In this episode, Glenn Beck explains why the Chinese government stole millions of voter files from the 2016 election, and why the mainstream media is covering it up. He also explains how the Chinese stole the Democratic National Convention and why we should all be worried.
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00:05:03.560Okay, so the president never said last night that the election was stolen.
00:05:15.720He never said last night that they had stolen the election or stuffed the ballot box or anything like that.
00:05:24.280What the president showed last night were documents that proved China ran the largest known theft of American voter data in history.
00:05:36.020220 million files, that's your name, your address, your phone number, your party affiliation, everything, run through a dedicated exploitation unit in Beijing.
00:05:50.580OK, now I want to give the fact checkers, you know, the first bonus point, because on the nose, look at you.
00:05:58.140You can do some work. There is no evidence, none, that China reached into a voting machine and flipped a ballot or changed the outcome of 2020.
00:06:06.520But that wasn't the charge. The media is treating this story as if that's what the claim was.
00:06:14.380but that's not the claim the outcome was never the frightening part here there are two things
00:06:21.660that you need to know that were discussed last night and i'm going to lay them out in the next
00:06:25.32015 minutes okay so just hold on with me first point according to the declassified material
00:06:32.120a hostile foreign power known as china spent years assembling a file of 220 million american voters
00:06:42.020names addresses phone numbers party everything everything the rhythm of when you show up and
00:06:48.860when you don't go out to vote important information and the response that the media is giving you
00:06:55.160today is ah most of it's public anyway you can buy all of that stuff okay all right well that's
00:07:02.560true, and it is precisely the opposite thing to find comforting. Any one fact on that list
00:07:13.860is harmless. Your address is not a weapon. Your party registration is not a weapon. The
00:07:22.020weapon is the assembly. The 220 million profiles in the hands of one regime, the one regime
00:07:31.920on earth that has already shown us in broad daylight what it does with information like
00:20:02.880In every case we have seen like this, never this, I don't think ever like this,
00:20:07.700never this big, never documented trail saying we're massaging the presidential report.
00:20:13.520We're making sure that we're holding this back.
00:20:16.860I've never seen that before, ever, ever.
00:20:19.380Remember, all we had was, what was her name, Fawn Hall that says, yeah, I did that.
00:20:23.740We never had documents, but we had hearings, and it eroded our faith, and there was a conviction here or there, and later pardoned, later overturned, but there was no accountability for any of these things, ever, ever.
00:20:43.240The machine just took the hit and then just kept running, and it's still running.
00:20:46.840so may i suggest that maybe we look at things differently because what they've done here
00:20:53.960is not just unethical it might be criminal obstruction of justice obstruction or impeding
00:21:02.600an official proceeding or the president's constitutional duties obstructing the
00:22:36.580Not to settle political score, but because a self-governing people cannot survive being lied to by its own protectors, then everything is on the table.
00:22:51.440We must have prosecutions where the law demands them.
00:24:30.820Their exclusive ActiveGuard Outdoor Protection uses AI-powered cameras, which are backed up by live monitoring against, you know, who will keep watch over your property 24-7.
00:26:05.940So really, I'm just a journalist who got the chance to go to the White House
00:26:09.280and tell the White House which documents I've heard about that I've never been able to get
00:26:12.860through FOIA lawsuits or through my relationship with Tulsi Gabbard. I had heard these things about
00:26:18.860China getting 220 million voter records, and I couldn't get them out of Tulsi Gabbard before I
00:26:24.440left. And so at some point, the White House said, well, listen, why don't you just come here,
00:26:29.340work with a team of intelligence officers, tell them what you want when they find it,
00:26:33.340and we'll declassify it, and you can go out and explain to the American public. So
00:26:36.900So I have sort of the same exact role that I do every day other than I just have a shortcut to getting the documents that I think will benefit the entire country.
00:26:45.000Has that ever happened in history in America?
00:31:14.500The Chinese were telling their consulates, target people with this messaging.0.83
00:31:20.020Then they told their social media folks, make it look like Donald Trump is a bad person.0.84
00:31:26.040could try to foment racial strife on the streets. Now, I
00:31:30.060want to compare this, what these documents say, to what Mark
00:31:33.660Warner was saying. Nothing happened from China. If you
00:31:36.060hacked 220 million voter files from us, if you're trying to
00:31:39.780foment racism and division on our streets, if you're trying to
00:31:43.860use your social media, if you're using blackmail, by the way,
00:31:46.860they talked, China was gaining blackmail on US officials, so
00:31:50.220that they can embarrass them just before the election. If
00:31:53.100you're doing those things, you have intervened in our
00:31:55.500election. I don't care what any Democrat or some knucklehead on CNN is saying. Those four things
00:32:00.160are thresholds that amount to interference in any common American's mind. Okay, so I thought that
00:32:07.720there were two things that came out. One, that this is really important, this voter data, and
00:32:13.420they could just use it for algorithms to shape you on how you're going to vote, all the things
00:32:19.220you just said and shape you as well um and two and this might have been a bigger thing the the
00:32:26.440cover-up from our own intelligence agencies i i mean john this is this is what happened in vietnam
00:32:34.380to some degree it's uh what that what happened with iran contra in in a way where everybody said
00:32:41.420well no the president knew here we know the president didn't know and it was a problem
00:32:47.020Every time something like this has happened, and I can't, I think this is the most important violation of this, them keeping information vital from the president of the United States.
00:32:59.980I think, is there anything here that is going to be so indisputable that you'll see an actual perp walk?
00:33:10.120Yes, I do. I think it's possible. I think you'll see terminations first, right?
00:33:13.780And so the CIA is now reviewing everyone that was involved with a presidential daily briefing for which this information was withheld.
00:33:20.140And you're seeing things here that you're showing up on screen so important.
00:33:23.440They basically are talking about deliberately massaging President Trump's database so he won't see the Chinese election interference stuff.
00:33:32.060There are people watching this that are pros in the intelligence community.
00:33:35.700They're not trying to cover it up. And they're they're writing back to this like it boggles the mind that we're going to keep this from the president.
00:33:41.440Another FBI person who kept pulling back China intelligence interference reports and not letting the community see them so they could be investigated, wrote in her own text messages to her colleague, I'm running a shadow government.
00:33:53.220I'm running a shadow government to keep the president and others from learning about this.
00:33:58.620It is remarkable when you hear that, those sort of text messages, what was going on.
00:34:03.400Other people writing, this is clearly politics.
00:34:06.440An NSA guy said, I'm alarmed that we're not telling the president, but I was too weak to stand up and object in the meeting.
00:34:14.760This was one of the widest secrets in the intelligence community, that some intelligence analysts used their power to keep the president in the dark about a 220 million voter data breach,
00:34:26.200about the vulnerability of machines in elections, about Venezuela's successful hack of a voter machine in a controlled environment, not an election, but in a laboratory setting.
00:34:36.440All of those things are things that are actionable, that a president and a Congress needs to know in real time.
00:34:42.140And we had analysts in the intelligence community who thought their political purposes were more important than our national security.
00:34:49.420They didn't want Donald Trump to have this.
00:34:51.380They didn't want Donald Trump to make a China argument.
00:34:53.560So they shut off the spigot of information for what they're paid to provide the president.
00:35:32.800Am I seeing dots that are not disconnected?
00:35:38.720I think you're seeing boulders coming down a hill, picking up momentum.
00:35:41.760I think the FBI and the IRS are going to begin taking some really big actions against people that might have been conspiring with foreign powers to harm American national security.
00:35:51.540There is evidence that I'm working on right now, by the way, as a reporter, not in my government job right now,
00:35:55.920that there was contact going on between U.S. groups and foreign enemies specifically related
00:36:03.060to the anti-ice and ice-out protests. Imagine that if anyone involved in that was conspiring
00:36:08.560with a foreign power to harm our United States. That's something we're looking at right now.
00:36:13.740Scott Bessing came on my show a couple weeks ago and said, we are going to start pulling
00:36:16.780IRS tax exemptions and making people pay taxes for what they did, and they might be charged with
00:36:22.240fraud if they claim they were doing public good and instead they were doing public harm under a
00:36:25.980tax exemption. So the IRS, the FBI, the Homeland Security Investigations Unit created a task force
00:36:32.680and they are cracking down. And I think the first fruits of that are likely to be in the next month.
00:36:36.860We'll start to see actual activity, perp blocks, actions in court, IRS actions. And that is the
00:36:44.280beginning of a long haul because our country has been embedded with nonprofits that are aligned
00:36:49.400with foreign enemies and that is something that is not a good security posture when uh the president
00:36:54.620said in a tweet um most terrifying and yet so satisfying tweets i don't know but within the
00:37:02.180last month he said uh something along the lines of you know the communists are starting to come
00:37:07.340out everywhere and i i've been waiting for this moment yeah wait to see what's coming it's going
00:37:13.400to be fun to watch yeah is this the beginning of this i think that is what he's referring to that
00:37:20.380we now are moving towards a body of evidence that americans were working with our enemies to harm
00:37:25.720our country i don't know what charge that will be you can throw terms wrong like trees and sedition
00:37:30.580i don't know yet but i do believe that that's what everybody's working on that is a very very
00:37:36.040important development in our country and it's important for another reason rasmussen scott
00:37:40.540Rasmussen has a poll out today. 31% of Americans now think socialism is good, and not even a
00:37:46.380majority think it's bad any longer. That is the most alarming statistic I've ever seen. What it
00:37:50.940means is the mainstream media have normalized what is the radical in America, and they're now
00:37:57.840convincing people that socialism is good. It has never been good in world history. It has been
00:38:02.960repressive. It is bad at this moment. The joy that Venezuelans have today versus six months ago
00:38:08.040shows you what happens when people get a little freedom from the repression of socialism.
00:38:12.880Every economy that ever was socialist has failed. And yet Americans, a third of Americans nearly,
00:38:18.340think this is a good thing. We have to nip that in the bud, stop that. And the way you stop it
00:38:22.840is by stopping the propagandists who pump that into our information system every day to the
00:38:28.180tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. I have about 40 seconds left. Let me just ask
00:38:33.400this last question. In one of the documents released last night, the Chinese government
00:42:39.080And the state of the union, there's a difference between perception and reality.
00:42:44.240and the Republicans need to understand you cannot lecture the people about how good things are
00:42:52.100because they don't feel that way um you have to reflect their perception um and and and change
00:43:01.500the perception by actually showing them a change of prices look gas prices are huge and I know the
00:43:08.240president is kind of between a rock and a hard place on this but that is a huge thing and you
00:43:12.640You know, you get those you get those gas prices down again to three dollars a gallon and people are going to start to say, OK, things are getting better.
00:43:21.280But as that changes, you know, and then, you know, here's the problem.
00:43:26.220The Marxists are talking a language that will go to the voters.
00:43:31.040OK. The working class needs to feel heard.
00:43:36.680And this is the president's biggest challenge.
00:51:24.300It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time.
00:51:28.120They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist or communist or anarchist or Marxist, but the fundamental character is always the same.
00:51:39.620It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice, liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built,
00:51:49.500to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with
00:51:55.380ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world through violence and through terror
00:52:00.960they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us here's what people think you know0.56
00:52:08.660when they think that um and i'm going to use the actual technical term communists those who are
00:52:14.480actual, you know, DSA, from their own report, proudly state that 51% of their board are
00:59:00.900I wonder if they've had conversations yet, him and President Xi.
00:59:04.620But I got to tell you, it was stronger than I expected.
00:59:15.340But I don't want you to listen to the media.
00:59:17.940I want you to listen to the media, understanding what they're doing.
00:59:24.980They are trying to silence actual documents.
00:59:28.500They're trying to say those documents don't make any difference, and the people who are in with the media and the left will tell you you're a conspiracy theorist for believing them.
00:59:40.940I want you to listen to what they're saying.
01:00:24.760She's an activist. She's a guy. Now, I'm not supposed to say that because there's a penalty attached to that. If I say she's actually a dude, there's a penalty because they need me to shut up. And that is just it doesn't care about Ashley. It is about control over me and people who won't toe the line. It has nothing to do with Ashley Webb.0.95
01:00:51.060but during the debate for candidates to replace graham plattner ashley webb is on and this is
01:01:01.160what she said this is why she's qualified to serve in he is qualified to serve for the u.s
01:01:08.780senate listen ashley webb what qualifications do you have to serve in the u.s senate oh i ran for
01:01:14.660office several times didn't win but i did run and then um i'm a songwriter and then i write my own
01:01:22.280books and then i suppose my transparency i wouldn't lie to the people and i wouldn't
01:01:29.460deceive the people like we're being deceived right now you have to see this video it's sad
01:01:36.460it really is truly sad it's truly sad it looks like an sl uh you know an snl sketch but they0.73
01:01:44.400would snl would never do this sketch you know they can't see the they can't see the the absurdity0.97
01:01:52.480in real life anymore but this would 20 years ago that would have been a sketch and the audience
01:01:58.960would have been roaring laughing because it's so absurd he's wearing a dress by the way and
01:09:00.760donald kendall is with me donald is a guy who has worked on two of my best-selling books
01:09:10.040dark future and also the great reset and so he knows what is going on uh what is what the what
01:09:17.460the elites are planning how they work etc etc and uh we have talked extensively over the last five
01:09:24.760years about uh ai and asi and agi and uh and data centers and he is concerned as concerned as i am
01:09:34.500on the dark side of this, but he is also coming out now.
01:09:39.880He's the director of the Glenn Haskins Emerging Issues Center
01:09:44.000at the Heartland Institute, and he has written many, many articles
01:09:50.180on the dangers of these data centers, but he is now coming out,
01:09:56.660and he is also saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
01:09:59.820We're in trouble if we don't have these data centers.
01:10:02.320So he just wrote, based on a report from OpenAI, suggests operatives likely based in China have been using artificial intelligence to manipulate the American debates about AI development and public policy.
01:10:18.280And I find it interesting because Donald is not a guy that would go to OpenAI for a report, but he's using OpenAI to make this point.
01:10:28.200So my first question, Donald, welcome to the program is why are you allowing open AI to, uh, lead this argument with you?
01:10:40.880Well, clearly I'm being coerced by artificial intelligence.
01:10:43.500It knows me better than I know myself, so it can push me in any direction, but, uh, I know, you know, you're a soft, you're a pushover, easy pushover.
01:10:53.360Let me just say, though, you know, I've been I've been working on AI, as you mentioned, for for years now.
01:10:59.160And, you know, the first real AI conversation that I ever had that was kind of outside, just like science fiction movies, was with you in your office back in 2019 when we were actually working on arguing with socialists together.
01:11:13.200So I actually kind of credit my whole kind of career path towards this this issue to you.
01:11:19.500So there's that. We'll start off with that.
01:11:24.640But but yeah, so, you know, I if you were to go through my backlog of articles, you'll definitely see that, you know, most of them are a little bit more critical of artificial intelligence.
01:11:35.080The power that's wielded by the institutions, you know, when they have this this this new tool of artificial intelligence and just like the whole host of things that are made possible now by this emerging technology.
01:11:48.540And most of that just kind of comes with a skepticism about these powerful institutions, whether it's government, whether it's big corporations.
01:11:57.640I mean, I had so many we've had so many conversations, the two of us of, you know, I don't want it in the hands of the government.
01:12:05.020I don't want it hands in the big in the big tech.
01:12:08.080But those are the two choices that we have.
01:12:10.560And so you can't you're just you're left with a lot of bad choices.
01:12:13.820So let me go to the data centers, because that is so critical.
01:12:18.940I believe, Donald, and I think you do too, if we don't do electricity, if we don't get our power grid under control and really expand power and have the data centers, we will be the Mexico of the world in 25 years from now.
01:12:41.080You know, I have bought into the debate that, you know, if we're not the forefront of this industry, then somebody else is going to be.
01:12:51.380You could have all the international agreements that you want to slow down the development of artificial intelligence to make sure that we're doing it properly and aligning it with the, you know, principles that we think are important.
01:13:02.460And you could even have China sign on to those international agreements and they will still work behind the scenes to push to push their homage, you know, supremacy on artificial intelligence.
01:13:15.700forward so when i started seeing these reports and the open ai one is just one of them there's
01:13:20.840a bunch of reports out there that are showing what we know because we also worked on uh propaganda
01:13:25.940wars together that this is a this is a common tactic of foreign governments foreign intelligence
01:13:32.940um is to sow seeds of discontent in other uh countries in rival countries so we've seen this
01:13:39.980with russia with the internet's research agency we've seen this with china time and time again0.84
01:13:44.920And dating back to like 2005, I believe, where they were just putting bot armies on the Internet to spread propaganda and make it seem like it's just a kind of a natural occurring thing.0.83
01:13:54.660Also, there is a reports about different environmental groups, whether it's Sierra Club or 350.org, those sorts of things that are kind of pushing the same message, this anti data center message that was very reminiscent of the anti fracking messages from just, I don't know, several years ago.
01:14:15.080So when all of these things are kind of coming out, it's like, you know, I could be as skeptical as the next person when it comes to the power of artificial intelligence in the hands of the United States government or, you know, these big corporate, you know, whatever, these giant corporations, international corporations that we know not to necessarily trust because of our days with the big tech censorship of social media or the days of ESG, all of that sort of thing.
01:14:40.880But then I look at it and I say, you know, I feel like we can, you know, in the same way that Elon Musk was able to kind of change the debate when it came to the objectivity of social media platforms, I feel like there is a pathway for that sort of, you know, getting that conservative voice out there and really pushing for constitutional principles when it comes to AI alignment.
01:15:01.740And I don't think we're going to have as much luck with that when it comes to artificial intelligence in China.
01:15:06.700And we know some of these models in China, whether it's DeepSeek or Kimmy, you know, a lot of these very specifically do not criticize the CCP.
01:15:21.880You know, they're there is twisted and ideological bias that you could possibly imagine.
01:15:28.440And we're seeing that companies in the United States, because those models run slightly cheaper than U.S. models, are actually starting to use those in their systems.
01:15:42.960So, Donald, let me go back again to the data centers.
01:15:48.840I have been saying since we've since we met and before we met, but I remember talking to you about this, you know, in that meeting that I have been concerned forever about what I say is the loss of free will.
01:16:02.320Yes. Not that you can't choose. You won't know if you have been manipulated into making that choice or if it was actually your original idea.
01:16:12.840This was the whole point of the president's speech last night.
01:16:15.780Not that they stole the election, that they are manipulating or can manipulate because they have so much information on the individual.
01:16:38.020But how many of them understand that there's a good shot that they were manipulated into thinking these things or being used as useful idiots by the algorithm in China?0.98
01:16:53.620There are legitimate questions that have to be asked.0.98
01:16:57.300But a lot of this real deep anti data center stuff, it is coming from China.
01:17:07.220I mean, how should people be aware of this?
01:17:11.920Yeah, well, it's an incredibly tough question to ask, especially in this day and age with the speed of the how information is disseminated across the Internet, social media, that sort of thing.
01:17:22.000So it's really hard to tell who's who's even getting their talking points from where that sort of thing.
01:17:27.500But, you know, I love, you know, the more heady conversations about artificial intelligence that that we have.
01:17:35.060You know, the idea that like, are you really making your own choices? You know, did you decide to have, you know, Cheerios in the morning or was that just a, you know, artificial intelligence constructed psyop? Those sorts of things when it comes to what the, you know, what the implications of that are when it comes to free will, those are the conversations that I want to be writing about.
01:17:53.720And I'll admit that when it comes to some of the data center stuff, you know, because I kind of looked at these things as kind of hand in hand, you know, I kind of bought into it a little bit, you know, whether it was the water usage or the electricity usage, driving up rates for people.
01:18:07.700Those were, you know, pretty concerning to me.
01:18:12.120We wanted to do stuff about water usage and, you know, my team and people that we that we partner with were like, yeah, you know, there's there's not really a whole lot there.
01:18:22.100you know, there's some specific instances, but, you know, it seems to be something that they're
01:18:26.000kind of mitigating now as they innovate. And then when it comes to the energy, when it comes to
01:18:30.280energy, it's like, I feel like we're playing into the hands of the kind of net zero brigade that's
01:18:35.560been pushing to offline reliable energy for a while, where it's like, oh, look, we don't have
01:18:40.360enough energy for these data centers. It's like, well, whose fault is that? So that's, that's my
01:18:44.840concern. And I've been saying, you know, when talking about this issue, that I'm hoping that
01:18:49.240this ai revolution coincides with an american energy revolution because that i don't think that
01:18:54.860we should offline powerful technology just because you know bernie sanderson crew offlined our
01:19:01.300reliable energy for the past couple of decades and so those go ahead so those are like the
01:19:08.220kind of the main issues that surround the data centers that i just like that aren't don't appeal
01:19:13.180to me quite as much as those more heady subjects that you and i discuss right but i think those
01:19:18.240those uh questions are what the average person are at right now and what you know i i think we
01:19:26.120we have to find a way to convince people that they have all the power they literally all the
01:19:32.120power they need if these these companies want the data centers and they do want them desperately
01:19:37.800if they want them great that is the best place to be when you're negotiating no you want them
01:19:45.100great you're going to offset any kind of cost that my power company has to make because now
01:19:52.740we need new infrastructure plus you're creating all of the energy and you're going to put let's
01:19:58.400say 10 or 20 percent of the energy you create back into the grid so my energy prices go down
01:20:03.940you can negotiate these things right now but you have in new york you know when new york says and
01:20:10.740there's other states and you talk about it there are other states that are saying you know we're
01:20:14.320banning all of these data centers that's insanity isn't it donald yeah yeah absolutely and that's
01:20:20.580another thing that kind of started pushing me into this direction was the the actions of bernie
01:20:24.680sanders and crew whether it was the data center moratoriums that was just going to shut it down
01:20:29.540shut down construction basically indefinitely they they kind of had a time horizon like oh
01:20:34.760we're going to shut it down until we can figure out this unfigureoutable thing uh so that was a
01:20:39.980concern to me. And then when Bernie Sanders came out talking about wanting to nationalize 50% of
01:20:44.680the AI companies and basically load the boards with bureaucrats, hand-selected bureaucrats on
01:20:50.740the board of these things, that was more concerning to me than some of the things that we talk about
01:20:55.600when it comes to AI and data centers. So that is a big issue. I mean, there has been a sizable
01:21:02.520impact by these activists' movements against data centers. There's been moratoriums passed
01:21:09.160in certain states and certain localities.
01:21:11.620There has been a delay in billions of dollars
01:21:38.180all these different groups across the country usually for environmental reasons so all of these0.80
01:21:43.580things just kind of like make me think hmm maybe uh maybe we're playing right into china's hands0.54
01:21:49.640and we actually kind of see this now there on top of all the reports that we're talking about
01:21:53.960there are reports um that show that american companies are are increasingly using chinese
01:22:01.140models to run their infrastructure so if that's the trend that we're that we're heading towards
01:22:06.120We obviously know China wants to be AI supreme. They want to they want to have supremacy in the AI industry. And if we are going to stunt our development of artificial intelligence, we're just playing right into their hands.
01:22:21.600And now we've got a society and industry that is just dependent on these AI models that are being developed in China.
01:22:31.300So this this, you know, for all the current concerns that we have, and I will say that there are so many justified concerns when it comes to artificial intelligence.
01:22:38.940I'm not going to back down off of that point.
01:22:41.040Yeah. But if we're going to move towards, you know, where where China is dictating kind of the underlying infrastructure of our society, that is a recipe for absolute disaster.0.87
01:22:52.240Yes. Suicidal. Donald, thank you so much for being on with us.0.99
01:22:55.920We'll talk again and maybe we'll have a deeper conversation next time.
01:22:59.120Heartland Institute Emergency Heartland Institute Emerging Issues Center Director Donald Kendall.
01:31:08.840review of books associate editor he is also the university of austin's classics professor uh and
01:31:16.160can speak of the speak of the odyssey with some intelligence unlike me so uh andrew joins us here
01:31:22.620in just 60 seconds first let me tell you about our sponsor this half hour it's patriot mobile
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01:32:28.560spencer how are you sir glad i'm doing great it's great to be with you thanks yeah it's uh
01:32:36.360it's good to be you uh good to be with you um i have to tell you i remember reading the odyssey
01:32:42.260when i think i was in high school and i just thought it was just a bore fest uh and couldn't
01:32:48.180get through it uh it is it is one of the greatest stories of all i mean you know this is uh i love
01:32:55.660this i remember i read uh wuthering heights at one point as an adult and i read it and i'm like
01:33:02.040that is actually a boring book i have to tell you oh really that one is actually boring i don't know
01:33:06.240did you like it oh no i did i did i liked it and i thought all right maybe i should reread it yeah
01:33:12.500there's something about these classics you know discovery you know here i am a 30 year old guy
01:33:17.980going you know people should read more classics there's something to this classic yeah they're
01:33:22.340classics for a reason you don't say anyway yeah the odyssey is is like that um uh where it is
01:33:29.780such a great story can you start with what the story is yeah i'm really happy to do that and
01:33:37.660it's easy on one level it's a story about a guy going home odysseus is a warrior and a king he's
01:33:44.380the king of ithaca he's been fighting in troy for 10 years that's the prequel the iliad if you like
01:33:50.660And this is the sequel to the Iliad where he tries to make his way home, but for a whole bunch of reasons, including the wrath of the gods and all sorts of other mythological mishaps along the way, he can't get back.
01:34:04.380And when he arrives back, finally, he discovers that a pack of weasels and snakes, a bunch of suitors have taken over his palace and he has to wreak vengeance upon them to gain his queen back Penelope, who's been waiting for him all that time, all those 20 years that he's been gone.
01:34:25.240and uh he one of the reasons he doesn't come back is because uh because everybody died uh that he
01:34:32.940was that was under his command and so he's kind of feeling bad about that or do i have that right
01:34:38.940or wrong something close so people all of his men die along the way as part of this tormented
01:34:47.260journey but you're getting at another layer of the story which is once you tell the kind of
01:34:53.620beginning middle end plot of it you get to dig deeper into these incredible layers including
01:35:00.940yeah why is it that this guy can't make it home and what does it mean to come home after 10 years
01:35:06.280of war what does it take to rediscover yourself and reflect on the experience of being a soldier
01:35:13.580having to do savage brutal deeds and then go back and become a husband and a family guy and a dad
01:35:19.000out back in the yard with a beer so there's definitely that going on as well and these
01:35:24.380big questions of leadership that you were being raised i don't i don't remember the hammock with
01:35:28.440the beer in the story but maybe i missed something sorry wine why they're greeks so it's wine but
01:35:32.500yeah close enough um the okay so the the other thing and and please uh correct me if i'm i'm
01:35:38.760wrong because i most likely am um but his son is angry with him right and uh and and his wife
01:35:47.840Well, everyone's got a lot of feelings.
01:35:50.900I would say, Clint, everyone's got a lot of feelings.
01:35:52.960His son, Telemachus, he's one of the first ever coming-of-age stories that we have in Western literature.
01:36:01.900And this is how the poem starts, which may be why you were bored by it.
01:36:05.300It's possible that you got to this poem and you were like, ah, there's dragons and monsters and witches and gods.
01:36:11.500And then the first thing that happens is we sit around in Ithaca with this kid who's kind of not sure about what he wants to do with his life.
01:36:22.400So he's trying to gain a certain amount of manhood and maturity.
01:36:27.540Penelope, meanwhile, yeah, is waiting for Odysseus.
01:36:31.280She's a famous model of devotion, but she's also human.
01:36:34.780And everyone in this poem is beautifully human.
01:36:37.360So she is trying to stave off the suitors with this famous trick of weaving and unweaving a burial shroud.
01:36:46.620And then she's also, yeah, this very beautiful symbol of how she's a match for him because he's famous for his matis, his cunning, and his intelligence, basically.
01:36:57.920She has that same amount of kind of deceitfulness, but also wiles and smarts.
01:37:05.220And when they finally meet, he's in disguise.
01:37:16.360And they have this gorgeous reconciliation scene where she practically melts into his arms when he finally proves that he knows the secret of their marriage, which is that their bed is carved out of a tree that she asked him to move.
01:37:30.340So there's this, there are all of these moments that are really cinematic and offer a great kind
01:37:36.100of palette for a director like Nolan to work with. There's also a lot of wordplay and kind of the
01:37:43.460plot, but on purpose, twists around. The word that Homer uses at the beginning for Odysseus is he's
01:37:49.460polytropos, he's many-wayed, he has many ways and wanderings, and the plot itself loops back over
01:37:55.540onto itself. So there's also stuff that maybe if you're coming to it for the first time, you're
01:37:59.900Like, I thought this was about a king and a queen, and now I'm kind of wandering about in Pylos and Sparta with all these random characters.
01:38:09.160But what I would say, if you're getting into reading it for the first time, is, like, bear with him for the first four books.
01:38:17.040There are 24 books or chapters of the poem.
01:38:19.520And just keep an eye on Homer's great theme, which is the man.
01:39:36.660Like, just I'm so in for this writer, the shut up and sing, the shut up and act writer that you want to put on contracts completely.
01:39:43.620They've done so much damage to people who are already fed up and understandably.
01:39:49.300right because like i always think about rachel rachel zegler in snow white this disastrous
01:39:55.220uh disney remake and you know zegler snow white is famously very very white zegler is not all
01:40:02.340that white so so people were kind of raising their eyebrows at that but more than that and much more
01:40:07.220importantly she doesn't like the source material she was giving these interviews saying oh it's
01:40:11.780it's misogynist and it doesn't like women in power and it's all about keeping women down so
01:40:16.900So that, combined with the fact that these racial recastings only ever go in one direction, and you're kind of ashamed for noticing this, right?
01:40:30.160I think that's driven people a little bit crazy.0.59
01:40:33.380And I understand that, like, now whenever somebody does this, they think, oh, no, here we go again.
01:40:38.440And with The Odyssey, which is such an incredible work of art and such a foundational work of Western literature, it's a very tender sore spot, right?0.94
01:40:46.780Like, you're going to take this thing and you're just going to drag it through the muck and you're going to tell me that it's evil and you're going to give me your stupid modern take on it.0.82
01:40:54.940You know, so I think that's what people are worried about.0.76
01:40:57.540And I think that that got blown a little bit out of proportion because Nolan is not doing that at all in this movie.
01:41:04.220He makes some changes to the source material so you can like or not like, but none of them is designed to undermine the poem or to tell you you're wrong and racist for liking it.
01:41:14.240it's the actors who kind of mouthed off and it's the controversy that got kicked up around the
01:41:20.620poem that stuff you know lupita nyong'o who is one of the people that talked about oh homer0.87
01:41:25.580doesn't like women or whatever um you know she she's a great actress and she gives a really
01:41:31.280interesting performance in this and she's really her part is really like a vanishingly small part
01:41:37.240of the movie as are a lot of the other things that people got um upset and mad about and nolan
01:41:42.620really does which not a lot of directors have done he really does put the story on screen he
01:41:48.420gives you matt damon as the smartest soldier around tormented guy making his way back home
01:41:55.100and he gives you anne hathaway in the best performance i've ever seen her give
01:41:58.480who is good unlike a lot of other penelopes that have been on screen she really does
01:42:03.540want odysseus back she loves him she's of course conflicted she's confused and in pain but she
01:42:09.320passionately loves him and is waiting for him and it's just a very moving story so
01:42:13.100i i don't know i think nolan does a really great job the book is better because the book's always
01:42:19.200better than the movie but it's that's something that you know you can kind of talk about when you
01:42:24.120see the movie the the woke takeover stuff is what everyone was really afraid of and that just
01:42:29.380doesn't happen it's just not in this movie which is great yeah you know one of my favorite poets
01:42:33.940you're gonna lose a lot of respect for me it's dr seuss no one of my favorite one of my favorite
01:42:39.140favorite uh uh poets is edgar allen poe and and his you like him because i just read something that
01:42:46.880said uh most people you know especially in that era all of the critics all of the other poets
01:42:55.180except for a few over in england they all thought he was trash oh poo this is snobbery this is just
01:43:02.460sheer people like edgar allen poe and that's why critics look down on him i think i mean they think0.82
01:43:08.860of him as trash or entertainment and because it's fun you know because it's exciting and people like
01:43:13.840it then they'd say oh he's not really a great poet he's not a sophisticated literary artist
01:43:18.920there are sophisticated great poets who are difficult to understand but poe is incredible
01:43:23.300and he's a beautiful wordsmith so is dr seuss by the way a genius yeah no i know it's impossible
01:43:28.640to do what dr seuss does anyway yeah yes okay so okay um can you tell me there is um while we're
01:43:35.400here on ancient culture except for the poe thing ai is now helping us unroll ancient scrolls that
01:43:42.280we haven't had access to can do you know anything about this can you talk to me about this and
01:43:47.400what's happening and what we're finding i love this story so this is like i'm not used to um
01:43:55.260people being interested in things that i'm passionate about because i'm a classicist
01:43:59.260so the fact that there's this big movie about the uh odyssey and this major ai story about
01:44:05.300classics oh no you're nerding out this is your weekend i'm just this is my like this is my
01:44:10.040moment i am just like put me in coach um right so but this is a genuinely awesome story and it's
01:44:16.520awesome for about a zillion different reasons um these scrolls that you're talking about were
01:44:21.820buried under the ash of vesuvius you remember mount vesuvius it exploded erupted and buried
01:44:28.760Pompeii and there was another city Herculaneum and so obviously there's like incredible stuff
01:44:34.340preserved there a lot of dead bodies for one thing but in addition in the 18th century they0.95
01:44:40.420found this villa with a library and it's not like today where you can just be a schmuck like me and0.94
01:44:46.440have a big shelf of books behind you it's like very few people had were wealthy enough to have0.74
01:44:51.540large collections of books and so there's a lot of stuff in there that might be lost that is lost
01:44:57.220from the ancient world that we could recover and it's tantalizing because they're baked into these
01:45:02.880carbonized chunks basically they're like they're like charcoal basically and so for centuries people
01:45:08.200have been trying to figure out how to read them how to read what's inside them without destroying
01:45:12.200them or just making them crumble to a million pieces it's like an indiana jones type thing you
01:45:17.880know if you touch it it falls apart and there have been all sorts of different mechanical efforts to
01:45:22.560do this um including most recently and this was when i was in grad school people were shooting
01:45:26.660them with x-rays, very highly powerful x-rays that can see inside the layers without touching
01:45:34.040the scrolls or doing damage to them. But it's really, really hard to figure out once you have
01:45:38.540the x-ray images, how you're supposed to basically arrange them, virtually unroll them, they say,
01:45:45.540to make them lie flat so you can read them and see what's on them. And that's what AI has now
01:45:52.540helped people to do there's this project called vesuvius project which is funded by a tech
01:45:57.540investor where you get a prize if you can do this with one of the scrolls and they just recently
01:46:02.660figured out how to do it with a complete scroll so you can just look inside into the past into
01:46:08.420these priceless treasures using the help of ai but not and this is really important i know we've
01:46:12.840talked about this before the ai is not reading the scrolls so it's not guessing what letters
01:46:18.120are there it's it doesn't even know any greek if that makes sense there's no there's no language
01:46:23.620built into the it's just showing us what it is exactly yeah and then the people come along and
01:46:29.100they they read the the stuff that's in there so okay right now all right like yeah the one
01:46:35.080disappointing thing is right now it's just i'm sorry go ahead oh i'm sorry it's such a hassle
01:46:39.780uh i gotta do a one minute commercial and then we'll come back um let me tell you about uh rough
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01:47:43.080Oh, well, right now, sorry to say, a bunch of philosophy. The hope, there's all these scrolls left to unroll. We could find stuff by Aristotle. We could find poems that were missing, like Ennius, the great Roman, the great Latin poet.
01:47:59.720But we have a tiny sliver of literature from this period.
01:48:06.300We've got, you know, seven plays by Aeschylus, which is just a miniature portion of what he wrote.
01:56:30.620And when I started The Blaze, I told my staff a year before as we were getting ready to,
01:56:37.160as I was explaining what Torch, I'm sorry, when I started The Torch,
01:56:41.160as I was explaining what I was going to do with Torch and why I was making this move in my career,
01:56:48.520I said, and we're changing the entertainment and enlightenment.
01:56:53.220And I know a few people who have been on my staff forever went, oh, what is he doing? He's gone insane.
01:56:58.760And I said, we're adding one word, empowerment, because that's what the next phase, which I'm in now, the last phase of my career has to be about.
01:59:30.440But I think even more empowering is, okay, that's a really good idea.
01:59:42.920And if we do this and this and this, I think we can accomplish it.
01:59:47.300And if we start thinking that way, even just for ourselves, not just for the people that we're trying to motivate around us, and if you're a manager or you're a leader of people, thinking that way, it's so subtle. I'm not even sure my daughter noticed it.
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02:07:46.320I am going to be working on our behalf.
02:07:48.640I am going to be telling the stories on our behalf.
02:07:52.340And you better believe I'm going to be doing it with a little bit of joy, a little bit of enthusiasm, a little bit of energy and a little bit of stick it to them.
02:08:12.480But I kind of want her to be in because I want her just to be on the Senate floor and just go, you're going to live down in a van by the river.1.00