than,
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you know, a typical conservative. Um, somebody that feels the country is in trouble and you don't
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like Donald Trump. I get it. I get it. And even if we vote differently, I get it, but I, I, we,
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we have to have conversations, uh, with liberals and with Democrats and, and just say, how are we
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missing each other on this one? How are we? Because the, the, the country is, is being sold down the
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river. I can't believe it's only conservatives that still believe in the flag and the military.
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Did, did you hear what happened in California? In California? I think this is, this is who we are.
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300 campers were out in one of the state parks and they were trapped by the fire and the California
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fire said, there's no hope. We can't get in. It's way too dangerous. There's no way for us to rescue
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you guys. 300, 300 campers. And they said, jump in the lake to survive. You've got to just go into
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the lake, put your head underwater. It's the only way you guys are going to make it. Well, then army
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pilots found out about it. And so the U S military said, we'll go in. California fire said it was too
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dangerous. The, the military crews go in. There was zero visibility in the Canyon, zero visibility.
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The, uh, the overload with people on these helicopters was also really, really dangerous.
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Are people going to overload it? Is it going to crash in the, none of it happened. They went in
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with zero visibility. They went to the lake and they rescued 300 people. They went in
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and then they got survivors and went out and then went back in again, got more survivors and got out.
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This is who we are. We are people that we don't care. They didn't card people who you voting for.
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They didn't care. They didn't care. We're Americans. And we have such little pride right now that we're
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not even talking about the heroes like these guys, absolute heroes that remembered we're all Americans
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and Americans don't leave Americans behind. We don't say, Oh, it's too dangerous. I don't, I don't hold this
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against the fire. You know, the California fire because they don't have military experience and
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helos like the federal government does. So I'm not saying anything bad. I'm not calling the
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firefighters anything bad. I'm just saying we do things in America. We do things. We've spent a lot
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of time, a lot of money, and we have a lot of, we've, we've shed a lot of blood to be able to do
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amazing things. Can we step and just recognize it for a minute?
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That's a great idea. I mean, I kept coming back to that thought today as, as we sit here on 9-11
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and the 19th anniversary, all this, uh, anti-cop stuff we've been taking in lately is it puts kind
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of puts you in a different place on that, doesn't it? And obviously I think this audience is, you know,
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generally pro police and doesn't put up with that nonsense, but it's been so commonplace
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over the past few months to just basically say all cops are bad, all cops, A-C-A-B.
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We made the other, we, we went too far the other way on September 11th. We said all cops are good.
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No, not all cops are good. Not all cops are bad. Cops, uh, military, everything. It's a section
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of society. All cops are us. They're us. Some are good. Some are bad. You root out the bad ones
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and you elevate the good ones. We're not doing that anymore. Instead. It's just all cops are bad.
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All cops. I mean, remember people all over the country were wearing like NYPD t-shirts and hats.
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Couldn't keep them in stock. Yeah. And now we're told they're just these evil people that basically
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just show up everywhere and just try to kill minorities. Well, now people are losing their
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job just for supporting cops online. What? Yeah. Uh, there's been a couple of professors
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who have said good things about, uh, police officers and got fired for it. Well, wow. It's,
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have we come that far that you can't even say anything good about police? You can't, uh, I remember
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the, the 4th of July celebrations that, that, uh, people were pissed off about. You can't celebrate
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the nation anymore. Uh, it's no, no, no. I'm saying no. Yet I know you believe this too. No,
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not on my watch, right? Not on my watch. And it's look next week. We are going to tell you an outline
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how America could very well be in civil war by Christmas. Uh, it is being plotted and planned
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and either side could start it. The crazy right wing, uh, groups, which I think there's maybe
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12 members of. Um, but they are, they are just as interested in destroying America. I mean,
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Richard Spencer is a socialist. So he is just as in, uh, motivated to destroy America as the far
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left is. So, uh, there are all kinds of people and all it needs is just a little shove, but we have
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got to find the people who we don't agree with that we can actually talk to and say, we've got to keep
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our heads. We've got to keep our heads and remember who we are. Eric Weinstein, you know,
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he is, right? He's the lefty professor up in Oregon. That was, I mean, he's as left as they come.
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He tweeted after the fire, uh, story. He tweeted, I miss heroic official behavior.
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I miss heroic official behavior. I also miss rule breaking for the greater good.
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Good. Can you imagine being an abandoned, abandoned in a lake
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and seeing a chopper with an American flag coming to pick you up, highlight, uh, piloted
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by actual Americans who remember what the hell that even means rather than whatever it is that's
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tearing us apart. That should be our goal. I, I call on you to reflect on the last 19 years
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and where we were and who we were and what we knew to be true.
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And then look at what has torn us apart. And are there things with people that you don't vote the
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same way? Are there neighbors that are just afraid, just as afraid of talking to you as you might be to
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them because they think you're an extremist that's just going to yell at them or you think they're an
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extremist is just going to yell at you. Well, some of them might, but we're all feeling how close we
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are to the edge. Reach out to anybody you think, and don't try to win. Just say, we got to keep our
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heads. I don't care how you vote. We got to keep our heads because if it's a fair election, we'll be okay.
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But the way this is being set up, it is being set up to cause people on both sides to feel like it was
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unfair. And this will be our undoing that this election will be our undoing if we don't remember
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who we are. So take today to remember where we were, what we went through, how many lives have been
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lost to protect this country and to save our principles and our constitution. The treasure
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that we have spent and the blood that we have all spent over the last 19 years, it cannot be for not
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today because we're all pissed and not talking to each other. Remember who you were on September
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12th. Remember the 9-12 project. Remember who you were the next day. You were kind. You were
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generous. We were in it together. Race didn't matter. Status didn't matter. Religion, politics, none of it
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mattered. Because in the end, we all realized we're Americans. Find those Americans that still
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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
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That's R-E-C-T-E-Q.com. You know, we're just talking about the difference between coming together
00:15:45.780
at 9-11 and coming together over COVID-19 and how it's not happening. There in and you know,
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our guests said, well, there's a couple of reasons, uh, the masks and social distancing of
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being, uh, being locked up, you know, where we're not with each other. And Stu and I were talking about,
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we, we have a few new people that have joined us here on the stage. I have met them. I work with
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them every day. I would not recognize them on the street if they didn't have a mask on because
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they're wearing masks the whole time. And I have no idea what they look like. I mean,
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you don't know people in the mask. You lose that connection. But I also seem to think there's a
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big difference in our media than there was in 2000. Social media was not a thing. Uh, and that's
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ever so destructive. Uh, and the other is we're an election. We were three years away from an election
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and gee, when did that unity start going away? Hmm. About the election time. Um, all right. I want to
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talk a little bit about, uh, what's happening in California in California. You know, we know the
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Nancy Pelosi, uh, you know, blow my hair out, uh, scandal where she just called up a salon and said,
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Hey, I need you to, you know, blow dry my hair and, and, uh, make me look nice. And the owner of the
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salon was so upset because wait a minute, I can't open my salon, but you can just come in and get a
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haircut. And we've got another situation like that. This is, uh, Danielle Rabkin. She is the owner of
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the CrossFit Golden Gate gym. And I want you to hear her story. She's got this unbelievable gym
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where she could social distance people by 30 feet and have them wear masks. She's not allowed to open,
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but the state has opened the state gyms. Welcome to the program, Danielle.
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So tell me, tell me what's happening in San Francisco.
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It's been pretty unbelievable. It's been the hardest six months of my life. Uh, we have been
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pretty closed still. I don't know that the rest of the country realizes we're almost still entirely
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on lockdown. The only things open are outdoor dining, indoor retail. I think that's pretty much
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it. Um, San Francisco has incredible COVID metrics. When I checked yesterday morning, we only had 88
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COVID deaths since March. We have never had more than 38 COVID ICU patients at a time since day one.
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Our hospitals were so empty in the early days waiting for the surge that never came, which is
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wonderful, but we were cutting back nursing hours, doctors shifts, giving salary cuts because hospitals
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were bleeding money. So we've been in really good shape, uh, to flatten the curve and somewhere along
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the line, flattening the curve turned into flattening the local economy because we've just kept everything
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closed. Um, and, uh, I, my personal life and livelihood has just been completely burned to the ground. I've spent
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over eight years building this business and I'm watching it just completely fall apart before my eyes. Uh, San
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Francisco has experienced a mass exodus. People are leaving left and right. If they're going to be locked down, they want
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more space. They want cheaper rent, but as other parts of the country continue to open up, why do people
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want to be here? Of course they don't. Uh, tech can work remote. Uh, there's no reason to stay somewhere
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where you can't get a haircut or go to the gym. Um, you know, it's just been so extremely frustrating.
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Even the Tony Fauci's of the world say that prolonged closures will cause irreparable damage. So it's just
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been mind blowing to me why this has been going on. Okay. So, so tell me first, the, the state has
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opened their gyms. Are these, are these publicly financed gyms or are these gyms for state workers and city
00:20:05.720
workers? These are publicly financed taxpayer dollars. So I know with certainty that at the
00:20:13.820
end of the, sorry, at the end of June, police station gyms were closed. Uh, a good friend of
00:20:18.620
mine is a police officer. Um, and I know that his gym was shut. So I really hesitated to build an outdoor
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gym in my neighborhood. The streets are not clean here. Uh, the air is smoky. Uh, it's just not a great
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setup for outdoor activity, which is what we're moving towards. But I finally bit the bullet and
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did it. And recently I saw a couple of police officers at the end of my block. And I'm thinking,
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all right, I know that their gym is shut. I got this. I'm going to get them to come work out on
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at my outdoor gym with me. So two weeks ago, I go up to them and I chit chatting and I say,
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Hey, what are you guys doing for workouts these days? And they tell me that their station gym has
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reopened and I about fell over. I couldn't believe it. Here I am suffering with prolonged
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closure. And I find out that their gym has reopened. So I immediately reach out to a friend
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of mine who, uh, is an attorney and works out of a courthouse in the city. And I say,
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does this set a precedent for me? What does this mean? They've told me Cal OSHA has inspected
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their gyms. Can I get a Cal OSHA inspection? And he says, Oh yeah, I know that paralegals have
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been working out at the hall of justice. And I couldn't believe it. Glenn takes me everything
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to not drop 20 F bombs right now. I could not believe it here. I am business owners like me
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still shut and paralegals are working out at indoor gyms funded by taxpayer dollars.
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So I actually go down to the hall of justice to check out these gyms. And I see notices on the door
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saying that they've been reopened since July 1st, limited occupancy, new COVID rules,
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new sign-in sheets. So, uh, we send it to the press. Um, I was trying to reach out through a city
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attorney, through my supervisor's office, through the office of economic workforce and development.
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Why is this happening? Why am I still closed? Does this mean I can reopen? Does this set a precedent
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for me? Um, I want to be very clear. I don't want to see these gyms shut down,
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but what are the implications for gym owners like myself? Right. Cause the PPP money, the PPP
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money is long gone and it probably didn't help San Francisco. I can't even imagine what you are
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paying in rent for a 4,700 square foot gym. No, you don't want to know. I know it was unbelievable
00:22:40.640
to me to see articles about people throughout the country, having windfalls with the cares act,
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$600 a week. And, uh, you know, there being debate over them, uh, wanting to incentivize people to go
00:22:53.740
back to work. And I'm thinking $600 a week doesn't even pay for the rent at my one bedroom apartment.
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And there are people, you know, gathering savings from that. This isn't right. San Francisco is
00:23:03.340
extremely expensive. There are businesses across the country that got the same PPP loans that we got.
00:23:10.500
They weren't ever closed. Maybe they were closed for one month and we've been closed for six months.
00:23:15.440
Where's our help. If the city wants me to stay closed, they can start paying my rent. Cause as you
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said, it's not cheap. Um, I'm many, many tens of thousands of dollars in debt to my landlord now
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because of this. So, so if I, if I may voice what I think some Americans may be saying, and that is
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why would we pay for, why would we take my tax dollars that I'm working hard for and send them
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to a state that is absolutely out of control in fire on fire, literally and figuratively,
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and they're screwing their own people. I don't know why, but they're screwing their own people. And I,
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I, I think Americans really feel for people who, um, are trapped in this, but it's kind of like,
00:24:10.600
you know, this is what everybody in San Francisco voted for.
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I get it. And I've heard that a lot, but the reality of the situation is that small business
00:24:19.680
owners like myself, we are where we are. People voted in who they voted in. This is the situation now
00:24:27.340
and we need help. Uh, I've never admittedly, I have not followed local politics and that's my own
00:24:35.480
fault. And you sure as well better believe it's a learning experience, but the decision makers right
00:24:42.520
now aren't just the local politicians. It's the department of public health. And well, I don't know
00:24:48.840
how your department of public health can say that working outside and working out outside is safer for
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you. I mean, the entire, the entire state is on fire. Smoke has to be, I mean, California wildfire
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smoke was at my home in Idaho last weekend, Idaho. It's got to be in San Francisco.
00:25:10.700
Glenn, I completely agree with you. And I've been trying to push that up the chain for weeks.
00:25:15.180
I have human feces on the sidewalk next to my outdoor gym. We are dealing with extremely poor
00:25:21.520
air quality. I've been trying to push for an indoor reopening for a very long time. And my voice just
00:25:27.660
isn't loud enough. Um, and an interesting turn of events, um, two weeks ago, of course, as soon as
00:25:33.640
I found out about these courthouse gyms reopening, uh, you know, we've been pushing this up the chain
00:25:41.000
to supervisors, the office of economic workforce and development just yesterday, public health
00:25:47.820
officers announced that they were shutting down the city gym. And I want to be very clear. That was
00:25:53.860
not the goal, but within minutes they've announced that gyms, hair salons and tattoos can now reopen
00:26:01.300
on Monday. It is unbelievable to me. Maybe it shouldn't be so unbelievable, but it took something
00:26:07.660
like this to get it to happen. So wait, wait, wait. So they are letting you open on Monday
00:26:13.260
because of the discovery of these city gyms. They just announced yesterday that they're letting
00:26:19.500
open on Monday. Well, congratulations on that. Uh, I mean, I don't know. I mean, we're, we're living
00:26:30.940
in a time now where, uh, many of these people are rulers. They're, they're not, they're not just
00:26:39.480
politicians. They're not people that were protecting our rights and they're just rulers. And this Nancy
00:26:45.920
Pelosi thing at her, you know, hair salon, it did, are people in San Francisco waking up
00:26:52.860
and saying, wait a minute, this is, this is, or are they still just as crazy?
00:27:00.920
It's a good question. I can't answer for you, but it certainly has not felt like a democracy to me
00:27:06.780
lately. Uh, it's, it's very difficult to feel like your voice isn't heard. Um, I'm curious to
00:27:15.980
know if, if the mayor has been using these gyms, these public, these police station gyms, if her
00:27:22.340
name is in the log books, um, we put out a records request and I don't know if they'll try to keep those
00:27:28.620
names public, but I think it'll be very interesting to see if her name is, is on there between, uh,
00:27:39.440
Danielle, I, I, I, I feel for you. I mean, I live in Texas and things are still crazy here. Not like
00:27:46.820
that, but even in Texas, uh, and there is, there is, uh, you know, when you have about 600 people in 10
00:27:55.820
days in a, in a country of 350 million dying in those 10 days, that's the last 10, I think has been
00:28:05.400
about 600 people nationwide, 350 million. And we are shutting and destroying our economy. It makes no
00:28:14.440
sense. And you have to ask yourself, what's the real agenda here? Because it, this is doing far more
00:28:21.780
damage to our children, uh, to our psyche and to our economy. People like you, I mean, how long is it
00:28:29.680
going to take for you to recover? Yeah. I don't know if I will, to be honest, and it's devastating
00:28:35.040
to me. I can tell you that San Francisco is letting the local economy burn to the ground. I don't know
00:28:42.200
that anywhere else is as severe here where reopenings can be done safely, slowly, and cautiously. They need
00:28:50.840
to start moving forward. Thank you so much, Danielle. I appreciate you, uh, speaking out. Thanks for
00:28:56.440
coming on. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. And don't forget rate us on iTunes.
00:29:11.240
There is another, uh, uh, video or documentary out right now that is so well worth watching and
00:29:18.420
watching with your kids. Um, and it really kind of stars Tristan Harris. He's the, the best one in it.
00:29:25.020
Um, I think, uh, he's called the closest thing to Silicon that Silicon Valley has to a conscience.
00:29:31.380
He is a, uh, uh, former Google design ethicist. He is now working on the problems that are being
00:29:40.360
caused by social media. Welcome to the, um, welcome to the program. Uh, Tristan, how are you?
00:29:45.660
Glenn, it's great to be back. Thank you for having me. So in the social dilemma, I mean, it,
00:29:51.200
it is really quite clear, uh, that they are profiting off of the divide, even though they're
00:29:59.420
saying they're trying to heal us. That's exactly right. You know, I'm really concerned with the
00:30:06.680
fact that, you know, how can you do anything when our fellow countrymen disagree vehemently across
00:30:11.760
all topics that matter, right? I mean, how can you fix anything if at least half of the world
00:30:16.160
violently opposes the idea and I'll counter every strategy that you do. This film is the first time
00:30:22.120
that the, you know, the people who built some of these products, you know, the inventor of the
00:30:26.000
Facebook like button, the person who built the YouTube recommendation system, uh, the guy who brought
00:30:30.900
the advertising business model to Facebook, uh, Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality are on
00:30:36.560
camera saying, look, these are the harms that it's causing first to children and the problems of
00:30:41.340
addiction and the breakdown of the family that we all know that I'm sure that so many parents are
00:30:45.900
struggling with, especially in COVID times when you have your kid on zoom calls, right? I mean,
00:30:49.860
I know how, how deep this is, uh, and, and the mental health issues there, but then the second
00:30:54.580
is on the polarization. And that's what I'm really most concerned about because as you just said,
00:30:58.620
they profit from the divide because no matter what topic that there is, social media will take the
00:31:04.520
most, um, egregious and extreme and worst part of that topic and show it to your out group,
00:31:09.520
to the other side in the least charitable way, which means that we're all biased in a worse way
00:31:14.960
about each other. Right. And it's driving us crazy and it's actually killing our democracy.
00:31:19.160
Um, if we don't actually fix it. And I'm really hoping is that if enough people see this film,
00:31:24.960
we'll have a new shared truth about the breakdown of our shared truth in reality. Uh, and that's,
00:31:31.260
that's really what we're hoping for. Okay. So by the way, if you don't know what we're talking
00:31:35.380
about, it is a new movie on Netflix called the social dilemma. Uh, I think you, you break it down
00:31:42.400
really, really well. And it is very credible, um, in its approach. And because everybody who's in it,
00:31:49.840
uh, is pretty much legendary. I mean, they were there, they invented it. Um, however, the, the problem,
00:31:57.420
uh, is, and I, I mean, I, I try to listen to, well, I do, I listen to two podcasts every day,
00:32:05.180
uh, that disagree with me. I don't necessarily listen to anything that agrees with me. I read a lot,
00:32:12.120
but I read all sides and, um, I'm surprised on both sides. How many people don't know how a story was
00:32:22.760
covered by the other side? A lot, a lot of people on, let's just take on the, the right. A lot of
00:32:28.040
people say the New York times never covered that. Well, they did. They did. They may have covered it
00:32:32.540
differently. They may have covered it one day or on page 18 where the right was saying, this is a
00:32:38.520
front page story, but they did cover it. Um, and I'm shocked at how many people, uh, on both sides
00:32:47.360
don't know what the other is side is being fed. Yeah. Well, it's because, uh, as you said at the
00:32:57.100
beginning of the hour, the, um, you know, these companies profit by showing you a, your own Truman
00:33:02.940
show, your own affirming view of reality, because imagine there's two news feeds at Facebook, right?
00:33:07.180
One called the everything you believe is right feed, right? And it just shows you more and more
00:33:11.800
news from your side that basically gets you to click on it more. Right. And there's another feed
00:33:15.960
called the everything, you know, might be different than what you know, right? We're
00:33:19.460
going to show you news that like challenges your views constantly, right? You can imagine
00:33:23.020
they could easily find two different sets of stories to show you which one is going to do
00:33:27.600
better for their business model of capturing your attention. The one that you like, the one
00:33:32.740
that affirms your view of reality, the one that you like. And so the problem is each of us
00:33:36.540
have been given our own Truman show, our own reality, right? Where it's not that everything
00:33:41.520
that we're believing is wrong. We've just been seeing a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver and it's
00:33:45.580
actually infected the rest of the media because even cable news or radio news, where do they
00:33:50.400
get their news from? Well, they get their news from Twitter as well, right? So Twitter
00:33:53.840
is, is, is the basis. It's this divisive force is the basis that's feeding into all forms
00:33:59.280
of media. Uh, and it's making us all bias in a worse and worse, uh, a way. That's what
00:34:06.820
So we, we've talked about this many times that we don't want to get news off of Twitter
00:34:12.000
because it seems like journalists, um, are not doing real journalism. They're reacting
00:34:19.640
Um, that's right. It's turned all of us into little monkeys that react, um, you know,
00:34:23.980
impulsively to the latest thing and whatever media ethics or journalism or training that
00:34:28.140
we might've had in a previous generation. That goes out the window. When I win, the faster
00:34:32.800
I make an assertion about what the other side did and I say something without, without actually
00:34:37.660
stopping and holding, because if I don't do it, the other guy will. So it's a race to
00:34:41.240
the bottom of the brainstem, a race to the immediate who can say it first, but that just
00:34:45.640
means that exponential hearsay, exponential gossip. Uh, and it doesn't lead to good sense
00:34:50.500
making, right? And if we cannot agree and it just leads to violence and, and really
00:34:54.600
escalating towards levels of violence that I think people are worried about civil war, that's
00:34:58.920
not actually productive. And by the way, our enemies are, are using this right
00:35:02.640
now, um, against us. Right. I mean, they actually want us to just sit here fighting
00:35:07.040
with each other after world war two, you know, with the big powers with nukes, you can't
00:35:11.020
actually wage a conventional war anymore. So you want to use subtler methods with plausible
00:35:15.360
deniability proxy wars. But if you're Russian, China, Iran, Turkey, or North Korea, you know,
00:35:21.720
you're not going to launch a nuke against us. Right. But you might want to take the existing
00:35:24.920
tensions and turn the enemy against itself. And that's what Sun Tzu exactly would say to do.
00:35:29.180
That's what the Chinese military strategy is. And Facebook makes it a trillion times easier.
00:35:34.360
Uh, so if I'm China, I want the, you know, the extreme right and the extreme left to proliferate
00:35:38.300
and fight each other and would be stoked about the rise of extremist groups on all sides.
00:35:42.540
So, so let me ask you, Tristan, because, because here's the problem, uh, from the right point
00:35:48.240
of view, from the conservative point of view. Um, and that is, um, we don't have any billion
00:35:55.900
dollar, hundred year old institutions like the New York times, um, uh, Fox news. A lot of
00:36:03.140
conservatives are just not even, they're not even watching Fox news anymore. They're tired of
00:36:07.400
a lot of the stuff. Um, and, uh, when you have a group of people, let's say the blaze where we,
00:36:16.140
we really not, I'm not saying all of our stories are perfect or anything else,
00:36:20.020
but we really try to look into things. And for instance, I'm saying right now about civil war.
00:36:27.220
There are people that want civil war. They do want to tear the country apart. I can tell you what
00:36:33.400
the groups are. I think they have, they are on the left, but there are also, as I said yesterday,
00:36:39.760
um, there are also people who like Richard Spencer, you think the Nazis and the white supremacists
00:36:45.780
don't want a civil war. They don't want freedom either. Um, and, and same with the outside. But
00:36:52.300
if I say what MSNBC is now saying about civil war, and they're saying that it's all coming from white
00:37:00.180
supremacy, but I say, well, yes, there might be some white supremacists that want that, but there's
00:37:05.820
also these organizations that want it. Antifa is in the street calling for the destruction of America.
00:37:11.260
America, I'm somehow or another, uh, unreasonable. How do we, how do we bridge that?
00:37:18.440
Well, this is the thing. So, you know, are there reasonable versions of each of each thing going on?
00:37:23.660
You know, are there new Patriot movements where people are learning the constitution, learning how
00:37:27.100
to do homesteading? You know, absolutely. But then there's also acceleration is orienting towards
00:37:32.100
civil war and which side is social media going to expose? They're going to take a tiny percent of
00:37:36.480
the worst side. And they're going to expose them in a statistically much bigger and greater way,
00:37:41.640
uh, of the evil parts, uh, missing the good parts to the other side. Right. And that's going to
00:37:46.660
disproportionately create a counter response by the other side that says, well, if they're going to do
00:37:51.320
that, then we're going to escalate this. And then that's also going to take the least represented,
00:37:55.280
most extreme view, uh, on say the left on Antifa. Right. And so, and I'm not saying that,
00:38:00.300
that there's, there's, there's real legitimate problems on, on, on both sides here,
00:38:04.020
but the problem is that it's selecting for the worst of us and making us hate each other.
00:38:08.400
And by the way, we're not going to get anything done as a country, uh, you know, when that happens,
00:38:12.480
I mean, and do you think that when we're sort of devolved into conflict with ourselves,
00:38:16.000
that our adversaries just sit around and, you know, handle things and drive their own
00:38:19.420
countries or they want to take advantage of it? And, you know, I think, you know, there's this line
00:38:23.620
that, you know, while we've been obsessed with protecting our physical borders, we left the digital
00:38:27.500
border wide open because if, if Russia trying to try to fly, you know, uh, a bomb or cruise
00:38:33.020
missile into the United States, we'll get shot down by the department of defense. But when they
00:38:36.980
try to fly an information missile into the United States, they're met by a Facebook algorithm that
00:38:42.280
says, yeah, exactly. Which zip code or personality do you want to target? And they make it as easy
00:38:46.440
as possible because the digital border is wide open. So they say, all of them say they're trying
00:38:53.520
to stop and suppress hatred in the division, et cetera, et cetera. So is any of that true?
00:39:00.100
Well, I think that they've, they've been very slow on waking up to these problems, Glenn. And that's
00:39:06.260
actually why I think, um, and I'm not saying this as a self promoter, I think the film is important
00:39:10.200
for this reason, because at this point, the tech companies can't just fix what all of us are
00:39:15.040
thinking and believing we're 10 years in to this social media washing machine that spread that split
00:39:20.780
us apart into these two different, almost like a, what do you call the centrifuges? You know,
00:39:24.260
you spin them around, right. And then split us apart on two completely different sides.
00:39:27.780
I think the only way to actually reverse that is to have a new cultural understanding about how this,
00:39:34.160
this, this hypnotic induction took place. And I don't mean we've each been hypnotized to believe
00:39:38.240
something is wrong. I mean, each of us have been hypnotized into these different bubbles
00:39:41.960
of reality that are not compatible with each other. And I'm really hoping that the film can actually,
00:39:47.440
again, create a shared truth about the breakdown of our shared truth. And so far, it seems to be,
00:39:52.540
you know, working really well at having people say, you know, I want to have a conversation with my
00:39:56.140
family. And the best thing, by the way, you can do if you see the film is watch it with your family
00:40:01.040
members, especially who might have different political beliefs than you. And after you watch
00:40:05.020
it, exchange, open up Facebook on both your phones and exchange your phone and look at the other
00:40:09.780
person's newsfeed. And you will be surprised that even with the same friends, because you're probably
00:40:14.260
your husband or wife or, you know, whatever, you have many similar friends, you will see a completely
00:40:18.960
different feed, which will show you, imagine if I was living in that world for the last 10 years.
00:40:24.180
Well, of course, that person would be, say, concerned about climate change because their
00:40:27.620
entire feed is so good climate change stories. Or on the other side, of course, that person would
00:40:31.740
be like, we got to do something about Black Lives Matter because they just see infinite evidence of
00:40:35.700
just people looting and rioting on the streets. Right. And that's the thing is we can't really see this
00:40:40.160
because we've been so narrowly trapped in these realities. And it really is an issue that can unite
00:40:45.160
us because the whole thing is meant to divide us.
00:40:47.400
Tristan, I'm I'm very glad that people like you exist. I've I've talked to Ray Kurzweil about
00:40:55.960
ethics in Silicon Valley for a while. He scares the hell out of me. And I had been praying for 20
00:41:06.420
years that ethicists would wake up and start to really guide these companies. I hope it's not too
00:41:12.920
late. I don't think it is. But thank you for everything that you're doing. The documentary
00:41:18.020
and you should watch it with your family. Watch it with your whole family. It's called The Social
00:41:23.580
Dilemma. It's not only going to show you how we're being divided, but it'll show you if you
00:41:29.020
aren't convinced you're being watched and spied on, boy, you will understand why and what's really
00:41:35.660
going on. It's The Social Dilemma and it's on Netflix now. Tristan, thank you so much. We'll