The Megyn Kelly Show - House Kicks off Biden Investigation, FBI and 1⧸6, and the Life of a Writer, with Andrew Klavan and Doug Brunt

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today is a day of firsts.

00:00:16.440 Later in the show, good old Doug Brunt, the man who married me, will be joining us for the first

00:00:22.860 time. And I married him right back to discuss his new hit podcast, Dedicated with Doug Brunt.

00:00:28.780 It's doing really well. I'm so proud of him. And maybe we'll take some of your calls.

00:00:33.520 How fun will that be? Yay. Okay, but we're going to start with the news. Nancy Pelosi expected to

00:00:40.580 announce any minute that her plans to pass the torch to the next generation of leadership are in motion.

00:00:47.740 But instead of retiring, she's going to stay on to help guide Hakeem Jeffries as the Democrats'

00:00:53.920 next House leader. So she's no longer going to be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It's official.

00:00:59.100 The Republicans have won the House. And what a moment. It was quite a moment. Meantime,

00:01:04.540 House Republicans held a press conference earlier this morning announcing an investigation into

00:01:08.360 President Joe Biden for his alleged involvement in his son Hunter's foreign business dealings.

00:01:13.840 That took no time at all. It's the first sign of what's to come when the GOP takes over the House

00:01:18.460 in the next session. Plus, there are stories about the Trump raid at Mar-a-Lago, January 6th,

00:01:26.180 and how it happened, and the FBI that we are now conveniently learning, only that the midterms

00:01:33.100 are over. Oh, yes, the mainstream media is suddenly interested in reporting on all those things

00:01:37.060 now that we're post the midterms. Joining me now to discuss it all, Andrew Klavan,

00:01:41.980 bestselling author and host of The Andrew Klavan Show. Andrew, welcome back. How are you?

00:01:46.780 Great to see you, Megan. I'm doing good. So let's just take this moment because I know it's been a

00:01:51.460 tough week plus for a lot of Republicans who wanted to see a more sweeping result last Tuesday. But

00:01:56.740 Nancy Pelosi being forced out of the speakership role and having to pass no baton because she

00:02:02.760 doesn't have the gavel anymore. It won't when the new Congress is sworn in. It's quite a moment,

00:02:07.600 right? She's the left's queen and it's over for her. Yeah. And she's look, she was very good at what

00:02:13.500 she did, as her daughter memorably said of her. She could, I think, cut your head off and you

00:02:17.700 wouldn't even know she'd done it. She was a very talented speaker. Most of her strategy had to do

00:02:24.300 with turning the ratchet. You know, she realized that the leftist ratchet only moves in one direction.

00:02:29.700 So if she could bring in a bunch of, you know, Democrats who look like they might be kind of

00:02:35.200 conservative and then force them to vote with her, they might get voted out the next time. But the

00:02:39.620 program, such as Obamacare and other things like that, we're not going to go away. She knows that

00:02:43.720 once you give something for free or supposedly for free to people, they're not going to get rid of it.

00:02:48.740 So she was a really clever leader. It is a big victory to get rid of her. Although at this, her age,

00:02:54.580 I mean, she was going to go eventually anyway. So she's really had a successful career as an evil

00:03:00.380 Bond villain. And I'm glad to see her go, but I'm sorry it didn't happen 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years

00:03:07.560 ago. You know, it's just it is a lucky thing, a lucky thing that the Republicans managed to hold

00:03:15.140 on by a fingernail. And when, you know, the red wave essentially turned out to be one guy like

00:03:21.120 waving from the House that they had gotten just barely a majority. But it's something and hopefully

00:03:26.740 it's going to do more than just start investigations. Hopefully it's going to bring a build back better

00:03:31.180 to a standstill. That's funny. Yes. It's like four New Yorkers waving from their respective

00:03:36.560 districts. That's it. OK, so meanwhile, speaking of investigations already, we have one. One was

00:03:45.660 announced in detail this morning by Representative Comer and Jim Jordan as well, saying these are a

00:03:53.240 couple of highlights. I'm going to play a soundbite. They said they've spoken with multiple

00:03:56.020 whistleblowers about Joe Biden's foreign business dealings with his son, Hunter. They say Biden told

00:04:03.940 the American people he had nothing to do with and never had conversations with his family, Joe Biden,

00:04:08.580 this is about their business dealings, quote, that was a lie. Joe Biden is, quote, the big guy

00:04:14.800 referenced in these emails that we've seen about their foreign business dealings and cutting him

00:04:19.140 in on a piece of these deals and actually says the evidence that we've seen raises troubling questions

00:04:25.040 about whether President Biden is a national security risk and about whether he is compromised

00:04:31.000 by foreign governments. There's a headline for you. Here's a little bit more.

00:04:36.280 Joe Biden told the American people he had nothing to do with and never had conversations with his

00:04:41.260 family about their business dealings. That was a lie. He personally participated in meetings and phone

00:04:48.780 calls. Documents show that he's a partner with access to an office. To be clear, Joe Biden is the big

00:04:58.780 doctor. This evidence raises troubling questions about whether President Biden is a national security

00:05:04.620 and about whether he is compromised by foreign government. And the president's participation

00:05:10.960 in enriching his family is, in a word, abuse of the highest order. This is an investigation of Joe

00:05:18.100 Biden, the president of the United States, and why he lied to the American people.

00:05:21.680 Hmm. I mean, those are strong. Those are strong words. And I realize these are Republicans who don't

00:05:26.700 like Joe Biden, but those are very strong things to say if you have no evidence. And they claim they

00:05:30.680 have whistleblowers on the record. I don't know. Some on the left and even some of the right are like,

00:05:35.320 oh, don't waste the people's time with these investigations. I don't think I agree with that.

00:05:40.680 I think I really I would like to know just how involved he is with Ukraine and China and others

00:05:47.200 on Hunter's business deals. You know, investigations can get tiresome. Sometimes you feel like they never

00:05:52.840 go anywhere. Nobody ever gets indicted. Nobody ever gets accused of anything. It's just this endless

00:05:57.240 array of soundbites. But yeah, I agree with you on this one. I mean, one of the things that has been

00:06:02.440 so disturbing in the last two, three, four years has been the fact that so many conspiracy theories,

00:06:09.520 what sounded like nutbag right wing conspiracy theories have turned out to be exactly true.

00:06:15.060 You know, where the COVID disease came from, all these things. The Hunter Biden laptop was supposed

00:06:20.360 to be Russian disinformation. We were told this by over 50 former intelligence, high ranking

00:06:27.480 intelligence officials. You were knocked off. The New York Post was knocked off Twitter, silenced for

00:06:33.020 reporting on it. All turned out to be true. Every single word of it turned out to be true. And all of those

00:06:37.800 intelligence officers, some of whom had been the leaders of the CIA, were lying to us in order to

00:06:43.060 win an election for the Democrats. That's a pretty big conspiracy. That's a pretty ugly conspiracy,

00:06:48.400 especially when you throw in the fact that Donald Trump was impeached for asking about it, for asking

00:06:54.420 the Ukrainians to look into it when it turns out to be quite, you know, factual and really damaging.

00:07:00.560 All of this stuff about Biden being the big guy sounds very, very plausible. The fact that his family

00:07:06.300 has been influence peddling for as long as he has been in office is incredibly plausible. And it does

00:07:12.700 compromise him in his dealings with people overseas, especially with the Chinese and with

00:07:19.420 the Ukrainians. I mean, it really makes us question where his interests lie. And I think it's just at this

00:07:24.720 point, there was almost nothing a right wing crazy person can say that doesn't turn out to be the case

00:07:30.580 because the press is so in the bag for the Democrats that they allow them to lie and lie and lie.

00:07:34.960 I mean, I was just, I was depressed watching Biden talking to Xi Jinping when I realized that they

00:07:41.480 agree on so many of the things that damage America, you know, when they agree on climate change as being

00:07:47.320 some kind of existential crisis that demands that the United States, but no one else should hamper

00:07:52.460 their energy when they agree on transgender issues, that people, that children should be talked

00:07:58.280 into hurting themselves and butchering themselves because this week they feel like they might be

00:08:03.840 the wrong sex. You know, Biden's interests are not this country's interests. You know, in a broad sense,

00:08:10.800 I'm not saying he is actually trying to undermine the country. I'm saying the things he believes are in fact

00:08:15.620 damaging to the country. And it's absolutely fair to ask how many of those things are aligned with his

00:08:21.820 financial interests, especially when we know that Hunter Biden has used him repeatedly, that we know that

00:08:27.840 Biden has attended meetings that had to do with Hunter Biden's interests. And we know what Hunter Biden is.

00:08:32.360 We know he's corrupt. He's not just the kind of drunk, you know, bad boy in the family. He is part of a

00:08:38.140 central Biden enterprise, which is influence peddling. So at this point, there's been so much

00:08:44.440 censorship. There's been so much, so many lies. The press itself is so corrupt and has backed the

00:08:50.440 Democrats in every lie they've told that there's no conspiracy theory that we can dismiss out of hand.

00:08:56.140 And that's a very, very damaging place for America to be. You know, speaking of the press,

00:09:02.360 OK, and and conspiracy theories, there is a report out today in the New York. Well, not today. It came

00:09:08.880 out earlier this week in The New York Times. The headline is FBI had informants in Proud Boys,

00:09:15.160 court papers suggest this is on the heels of other information that the FBI also had people inside the

00:09:22.180 so-called oath keepers. These are two groups accused of planning the January 6th riot.

00:09:28.620 The Democrats would say insurrection, sedition. They use the term. And now it's coming out. It's not to

00:09:34.980 say they did it all. We saw there were, I don't know, thousands of people at that on Capitol Hill

00:09:41.220 that day. But these are the two groups that they're really going after now in court, the Proud Boys and

00:09:46.280 the Oath Keepers as having planned this thing. And now it comes out post-election that the FBI had some

00:09:55.040 unknown, as many as eight informants inside the Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the

00:10:02.900 Capitol. So the FBI had eight agents in the group. They now claim in court plotted the January 6th riot.

00:10:11.100 They would say sedition, insurrection. And they did nothing. Why? Why not? They're they're talking

00:10:20.640 about like the defense lawyers are the ones who are raising this because they're saying that there was

00:10:25.520 no plot to do anything other than march on the Capitol. There was no plot to hurt anybody. And if

00:10:33.340 there had been, the FBI would have been jumping up and down about it because they had eight people

00:10:37.560 in our group. To me, it's just interesting that all along, if you said anything about the FBI being

00:10:45.960 involved in January 6th, that you were called a conspiracy theorist, you were called a nutcase. And now we

00:10:52.280 find out again from the New York Times, at least eight informants were inside the Proud Boys in the

00:10:58.020 months surrounding the storming of the Capitol. One guy who was about to take the stand at the Oath Keepers

00:11:06.220 trial. That's already underway. Another group, they're already being tried for plotting January 6th. One of the

00:11:12.400 FBI informants was about to get called. His name is Greg McWhorter by the defense so that, you know, he could be

00:11:20.520 asked about this very stuff on the eve of his planned appearance. He had a heart attack. And now we're not sure

00:11:27.440 whether this guy is going to be able. It's all very strange and it smells bad. And really, there are still a lot more

00:11:35.580 questions to ask and have answered about the FBI's role in this event that the Democrats have been

00:11:41.620 touting over and over and over and over and over again, ever since it happened. What do you make of it?

00:11:47.380 Well, you know, you ask a really good question if you use your imagination. First of all, the FBI's

00:11:52.240 reputation is in shreds. I mean, after the Russian collusion idea, after everything we found out about

00:11:58.040 the lies they told to the FISA court in order to listen in on Americans' conversations,

00:12:03.180 actions, the fact that they knew that the Steele dossier wasn't real, but they continued to push

00:12:07.820 it and investigate it and hold it up. The FBI reputation is in shreds. And the fact that

00:12:12.300 Christopher Wray, who claims that they had nothing to do with the January 6th riots, is still in place

00:12:18.080 is really damaging, I think, to the institution, which used to be, you know, for periods of time has

00:12:23.740 been quite a respectable law enforcement agency. But just use your imagination. You ask the question,

00:12:29.500 why didn't they stop this from happening? If the Proud Boys were actually planning an insurrection,

00:12:35.200 if they actually had plans, and nothing about January 6th looked planned to me, but if they

00:12:39.060 had plans, why didn't the FBI stop it before it endangered anybody inside the Capitol? If they

00:12:46.200 didn't stop it, then we have to sit back and use our imaginations and say they had eight guys.

00:12:50.900 I mean, the Proud Boys is not a vast organization. They had eight guys in there.

00:12:55.040 Everybody's saying, oh boy, here we go. We're going to storm the Capitol.

00:12:58.840 What were they saying? What were these eight guys who were pretending to be Proud Boys saying,

00:13:03.640 you know, when everybody was saying, let's storm the Capitol? Were they saying, oh no, let's not?

00:13:07.600 Or were they saying, yes, let's go? In which case, they were inciting a riot. They were actually part

00:13:12.140 of what happened on January 6th. And everything that happens after that begins to look a lot like

00:13:16.900 entrapment. I want to say, I'm not a fan of the Proud Boys. I'm not a fan of street fighting politics,

00:13:22.720 but they are a reactionary group. They tend to react to Antifa. They tend to react to violence

00:13:28.940 that's already going on. And the idea of them actually rubbing their hands together and plotting

00:13:33.840 to invade the Capitol to stop the election from being certified doesn't really fit with their

00:13:38.120 profile. We know from the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy, we know the FBI has a tendency

00:13:46.440 to go in and incite these guys to do things so they can arrest them. At this point, it's just

00:13:51.900 very suspicious. And again, as I say, given the information crisis that we're in and the way that

00:13:57.700 the Democrats have manipulated that information crisis, no, no conspiracy theory is beyond belief.

00:14:03.340 No, I mean, because of the many lies that they tell, it's like if they would be more straightforward,

00:14:08.720 people would be less conspiratorial. That's the same thing with COVID. The this guy, McWhorter,

00:14:13.920 who had the heart attack, Greg McWhorter. So he was a government. He was an FBI informant.

00:14:19.020 He was implanted or with the Oath Keepers. He was their vice president, but it was secretly

00:14:24.460 reporting to the FBI. By the way, he's the one who had the heart attack on the way to testify,

00:14:29.620 allegedly only 40 years old. OK, so and no. And this trial is underway. We don't know whether

00:14:35.420 they're going to wrap it up. Are they going to be able to get testimony from this guy?

00:14:38.160 The government did not call him. Why wouldn't the government call their own informant who was

00:14:43.460 embedded in the group to tell us all about what the group was doing, how they were plotting the

00:14:47.460 January 6th insurrection? Well, they didn't. It was the defense that called McWhorter. And then he

00:14:53.520 had the heart attack on the way to testify. It's all very sketchy. All right. I mean, you write crime

00:14:58.120 novels, you know, this is like this could appear in one of your novels. So and he was the second

00:15:04.960 known FBI confidential source. There was another guy named Abdullah Rashid, a former Oath Keeper from

00:15:12.520 West Virginia who told the jury he became alarmed by the violent language that another Oath Keeper was

00:15:18.100 using prior to the riot and that he provided the FBI with a recording of the call. This guy testified

00:15:25.020 the more I listened to this call, it sounded like we were going to go to war against the U.S.

00:15:28.860 government. Officials at the FBI, quoting from The New York Times on November 8th, officials at the FBI

00:15:34.300 did not respond to Mr. Rashid's initial attempts to contact them, only reached out to him after

00:15:41.260 January 6th after. So it's like, what is the FBI doing? It's going to be very hard for them,

00:15:48.580 I think. I don't I haven't been paying close attention the day in, day out of this trial.

00:15:52.400 But if their case rests on proving that this was a pre a plot that was preformed before the day of to

00:16:01.180 go in there and cause an insurrection and storm the Capitol and use violence against our public officials

00:16:05.960 to stop the certification of the vote, it's it doesn't line up with we didn't even bother to return

00:16:11.440 the guy's phone call, our own informant.

00:16:15.220 You know, it's also really disturbing. You mentioned this before that none of this comes out until after the

00:16:21.200 midterms. You know, none of it, all of that time leading up to the midterms, the Democrats were staging

00:16:26.800 that show trial about January 6th, and it was all one side. Anybody who wanted to disagree with the

00:16:31.700 narrative was actually kicked off the committee. You know, and all of the time that the Russian

00:16:36.620 collusion story was going on, we've heard all of these anonymous sources. I mean, I'm old enough to

00:16:41.660 remember when an anonymous source was something you used only with cautious care, because it meant that

00:16:45.920 the reader, the consumer of news couldn't tell what the source's interests were. We couldn't tell if he

00:16:52.200 was, you know, lying or had motive to lie. We couldn't tell anything about him. He was just a

00:16:56.420 voice. All through the Russian collusion story, we had all of these FBI sources, these intelligence

00:17:01.680 sources, which we then learned with the Hunter Biden story, we're capable of lying in order to

00:17:06.040 support Democrat rule. Now, this story is coming out after the midterms. All of a sudden, all of these

00:17:12.200 right wing conspiracies are in doubt. It's a question of whether these guys were, you know,

00:17:17.920 being egged on by the FBI, by the feds. It's just, it's just so disturbing. I mean, the corruption

00:17:25.140 in the press, which to me is one of the worst things, if not the worst thing that's happening

00:17:30.120 in the country, the utter corruption of the press, the absolute embrace, embracing of corruption,

00:17:35.800 the idea that no, we're not supposed to be objective. We have to tell the higher truth,

00:17:39.720 which is whatever they happen to believe. I think it is just impossible. It is impossible to get the

00:17:45.540 kind of information that citizens need to make good decisions about who is doing what. You know,

00:17:51.320 I have all kinds of, you know, arguments with this Republican or that Republican, but the power,

00:17:58.840 the cultural power of a Democrat party aligned with the FBI, aligned with corporations, aligned with

00:18:06.120 Hollywood, aligned with, you know, the media and the academy. And the intel agencies. It's just

00:18:12.680 appalling. Yeah. In the intelligence operation, it's just appalling. Think about it because

00:18:16.600 they had testimony by the FBI director on Tuesday, Director Chris Ray testified in front of the House

00:18:25.420 Homeland Security Committee. And he was questioned about the extent of the FBI's involvement in the

00:18:31.660 January 6th riot. Okay. And we have actually a side of this queued up. Listen to how that went in

00:18:37.880 part. Saw three. Did the FBI have confidential human sources embedded within the January 6th protesters

00:18:47.600 on January 6th of 2021? Well, Congressman, as I'm sure you can appreciate, I have to be very careful

00:18:55.640 about what I can say about when. Even now, because that's what you told us two years ago.

00:19:00.800 May I finish? About when we do and do not and where we have and have not used confidential human

00:19:06.120 sources. But to the extent that there's a suggestion, for example, that the FBI's confidential human

00:19:12.540 sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6th, that's categorically false.

00:19:18.860 Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6th

00:19:25.020 prior to the doors being opened? Again, I had to be very careful. It should be a no.

00:19:30.040 Can you not tell the American people? No, we did not have confidential human sources dressed

00:19:35.400 as Trump supporters positioned inside the Capitol. Gentlemen, time has expired. You should not read

00:19:40.580 anything into my decision not to share information. Director Ray, gentlemen's time has expired.

00:19:48.060 That was Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins. Interesting exchange, right?

00:19:51.760 Oh, incredible. Especially when you think about poor AOC hiding under the desk in fear of her life.

00:19:57.940 You know, what were these guys doing if they were inside the Capitol? You know, the fact, you know,

00:20:04.300 when they were having those January 6th hearings, I wouldn't even talk about it on my show because I

00:20:08.740 don't think it's a I don't think it's a new story. If you have a trial without a defense,

00:20:12.780 I don't think it's a new story. Yeah. Why would I even echo it? And it's almost impossible. It's

00:20:19.280 just human nature, no matter what you believe, to not say, well, there's no defense, but certain

00:20:25.020 information is coming out. As far as I was concerned, no information is coming out because

00:20:28.960 if you don't get to cross question people, you can't get at the truth of things. What you just saw

00:20:32.960 there was, again, you know, that that guy should be out on his ear. I mean, not because he has done

00:20:38.940 anything wrong, but he because he is has presided over this period of obvious corruption and

00:20:44.640 dishonesty among the FBI and so should be replaced with a reformer leader. You know, something went

00:20:52.120 terribly wrong with the FBI after 9-11, I think that it was really given a new brief to take it away

00:20:59.080 from the crime and to take it into what I don't know what you call it, intelligence terrorism. You know,

00:21:04.920 it was given a sort of new intelligence brief. It kind of became an intelligence instead of a

00:21:09.880 or at least mingled intelligence with its law enforcement capabilities. And it's lost its way.

00:21:15.800 It has entirely lost its way. And you have to bring in a new broom to sweep it clean. These are the

00:21:20.680 things that are going to be on the ballot in two years, should have been on the ballot in this last

00:21:26.860 midterm. And it's the kind of stuff that I don't know. For me, it trumps almost everything else.

00:21:32.020 It trumps, you know, inflation and crime. We cannot trust our government anymore. And I really

00:21:37.520 don't believe we can. I'm like the last person. The reason this is so aggravating for me is I'm

00:21:43.200 the opposite of a conspiracy theory person. You know, I believe Harvey Oswald killed JFK.

00:21:48.580 I'm like the opposite of a conspiracy theorist. But this is a moment when the lies are so intense and

00:21:54.520 the power to spread lies is so vast that I think we all have to be a little bit of conspiracy

00:22:01.320 theorist just to keep abreast of what's going on. I keep questioning. Well, so as I mentioned,

00:22:05.460 the Oathkeeper trial is underway. The Proud Boy trial is about to take place. And what the reason

00:22:12.160 we know about all these informants, as many as eight, again, citing the New York Times,

00:22:17.320 is as follows, quote, the existence of the informants came to light over the past few days

00:22:21.440 in a flurry of veiled court filings by defense lawyers for five members of the Proud Boys who are

00:22:27.100 set to go on trial next month on seditious conspiracy charges connected to the Capitol

00:22:31.000 attack. In the paper, some of which were heavily redacted, the lawyers claimed that some of the

00:22:35.880 information the confidential sources had provided to the government was favorable to their efforts

00:22:40.920 to defend their clients. This is the defense saying, hey, you you government had good information

00:22:44.680 for us and you should have given it to us. And, quote, it was improperly withheld by prosecutors

00:22:50.280 until several days ago. The prosecutors responded that information was neither suppressed nor relevant

00:22:58.000 to the case. Ultimately, it was produced. So I think they did have to concede it was it was relevant.

00:23:06.120 Otherwise, it would not have been produced. And so you've got them not coming clean about the

00:23:11.480 informants. You've got the same situation happening over in the Oathkeeper's case. You've got the director

00:23:17.440 of the FBI refusing to even say whether he had he had FBI agents dressed as Trump supporters inside the

00:23:24.420 Capitol. This is one of the issues that they're debating on January 6th where, you know, some of these

00:23:28.520 guys in their defense trials and their their trials are saying I was let in. The guy was like waving me

00:23:32.560 in. Who did that? Right. Why would they do that? And on top of all of it, you got this January 6th show

00:23:39.640 trial commission that's been trying only one side of the case. There is no representation for Donald

00:23:46.400 Trump or anybody else. And and here's the cherry on top of this Sunday, Andrew. Again, post the

00:23:52.900 midterms, we get this report from NBC News, which will shock you. Not at all. Here's the headline.

00:24:00.840 Jan 6th committee staffers told preliminary plan for final report will focus largely on Trump,

00:24:07.480 not on law enforcement failures, sources say. And they go on to describe that they had several teams

00:24:14.300 amongst the investigators on the Jan 6th committee. The blue team examined the preparedness and

00:24:19.560 response of law enforcement agencies. The green team investigated fundraising around Jan 6th.

00:24:24.900 The purple team looked at the rise of domestic extremism in the U.S. And then there's the gold

00:24:29.660 team, which focused on, you know who, Donald Trump. Only the gold team is going to get any of its work

00:24:37.960 reflected in the final report, despite the fact that they have reportedly on these these other teams

00:24:44.680 that have looked at, for example, the Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies done

00:24:48.480 over 100 interviews and depositions with officials from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security,

00:24:55.400 the Pentagon, the D.C. and Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies.

00:24:58.960 The final report, notwithstanding, seems to be shaping up to be, quote, all Trump.

00:25:05.800 They have gone in another direction. Some of these committee staffers who spent more than a year on

00:25:09.680 the other pieces of the investigation are reportedly upset, quote, heartbroken and very frustrated that

00:25:15.920 over a year of their work is about to be wasted on what is clearly a political decision.

00:25:22.500 So they're throwing out anything having to do with law enforcement failures that day.

00:25:27.120 They'll only zero in on the man. It's all about Trump. It's just every this is why people really

00:25:32.800 believe when Trump says the whole system's rigged. It's very easy to believe.

00:25:37.800 I I real in shock to hear all this, but I have to say that, you know, this is jet fuel for Trump.

00:25:44.820 What the what the Democrats have wagered on, they have wagered on the idea that Trump is annoying

00:25:50.440 enough and boorish enough that their charges will override the people's the people who love Trump love

00:25:58.560 him because of this. They love him because of his enemies. They love him because they know he's being

00:26:02.820 lied about. They know he's being attacked. They know he's being treated unfairly. And it may it gives

00:26:07.200 him a certain, you know, or a certain glow of being, you know, how can I say it? A truth teller,

00:26:14.280 a fighter for truth who is being put put upon by all of these powerful forces. And these are the

00:26:20.620 same powerful forces who've been telling ordinary Americans for 50, 60 years that their country's

00:26:25.840 garbage, they're racist, they're sexist, they're phobic in this way and that. These are the same

00:26:29.920 people who've been yelling at all these Americans that they're deplorable are now yelling at Trump,

00:26:34.520 which gives Trump the ability to say they're not after me. They're after you. I'm just in the way,

00:26:38.780 which is one of the best, smartest things he ever said. And so that basically, you know,

00:26:43.760 encourages people to vote for Trump, to cling to Trump, to stick with him no matter what he does.

00:26:49.300 And what the Democrats are betting is, yes, they will do that. But he has a ceiling of 40 percent

00:26:53.820 support and 30 to 40 percent support. And we can get everybody else and win. Now, looking at some

00:27:00.300 of these midterms, I don't think Trump was entirely to blame. And we're not going to know who was to

00:27:04.680 blame unless the GOP does an autopsy. And I'm not sure they even will. I'm not sure they even have

00:27:09.680 the courage of mind to do an autopsy and find out why their red wave disappeared. But some of it was

00:27:15.740 Trump. Some of it certainly. Just looking at the voting patterns, the way that people split their

00:27:20.740 votes, some of it was just distaste with Trump. They were ready. Voters were ready to face inflation.

00:27:26.240 They were ready to face crime. They were ready to face the disorder that happened over the summer of

00:27:30.780 2020 with the Democrats' support and encouragement and incitement. They were ready to face all that.

00:27:35.580 They just wanted Trump out of the picture. He wasn't even on the ballot. But just the idea

00:27:40.420 that people were going to support his idea that the election had been stolen was enough for some

00:27:45.120 of those candidates to go down. The Democrats had supported those candidates, supported those

00:27:49.860 Republican candidates who were in favor of Stop the Steal, hoping they would go down and the Democrat

00:27:54.140 strategy worked. So even now, even now, the stuff that they're doing keeps Trump alive. It keeps him in

00:28:00.440 the picture. It keeps him in the game because the more they attack him, the more he becomes a hero to

00:28:05.400 his people. And their only bet, their only wager is that they can make more people disaffected with

00:28:12.260 Trump than they will make people stick with Trump. In some ways, so far, their strategy,

00:28:17.520 just judging by these midterms, has worked really well. And we can expect to see more of it

00:28:21.420 until it collapses, until people start to go in a different way, which may be DeSantis or maybe

00:28:26.600 something Trump does new.

00:28:27.600 Cue, you know, the whole thing's theater, right? So cue the stage right entry of Mike Pence,

00:28:34.140 who just released a book and is making the rounds this week. And, you know, I read part of what he

00:28:39.980 said in his book and what he did in his Wall Street Journal piece on the air. And I said publicly that it

00:28:45.680 was kind of heartbreaking for me to listen to him tell the story about going back in and talking with

00:28:51.340 Trump after Jan 6th and him reminding Trump that he was on the Capitol. He was at the Capitol with

00:28:57.660 his wife and his daughter when Trump tweeted out, you know, that stuff about Mike Pence as people

00:29:02.920 were chanting, hang Mike Pence. There's no question Trump behaved terribly that day. And it was sad to

00:29:09.160 me. I don't just the story of their relationship in one of his most loyal soldiers having his heart a

00:29:15.560 little broken by Trump, who really, let's face it, is loyal to no one. Anyway, so Pence is getting the

00:29:22.880 star treatment now from the left wing media. Why? Because he was the former vice president? No,

00:29:29.440 because he's ripping on Donald Trump. CNN did a whole town hall with him last night. And here is in part

00:29:36.880 why they did that. Here's the soundbite.

00:29:39.080 I think in the days ahead, whatever role I and my family play in the Republican Party,

00:29:46.560 whether it's as a candidate or simply a part of the cause, I think we'll have better choices,

00:29:51.580 better choices than my old running mate. I think America longs to go back to the policies that were

00:29:56.180 working for the American people. But I think it's time for new leadership.

00:30:02.480 You tell me, first of all, whether that's going to move the needle at all in Republican politics.

00:30:06.660 Well, not really. I mean, you know, I'm actually kind of a fan of Mike Pence in a way. He's not

00:30:13.240 exactly a sparkling personality. He's not, you know, Mr. Charisma or anything like that. But he

00:30:17.780 does have a tendency to say these, these kind of, you know, straightforward things. I actually believe

00:30:23.000 he's a man of faith, which I think is different than a lot of politicians. He has a way of saying

00:30:27.220 these kind of old fashioned things that turn out to be kind of prescient and smart. Like, you know,

00:30:31.920 when he said, I don't go to dinner with women alone, and everybody made fun of him. And right on the

00:30:36.640 heels of that came the Me Too movement, where we found out that guys who didn't act that way

00:30:40.600 actually acted in different ways that weren't very good at all. He stood up for Trump during

00:30:47.220 his administration. He was a loyal vice president. Everybody made fun of him for being oleaginous and

00:30:53.400 being kind of, you know, a sock up to Trump. But then when the moment came, when the moment came to

00:30:57.880 do what he had to do, he did it. He actually stood up for the country. And he may, you know, I don't

00:31:03.320 think January 6th was an insurrection. But I think that what Mike Pence did may well have saved

00:31:08.320 the Republic, that actually, if he had stopped that certification, that just and legal certification

00:31:14.680 of the election, I think it would have, the place would have just gone up in smoke. And I think he

00:31:20.140 was very brave and very principled in doing it. And so I have a lot of respect for him.

00:31:24.400 There ought to be a job. There's a job of people who have to go and inform, you know, the families of

00:31:30.200 soldiers that their soldier is missing in action. I think there ought to be a job of people who go

00:31:34.180 to politicians and explain to them that they're never going to be president. I don't think Mike

00:31:38.320 Pence is going to be president. I think he does think so. And that he's running. And that is the

00:31:42.360 reason, you know, that is ostensibly, arguably the reason why he is now saying that Trump, it's the

00:31:49.340 Trump day is over because he wants the Mike Pence day to begin. I just don't think he has the charisma.

00:31:54.200 I don't think he has the backing. I don't think he has the flair to become president. He's another one of

00:31:59.020 these guys like Jeb Bush or Tim Pawlenty, who somebody just sort of show up at his door and

00:32:03.540 ring the doorbell and say, I'm sorry to break this to you, you know, Jeb, but you're just not going

00:32:07.160 to be president because you're boring, you know? And I, it's like the reverse of publisher's

00:32:11.280 clearing house. Like, hello, you did not win and you can't. Exactly. You know, it's like, you're a

00:32:17.940 great guy and we love you. And you've got risen to the second highest role. Take the win,

00:32:23.540 take the win and go home. You know, I think that, I think the Pence, like I say, I have a lot of

00:32:28.100 respect for the man. I really do. I just think, you know, we ought to just leave the presidency

00:32:32.760 to those people who have the viciousness and the power and the charisma to win that, that election.

00:32:39.980 Well summed up. All right. Stand by, Andrew. I'm going to squeeze in a quick break. Much more to

00:32:43.060 discuss, including the latest on this guy, Sam Bankman-Fried from FTX and what he admitted

00:32:48.500 to a Vox reporter last night, which was absolutely stunning. If he has a lawyer, I'm sure that man or

00:32:54.800 woman is apoplectic with this guy at the moment. Stand by and we'll get to it.

00:33:01.820 Can we spend a minute on this guy, SBF, Sam Bankman-Fried? This guy, he's in a whole

00:33:08.080 load of trouble, a whole load of trouble. And just for our, our listeners and our viewers who

00:33:13.880 haven't been keeping up, he ran this company FTX. It was in the crypto market. He created his own

00:33:19.260 token FTT, which was then sold on his exchange FTX. They used another company he owned called Alameda

00:33:26.520 as like a hedge fund to push and create the market for this FTT token. Anyway, it's all come crashing

00:33:33.260 down. They said the company was worth 32 billion. Turns out he moved $10 billion worth of customer

00:33:40.480 funds from one company to cover losses in the other. A definite legal, no, no, hardcore, no,

00:33:47.080 no. And he got caught and at least one to $2 billion are now missing. We don't know where

00:33:52.300 they went. He's kind of blaming it on his on again, off again, ex-girlfriend who bragged about

00:33:57.080 not knowing math, who he put in charge of that hedge fund. It's the whole thing's a disaster.

00:34:01.720 But he was described as this wunderkind by the left wing media. He donated so much money to

00:34:07.460 left wing causes. And he was so he was celebrated as this ethical guy who was basically going to help

00:34:14.540 get Democrats elected and give all of his money to charity. Well, it turns out he's a disgrace.

00:34:21.520 This guy lost all the money. He's probably going to be arrested soon. He's in the Bahamas, but

00:34:25.080 they're talking about he's going to be shipped like he's a package back to the United States.

00:34:30.600 They're not using the word extradited. We do have an extradition treaty with the Bahamas. So

00:34:35.060 if we say we want him criminally, they're going to ship him back. But it looks like he may be getting

00:34:39.040 shipped back anyway. And now he's been sued. All these other celebrities who endorsed his product

00:34:45.000 have been sued. Giselle, Tom Brady, who's the amazing Steph Curry basketball player, Larry David.

00:34:52.360 They've all been sued by investors who said you helped him mislead us. And then he gives an

00:34:57.080 interview last night to Vox, one of the many places that did a fawning profile of him. OK, gives a I don't

00:35:03.360 know if you want to call it an interview. He had an on the record text exchange or DM exchange on

00:35:07.140 Twitter. And the senior writers named Kelsey Piper, they had the following DMs. All right. Just just

00:35:13.800 as a just to give you a sample of what he said. He said his past conciliatory statements, like when he

00:35:23.020 said last month that some amount of crypto regulation would be definitely good. He told this guy that was

00:35:29.060 just PR F regulators. They make everything worse. Then he went on to say, well, maybe it would be

00:35:34.660 good, but regulators can't do it. Then he says. OK, I didn't want to do sketchy stuff. There are huge

00:35:44.220 negative effects from it, and I didn't mean to. So he's kind of admitting he did, but his heart wasn't

00:35:49.760 in it, Andrew. Then Vox says to him. You were very good at talking about ethics for someone who kind of

00:35:58.640 saw it all as a game with winners and losers. And this is the money part. This guy, Sam, replies,

00:36:05.140 yeah, he he I had to be meaning really good about talking about ethics. I had to be. It's what

00:36:10.880 reputations are made of to some extent. I feel bad for those who get effed by it, by this dumb game.

00:36:16.860 We woke Westerners play where we all say the right shibboleths. And so everyone likes us shibboleth,

00:36:23.460 meaning some sort of shared value. So he's admitting that it was all BS, like all of his

00:36:29.740 stuff about his woke causes and how he's just going to give all of his money to the goodness

00:36:35.160 that it was all a bunch of baloney because he knew it's what the media and others wanted to hear to

00:36:40.460 give him all this money to run a company. He apparently had no business running and to be to

00:36:45.260 wind up in the cover of Forbes on the cover of Fortune, still fawning profiles in The New York

00:36:50.280 Times to this day because he gave $10 million to Biden last time around and over 40 million to

00:36:55.260 Democrats this time around. And now he's really doomed, in my opinion, because, you know, when he

00:37:01.100 said that thing about crypto should be regulated, that angered the rest of the crypto community who

00:37:07.140 then began to expose some of the things that he was doing, the way he was moving money around,

00:37:11.500 supporting one of his companies with another of his companies. They exposed him because he came out

00:37:16.280 and started calling for regulation, which crypto probably needs. Now he has done even worse. He

00:37:21.820 has stepped on the woke crowd. Wait until you see how quickly the news, the media dumps him and

00:37:29.960 leaves him, hangs him out to dry when he, if he's not going to be woke or if he's going to expose that

00:37:34.620 woke is what it has always been, a virtue signal that has nothing to do with reality and certainly

00:37:39.040 nothing to do with profits. You know, I find this, first of all, the guy's 30 years old. He went into

00:37:45.540 meetings and played video games and everybody said, wow, isn't that cool? And I thought, no,

00:37:50.260 no meeting. You should actually be paying attention to the meeting because maybe somebody's saying

00:37:55.200 something important. The whole thing reminds me of like the bonfire of the vanities on speed.

00:38:00.720 For those who don't remember Tom Wolf's novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, it was about a stock,

00:38:04.640 a bond trader. And the whole point was that the guy produces nothing. He does nothing. He simply

00:38:09.980 takes bits off everybody, what everybody else is doing. Peggy Noonan at the time described it as

00:38:16.040 shuffling about a bunch of money around. And when you're done shuffling it, there's somehow more

00:38:20.280 money. And I think now we not only have that, we not only have money detached from any accomplishment

00:38:25.540 or any manufacturer whatsoever. We have money actually detached from money. We have cryptocurrency,

00:38:29.860 which means nothing. It's kind of can disappear with the press of a button as indeed in this case,

00:38:35.280 it seems to have done. You know, I can't help but feel that in the history books, when they go back

00:38:40.820 on this and they think about the great crash of 2024 or 2026 or whenever it comes, they're going to say

00:38:46.980 that it had something to do with the fact that money has become detached from value. We even have

00:38:51.780 modern monetary theory where people say, yeah, we can print all the money we want. It's not going to have

00:38:55.680 any effect at all. I mean, people are now living in a complete fantasy world when it comes to money.

00:39:00.820 And I think this is the first guy, the first guy who actually sort of understood that he was in that

00:39:05.740 fantasy world, shared the fantasy. Everyone believed it. He was giving, you know, he supported

00:39:09.500 the right people, said the right things. And now it turns out he was walking on air. You know, it's kind

00:39:15.040 of frightening. And I think one of the things that you're seeing now is all these people taking stock

00:39:19.460 of what it means to have a currency that's attached to nothing, including the American currency. I mean,

00:39:25.200 America lives off the fact that everybody lives on our currency, which is why we managed to survive.

00:39:30.620 But the inflation that's happening is because of printing money that has no value. The fact that

00:39:34.900 they're having, you know, almost twice the inflation in England, it's up to 11% over there,

00:39:39.740 has to do with the fact that nobody uses the pound anymore as the going currency. They use the dollar.

00:39:45.760 So we can keep printing for a while. But all of this stuff is this fantasy world we're living in,

00:39:50.800 where money has become detached from anything that looks like value. It's one thing to say,

00:39:55.120 well, the gold standard didn't matter. But some standard has to matter. Something has to,

00:39:59.040 you know, money has to mean something. It has to represent, symbolize something. And now it doesn't.

00:40:03.260 And so this guy just seems to me to be the first fruit of a very rotten tree, the first fruit of

00:40:10.000 a tree where money just doesn't mean a damn thing. But we keep trading it. We keep talking about how rich

00:40:15.500 people are when it's just a bunch of blinks on a computer screen that can disappear like that.

00:40:19.620 But, you know, in some ways, I sympathize with him. He's just the first guy to get caught.

00:40:24.400 Well, and he was funding Vox, the very organization that did the fawning profile on him. And we've

00:40:29.420 seen this over and over. He funded a lot of these left wing publications that either previously to

00:40:34.140 getting the money did fawning profiles on him or right after getting the money did the fawning

00:40:38.340 profiles on him. And it's all a game. It's actually it's kind of cool to hear him admit it.

00:40:42.620 You know, it was all bullshit. It was all bullshit. I'm not woke. I'm just using you losers like good

00:40:47.940 for him. Am I rooting for him? No, I'm not rooting for him. But I appreciate the moment of honesty.

00:40:53.740 So you're talking about what's going to happen when when we hit the, you know, the the financial

00:40:59.080 skids and how what we're going to look back on and blame. What are we going to look back on when

00:41:04.060 our culture completely implodes? We may we may be well on the road. Well, one of the things is going to be

00:41:10.300 the removal of all testosterone from our men. I give you Justin Trudeau, who was caught in this

00:41:18.180 amazing moment. Right. You've seen this with it, with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Watch this

00:41:25.460 and listen to the translator who's translating for the Chinese president.

00:41:28.600 Everything's been leaked. It's not appropriate. And that's not all the way the conversation was

00:41:43.320 conducted. It's not the way the conversation was conducted.

00:41:46.780 If there is. If there is. If there is. If there is. If there is. If there is. Free and open and frank

00:41:57.340 dialogue. And that is what we will continue to have. We will continue to look to work constructively

00:42:02.580 together. But there will be things we will disagree on. You will have.

00:42:05.460 Let's create the conditions first.

00:42:10.120 Oh, God, you got to the listening audience. You got to go back and watch this on YouTube

00:42:18.140 and you got to watch Justin Trudeau sort of skulk away. That's sort of a big bottom because I see his

00:42:23.080 big bottom walk out the room. No judgment. Same. But in any event, it was emasculating. He emasculated

00:42:30.800 him. You know, you you you kind of associate testosterone with being a bully, but Trudeau

00:42:37.560 has managed to actually get rid of his manhood, but retain the bully. He's actually still kind of

00:42:42.020 a dictator and a thug. The only problem he has is that she is much better at being a thug than he

00:42:46.940 has. And there's a lot more people to thug around with. You know, that that is humiliating. But what

00:42:52.820 can I say? I'm not rooting for either of those guys. I know. Get humiliated. It's just as good.

00:42:57.660 I'd like to see them both humiliated, but I'll take one. It was embarrassing and it is embarrassing

00:43:03.900 to have these guys. I mean, they have they have no bottom. You know, what was it the C.S. Lewis

00:43:08.840 and their men without chests? You know, they're men without any values whatsoever. They're men who

00:43:12.940 stand nowhere, stand for nothing except their own power. And this kind of weird idea that they have

00:43:18.600 that they are going to manipulate the world and make it a better place. And it's you don't they don't

00:43:22.940 need you or your industry or your business or your choices or your opinions. They're just going to

00:43:27.640 do it all. I mean, Trudeau is a man who actually took money away from people from people out of

00:43:32.620 their bank accounts for protesting, for exercising free speech. He has no place to stand. So when

00:43:39.180 another tyrant slaps one tyrant a lot around it, to me, it's like Hitler slapping Mussolini. It's

00:43:44.300 like the big tyrant slapping the little tyrant. Who cares? You know, I mean, I kind of enjoy it a

00:43:48.740 little. Right. You're right, because Trudeau is a bully because he goes after those who have less

00:43:56.080 power than he does. That's what a bully is. So he's he he can sit there and try to do his little

00:44:01.060 social talk to, you know, the Chinese president like we believe in open communication. What the

00:44:06.540 Chinese president is saying is you leaked our private conversation. I read it. I read about it

00:44:10.340 in all the press. I had meetings with 12 leaders. Nobody else did that. And you're a shit. Trudeau's

00:44:16.440 like we believe in open communication. It's like, oh, my God. It's like, OK, so in any event,

00:44:22.040 it was emasculating. It was humiliating. And I got to end on this note because I've been dying to get

00:44:25.840 your thoughts on this news today. That's San Francisco. All right. San Francisco has launched

00:44:31.280 a program to pay trans residents twelve hundred dollars a month for 18 months. It's guaranteed.

00:44:40.500 They call it gift guaranteed income for transgender people that will provide them with it with

00:44:45.260 taxpayer dollars. Twelve hundred bucks a month just for being trans. They will prioritize enrollment.

00:44:50.080 Get this. Hold on. Of transgender, non-binary, gender nonconforming and intersex people who

00:44:56.080 also happen to be black, indigenous or people of color experiencing homelessness, living with

00:45:00.480 disabilities and chronic illnesses, youth and elders, monolingual Spanish speakers and those

00:45:04.380 who are legally vulnerable, such as TGI people who are undocumented, engaging in survival, sex

00:45:08.860 trades or are formerly incarcerated. So if you've been to jail, you're engaged in the sex trade.

00:45:14.360 You're an illegal immigrant. You are homeless. You have a disability, a chronic

00:45:18.700 illness. You're on the spectrum of non-binary, gender nonconforming, trans. And you're also

00:45:25.580 a person of color. You're in at the top of the line.

00:45:30.500 Well, speaking as a woman who's moving to San Francisco, I think that this is totally fair.

00:45:35.560 You know, I'm actually I'm actually happy to see what's happening in San Francisco. I mean,

00:45:38.560 it's kind of mean. It's kind of schadenfreude. But let them look. They get what they voted

00:45:43.260 for. You know, the city was one of the most beautiful cities. It was the queen of the Western

00:45:48.500 of the West Coast. It is now an absolute hellhole. When do people start to wake up? When do they say,

00:45:54.840 you know, like, maybe we should vote for somebody else? But they never do. What they do is they vote

00:45:59.160 with their feet. All those people are now living in Nashville and they're living in Florida. All the

00:46:04.380 people who would have changed it. So these guys just keep doing it until it collapses like Detroit.

00:46:08.680 Right. That that is an amazing story, an amazing story to pay people to be gender dysphoric,

00:46:14.600 to pay people to be homeless. But you get what you pay for. You know, I remember researching

00:46:19.620 San Francisco for a book and talking to the cops and they said they won't let us enforce the law.

00:46:24.540 This town is going to go downhill. Everything that they said would happen has happened. It's

00:46:29.180 going to continue to be this way until they start to vote for other people.

00:46:33.200 Yeah. And as far as I can tell, no requirement that they seek work in the meantime or do any sort

00:46:38.660 of a rehab program if they need it. Nothing. So nothing will change at the end of that 18 month

00:46:43.620 period, except the taxpayers of San Francisco will be a lot poorer. Great job. Andrew Klavan,

00:46:48.920 it's always a pleasure. It's great to see you, Megan. Thanks a lot.

00:46:51.740 Yeah, you too. Coming up, another pleasure. Doug Brunt. That's going to be fun. And remember,

00:46:57.280 you can call in too and you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel 111

00:47:02.860 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel,

00:47:07.480 youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, follow and download on Apple,

00:47:13.300 Spotify, Pandora Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you'll find our full

00:47:18.980 archives with more than 430 shows. Man, we've been working hard and we love doing it.

00:47:27.280 Joining me now, Doug Brunt. He is the host of the brand new hit podcast dedicated with Doug Brunt.

00:47:34.960 He's a New York Times bestselling author, a father of three, and he also happens to be my husband.

00:47:40.920 Now his new podcast that's available right now, wherever you get your podcasts for free,

00:47:46.420 debuted in its debut week at number two in the books podcast, podcasts about books and dedicated to

00:47:53.020 books. And it's also been consistently in the top 10 every single week since it launched. He's had a

00:47:59.160 ton of well-known guests on the latest that he just taped. That's going to hit soon as with Paulina

00:48:03.860 Poritskova. Um, but he's had tons of top, top number one, New York times bestsellers from Nelson

00:48:09.460 DeMille, the lead child and so on without further ado, Doug Brunt. Great to see you. How are you,

00:48:14.300 honey? This is, we're making full use of the house today. This is great.

00:48:17.380 I know. Literally Doug is downstairs and I am upstairs and we're kind of low tech because I

00:48:22.840 couldn't figure out how to put another person at this desk. How's it going so far?

00:48:26.380 It's going great. Abby and I have been conspiring this morning. So she has something I think to

00:48:31.100 drop off for you. Oh, oh, it's a cocktail. I feel like I'm on dedicated with Doug. I've got mine down

00:48:38.960 here. Oh, cheers, babe. That's your Negroni. Cheers. Yeah, exactly. Good. Okay. I have booze it up. It's

00:48:45.500 only one afternoon. Who cares? Or like five hours ahead of schedule. Very nice. Do you want to tell

00:48:51.940 the audience what you've made me? I know what it is. Tequila soda with lots of lime. Yeah. That just,

00:48:58.400 it's like scratching an itch. I I'm a big tequila fan now. This is what he does in his podcast

00:49:03.380 dedicated. He kicks it off with some booze, uh, with his guests. And then they talk about before

00:49:08.820 they get started on the, the books and the book to film deals and the writing process, they,

00:49:13.860 they pour a cocktail. And Doug is an amazing mixologist because you actually do have formal

00:49:19.560 bartending in your past. A couple of years out of college, I was actually making cocktails and

00:49:24.680 getting paid for it. Now it's just sort of privately at the home, but used to be a profession

00:49:28.140 briefly. But that's the fun thing. Like you can hear the ice. That's one of the things I like about

00:49:33.820 listening to dedicated. You can hear Doug pour the cocktail and you get to learn about new cocktails

00:49:38.080 and what like people are boozing on, what they like. Some are teetotalers and you can like what they

00:49:42.800 learn what they like. Anyway, that's just one of the many fun things.

00:49:45.800 Yeah. I've learned some great ones that Jess Walter had the, uh, the Robert Burns cocktail,

00:49:49.800 which was delicious. Scotch Benedictine and sweet vermouth recommended.

00:49:53.760 Yeah. I, I don't drink scotch, but it made me want to. Um, okay. I want to get to dedicated

00:49:59.000 with Doug Brown in one second, but let's, let's talk about you for a minute. Let's get,

00:50:02.080 let's help the audience get to know you. Um, you were not always a writer when I met you

00:50:07.180 way back in 2006, we met in July of 2006. My God, so long ago, you were running an internet

00:50:14.660 security firm and that's what you were doing when we got married in 2008. And then things took a turn

00:50:21.660 the same way I left the law for journalism. You left running a company for writing. So explain to

00:50:27.220 the audience how that happened. Yeah. You were, you're kind of an inspiration for that because

00:50:30.400 you were unhappy practicing law and then you sort of followed a passion and took a leap of faith for

00:50:36.140 something you were, were fascinated with. And, and I had seen that happen and play out firsthand.

00:50:41.940 And I was running this technology company. It's based down in Florida. And I was back and forth

00:50:46.240 between New York and Florida. And I remember going for a walk with you in central park and we had our

00:50:52.220 first and, and I think, uh, Yardley was just a baby then. And we were walking the kids in a stroller

00:50:59.520 and everything central parking, like, honey, you just seem like stressed. And it's, uh, you know,

00:51:05.020 you're going through a sort of difficult time. And by that time I'd actually been toying around

00:51:08.400 with the novel and you kind of gave me a nudge, like, why don't you, why don't you pursue this?

00:51:12.720 And so long story short, I did find an agent for that and, uh, sold the company and, and then got a

00:51:19.440 publishing deal for the first book and have been writing since. Yeah. It was so awkward for me

00:51:24.620 because I didn't know whether you were a good writer and I was really hoping you, I mean, you're smart

00:51:28.620 and you're very well read, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be a good writer.

00:51:31.380 So the audience will appreciate the position I was in poor me where I was like, Oh God,

00:51:36.440 that would have been terrible. If you read the book and thank God you came back with like,

00:51:39.960 well, this doesn't suck. So I'm like, I'll take it. That's a huge win. Doesn't suck.

00:51:44.620 It avoids a very awkward moment in the marriage. I think it's fair to say I'm your, I'm your number

00:51:49.360 one fan and your harshest critic all in one. When I, when I read a full pages scratched out with a red X,

00:51:54.500 like boring written in the, in the margins. I, I mock because I love because better you should hear it

00:52:00.820 from me. Then you hear it from the general public and always, every writer needs that person.

00:52:06.720 Speaking of ghost of Manhattan. I pulled this cause it's been a long time since I read it.

00:52:11.600 It came out in 11 or 12, 12. Okay. Came out in 12. And this is Doug's debut novel. And it did make

00:52:20.580 the New York times bestseller list, which was amazing. And it's an amazing, amazing story of

00:52:25.500 this guy named Nick farmer, who's a wall street bond trader. And the, and I think it's just his

00:52:31.280 struggle to save his soul. That's my summary of it. And what I love about it is the beautiful writing.

00:52:36.560 It's in the first person, his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his friends,

00:52:42.000 his witty dialogue at dinners and just going from a to B with various characters, but he is such an

00:52:48.220 interesting character. But I pulled this just from, um, and it got all sorts of great reviews from the

00:52:52.800 fancy reviewers like Kirkus and so on. But I just pulled one from, from the Amazon writings. Uh,

00:53:00.160 Nick farmer is a bond trader with bear Stearns in 2005 before the financial meltdown. Brunt paints

00:53:05.280 a picture of the excesses of a bond trader's life as seen through Nick's eyes. He has spent too many

00:53:10.360 years getting drunk by 5 PM spending expense money on strippers and drinks. His marriage is in trouble.

00:53:15.640 His life is a mess, but how can he fix it? He went to bear Stearns right out of college. He's been

00:53:20.140 doing this too long. He's 35, not 25 makes way too much money, but knows it's all a sham.

00:53:26.140 Brunt does a masterful job of involving the reader into Nick's life. He takes you on a rollercoaster

00:53:31.280 of emotions. As you feel disgust, fear, hope, and finally learn to like this broken and deeply

00:53:37.160 flawed character. I didn't like Nick in the beginning, but came to care very much about him

00:53:41.420 by the conclusion. This is a very strong first novel. It's written in the first person. It really

00:53:45.380 does involve the reader and I give it five stars and recommend it. I feel exactly the

00:53:50.200 same way as this lovely reviewer did. Nick Farmer is a character we need to see more of.

00:53:56.120 And why don't you listen to your wife and write a ghost of Manhattan too?

00:54:00.580 I did love writing that book. I, I, I miss it a little bit. Those characters in that book

00:54:04.740 and it would be fun to revisit them. It's funny. I read all the reviews and even every, everyone

00:54:10.080 that comes in on, you know, on Amazon, even the, even the little ones. And I tend to believe only

00:54:13.800 the worst ones. Of course, you know, I torture myself over reading all these things.

00:54:18.100 Oh, here's a question for you. I love that review and that was a fun book.

00:54:21.220 So you do that. You put yourself through that torture about with nasty comments about you,

00:54:25.060 but do you do that when it comes to me? Do you read comment, the comment section and anything about

00:54:29.200 me? Oh, that I go to 60 miles an hour instantly on those. I read the, I don't believe them. Of course,

00:54:34.160 they just infuriate me more somehow. Oh, Abby's agreeing. Abby and Doug are my chief defenders on

00:54:40.640 anything negative. Um, okay. So ghosts of Manhattan, but before you came out with that novel

00:54:45.920 and you tried your hand at writing, you were, you were not a public figure and I would submit to the

00:54:52.060 audience, not so interested in becoming one. You were more of a private guy. And this is one of the

00:54:57.420 things you had to wrestle with when you decided to propose to me, right? I mean, you, you understood

00:55:02.400 I was on Fox at the time, though. I was a cub reporter. Um, by the time we got married,

00:55:07.580 I had America's newsroom with hammer. So my star was kind of rising a little. Um, so you had to

00:55:13.100 make a decision on whether you wanted to put a toe into public life that way. And it really did

00:55:17.780 require a thoughtful reflection by you. It did. And, and of course, all worthwhile. We do it all

00:55:24.080 again, obviously, but, um, it does, it does require some thought, but no one can know exactly what

00:55:29.180 they're getting into with that. Even you, I'm sure. And there, there is a lot of good with the

00:55:33.380 bad, but good far outweighs the bad. I mean, when we go places, almost 99% of the interactions are

00:55:39.420 positive people coming up and saying, you inspire me, you inspire my daughter. I want my daughter to

00:55:43.920 be like you. It's, it's almost always that very few negative ones. Um, you know, there've been moments

00:55:51.400 where we're like really peaking on intensity and, and focus on you that are, that's unpleasant,

00:55:57.660 but for the most part, it brings far more good into our lives than that.

00:56:03.460 Well, I mean, you, you came in with very open eyes to this relationship because when we first

00:56:08.560 started dating is when I had that terrible stalking problem in my life and literally on our first date,

00:56:15.040 well, tell them, tell them what happened, what you had to agree to.

00:56:19.060 I can't remember if it was Cougar or Viper, but your friends had named all the security guards and

00:56:22.360 gave them co-names. One, one poor guy was Pooh Bear, but everyone else had a pretty tough name.

00:56:26.200 And, and, uh, so we were chaperoned, like a couple of high school sophomores going to the

00:56:30.880 prom. And, and the one guy was really, you know, these were, these are guys who clearly

00:56:34.780 had experience with weapons and, and, uh, taking people down. And, uh, I did not want to be taken

00:56:40.240 down by anyone. And he's like, I'm going to have to see some ID of course. And I'm like reaching

00:56:44.260 into my back pocket, like whatever you need, sir. And he's like, no, no, I'm just, just messing

00:56:48.160 with him. So, but anyway, our first kiss was also in front of security, which, which is hard to do.

00:56:53.540 Yeah, it was, it was hard for both of us. I mean, but especially me.

00:56:59.360 Yeah. You'd really gotten to know these guys. I think they're after they dropped me off for many

00:57:03.540 dates, I was dropped off somewhere else at my hotel and, uh, they'd give you the little quiz

00:57:08.800 about what, what's it, what's up with this guy? You know, do we need to, are we going to see him

00:57:12.340 again? They approved of you. Otherwise it wouldn't have worked out. You know, I mean, I trusted their

00:57:16.720 opinions, but after that first kiss, it was, I did not do well audience. I did not. I was embarrassed.

00:57:22.080 Cougar and Viper were watching us and it was just awkward AF as the kids say. And so the next day

00:57:28.160 when we went back to pick up Doug at his hotel, I said to Cougar and Viper, stay where you are.

00:57:34.000 I got something I need to do. So I went to the hotel, I pressed the buzzer on Doug's door and

00:57:39.640 he's looking for the security. I'm like, they're not here. I'm like, I, I can do better. That was not

00:57:44.720 my best effort last night. And of course, Doug was like right this way. Yeah. Classic cue. It's like,

00:57:51.100 take charge kind of girl. Come on in. I like this.

00:57:55.460 It was only a kiss as the song says, but things went from there. So it was a crazy beginning and

00:58:02.840 we did get married and it was a whirlwind romance. It was absolutely, it was, I was mesmerized by you

00:58:08.800 and remain mesmerized by you. Like I, there's a journal entry that I kept at the time that has a

00:58:15.160 picture of you. You're just in jeans and a t-shirt, but you're, you're, your hair is kind

00:58:20.280 of messed up and you'd been so kind and such a person of character. And I, and I wrote something

00:58:24.580 to the effect of, is it possible? Is it possible that this guy loves me and isn't a serial killer

00:58:31.920 or gay or a felon of some type? Like, is there something of, there's gotta be a shoe to drop here

00:58:38.420 because he's too good. And now I'm happy to say 15 years of marriage later, you're not,

00:58:43.780 it's not fake. You're real. You're just as awesome as I always knew you were, babe.

00:58:48.340 Oh, I, I am the lucky one. And, uh, it's funny. I just had Anna Quinlan on my show. And

00:58:53.380 at that time in our dating phase, prior to marriage, you'd give me a book by

00:58:56.920 Anna called a shortcut to a happy life. And he wrote a very sweet inscription in which I won't

00:59:01.320 repeat here, but it was a very nice inscription. And I brought it to my interview with Anna to get

00:59:06.160 a sign. Of course I forgot. Cause I was all like thrown by my interview with her, which was so fun

00:59:10.200 and good. Um, but I saved that book going back. And I, I remember those days when we were first

00:59:15.560 dating. And of course now we have three beautiful kids and everything's been so awesome. I feel like

00:59:19.760 we're just actually hitting, hitting our stride in some ways. Like we're really like hitting a great

00:59:24.300 peak where our kids are fun and they want to be with us. We're doing so much fun stuff, just the two

00:59:28.780 of us. And so, so why, how, why do you think it's worked? Right? Because, um, obviously I,

00:59:35.160 I had a first marriage and I'm still friends with Dan, but that one didn't work out and you had

00:59:39.220 other relationships and so many marriages struggle. And I'm sure there are a lot of people listening to

00:59:42.800 us right now who are like a gag, but B, how are they doing that? Like what, what is the, you know,

00:59:48.360 like I wouldn't mind hearing a couple of things about what makes a relationship work so well like

00:59:52.500 this consistently, you know, consistently. You're, you're, you're our secret sauce. I really believe

00:59:57.740 that you're the most self-aware person I know. Everyone I know, even my best friends have

01:00:02.080 blind spots to their behavior and something that in your friends, you're like, listen, nobody's

01:00:06.600 perfect. I'm going to forgive this person, these kinds of foibles or whatever they are. And I know

01:00:11.860 that you just, you see yourself so clearly and then you do things about it. When you find something

01:00:19.160 you think needs work, whether it's a relationship with me or your mom or a sibling or a friend,

01:00:24.240 and, and you are, you're very proactive about putting in the work and, you know, I mean,

01:00:31.540 obviously everyone should know it's not all rainbows and unicorns with us. Like we work on things. We

01:00:36.100 have very frank and honest conversations with each other. When we find something annoying,

01:00:40.280 uh, there has not been anything annoying, at least on my half, but you'll, we'll talk after,

01:00:45.880 but I'm, I'm all good right now, but when there's not, and there have been over, over the years,

01:00:51.140 of course, there are those moments in every marriage. And we, we, uh, we don't let that

01:00:57.260 fester. We, we just put it on the table and talk it through. And I think we're both honest with

01:01:00.820 ourselves and with each other about it. I think that's right. It's communication is talking about

01:01:05.080 it. And, and even like trying, you can acknowledge, like, I'll say to you, I'm irritated. I'm mad. I

01:01:11.480 don't like what you said or did, but it's not like F you, you know, I'm so effing pissed at you.

01:01:17.260 Like it's, it's done in a sort of a calm, like I, I am angry and I want to explain why

01:01:21.940 and the other person listens. Um, I won't tell what the story is since I, since that's what the

01:01:27.060 whole thing is about, but there is a story is part of my bit. I'm telling you, I'm very funny when we

01:01:30.760 go out to these dinners sometimes. And I have this great piece that I, the story I love to tell about

01:01:35.200 Doug. And one time he was like, stop telling that story about me to people who don't know me.

01:01:40.060 It's like, you can tell that story to people who do know me, but people who don't know me,

01:01:43.320 you're going to think I'm an asshole from that story. I was like, what do you mean? It's part

01:01:46.960 of my bit. What are you, what are you saying? You can see the look on their faces. They're

01:01:50.120 kind of like, Oh, like, well, that's good story. And then they're like, Oh my gosh,

01:01:55.060 you've got to, this guy's terrible. But it was a good example of how you were like, honey,

01:01:59.200 I want you to stop saying that. And I, I was sad to part with my bit, but it required me to

01:02:02.980 refresh my material. Well, you don't have to part with it. Just wait like a few weeks till

01:02:06.520 we know them a little better. In other words, I'll bring Doug back on this show in three weeks

01:02:11.620 and we'll, I'll tell you what we're talking about. All right. So you've been writing books.

01:02:16.820 You've been writing three, you wrote three successful novels, Ghost of Manhattan. We

01:02:20.900 talked about the means, which is a political thriller, which I absolutely love. It's about

01:02:25.540 media and politics and a presidential race. I'm going to give you just one review or two from

01:02:30.620 that one. Cause I love, I was, it was fun for me to read the Amazon stuff. Somebody writes,

01:02:34.620 finally, I'm surprised by an ending lately. It seems I predict the outcomes of the books I'm reading

01:02:39.760 and I'm always disappointed that I do. So not so with the means, not once was I able to foretell

01:02:45.040 a character's end game. And the final sentence blew me away. Kudos to an author that kept me entranced

01:02:51.060 until the end. I love the means too. I, the whole book, he, it moves quickly. And as somebody who's

01:02:57.740 in politics and media in a way, um, I loved it. And then came trophy son, which is about what we're

01:03:03.240 doing to our kids and sports. It's a novel about a fictional character named Anton, uh, Stratus

01:03:09.040 and his dad, who's like trying to make him into the trophy son. So they all do well, but then you

01:03:13.920 make this switch before you get to your podcast, you make this big switch over COVID. And I was like,

01:03:18.660 what are you doing? What are you doing? And what, tell us what you were doing and why.

01:03:22.860 Well, I was, it started out because I was in between novels and I was searching around for ideas

01:03:27.580 for the next novel. So I was, you know, making, doing search terms like, uh, fascinating or

01:03:33.260 mysterious disappearances at sea and things like that. And I came across this one story that was

01:03:36.940 interesting. I thought, Oh, maybe this could be the springboard into a book. And the more I did

01:03:40.780 research on it, the more I found that this has been completely forgotten to history. It's a really

01:03:46.800 important story for the 20th century and beyond. It played a huge role in world war one and no one

01:03:52.920 really has covered it. So the more research I did on it, the more I, I came to some conclusions about

01:03:57.480 what really did happen. And I decided to treat it as nonfiction, tell it in a narrative nonfiction

01:04:03.600 way, the way Eric Larson is sort of a King of narrative nonfiction these days with books like

01:04:07.840 devil in the white city and a dead wake. And so, um, I just thought it was too, too good not to,

01:04:14.540 not to do it, um, in a nonfiction way, rather than have it be a, uh, you know, historical fiction or,

01:04:20.920 or kind of make up a story based on it. I, I wanted to actually do it. And so in early COVID

01:04:25.620 worked on a proposal and it was new to me, I didn't realize how that whole system works with

01:04:30.000 a nonfiction book. You really do a, like a 30 page treatment or proposal that has all these

01:04:35.000 certain elements that need to be in the proposal. So I put that together with a, an agent, a new

01:04:39.360 agent who specializes in nonfiction and sold that over COVID. So that was sort of like the COVID project

01:04:44.000 where we're all quarantined up together. Yeah, that it was so cool. And that is kind of a difference

01:04:49.600 because when you wrote your novels, you just wrote them and then you give it to your agent.

01:04:54.240 Maybe you get feedback or you do some editing and then, you know, you improve it and then you

01:04:58.500 submit it to the publishing houses and see whether you have any takers. But the nonfiction was a

01:05:03.180 totally different process. Tons of research. Um, so I, I, you know, I'd be stacked, stacks of

01:05:09.620 materials around me, different books and going through old newspaper archives. And it was tough

01:05:14.020 during COVID because there were archives in Germany and the UK that I wanted to get into. And you can't,

01:05:17.900 they were closed for like a year. And over time I established, you know, uh, virtual relationships

01:05:24.100 with archivists in these different places who would help me out and they'd go down and they'd

01:05:27.640 scan something for me and they'd email it back over. And so I managed to, to do it. The whole,

01:05:32.220 the whole world obviously has changed. I sold the whole book. I haven't sat down in a room with my,

01:05:36.300 my agent, except for that random running we had with him in the restaurant out of state,

01:05:41.860 you know, Montana, every, everything's happening over zoom. So the whole auction process for selling

01:05:46.380 the book happened over zoom and, and, uh, it's kind of a different world in publishing too.

01:05:50.180 And also you get paid beforehand in nonfiction. That's nice too. Like in the novel, you only,

01:05:55.500 you may or may not get paid at the end of writing the novel and nonfiction, they kind of pay you to

01:05:59.520 write it, which I like that. That's good. Um, so this, I know you're very hinky about releasing to

01:06:05.620 the world too much info about this book. It's been Doug's baby. So I won't, I won't press yet. Cause

01:06:11.180 it's, it's coming out. It's coming out. We think 2023, right? Fall 23.

01:06:14.940 Okay. So when, when he's ready to break that news, he'll, he'll come on and he'll tell you

01:06:19.280 all about it. And you will love it. It's basically the quarter century prior to world war one.

01:06:23.620 Most of it, but it's, it's great because it sort of gets you in. It's not just about the topic.

01:06:28.720 It's also about life on this planet back then and takes you into sort of the gilded age and how

01:06:34.340 people were living. I just, there's so many things to fall in love with in the book. So anyway,

01:06:37.820 that wasn't enough for you. You decided I'm like slowly, but surely as our kids were getting older,

01:06:42.720 you were, you were getting more interested in expanding your professional universe. You don't,

01:06:46.600 you'd been writing, you'd had this great book club in Manhattan, but you wanted to do more and more and

01:06:51.580 more. So you expanded into nonfiction, which I think is harder. I think that's, that's harder.

01:06:56.820 You just worked so hard on this book. And then you decided last fall might be fun to do a podcast

01:07:01.960 about books and with some of these authors who you'd come to know in the book world. So what made you

01:07:08.700 decide to do that? Yeah. I've thought a lot about that and what the real inspiration was.

01:07:14.840 And can I bring it back to a moment? And I think one of the main moments, maybe the main moment was

01:07:20.680 finishing the gold coast by Nelson DeMille and putting that down and thinking what I wouldn't

01:07:26.660 give to sit down in a bar with this guy who I don't know, but just to get to know him. And it's not so

01:07:31.500 much to talk about the book itself, why this character did one thing or another,

01:07:36.020 but to get to know the writer himself. Because when you read a novel, that's like a 15 hour

01:07:41.260 experience or so. And if the writer's good, it's really powerful, far, far more than just a movie.

01:07:48.600 And you've spent 15 hours in this person's head. And so the opportunity to get to know that person

01:07:52.860 is something I've always wanted. Whenever you finish a book, it's like, God, I wish I could meet

01:07:57.320 this person and sit down and have a drink. So that's really what the show is. These great writers,

01:08:01.520 we're getting the best writers in the world come in. It's Jennifer Egan, Lee Child, Nelson DeMille,

01:08:06.260 Anna Quinlan, Amor Tolles come in and we have a drink where they choose their favorite drink,

01:08:11.800 which we make on the set. And we get to know the person, which is an experience that you really

01:08:18.860 can't find anywhere else. Yes. And what I love about it is you, it's a no politics zone. So unlike when

01:08:27.420 you try to take in entertainment, because you're inviting people to come and enjoy themselves in

01:08:31.780 dedicated with Doug Brown, it come and enjoy and relax and have a nice 45 minutes to an hour with

01:08:37.700 a figure you may or may not admire or but probably will by the end of the time. So you don't unlike

01:08:42.900 these people who run the Academy Awards or the Emmys who are always shoving their politics down our

01:08:48.180 throat, you do exactly the opposite. So I could listen to a person and not know anything about their

01:08:53.320 politics. And that's by design. You don't just don't want it to be jarring or unpleasant for half

01:08:57.740 the country. Yeah, I mean, we're a we're a happy little show, you know, and it's I want people to

01:09:02.580 be able to it's audio only. And so you can hear the ice clinking against the tin of the cocktail

01:09:08.140 shaker and close your eyes and just imagine you're there in the room with this brilliant writer. I mean,

01:09:12.500 these are some of our greatest thinkers and greatest storytellers and hear them tell their own story,

01:09:17.500 how they how they came up with the ideas for the books or how they got started with writing and the

01:09:21.740 scary moments. Like Lee Child says, in the beginning, he got fired from a show. He's a TV producer in

01:09:27.020 London. He got fired. He says his muses were hunger and fear. And that's what drove him to write his

01:09:32.880 first novel and work or I'm out on the street. And you know, 20 some books later, he's he's hugely

01:09:39.600 successful, but has a million great stories of how it all went on. And they talk about the writing

01:09:44.180 process, which for writers, the only two things writers have in common are lots of coffee, and they read a

01:09:50.420 lot. Everything else is wildly different, you know, from time of day to do they write by hand or they

01:09:55.520 type it in or do they outline ahead of time or some writers think that outlining ahead of time

01:10:00.200 takes away something from the novel and their energy they can put into it. So they don't outline

01:10:06.060 it. And there's every variation you can imagine. You're all you're longhand on legal notepads.

01:10:13.260 Yeah, that is for all my novels, longhand on a legal notepad. And then I type it in,

01:10:16.700 which is an editing step. And I try to stay away from the computer as much as possible.

01:10:20.200 But with nonfiction, I've been typing right into the computer because I'm, I'm constantly needing

01:10:24.880 to access some piece of information or fact check myself, you know, in real time. And so

01:10:29.060 with a nonfiction, I've been typing it directly in more like a like a journalist might.

01:10:33.460 You do so much homework for the for the show. It's amazing how you'll read like all the person's

01:10:38.400 books practically. It's incredible. And in the beginning, I would say you were more nervous than you are

01:10:42.740 now because you've already taped like eight or nine of them, maybe more. I can't remember.

01:10:46.600 But is it getting easier for you?

01:10:49.200 It is getting a little easier, but I am still doing the same load of work because each person's

01:10:54.440 totally different. And I've branched out into some different types of writers in a way, I would say.

01:11:00.580 So in the beginning, it was writers that I personally knew pretty well, like Lee and Nelson

01:11:05.820 DeMille have been friends for a long time. And so that was more like talking to an old friend.

01:11:10.580 And one thing that was so special about the Jess Walter interview is I didn't know him and I just

01:11:14.640 shot him a note. I've read his books. I've read Beautiful Ruins and a few of other of his books.

01:11:19.100 I shot him a note and he was in town for the Brooklyn Book Festival. And I said, hey, do you

01:11:22.460 want to come in and do this conversation for the show? And he said, sure. And he came in and he picked

01:11:27.060 a great cocktail and we just had a great time.

01:11:30.780 So now it's funny that you should mention Jess Walter, because before we get to his sound,

01:11:34.200 I have some sound bites on play for the audience, but I have an important one for you

01:11:37.640 from someone you may know. His name is Yates Brunt, and he had some thoughts for you on this

01:11:44.800 interview. Listen.

01:11:48.040 Hey, Dad, it's me, Yates. I heard you were going on Mom's show today. I just wanted to wish you good

01:11:52.820 luck. And I've really been enjoying your podcast. I especially enjoyed the story about Jess Walter

01:11:59.440 and the movie Drive-In. That was really funny. Anyway, see ya.

01:12:03.840 Oh, that's awesome. You're going to make me cry in the middle of the show. He's so sweet.

01:12:09.540 That was a great story from Jess Walter.

01:12:11.880 And you know what? We have it queued up. So here's a little bit of what Yates liked so much

01:12:15.980 about the Jess Walter interview with Sot9.

01:12:19.180 There's a story of your family living next door to a drive-in movie theater. Is that one you could

01:12:24.860 share with us?

01:12:25.440 Yeah. We had this sort of flat roof on our garage, and so he put lawn chairs on the roof of the garage,

01:12:31.940 and we all climbed up there. It was the late 1970s, so the drive-in was showing like

01:12:36.100 Bad News Bears.

01:12:37.060 No, no. If only. It was showing like House of a Thousand Pleasures, and it was like kind of hard

01:12:43.980 R-rated semi-porn. And so my dad quickly got us kids off the roof and never put the chairs up there

01:12:50.400 again. But my friend and I built a tree fort toward the back of the property, which had slightly better

01:12:55.780 sight lines. And we got binoculars, and we would climb up there and watch movies. And I think it's one

01:13:00.400 of the places I fell in love with stories. I would watch Clint Eastwood movies.

01:13:03.500 I think how many novels were born out of this period of your life.

01:13:06.280 So they would show like kind of a terrible movie, and then they would show Dog Day Afternoon, or

01:13:11.320 just these 70s auteurs, Harold and Maude, and Woody Allen movies. We had this tunnel underneath the

01:13:20.380 big aluminum fence, and we climbed in, and we cut a speaker, and my friend wired it up, and we

01:13:25.700 unspooled the wire. And he's unspooling, and I'm covering it with dirt all the way back through the

01:13:31.580 back of the drive-in theater, up the aluminum fence into our tree fort. And I look up, and there's the

01:13:38.020 theater manager, and he's just walking. And he can see this mound of dirt straight up to our tree fort.

01:13:46.400 And so we were arrested, and our job for the rest of the summer was to pick up all the trash in the theater.

01:13:53.460 Sure. That's amazing. He wasn't much of a thief, was he?

01:13:59.100 No, no. But he can take you there. He's such a good storyteller. You're listening to the story.

01:14:03.880 You can just see the manager pulling this wire up out of the ground, up to the tree fort, and

01:14:07.860 he's great. He's so charming, just like his books. He is a very charming guy.

01:14:12.440 And his description of his home in Washington State was absolutely amazing, too. It makes me want

01:14:17.880 to move there. That's the thing that's so special about these interviews that I've noticed.

01:14:21.860 Same thing with your book. I was like, I hope I like it. I'm going to have to be honest if I don't

01:14:26.120 like it. But I've been loving it because the discussions are snappy, and they're interesting,

01:14:30.920 and they're in-depth. But these are literally the country's best wordsmiths. And what are they

01:14:37.580 doing? Using more words sitting across from you and stitching them together in a way that's just

01:14:42.660 kind of mellifluous. And it's just a sort of an effervescent experience for the listener,

01:14:49.640 because for them, putting beautiful sentences together is effortless. And you can tell. And

01:14:55.980 for you, too. Like, the exchanges are really... You came home after the first one, and I listened

01:14:59.660 to it, and you're like, what do you think? And I was getting ready to give it honest, critical

01:15:04.820 feedback if necessary. And I said, my only complaint is, you need to up your conversation

01:15:09.720 level at home. I need to see this version over the dinner table.

01:15:12.380 Right. Your away game is so strong. Let's get this going on around the dinner table.

01:15:15.440 Right. Just kidding. But it's been so fun to listen. All right. We have much more coming up.

01:15:20.880 We're going to get to a couple more soundbites. We're going to get to Strudwick, and we will be

01:15:26.280 right back.

01:15:29.760 We actually have a call from Sheldon in Massachusetts, who's got a question for you,

01:15:35.100 Duggar. Hey, Sheldon, what's on your mind?

01:15:36.740 Hey, Doug. Megan, nice to talk to you. And Doug, thank you so much for the Nelson DeMille

01:15:41.720 interview. I'm a huge fan. I read Club Island years ago and was hooked instantly, and I've

01:15:46.220 read everything since. Gold Coast is probably my favorite. And obviously, John Corey is the

01:15:53.840 hero in that. And thank you for asking him what John Corey looks like. Now I can't see

01:15:58.060 him any other way than Bruce Willis. The question for you is, is Nelson DeMille anything like John

01:16:03.900 Corey off interview? I didn't hear it in the interview, but I was wondering off interview

01:16:07.680 if he was like John Corey.

01:16:08.760 He is. It's funny. First of all, I love talking about Nelson. I just think he's great. He's

01:16:13.640 really sort of like the king of the current thriller. He's influenced so many writers.

01:16:18.100 And the John Corey character is terrific. And he is like that. He has that, you know, Nelson

01:16:23.560 was in the military. He's friends with a lot of current and former cops who have that sense

01:16:28.440 of humor. And Nelson, when you go out with him, you spend half the night laughing because

01:16:32.020 he has these little one-liners that are just so quick, so clever and observant of what's

01:16:37.320 happening in the room around you in the moment. And so he really does have that kind of a sense

01:16:42.140 of humor, which I think is one of Corey's sort of main characteristics of that sort of

01:16:46.960 irreverent humor, irreverent way of looking at the world. He definitely has, and a fearlessness

01:16:53.320 too. I mean, Nelson totally has that.

01:16:55.820 Nelson is a badass. And actually, I want to tell the audience something Doug would not share,

01:16:59.800 which is Nelson actually said to Doug in that interview, Sheldon, maybe you heard it, that

01:17:02.980 Ghost of Manhattan, he said, is actually better than Bonfire of the Vanities and that they

01:17:08.280 need to make a movie out of it. Yes, I agree. Sheldon, thank you for listening. If you want

01:17:13.300 to call in, again, the number is 833-446-3496. Before I get to another caller, Dougher, I want

01:17:20.920 to go to Lee Child because he's extremely famous. I mean, you pointed out in the interview with

01:17:25.960 him, he's no longer measuring the numbers of books sold. Like, once it's past hundreds of

01:17:31.380 millions, you kind of stopped counting the crazy success that he's had. And his most famous

01:17:37.680 character is Jack Reacher. And you asked him about the same thing. Like, what did you think

01:17:42.720 Jack Reacher was going to look like? Because it wound up being Tom Cruise. And he got blowback

01:17:47.540 from his fans on that because he and the audience had a different thing in mind. And here's a little

01:17:52.160 bit of that. So to talk about Reacher and how he's portrayed in film and TV, I think you've

01:17:59.780 sold the movie rights to all 20 plus books already. In the early days, there were a ton

01:18:05.640 of actors. I looked this up. I know The Rock at one point was considered for all this. I

01:18:09.640 think it was probably the early 2000s, maybe before he was such a huge star. But Will Smith,

01:18:15.820 Russell Crowe, Daniel Craig. But one time you told me the name of someone who was not an actor,

01:18:21.980 but was someone you could, years and years ago, this is, that you could picture in the role.

01:18:26.060 Do you remember the name you mentioned to me? I'm black. Howie. That's right. Howie. Yeah.

01:18:33.660 What was his second name? Howie Long. Howie Long. Right. Yeah. He was, I mean, sports people in

01:18:39.520 general. Yeah. Football players are in Britain. Rugby players. I mean, Howie was a good looking

01:18:44.980 guy. Yeah. You know, which is why. Well, I think the guy that you have currently on the Amazon

01:18:49.020 show, Alan Richon, he looks like a young Howie to me. Yeah, he really does. And that was always the

01:18:55.080 picture I had in my mind of physically large, intimidating, a little less handsome, probably

01:19:02.060 than Howie, who was, you know, very good looking guy. Lee Child's got swagger, right? He's got it.

01:19:10.120 He does. I mean, I, this is not a phrase I have used, but he's like a cool cat, just effortlessly

01:19:15.720 cool. Yeah, he's, and you got to listen to the show just to find out how he came up with the name

01:19:20.540 Lee Child, which is not his real name. And Doug gets him to explain how he got there. And it's

01:19:24.940 an amazing story. I remember when you first learned it in our private life, you came home

01:19:28.360 and you're like, you're not going to believe this. And sure enough, I did not believe it.

01:19:31.320 But then I heard him tell it himself on dedicated. And it was super fun.

01:19:35.120 Well, later in that episode, I say who, sorry, go ahead.

01:19:38.320 No, you go. Later in the episode, I say to him who, so I do this at the end of every episode,

01:19:43.400 I do a sort of a lightning round of questions. And one of the questions was who would be

01:19:46.600 Reacher's celebrity crush. And, uh, he, you know, he wanted to be polite. So he didn't

01:19:52.280 actually name a name, but he said, well, you know, this former cable news host, uh, you know,

01:19:58.440 might do the, you know, would be very smart. And, and he and she and Reacher might have a, uh,

01:20:04.660 so actually said, like, I didn't want to actually say the name, but I thought that would be polite.

01:20:08.620 I, it was probably, but it's clear, but I appreciate that in any event. Um, then you had on,

01:20:14.940 I mean, honestly, like one of my, she's my favorite. She's amazing. I love everything.

01:20:19.280 She writes Anna Quinlan, who you mentioned a minute ago. And, um, we have a clip of it and

01:20:23.940 she tells, well, as you mentioned at the end, you kind of do quick hits with people like, uh,

01:20:28.480 what books are on your nightstand right now? What's the fewest number of people who have ever

01:20:32.040 attended a book signing of a dose of humility and what life advice do you have? It could be anything

01:20:37.880 could be professional, could be personal. And of course, Anna Quinlan did not disappoint.

01:20:42.600 Here's just a little bit of what she said in SOT 10.

01:20:46.920 One piece of good advice for the listeners.

01:20:50.320 One piece of good advice. Look around, really look around. There comes a moment and it comes too soon.

01:21:00.400 Usually when we're maybe 12, 13, 14, when we stop seeing what's around us, we stop seeing the people

01:21:10.680 we love. We stop seeing the natural world around us. Um, we just stop seeing. So I would say why

01:21:20.580 because we're in a busy and in a rush and we need to slow down.

01:21:23.240 I think things get dulled after a while, you know, I mean, all you have to do to realize how

01:21:30.040 important it is, is watch a four year old. I mean, when you watch a four year old looking at an

01:21:35.300 anthill, you suddenly see an anthill in a way you haven't since you were four years old. And then

01:21:42.040 the sense is dull. And I think one of the ways to understand what a, what a privilege is to be alive

01:21:52.160 because it really is, um, is to really look at the world.

01:21:57.280 Oh, I love that. That's great advice.

01:21:58.740 Oh, that one is yet to be released. That's coming still. So if you don't see it on the

01:22:04.380 download list, that's why it's coming, but I love her. She doesn't drink, but I will,

01:22:08.080 I will drink to that advice from her. That was, she's just awesome. It was great to be with her.

01:22:12.300 Yeah. We got to drink again. This is what they do on dedicated

01:22:14.480 and my show. I do require sobriety as a general matter.

01:22:21.580 Have you yet gotten to the point where you've finished your glass and felt a little,

01:22:24.860 Hey, it's getting a little loosey or a little more fun.

01:22:27.300 Uh, yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't want to like overplay the booze. It's not like we're

01:22:30.200 getting trashed out there, but yeah. So on two episodes in particular, I was a little

01:22:34.400 buzzed up by the end. I, and so was the guests. They got to be like, I've got to go home and take

01:22:38.320 a nap now. Um, okay, well, let's get another caller and Ruth from Canada. Ruth, how are you doing?

01:22:45.620 Do you have a question for Doug?

01:22:47.520 I'm doing so great. And it's so ironic. I'm sure there's other writers out there, but I'm literally

01:22:52.820 editing my first, um, nonfiction after writing two historical novels and I'm right. I'm editing

01:23:02.740 it as I'm listening. And by the way, thank you for being so, so open and, uh, just, uh, such a

01:23:08.740 wonderful relationship to share with us. And so effervescent and, uh, it makes relationships sound

01:23:15.140 really easy, which I know they're not, but I'm just wondering how Doug, did you go from

01:23:20.820 fiction, which I find, uh, such a joy now after a thousand pages, uh, and, uh, you know, 20 chapters

01:23:30.300 with 20 to 30 footnotes. It's like, I get so bogged down in the details. Did you go, how did you do that?

01:23:38.300 It really was keyed in on this one story. It was, it's almost like a, like a sliding doors moment.

01:23:43.600 Had I not come across this, I'd probably still be writing fiction, which I do love and may go back

01:23:48.520 to, although I have an idea for another nonfiction book after this, but I know what you mean that the

01:23:52.460 fiction, it feels, it feels like it has that magic in a way. And when I write it, I have a pad of paper

01:23:57.740 and I can write it anywhere. And it just seems fun. Whereas the, the nonfiction is also fun. And I

01:24:03.420 really fell in love with this real character from the, from the 19th century, but I'm now in the phase

01:24:09.580 of putting together the end notes. And that really is like, I'm in the grind phase of like,

01:24:12.960 I got to cross all the T's on this thing. And I'm, if I lost, misplaced the source material for

01:24:18.220 this one quote I have, I'm like, Oh my God, this is gonna be five hours where I try and track down

01:24:21.520 where I got this piece of information. So I'm trying to get all that stuff tied up now. But I,

01:24:27.000 I don't know. I've loved them both. It really, the change came because of this story. It's a

01:24:31.660 powerful story that I hope I can do justice to it. Yeah. And this that I'm, I'm doing as a

01:24:37.320 background information for what I think I discovered of historical fiction, uh, for the

01:24:43.800 two first two novels. So it is fun to, to, you know, expose what you've discovered of a,

01:24:50.620 of a lost story or something that needs to be told. That is sort of the, you know, impetus that

01:24:56.240 keeps us going. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a way for the reader to, to learn about history in a,

01:25:03.320 in a snappy way, snazzy way, right? Like you're entertained while you're actually learning real

01:25:08.440 facts about history that might be beneficial to your life. Ruth, thank you. And good luck with

01:25:12.120 your writing too. Let me squeeze in Wayne from Virginia. Who's got thoughts. Hey, Wayne, what's

01:25:15.740 on your mind? Hey, Megan spoke to you a few times before. Um, I just wanted to tell you, um, it's

01:25:22.680 to get away from politics for a day. Thank you. Oh my God. Um, just, you know, and, and to see that,

01:25:31.540 you know, Doug does his sit downs and leaves it out of it. We need to, we need that break every

01:25:35.400 now and then. And, um, I mean, don't get me wrong. I love your, I love your shows. I'm Robert F.

01:25:40.820 Kennedy Jr. With probably the best ever, but, um, we needed a breather and it was nice to have today

01:25:46.060 in the traffic. So thanks a lot. And I'm glad you, you seem like you guys have found a place in life

01:25:52.520 where, um, you're really, uh, content with everything, with the kids, with the family, uh, you're

01:25:59.100 unfiltered. You can do as you please. And if the money comes along, that's great. But I got a

01:26:04.340 feeling that if the money wasn't there, it wouldn't matter that much to you. So, um, congrats on getting

01:26:10.040 right to that spot. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. Can I tell you, this reminds me,

01:26:15.440 my team gives me the mailbag, right? And they, and they give me what people have, um, written it.

01:26:21.160 Hold on. I want to see if I can find the one, because this is reminding me of one of the emails that

01:26:26.520 one of the viewers sent in Duggar. Um, and they, let me see if I can find it. It was about maintaining

01:26:32.980 friends. Um, oh no, hold on. I so appreciate, this is from Todd. I so appreciate your insight

01:26:40.800 and ability to remain positive and objective throughout the political process. Any advice

01:26:45.560 on how to do that? I find myself increasingly frustrated with politics and exhausted with

01:26:50.140 the entire situation. And I've also heard, uh, oh, and this is one from Pamela Hall. She writes in,

01:26:55.160 you've said several times that most of your friends are left leaning. I would love for you to expand on

01:26:59.500 that. It would help me navigate my relationship with my woke daughter and her husband, uh, and so

01:27:04.680 on. So I think both of these, all Wayne's comment and those two questions, Duggar are, they all come

01:27:10.980 back to the same thing, which is it's easy to do if you shore up your core life, right? Like if you shore

01:27:17.100 up what actually matters and you know, what actually matters, you know, your loved ones, your family

01:27:21.000 could be your dear friends, but you're, you know, as I've said before, like what's in within 15 feet

01:27:26.500 of you, if that's good, it's easy not to get too worked up about politics or your friend's politics

01:27:32.720 because there's so many other places to bond and feel good. That's true. If you've got your,

01:27:37.660 if you're centered in that way, that is step one, but there are more steps to it. And I think you have

01:27:41.780 those as well, which is that you're open-minded. You see the humanity in people who, you know,

01:27:47.100 have different opinions and you want to hear them. You, you actually do listen and you're

01:27:51.160 really, you know, I, I've had this fun show and he's right. Like, this is a nice, you want to take

01:27:54.960 a break, come on over. This is great, but you're doing the hard work with this show and you're able

01:28:01.500 to do it in a way that actually does have humor and treats people like with, you know, with respect,

01:28:08.260 all people with respect and wants to hear from them and debate the issues and have, have different

01:28:13.480 perspectives on and hash it out in a way that like, we're all on this planet together,

01:28:17.220 kind of a vibe. Um, and, and again, like you're, you're probably the funniest person. I know you,

01:28:22.040 you managed to do all of this difficult stuff with a bit of humor, you know, which is very hard to do.

01:28:29.060 No, I don't think anyone else does it. Here's one example of that. I don't know if this was humor.

01:28:32.440 This was true. It was somewhat humorous, but it was also kind of true. And it went viral when I made

01:28:37.400 the following comment about our life to Gad sad, um, which got a lot of pickup and I got to ask you

01:28:45.360 about how you responded. SOT 11. Yeah. When a woman cheats on a guy, it triggers paternity uncertainty

01:28:53.400 from an evolutionary perspective. Whereas, uh, when, when, when a man cheats on a woman, it's not quite

01:28:59.860 the same thing. That's why, by the way, if I can just go back to evolutionary psychology, women get

01:29:04.740 more triggered and more angry and more jealous by emotional infidelity rather than sexual infidelity.

01:29:11.800 That doesn't mean that they're happy if, uh, their, their man sleeps around with other women,

01:29:16.020 but if he develops a platonic emotional bond with his coworker, she laughs at his jokes. She

01:29:21.820 understands his life goals and they're always chatting with each other and texting, but they've

01:29:26.960 never had sex. That might actually be a greater precursor of them splitting because emotional

01:29:33.060 infidelity is the greatest threat to a woman's, uh, interest. So my feeling is that it's not

01:29:38.380 because it's, I'm sorry. Say again. I can see that. I can see it. It's like, I'm thinking about

01:29:42.620 my own husband. I I'd much rather he have a one night stand with a woman than sit and cry with her.

01:29:49.960 So this, the New York post ran with that headline, that exact thing I said,

01:29:55.020 and you texted it to me with the caption. This feels like a trap.

01:30:02.040 I was getting text messages from friends like Duggar. What a hall pass. This is amazing. She is

01:30:06.860 so cool. Where are we going this weekend? Who, which friends exactly?

01:30:17.440 Yes. But this is something that I know I don't have to worry about. You don't have to worry about.

01:30:20.880 Um, one funny thing that we had to endure together was the portrayal of our relationship

01:30:25.960 on the big screen in the movie bombshell, uh, with which we had nothing to do.

01:30:32.040 And it was like a question of who's going to like, who's, who's playing Doug? Like who's,

01:30:37.060 what's, what's going to happen. I had known from the news reports that Charlize Theron was playing me,

01:30:40.880 but, um, they, they chose a guy who actually did a good job. He doesn't look like you, but he kind of

01:30:46.300 captured your, your general essence of like kindness and self-deprecation and smarts. Um,

01:30:53.600 in any event, here's a little clip from that movie. Stand by.

01:30:57.880 You don't have to worry about Trump. You're tougher than all those guys. Okay. You just

01:31:01.380 got to worry about the crazies. I can't handle a few crazies. Trump will stop once he feels he's

01:31:06.140 won the argument. I feel like he's less interested in winning the argument than just

01:31:10.380 having the argument with you in public to prove he can take on the establishment.

01:31:16.220 I'm not the establishment.

01:31:17.980 Honey, get real. You are the establishment now.

01:31:21.120 Mommy!

01:31:21.940 Not yet!

01:31:24.740 You do understand I have to be above this, right? I have to be an anchor first, then I'm on the...

01:31:30.320 You know, the entire country is talking about your period right now.

01:31:34.460 Mommy!

01:31:35.620 What?

01:31:36.400 There's a man!

01:31:37.500 What?

01:31:38.160 Yardley!

01:31:38.660 He's right there!

01:31:39.760 Yardley, where is it?

01:31:41.260 There he is!

01:31:42.020 He's got a fucking camera!

01:31:43.200 Come here, honey.

01:31:43.900 No, no, no. Don't open the door. They can't tell him if we're inside.

01:31:46.260 Get out! Get out of here! Go!

01:31:50.060 What were you guys doing?

01:31:54.120 Mommy and Daddy?

01:31:55.180 Um, it was a cross, a crossword.

01:31:58.500 Mommy was just taking a quick little nap.

01:32:00.640 Quick one.

01:32:01.480 It wasn't that quick.

01:32:04.060 Honestly, I cannot watch that scene. Every time I see that scene, it makes me tear up

01:32:08.340 every single time because of the Yardley moment because that actually did happen and it was

01:32:12.260 really upsetting and it was part of the craziness of, you know, Trump and me and that whole time frame of our lives was so tumultuous.

01:32:21.920 Um, it's just one of the many things we've been through, Duggar, in which you've been so supportive of me and had to take a lot of bullshit incoming that you shouldn't have been put through.

01:32:32.340 No, like I said, you know, there's, there's far more good than bad, uh, that has come with you being sometimes in the white hot spotlight.

01:32:42.000 Um, you know, it's, it's not just under a microscope.

01:32:44.160 You're under like something beyond that every once in a while, but far more good than bad for sure.

01:32:48.500 And Duplass, I liked him actually.

01:32:50.380 Uh, I saw on a red carpet thing where he was saying, look, I'm, you know, I'm just playing, I'm not Doug Brown.

01:32:58.000 I'm playing a role and I'm, I'm telling the story of an event in history, but I've never met him.

01:33:02.340 I'm not meant to try to represent who he is as a person.

01:33:06.380 Um, which I thought was the, the right way to say it as opposed to someone else I could mention who was like, I inhabited her.

01:33:14.480 You know, I was like, Oh my God, so annoying.

01:33:19.080 Okay.

01:33:19.680 Meanwhile, she gets like woman of the year from some stupid magazine for pretending to do the things that you did.

01:33:26.400 And meanwhile, they lobbed in a bunch of things that were like negative about you that were not even close to true.

01:33:32.300 So there was another one of those moments where Abby and I were together, like, I'm going to kill someone.

01:33:36.160 This is so annoying.

01:33:37.300 And it's time for another sip of the cocktail.

01:33:39.240 She did not lessen my annoyance.

01:33:40.880 Yeah.

01:33:42.040 I don't know who he's talking about.

01:33:44.080 Um,

01:33:44.480 wait, before we go, let's get in Andre from Albany, New York.

01:33:47.400 I got to take somebody from my hometown.

01:33:48.840 Andre, what's on your mind?

01:33:51.000 Oh, Megan.

01:33:52.000 Uh, good to talk to my favorite Albany law grad.

01:33:54.740 Yeah.

01:33:55.440 Great show guys.

01:33:57.680 Um, Doug, I had a question for you.

01:33:59.620 You talked about earlier and Megan, I'll keep my question within the scope of direct.

01:34:03.320 Um, Doug, you talked about books on tape, right?

01:34:08.880 Versus reading a book.

01:34:10.840 And I prefer to read a book because I find it.

01:34:14.480 A little bit more using my imagination as opposed to being lectured to.

01:34:18.800 Do you agree that there's a, a component of that in reading that is lost when you're listening to books on tape?

01:34:24.740 I do.

01:34:26.680 And, and it's almost like a spectrum.

01:34:28.500 And, you know, on the, on the one side is the full, uh, visual experience of a film and then book on tape and then actually reading.

01:34:36.560 Um, and in reading, you're, you're able to do the most to generate, uh, what's, what's being evoked by the words.

01:34:43.380 Uh, so yeah, I, I find that, that reading is by far the most stimulating to your imagination.

01:34:48.740 Mm-hmm.

01:34:49.660 Andre, thank you for the question.

01:34:51.020 Go Albany.

01:34:51.880 Duggar, I'm so proud of you.

01:34:53.620 It's an amazing podcast.

01:34:55.220 I've said to the audience before, I don't, I'm not only no longer the only podcaster in the family, but I'm not even the top podcaster.

01:35:02.440 It's, I wouldn't even get to Strudwick.

01:35:04.220 Do you have a parting thought on Strudwick?

01:35:06.860 He's getting slightly better.

01:35:08.780 That'll be my parting thought.

01:35:10.020 I don't know if that's more of a hopeful thought or an actual present day parting shot.

01:35:14.200 It feels like he might be getting a little better.

01:35:16.320 Doug also said him getting better is sort of a middle finger to us now that we do a weekly newsletter on it.

01:35:22.680 We include Strudwick's antics.

01:35:24.060 And he was like, it's classic Strud to get better.

01:35:26.060 Yeah, now he gets better.

01:35:29.200 Oh, fear not.

01:35:30.160 He's actually no better at all.

01:35:31.620 As Doug says to Strudwick, we only have two dogs, Strudwick and Thunder.

01:35:33.860 He says to Strud, you're almost my favorite.

01:35:39.040 Duggar, all the best with it.

01:35:40.420 It's called Dedicated with Doug Brunt, and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts for free.

01:35:46.320 Thanks for joining us today.

01:35:47.220 That was super fun, right?

01:35:48.340 Oh, so nice to have Duggar on.

01:35:49.760 And tomorrow we've got a big show, too.

01:35:51.400 Tomorrow's my birthday.

01:35:52.840 So the team booked some of my very favorite guests, Dr. Laura, and then an epic Kelly's Court.

01:35:59.300 I don't think this has ever happened before.

01:36:01.200 Marsha Clark versus Mark Garagos.

01:36:04.640 Boom.

01:36:05.500 A-plus lawyering happening on the show tomorrow.

01:36:07.880 We have updates for you in the Alec Baldwin case, Jean-Brette Ramsey, Casey Anthony, all this crazy stuff.

01:36:15.920 These blasts from the past have been in the news this week, so we'll get to all of it.

01:36:19.700 You're going to love it.

01:36:20.320 It's the birthday show, and it's going to be fun.

01:36:21.960 We'll see you then.

01:36:22.920 Download the show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher.

01:36:25.140 Also go to YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly.

01:36:29.240 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

01:36:31.060 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 17, 2022

House Kicks off Biden Investigation, FBI and 1⧸6, and the Life of a Writer, with Andrew Klavan and Doug Brunt ｜ Ep. 437

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