Megyn Kelly is Joined By Doug Brunt To Talk About His New Book, and the Importance of Laughter in Marriage
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Summary
The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel, Romanov s Revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan Who Fueled the World by Doug Brunt and the author of the upcoming book, The Lost Empire: The Story of the Noble Family and the Man Who Created the Nobel Prize.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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I'm joined now by a very special guest, a New York Times bestselling author, host of the excellent podcast dedicated with Doug Brunt,
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and the author of the upcoming book, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel, Romanov's Revolutionaries and the Forgotten Titan.
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Who Fueled the World. Doug happens to be my husband as well, so that worked out well. Hi, honey.
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Congrats. So here is the galley copy of the new book, which is just so cool looking. It's beautiful.
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The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel. And it looks kind of similar, similar style to your last big New York Times bestseller,
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The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel. Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel will not be available until May,
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but they can pre-order it today, have it in time for Father's Day.
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And tell us what The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel is about.
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Well, getting the galleys is such a nice moment. We open the box, you know, as a family around the dining room table,
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and you pull them out and you see it and you hold it in your hands after years of working on it.
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It is a companion book to the Diesel book. Emmanuel Nobel has an appearance in the Rudolf Diesel story.
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But you don't have to have read Diesel in order to read this book.
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It can be out of sequence. And in fact, I haven't said this really. The only people who know
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this next piece are you and my editor and a few people in archives around the world. But I'm
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working on a third, which will be, will complete a trilogy of these three turn-of-the-century
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characters. Emmanuel Nobel essentially established the Russian oil industry along the Caspian Sea in
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Southern Russia. So by 1900, he and his family had built an oil business larger than standard oil.
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And in World War I, he controlled more oil than anyone else on the planet. So it was this huge
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prize sitting in Southern Russia that Germany, the Brits, the Bolsheviks, you know, the communists,
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Japan, everybody wanted to get to the Nobel oil because they had essentially developed a whole
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oil infrastructure that was superior to anything else in the world.
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Even to Rockefeller. And yet, for reasons explained in the book, Nobel has been obliterated from history.
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This brings him back to life and tells the story.
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The only Nobel anybody knows is Alfred Nobel, who started the Nobel Prizes. This is Emmanuel
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Nobel, his nephew, built a totally different, bigger fortune that has been totally forgotten,
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wiped out. His name is not really known at all in connection with the awards. That's all the
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Uncle Alfred who did dynamite. That was his business. And it's, it's, do you reveal why? But I mean,
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a little, I mean, it has to, of course, the, the, when the communists took over Stalin and Lenin,
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they nationalized all these businesses, but everyone, even in that time, even when the
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Bolsheviks had taken over, everyone thought the communists are going to last about three days.
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And so there's an interesting negotiation between Standard Oil and Rockefeller and Nobel about all
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these Russian assets of petroleum, what to do with them. Cause nobody believes Lenin's going to
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last. And with regard to the prize though, so Alfred Nobel and the Prizes, he was, he was an
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investor in the oil business of his brothers and nephew, but the prize wouldn't exist if it wasn't
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for Emmanuel either. And there are two funny stories about that. When Emmanuel's father, Ludwig,
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dies, Alfred and Ludwig are huge celebrities around the world. And the newspapers in France where
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Alfred lives mistakes who's died. They thought Alfred died. So they print this obituary for Alfred
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Nobel calling him, you know, as the inventor of dynamite, this merchant of death and caused more,
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you know, killing than anyone in history. And so he reads his own obituary and thinks,
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holy crap, you know, I need to, this can't be how I'm remembered. And so he changes his will
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to establish the prize and gives, you know, tons of his money away. And of course all his,
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you know, after he dies, all the other Nobel people are like, you must be joking. Like the fortune's
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going to this crazy prize, including the King of Sweden who pulls out Emmanuel aside and Emmanuel's in
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charge of the estate basically for his uncle, Alfred and the prize. And every one of the
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family's fighting it. The King of Sweden is like, you don't want to pay attention to these crazy
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pacifists. This is nonsense. You know, you should take care of your family and put all the money
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toward that. So Emmanuel stands up to the King of Sweden and says, no, no, no, we're going to,
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you know, I'm taking my role as the executor of his will. Seriously, we're going to have the prize.
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And so he, at the last second, rescues the prize.
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Had it not been for Emmanuel Houston. But the funny thing is, is it's like, you think about,
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you know, Russia and you know, they've got one huge asset. Well, two, one is oil and two is their
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ability to mess with you online, right? Like those are two big assets that they have. Those are their
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two primary weapons. There's also the matter of nuclear weapons, but in any event, this is their
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main source of income is their petroleum industry. And it wasn't theirs and they didn't invent it.
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And actually nobody was doing it at all in Russia until Emmanuel Nobel came along and it was like,
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hey, look at all this stuff. This actually looks quite interesting.
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When they first bought land in the Caucasus near, in present day Azerbaijan along the Caspian Sea,
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people were skimming oil out of puddles. There was no drilling, you know, any wells that were dug
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were dug by hand with spades. So they come down there with great, they are chemists and engineers
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by trade. And so they come down there and they completely turn it around. But this was in the 1870s,
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the time of the czars. So the book has these amazing detours through history that include
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the Rothschilds and Rockefellers and Dostoevsky and Fabergé.
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And tons on Stalin. I learned so much about Joseph Stalin that I did not know.
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And you personalize his backstory in a way that I didn't know. Like, how did he grow up to be this
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murderous, crazy dude? And now I know. I mean, you actually have a lot of backstory on Stalin.
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You see the rise of these two men, very, very different in character, but in strength,
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they were equals for a long, long time, Emmanuel Nobel and Joseph Stalin. So you learn a ton about
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world history, about Russia. Everything that Russia is today is explained in this book.
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Like, but you don't feel like you're learning. You feel like you're just getting a, like a caper.
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Well, yeah, it's written ideally in a very novelistic way. It's a ripping read. I mean,
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you go through it, but it has these fun detours, but it is a piece of history. And Stalin, as you say,
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grew up as a neighbor to Nobel in Southern Russia. He grew up in Georgia, which is between the Black Sea and
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the Caspian Sea. And he actually worked in the oil fields of the Nobels and the Rothschilds,
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another big figure in Russian oil. And so Emmanuel Nobel and Joseph Stalin, they're sort of like
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these counterpoints to each other. And Stalin is looking at these oil capitalists, industrialists
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with envy and hatred. And, you know, ultimately, you know, the whole book brings this collision,
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Yeah. He was looking at Nobel's oil the same way Zoran Mamdani is looking at the billionaires in New
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York. All right. Now, so don't forget, it's called The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel by Douglas Brunt.
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You can get your pre-order right now. That would help Doug out and yours truly,
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And avoid the Mayhem of pub day. Like, Diesel sold out. People couldn't get it for like two
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months because, you know, Simon & Schuster had to go back and print more copies. If you pre-order
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it now, it shows up on your doorstep or your bookstore has it.
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You don't have to wait. And that's happening right now with Charlie's book where they've
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Yeah. You're going to have to wait months for his book.
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They always underestimate anybody who's conservative or married to a conservative.
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Yeah, they do because they just assume there's no audience for that because that's not the world in
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which these book publishers live. So it's called The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel. Get your copy
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now. Now, more importantly, what do we have here with us?
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All right. First, we've got, we have our Jack Carr tumblers with the, I don't know if it can show up
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here with the ice, but it's got the Tomahawk Navy SEAL thing. So shout out to Jack Carr.
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Thank you for the glasses. We're going to have a little traditional eggnog with bourbon.
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Yeah. What do you, what officially goes in a, in an eggnog?
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Some people do bourbon, some do rum, some do both.
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Okay. The reason that we're doing this is a, it's eggnog and why not? It's that time of year.
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But B on Doug's podcast, which is called dedicated with Doug Brunt, uh, where he interviews authors.
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He both interviews authors and talks about their books. And he always pours a cocktail of choice.
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Could be, could be virgin, could be alcoholic. This one happens to be alcoholic.
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It's almost, almost always alcoholic. Thank God. And everyone drinks the drink.
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Michael Lewis was on the other day and he's like, do people actually drink the drink?
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He had a Sazerac by the way, which is like the New Orleans cocktail.
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Yeah. It's basically similar to an old fashioned.
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We did. I think I had to read your ad by the end or maybe that was a different show.
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That's delicious. I know. Well done. Yeah. No. And we talked about how that one year
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we were drinking eggnogs like they were going out of style when we were young. We didn't have kids
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Looking in the mirror, like something's changed in our diet.
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And then we looked at the nutritional information on the box.
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Which by the way, the low fat isn't, isn't a whole lot better.
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Well, 150 calories, you know, a lot of cholesterol in there.
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Nothing is worse than, than the Martha Stewart recipe. I mentioned this to you this morning over coffee.
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I just saw it on X. Steve, I'll send it to you. We had to drop it in for the listening audience.
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This thing was loaded with alcohol. First of all, it was like so many eggs and so much sugar and so
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much heavy cream. And then on top of that, it was like three cups of bourbon, three cups of rum,
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I don't know what you were thinking, you know? Usually men are trying to get women intoxicated.
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You're on set. You can't like, well, we can definitely add more booze, but getting involved
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in eggs and cream and stuff, we're not going to do that here.
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No, you don't want egg cream of any kind. And she, she stuffed the yolks in there too. It was
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pretty nasty. So we're getting ready for our holidays. What have you been doing to get
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I said a few present suggestions, which is more than I normally do.
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I'm only laughing because every woman knows that's a joke.
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No, we kind of have our shared responsibilities, I would say, but generally the Christmas shopping
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is on my list because of, because I want it to be.
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Yeah. Well, you're so good at it. It's amazing. It's like a, you know, Santa Claus threw up
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under the tree. There's like a million presents everywhere.
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He helps me. And that's why I have, I have an ace in the hole. I have a secret weapon.
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Yeah. So I don't really need Doug Brun's help because I've got Santa.
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You do help. But we were talking a little bit about our Christmas traditions. I was
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doing this for Steven Crowder and, um, there's so many that we do. Like we go to Montana every
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year and there's a bunch of stuff we do over there. But what would you say? Like I've asked
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what, what's our top or what's our, a couple of top Christmas traditions that we have?
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I mean, well, we, we're still, you know, earmuffs on the kids. We're still firing away with
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the elf every morning and the, and the, uh, Advent.
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Wow. And we try to carol as much as possible, but that's not every year. We do have a great,
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like almost 20 years tradition of getting lunch with a particular group of friends in
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the city. It used to be at the 21 club. Hello. That's got to open back up. It does.
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It's the 21 club. Yep. Um, but we, we have found new venues for that.
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Wait a minute. What was the second thing you said?
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That's not really traditional. I say that's not an annual.
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Did we reveal what happened last year when we caroled?
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Yes. It's embarrassing, but it's a funny story.
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Well, our first stop was actually pretty good. They were amazed. They're like, this is so great.
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And we kind of knew them and they thought this is great. And the other dad was like,
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I'm coming with you. And he turns around, it's like, let's go. And they're like,
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screw you dad. He's like, next year, maybe I can join you.
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Yeah. Just the five of our family. And so then we go to the next house from that point forward,
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it went down. Like, nobody really wants it. They're like, it's cold outside. Why do I have
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There was one moment where we were waiting across the street. We had our Santa hats on. We were
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freezing. And this SUV drove by with the window down and just kind of waved at us. And we were
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like, chicka bell, chicka bell, chicka bell. Shaking the bell at them.
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Everyone was kind of like trying to squeeze the door closed, kind of like, I've got some people
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Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't the greatest doubting. It's probably not going to be a
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tradition, but I think I'm thinking of things like when we watch, it's a wonderful life.
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Oh yeah. Yeah. So actually you drive, in addition to getting the presents, you do drive a lot
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With the salt and the bread and the whole bit and, you know, ringing the bell when Clarence
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You and I, like the greatest tradition, bar none of, you know, Christmas aside, you and I start
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every morning with a cup of coffee. We've got the coffee machine in the bedroom. It's set
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the night before with the alarm. It goes off and we start each day with 20 minutes together,
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talking, having coffee. Sometimes listening to AM update, but other times watching Christmas
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in Connecticut for a few minutes to start the day. It's just an awesome way to enter the
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day and enter the world, you know, having connected a little bit.
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It's so true. And right now we have a little tree in our bedroom. We've got some Christmas
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lights and that, that makes it magical too. You know, like turn that on. The only thing Doug
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and I argue about in the bedroom is the temperature.
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So now we both like it cool when we sleep. That makes sense. Everybody should have it.
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They say 68 degrees. It's good for your health. It's good for your sleep. But Doug would like
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the thermometer to be turned down much earlier in the evening so that it's like cold when
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Yes. That makes me irritable. We climb in bed. I'm like, it's so effing hot in here.
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And I'm like, it's freezing because you can't function in there when it's, it's 68 degrees.
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Like when you're doing your nighttime routine, you're washing your face, you're in your night
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gown, you're freezing your ass off if it's 68 degrees.
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You've got a heated floor though. You should just sort of like get low.
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That is a luxury by the way. When we bought the house, it had a heated floor. I've never
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Damn. Damn. As they say. So we're going to go to Montana. It's not snowy there, unfortunately.
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They're making some. Yes. For me, like I'm, I'm happy to do a couple of groom blues and
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then go sit by the fire, play poker with the kids and like never get out of pajamas. Like
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It doesn't that sound like heaven on earth for two weeks. It's going out there. We've got
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our annual costume night. I recommend this to everybody. You can go big. I mean, obviously
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I go big because I love costumes, but you can, you can do this on a shoestring budget too.
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You just go to the local costume store and you get a couple of costumes for your family.
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It does not have to be fancy, but it needs to be a theme. It needs to be theme related.
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And then the way we do it in our family is on costume night. I like controlling it. So
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I'll put out the costumes on people's beds. You'll keep the kids busy. They all know it's
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It's super fun because nobody knows what the theme is. Meg plans this every single year.
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And then the theme's amazing. One year was back to the future. One year we had watched
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the 10 commandments. So I, you know, I was Moses and someone was the various Kings.
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You were the best most. Oh, look, here's back to the future.
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Oh, nice. Blurred the kids, kids faces. You were the best McFly. You were George McFly,
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It was Marty. And you, oh, you've got to do your imitation. Can you do your George McFly
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You did. I love it. And then we did Moses. We did 10 commandments and you made an amazing
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Moses. Years early. This was good. I mean, this, we went all out for the Moses. We got
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If there's no one in the family who does this amount of planning as you do, which is amazing
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because everyone fully appreciates, but even like a wig night is kind of fun. If you're
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recommending to the audience, we have a closet full of wigs.
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Right. It's like, you could just be eating your dinner. We don't actually do anything. Like
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somebody's asking, what do you do on costume? We're like, nothing. We just put them on.
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There's the Wonka. That was a great one. Here's the funny story about these two people
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in there as Violet Beauregard and Augustus Gloop. They've since become dear friends of ours,
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but that night we didn't know them at all. So we were expecting two family members who then
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couldn't come. It was like right after COVID, that was either 2020 or 2021. It was right when things
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were still nutty because of COVID and their flights got canceled. And these two go to our
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school and we had just met them and we're like, so would you like to come for dinner? They're
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like, sure. We'd love to. And we're like, could you wear some weird costumes?
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That's not exactly how it goes. There's no could you wear. It's like, here's, she,
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Meg like lays down the law. When you cross that threshold, you're in her world. And she says,
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off you go. And here's your costume and don't come back out until it's on.
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It's kind of the price of admission. Anyway, and we realized too late that Augustus Gloop
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winds up looking a little like Hitler Youth. He's in like a little military outfit with the
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Our friends, Lisa and Chris, were such good sports. They donned the outfits and it was such
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a fun thing. I think he sort of entered with a little trepidation, but mid-dinner was loving it.
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Once we got the liquor flowing. Well, that helps with all costumes and wigs.
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But no, so the other piece of costume night is just to order a background from Amazon. So if you
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go on Amazon and you type in 10 commandments or you type in back to the future backdrop,
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you will pull up so many options for 40 bucks or under like 40 bucks for the big one for eight by 10.
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But if you want to go smaller, it's much cheaper. Anyway, my point is simply for under 150 bucks,
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you could probably get everybody in your family in a costume and with a backdrop. And that's really the
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end of it. So we'll try to sometimes do like the food that's themed appropriately. If like that
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night, one year we did Karate Kid, Cobra Kai. Yeah, that was great. We had Asian that night.
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That's about as much as what, you know, it's not that like, then you just sit there and you laugh.
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Specials. Yeah. Oh, we did have John Kreese do one of those.
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And speaking of like cheap, that was like 30 bucks or something.
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Yeah. One of those services where you can pay an actor to like say something personalized.
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Yeah, he's like strike first, you know, getting on with our kids who, by the way,
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that was the best 30 bucks we ever spent because the kids were totally into it.
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And he called us the blunts, I think, instead of the brunts.
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It was close. Whatever. You don't expect perfection from John Kreese.
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Anyway, I can't wait for all of that stuff to start. It's like, that's what makes the two weeks
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magical. Like the Christmas is the apex of it. But if you put these other things around,
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then it's not as much of a letdown when Christmas is over.
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And it's also that contains, you know, one of the few times of the year where there aren't
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obligations all over the kids, especially in us. And we get, you know, tons of time together.
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High quality, low quality, but it all adds up. It's a great time together.
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You know, the kids are getting more into Texas Hold'em.
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We'd have the big stack in front of us. Now it's insane.
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Or at least cheat them without them knowing. One or the other. But yeah, no, that's been
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fun. We got to learn some new games. The kids are now into Texas Hold'em, which I actually,
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I don't totally know how to play Texas Hold'em. You just hold three cards and you play off of.
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You hold two and there's, yeah. But it's really, it's like a betting thing. Once you learn how to bet,
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you're good. It's basically, everything's a poker hand, so.
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Let's do that. This time next year, we'll be sitting here talking about how well I did at
00:19:24.540
Okay. So let's talk about the news a little bit, because it's always fun to get your take
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on it. And I thought, I saw this article yesterday and I was like, this is a good one
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for Duggar. Here's a headline from the New York Post. Marco Rubio instructs diplomats
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to use Times New Roman font, eliminating Biden-era DEI initiative. Did you know there's DEI font?
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I did not. By the way, I don't think the takeaway of this story should be that Calibri is woke.
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Exactly. But I totally get where Rubio's going on this.
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Calibri does look a little light in the loafers. I'm sorry.
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Times New Roman is like, bald, bald. We're showing it on the screen for the listening,
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Calibri is like skinny with softer edges. And it just, it looks a little more feminine, I'd say.
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Well, look, here's my overall take on this, because I understand what Rubio's doing. I'm sure when
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people heard about this, you could imagine the attacks, like you're running state and this is
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what you're going to spend your time on. But it does matter. And you know, firsthand, when I am
00:20:23.560
working on these books, Simon & Schuster and I spend time on the font. Like it's got to match the
00:20:28.720
mission. And you know, it's your, it's your first chance to set the tone, set the atmosphere for the
00:20:37.740
It's the, it's the last little bit of, you know, connection point that you have. And it,
00:20:41.900
and it does matter. It's why writers, authors, and publishers, and editors actually focus on
00:20:46.260
this. The font of different books looks very different depending on what kind of book it is.
00:20:49.700
Like if you open George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones and you see Times New Roman, you're going to be
00:20:53.780
like, what is this? Like the best versions of those books look like it was written by an elf,
00:20:58.200
you know, like Bilbo Baggins, like something a little medieval and fanciful. And, you know,
00:21:02.480
especially like the first letter of the chapter should look that way. And so it's Rubio's way of
00:21:08.680
creating a mindset or creating an atmosphere for the information he's putting out there. And you see
00:21:14.640
that dynamic everywhere. It's the same as Bill Bratton's broken windows policing. You know,
00:21:19.920
you walk into a neighborhood that's full of broken windows and graffiti on the walls and trash on the
00:21:23.040
streets, and that creates a mindset and atmosphere for crime. And Bratton and others before
00:21:28.140
him have proven that if you fix the windows, paint the walls, clean up all the trash and have this
00:21:32.020
beautiful neighborhood, you prevent crime before it starts. And it's that same dynamic. It seems like
00:21:36.560
a small thing, but setting that tone, setting the atmosphere matters.
00:21:44.860
So I get what he's doing. If he was going to, the only change I would make is he shouldn't go back
00:21:48.540
to Times New Roman. He should do like the Bilbo Baggins handwriting for all of our state
00:21:52.240
communication. But actually that reminds me of a story you were telling me the other day.
00:21:56.700
It's the same thing of like the small tonal things we should value and prioritize them
00:22:01.900
more. Almost we have to invert our thinking that these things are more important. It's like that
00:22:06.900
Jordan Peterson piece that you were showing me.
00:22:08.660
Yeah, that's right. Oh yeah, that was so good. It was a Jordan Peterson soundbite on Instagram
00:22:13.120
where he was saying, yeah, it's great to go to St. Bart's or Aruba and have a margarita,
00:22:18.820
you know, down on the beach. Everybody would love that. But your life, he said in this clip,
00:22:23.960
is how your wife greets you at the end of the day. It's how you are around the dinner table with
00:22:29.080
each other, how you're treating each other, you know, whether you're quote present, you know,
00:22:33.980
but truly it is like, do you feel valued when you walk into the room with your spouse or your kids
00:22:38.360
or your family? Like that, that does make up your life with so many more of our waking hours are
00:22:41.960
spent around that table or that coffee mug than they are down in, you know, Aruba with a mocktail.
00:22:47.960
And they're small and they're often overlooked and it's not, we don't think it was a big deal.
00:22:52.420
And yet we really do need to invert how we think about that because that's the biggest deal. As
00:22:56.600
Peterson points out, that's 80% of your life, those little moments that add up. And so it's,
00:23:01.620
you know, long way of saying, I think that's the same thing Rubio is getting at of like,
00:23:05.820
this is the font they're going to be staring at for 10 hours a day. Like this is an opportunity
00:23:10.920
to set an atmosphere, to set a tone. This is what I want.
00:23:14.460
Yeah. So it's not, it's not trivial. It actually is something.
00:23:16.800
Well, this led to a discussion that we had about like, what, who do you want the kids to marry?
00:23:22.460
You know? And I was saying, my God, they, they all have to marry somebody with a good sense of humor.
00:23:28.000
Right. And we were talking about this because it's like.
00:23:30.000
You're so lucky in that regard. Cause I, you know.
00:23:31.900
You're very funny. I am lucky. Yeah. I treasure you.
00:23:35.560
I will concede though. You are actually the funnier of the two.
00:23:38.800
What? That's never been conceded before by anyone.
00:23:42.580
But no, all fair. I'm going to take it back, but we laugh a lot.
00:23:47.520
Totally. We laugh at each other and our kids are so good. All three of them have developed a
00:23:53.220
Yes. Because it is important. Number one, it's important to laugh at life,
00:23:56.320
but it's almost equally important to be able to laugh at yourself and others. All of those
00:24:01.180
things must be laughed at. It's not cruel. Like it's, it's a stress relief mechanism. I really think
00:24:06.580
it's the, the antidote to cortisol, right? Like just laughing and life provides so many
00:24:11.860
opportunities. It could be just a nothing, but like, we're constantly making fun of ourselves,
00:24:16.400
you know? And I, and I have noticed, I mean, you and I have had these little sidebar
00:24:20.320
conversations when one of our kids isn't hanging in that department. Like he gets made fun of,
00:24:25.200
and you can see like, he's a little pissed off that he got a little made fun of. And we're like,
00:24:30.180
that's not, I mean, we don't pounce on him at that point, but we're like, it's, you know,
00:24:33.700
that's, that's a sign that we need to keep doing that until he gets a little better.
00:24:37.480
Otherwise he's going to, you know, it's not going to work out come college dorm days.
00:24:42.200
That's right. Life is tough. And you really do have to be able to laugh at, at all of it,
00:24:46.120
or you're not going to make it very far. I really feel like, you know, my Nana,
00:24:49.960
I've talked about her on the show too. She, she died at 101. She only ate processed foods.
00:24:54.820
She never exercised a day in her life. Um, so what did she do? She laughed a lot. She was very
00:25:02.720
funny. She had a circle of friends that laughed. She was very quick to make fun of herself first
00:25:08.040
and foremost, but everyone else as well. Like, I do think it's a, it could make the difference
00:25:12.680
between life and death. Totally. Totally. We need to study Nana and we need to study Dick Van Dyke.
00:25:16.900
Whatever those two are doing, I'm going to do all of it. Well, I was a little concerned about Dick
00:25:21.640
Van Dyke's comments about how he made it to a hundred. He said he was like drinking way too much
00:25:25.760
until his fifties. That wasn't the part that concerned me. It was, he said, I was sort of on board
00:25:29.500
with that. He said he's, he's never, it was either, he's never hated anyone or he's never
00:25:34.920
been like rageful. I was like, uh-oh. I don't think he's right about that. You know, people
00:25:41.960
can't self-analyze. They have no idea. We need to analyze him, you know, from the outside. It was
00:25:46.320
all the dancing. It was the dancing. He's skinny. You know, he's a skinny guy. That probably helps a
00:25:50.740
lot. It was totally the old bamboo in Chitty Chitty Bam Bam. Totally. Once you learn that,
00:25:55.640
you keep doing that dance, you live forever. Yeah. How are we going to do that? The old
00:26:00.340
bamboo? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. We have to watch that with the kids. I think they're
00:26:03.300
totally up for it. They haven't, the kids, we used to watch this movie on a loop about
00:26:07.520
10 years ago. You guys know Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 12 years ago. Yeah. And it's such an
00:26:12.880
amazing movie. It does have that AI haircut. So I saw your tweet on that actually, that this
00:26:17.620
was already invented in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But the kids, I think, have like foggy memories
00:26:21.780
of it. So I'm excited to see how they see it now. I love all parts of it.
00:26:25.620
I love Truly Scrumptious. I love, love, love Dick Van Dyke. He's just so utterly charming.
00:26:32.320
I love the apparatus he sets up in their house to cook the breakfast, to lift the blankets
00:26:38.680
off the beds. Yeah. It's all great. The villains are great in Bavaria.
00:26:43.060
The whistle thing. Yeah. That's such a great scene. It's like, who even knew? But we had
00:26:48.780
a very funny thing happen with our love of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over our fake-sgiving holiday
00:26:53.160
where we have the family come for fake Thanksgiving, not the actual day, but it makes it easier on
00:26:58.300
everybody who needs to travel. And we split the family into two groups to play charades.
00:27:03.100
And our side was coming up with the clues for the other side. And then they came up with their clues
00:27:10.360
for us. Now, unbeknownst to our opponents, who are also family members, our family is obsessed with
00:27:17.500
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. We know a lot about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. We've seen that movie
00:27:20.600
truly hundreds of times. A hundred times. Yeah, exactly. So there was a joke when we used to watch
00:27:25.880
it. Our oldest, Yates, who was just a little guy at the time, like two or three, he saw this one
00:27:30.560
scene involving this boat and there were these like rounded things on the boat. Like funnels from
00:27:36.420
the top of the boat. Okay. Yeah. And for whatever, and then two bad guys hide themselves later in those
00:27:42.260
funnels and go on land and start spying on people. And for whatever reason, Yates always referred
00:27:46.200
to them as the barrels, the bear. I want to see the barrels. And he would do this with his hands
00:27:50.700
for listening audience. I'm like twinkling my fingers together. It needs to be like the barrels.
00:27:55.760
Well, I got up there and I pulled my clue from the other side and the movie was Chitty Chitty Bang
00:28:02.680
Bang. And you were on my team. So I needed to act this out to you. And of course they're wondering,
00:28:08.440
I'm sure the other side is like, okay, maybe she'll do Bang Bang. How's she going to get this?
00:28:11.740
And all I said was movie. And then I did the finger motion and you were like, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
00:28:18.860
At which way, there's no convincing them that we haven't been cheating. There's nothing you can
00:28:22.880
say. They're like, no, no, no. You obviously cheated. None whatsoever. And we did crush them.
00:28:27.540
I mean, it was embarrassing. It was brutal. Had to take pity on them.
00:28:30.820
It was brutal. It was so fun. I love charades. What a fun game. Our kids have recently introduced us to a
00:28:36.560
new game. Oh my God. That is so fun. What is that thing called? Impostor. Impostor. Yeah. Yeah. So
00:28:42.360
someone in the group, you can do it on your iPhone, which is actually a great use of the phone for
00:28:46.340
this. So explain it, how it works. Let's see. Oh my God. If there's five of us sitting there,
00:28:51.100
the five of us are sitting there and someone's the imposter and there's a word. And one, everybody
00:28:56.660
has to hold the phone at one point. Like it starts off, I'll explain it.
00:29:00.960
So if I were patient zero of this five person game, but you can play it with, you know, three
00:29:07.840
people too. I think three is probably the fewest you could do it with. Um, five. Yeah. I would say
00:29:12.360
five is five or more would be most fun. Yeah. So you, um, open, you see the phone. I don't know
00:29:18.880
the app. I'll ask the kids, but I'm sure if you Google imposter app, you can get it. And it will say
00:29:23.640
like, you agree as a family on which category you're going to pick. Like there's sports, there's, um,
00:29:29.160
uh, like movies. And, um, we, we pick movies for one. I wasn't, was I the first on that one? No,
00:29:41.260
I wasn't. Okay. So Yardley went first on this one and I think I might take over. No, no, I've got
00:29:47.020
this. I'm going to see me. She got Peppa Pig. That was the clue. So Yardley wasn't the imposter. I
00:29:53.060
was. And so you, when Yardley looked at the phone, it said Yardley and she saw Peppa Pig. Then we
00:29:57.960
handed it to Thatcher and he saw Peppa Pig. Then they handed it to me and I saw imposter.
00:30:02.840
Yes. You have no idea that it's Peppa Pig. You don't know. So when the phone gets handed to you,
00:30:06.440
it says, it just says your name because of the person who starts at just types when the five
00:30:09.640
names are playing. So when it sees, I see Megan, I hit it. And then it either says imposter or it
00:30:14.860
gives me the clue. And then we pass the phone around and then you start guessing. And the way it works
00:30:18.920
is like Yardley went first. And so she said, Oh, I knew we were in like TV and movies. And she said
00:30:24.380
pink. And then the next person said Australia. And so when it got to me, I was the imposter
00:30:31.540
and I thought flamingo. That's what I thought we were going for. So when you're the imposter,
00:30:36.100
you have to try to act like, you know, what it is. You have to, you have to like act like,
00:30:40.160
you know, and the other people have to, when they, when they do know, have to reveal a clue
00:30:45.060
that shows they know, but not so much that they're going to clue in the imposter. So I said feather
00:30:50.520
and you go, mom's the imposter. And everyone started laughing at me. Everyone started laughing
00:30:55.900
because it is. If you're early at the imposter, you don't have enough, you know, if you go late,
00:30:59.880
you might get enough clues that you can sort of dial in on, on what it is. Otherwise you're just
00:31:05.080
sort of throwing darts and hoping to say something that makes any amount of sense to the rest of the
00:31:09.960
group. We are here today with Douglas Brunt promoting his new novel, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel
00:31:14.640
Nobel, even though it doesn't sound like it. You can get it on pre-order right now. It's well worth
00:31:20.840
your time, but that game imposter is worth your time as well. However, be more ambiguous than I was
00:31:27.220
with that whole thing. Now I want to keep going. I want to keep going a little. We're going to keep
00:31:31.940
going past the break a little bit. Sorry, EJ. I'm going to eat into the next hour just a bit.
00:31:36.900
Um, in the news today, well, yesterday, but also today is the fact that they have named a new
00:31:44.400
CBS evening news anchor. Did you know that they were looking for one?
00:31:51.940
The only reason I know anything about this story is you tweeted how irrelevant it is. And I saw your
00:31:59.260
tweet and I'm like, Oh, what's so irrelevant. And it was to Coppel. Yeah. Yeah. Tony to Coppel to
00:32:04.720
Coppel. Do you know anything about Tony to Coppel? I don't. I remember he got in trouble for like
00:32:07.980
doing an interview that pushed back a bit in a way. I don't even remember all the details about
00:32:12.480
it, but I remember he pushed back in a way that seemed like actual journalism and he got some
00:32:15.880
blowback for it. It was a great moment on the morning show. That's the only way I know him,
00:32:19.060
which is a positive, uh, thing to know, I guess, but it is crazy irrelevant. I mean, you and I are the
00:32:25.180
same age. We grew up in, you know, 150 miles apart at the same time, like loving all the same
00:32:31.480
movies, having the same high school experiences and watching one of three evening news anchors.
00:32:37.980
And that's almost how households identified in those times. Like, are you a Jennings house?
00:32:41.720
Are you a Rathers house? Yeah. You know, we were Jennings. You were Jennings. We were Jennings too.
00:32:45.880
And, um, no longer like that's no longer how people, it used to be like, I'm an American,
00:32:50.720
I'm a Christian or a Presbyterian. I'm a whatever that. And I, we watched Jennings. Like it was in the
00:32:55.820
top 10 of things that identify your household and no longer, nobody even cares. Nobody, you know,
00:33:02.060
our age or younger gets news that way. It's so irrelevant, right? It's like, I mean, I would,
00:33:07.060
I know I'm biased, but I think podcasts are far more relevant now. People like they have their
00:33:10.840
loyalty, their allegiance to like this show. If you're going to spend an hour or two a day with
00:33:15.320
somebody, it's not going to be the evening news. My God, why would you, by the way, it used to be
00:33:19.420
like the newspaper the next day was kind of stale from yesterday's news. You know, the immediacy cut
00:33:23.800
because of cable and now be, you know, with the, by the time it's made it through the producers
00:33:28.800
and packaged and written and ready for primetime cable evening news, it's so old.
00:33:35.580
It's so old. Yeah. Um, so I don't think, you know, like that, that all the mainstream media
00:33:40.560
is writing articles like Ken Tony DeCoppo restore CBS to its former glory. I'm like, when, what,
00:33:46.500
what glory? And they're like, can they, can he get them at a third place? The answer is no,
00:33:50.820
he cannot, he can't do that either. Nothing's changing in TV news other than diminishing ratings.
00:33:55.400
Maybe he can do something relatively with the other three, but the three as a unit, like
00:34:00.060
evening news is going only one way, which is down.
00:34:02.940
Yeah. No, one big Tyrannosaurus Rex, only not as scary.
00:34:06.780
We are back now with Doug Brunt. It was a very tough booking for me, but I made it this morning
00:34:11.440
over coffee. He is here promoting his soon to be released, The Lost Empire of Emmanuel Nobel,
00:34:17.640
Romanovs, revolutionaries, and the forgotten Titan who fueled the world. I like that. Not ruled the
00:34:24.580
world. Fueled. Fueled the world. Play on with the font that Rubio would approve of. Well done. Exactly.
00:34:30.480
It's, it's musculature. It's got musculature. Yeah. It gives you a sense of history, turn of the
00:34:35.000
century. Yeah. Except we've changed the cover since then, since this. Yes. Not the font, but we did,
00:34:40.540
we got rid of the Romanovs. Wait, hold on. Okay. There we go. Uh, that lower right picture of the
00:34:45.220
Romanovs. Tsar Nicholas II and his family who were brutally killed. Um, we moved that to the back
00:34:49.780
because it seemed like the cover was a little too busy with that on there. So. It's fun hearing
00:34:52.800
the stories, right? About like how a book that you enjoy or wind up loving changed over time.
00:34:58.380
Yeah. Like from the title to the cover art. Like here. So here is the mysterious case of
00:35:02.660
Rudolph Diesel. This is Doug's bestseller. This book has sold a ton. Um, hugely successful. And it's
00:35:08.960
a mystery about Rudolph Diesel, who was the Elon Musk of his time, who went missing and Doug solved the
00:35:14.340
case. He solved the mystery of what happened to him. And it was not always called the mysterious
00:35:18.780
case of Rudolph Diesel. No, I mean, for months and months, my editor and I were going back and
00:35:22.840
forth. Like we're going to solve this over a bottle of wine. We came up with engines and empires. It's
00:35:26.780
the diesel engine. And I loved it. He loved it. 11th hour. They have a sales meeting with the internal
00:35:31.800
SNS team. Barnes and Noble has a sales team that contributes to this stuff too. The CEO, John Karp of
00:35:36.120
Simon and Schuster. And so I get this call. We've already printed galleys, like what we have for Nobel
00:35:40.780
and it has the engines and empires title. He's like, everyone loves the book. It's charming.
00:35:45.300
It's atmospheric. It takes us to this early Downton Abbey era and a crazy mystery. And it's
00:35:49.540
super fun and great history, except the title. We got to change the title. I'm like, what?
00:35:54.620
That's the one thing we had. So they had come up with a different title. And in the last second,
00:35:58.940
it was, it was that. So those things happen. And it's, it's kind of a fun part of the journey
00:36:02.400
when the book is all aspects of it. I really love the research and time in the archives. All of it
00:36:07.520
is great. But these fun little twists at the end and looking at the cover art, the SNS cover art
00:36:12.940
team, their art department is amazing. It's very cool. And it's always interesting to hear or see
00:36:17.480
how someone else has an expression of the story. You know, like what did they come up with for a
00:36:22.640
cover of this book you just spent years writing? Right. That year, it's like yours. It's your
00:36:26.640
personal baby, your creativity, your research, all of that went into it. And then somebody else has got
00:36:30.340
strong thoughts on it. And it's fascinating to get the first like read back or feel feedback on how
00:36:36.500
somebody else sees it. Like, what is this book about? What should be called? You do host a
00:36:41.240
podcast, which we're actually now airing on the Megyn Kelly channel on Saturdays called Dedicated
00:36:45.320
with Doug Brunt, which I mentioned. And you had a very interesting interview the other day with
00:36:49.600
Michael Lewis, famed author. Author of Moneyball and Blindside and Liar's Poker. Yeah. All of which
00:36:56.900
have become big movies. And he wind up, he winds up telling you a story about, okay, I'm not going to
00:37:02.920
give it away. Listen to this story. I'm just going to run the soundbite. It's going to end in a big
00:37:07.380
reveal about somebody, you, the Megyn Kelly show listeners and watchers know very well. It's this
00:37:14.700
guy's everywhere. He's Waldo. He's everywhere. Okay. Listen to Michael Lewis talking to Doug Brunt.
00:37:21.900
One of the people we interview, I interviewed for this podcast was Steve Bannon. My connection to
00:37:27.940
Steve Bannon, he bought the movie rights to Liar's Poker. Oh my God. I didn't know he was
00:37:32.920
even in that business. You did know he was in that business. Where do you think his money came
00:37:36.020
from? Seinfeld. He went from, he was Steve Bannon was involved with Steve Bannon went from the Navy
00:37:40.840
to the Navy to Harvard Business School to Goldman Sachs to Hollywood. Bannon told me, I just found this
00:37:46.380
out like a month ago that, um, not only did he buy the movie rights, but he was so pissed off by how
00:37:53.580
bad the script was. They got out of a very fancy script writer that he went off in a little dark
00:37:58.840
room by himself and wrote a Liar's Poker screenplay himself. He was obsessed with it. Did you get to
00:38:04.280
read it? Well, this is the next thing I'm going to go see him. And he says he has a copy somewhere.
00:38:08.560
So I want to read it. I want to see what he did. That would be amazing. I'm glad you played that
00:38:14.920
clip. I got to follow up with Michael Lewis to find out how the Bannon meeting went. This is all sort
00:38:18.520
of happening now. You call him and I'll call Steve and we'll see whether this is happening. I would love to
00:38:22.640
see that Liar's Poker is an amazing book. It's still read today. So Liar's Poker has not yet
00:38:26.820
been made a movie. Has not been made a movie, but it's his first book. It was a breakout book. He
00:38:31.440
tells so many amazing stories of how he first started writing. You know, he was working at
00:38:35.060
Solomon Brothers and Wall Street and he writes, he has sort of a Jerry Maguire moment. He gets this
00:38:39.040
article published about how bankers are paid too much. And it goes in the Wall Street Journal and
00:38:43.780
someone had sort of stuck their neck out to get him this job at Solomon Brothers. So he comes up the
00:38:48.060
elevator feeling like, like I've written this, I'm in the journal. Like, this is so exciting. And the guy who got
00:38:52.520
on the job is at the top of the elevator bay, like ashen, looking like, what have you done? Like,
00:38:57.860
you can't do that. You can't work here and do that. You pick one. So he ends up actually writing
00:39:03.400
financial articles under a pseudonym for a while. But then he comes out with Liar's Poker,
00:39:08.620
which is an amazing book. This reminds me of a story when I was practicing law where we had a client
00:39:13.160
who came to us already having had a default judgment entered against them. Like they had blown off this
00:39:20.040
complaint repeatedly. And the plaintiff got a default judgment against them because they failed
00:39:24.080
to defend. Then they called us and said, will you help us? So I was a low person on the totem pole.
00:39:28.380
So they sent me in there like, oh, go get this default judgment vacated for our client, which is
00:39:32.340
an uphill battle. So I went in there and it was very contentious. And the other side, the plaintiff
00:39:38.360
did not want the default judgment to go away. We really battled. And the judge gave me a super hard
00:39:43.360
time because the client had been completely derelict and defending. And it was just a funny and
00:39:49.720
tumultuous time in my career. So long story short, they vacated the default judgment. And the court
00:39:55.340
wrote this opinion, like in writing that you can still look up now, where he really praised me and
00:40:03.100
the oral argument, but he completely dumped on my client. I was so young. I was like, this is the
00:40:10.080
greatest opinion ever. He loved me. I brought it back to Joan's day and I'm like, look what they
00:40:17.220
said. And of course the seasoned lawyers were like, uh, this is not a great opinion for our client
00:40:24.060
who now is like being ripped by a court on the record repeatedly for its dereliction of duty.
00:40:30.060
I'm like, but I got the right result. And look at all the praise for me.
00:40:34.020
Kind of like that. Yeah. And like Michael Lewis, you went on to a great career. Yes. From there.
00:40:43.300
It all, it all wound up. In a different place. That's right. I'll wound up working out different,
00:40:46.920
different industry altogether, although some of the skills translated. Here's the other piece of
00:40:50.740
news I want to talk to you about. We've been trying to get this on. Um, this has been out for a week
00:40:54.780
now. The Atlantic dropped a piece called Accommodation Nation. And this piece, you may not have read it,
00:41:01.100
but it is all about something that you're very familiar with. How many schools now, this focuses
00:41:06.820
on colleges, but it's true in high schools and other schools too, have quote disabled students
00:41:14.300
who need quote need extra time on the exams. It's gotten out of control. Even the Atlantic is calling
00:41:22.260
it an explosion over the past 15 years. The increase is driven by more young people getting diagnosed with
00:41:26.880
conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression. And by universities making the process of getting
00:41:33.100
accommodations easier, the changes occurred disproportionately at the most prestigious
00:41:37.540
and expensive institutions. Of course. Right. Um, students, they, they write, you hear students
00:41:43.180
with disabilities. It's not kids in wheelchairs. One professor at a selective university told the
00:41:47.640
magazine it's rich kids getting extra time on tests. Even as poor students with disabilities still
00:41:54.800
struggle to get necessary provisions, elite universities have entered an age of accommodation
00:41:59.420
here. Listen to this individual universities. This are, these are stats from the Harvard Crimson
00:42:04.260
Stanford in 2014, 3% of the student body said they had a disability today, 38%. Brown, 2014,
00:42:14.060
10%, now 22%. Cornell, 2014, 5%, now 22%. Harvard, 2014, 3%, now 21%. Yale, 2014, 8%, now 20%. The school
00:42:26.740
with the lowest is MIT. They had 3% in 2014 and they have 8%. UC Berkeley, the number has quintupled over
00:42:35.600
the past 15 years. Amherst, it's at 34%. At one law school, which they don't name, 45% of the students
00:42:42.940
receive academic accommodations. And listen to this. Um, the Americans, it's because of the Americans
00:42:48.820
with Disabilities Act, which is passed in 1990 meant to make life fairer for people who have actual
00:42:52.920
disabilities. Um, and you have to provide a reasonable accommodation, but now it's been expanded,
00:42:57.540
uh, to people who basically have any physical or quote mental impairment that substantially limits
00:43:04.000
a major life activity. And even beyond that now, now in 2018, 2008, Congress amended the ADA to restore,
00:43:10.840
uh, the definition to include a list of major life activities that could be disrupted by disability,
00:43:15.540
including learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, even if it doesn't severely restrict
00:43:21.680
your daily life. Um, and now this depression thing, listen to this. Mental health issues have
00:43:28.480
joined ADHD as the primary driver of the accommodations boom. The number of young people diagnosed with
00:43:33.420
depression and anxiety has exploded. Um, okay. It doesn't need it after the release of the DSM-5,
00:43:41.140
the symptoms need only to interfere with or reduce the quality of academic functioning. That's all
00:43:48.300
reduce the quality of your academic functioning. And for this, you get extra time or unlimited time
00:43:53.880
on your exams or papers, or you can get out of homework, or you can get the professor to quote,
00:44:01.020
not call on you without warning. That's happening at Carnegie Mellon per the Atlantic. Um, Ohio state
00:44:09.380
says 36% there have these issues. You can get extensions on take home assignments, permission to
00:44:14.980
miss class. You can get, um, social anxiety disorder. If you say you have that, you can get a note.
00:44:20.740
So you're not called on in class. And then some get housing accommodations, including single rooms
00:44:25.140
and emotional support animals. One administrator told me, writes the author that a student at a
00:44:30.680
public college in California had permission to bring their mother to class. This became a problem
00:44:35.220
because the mom turned out to be an enthusiastic class participant. Um, this is deeply wrong and we've
00:44:43.120
all seen it. You know, as you're reading that and all the stats and there are all these universities
00:44:46.920
you're talking about, it's, it's occurring to me, the real, I mean, this is something we've talked
00:44:49.920
about a bit before, but with this story, the real problem here is the college admission process.
00:44:54.260
It's so screwed up and the parents, it's the parents fault and, and the university because
00:44:59.680
the parents gear everything around the wrong goal. We're supposed to be preparing these kids for life.
00:45:05.400
So offering these little cheat codes to get a better grade, to get into the college is not
00:45:10.780
preparing you for life. It's preparing you to get into the college that makes the parent feel good.
00:45:14.140
Like junior got into an Ivy or whatever it is. And it's ruined not only academics, it's ruined
00:45:20.020
athletics because that's the same thing too. Athletics used to be about teaching practice
00:45:24.060
equals improvement and teamwork and all of these values that you get from sports. And in addition
00:45:29.340
to just sort of having a rounded youth, having a rounded youth, that that's like the way to get
00:45:33.820
into college in the seventies and eighties. Now you're not rounded. You have to be a specialist in
00:45:37.280
one thing. You have to be the best, best violinist or the best chess player. So you can get into
00:45:41.300
Yale or whatever. Well-rounded is not valued at all. And it's the same with these academics.
00:45:47.220
If someone's like struggling on their SAT or on their math test, if they don't actually have a
00:45:52.800
problem, giving them an extra hour to take it. So they can get a little bit better grades. So they
00:45:55.960
can get to a little bit better college is backward. You should be teaching them how, how are you going
00:46:00.440
to survive in the world? Right. When you get out into the law firm or the investment bank or whatever
00:46:06.760
you wind up doing, they're not going to give you extra time on the test. You've got to perform.
00:46:10.340
Someone's there. The client needs this result by 5 PM period. But no one is, no longer is anyone
00:46:15.480
chasing a goal for their kids of how am I going to prepare this person for life? How are they going
00:46:20.380
to be strong and self-sufficient, provide for themselves? It's all geared around a college
00:46:25.600
application for an Ivy league school. Yes. That is if that degree is your make or break ticket.
00:46:30.340
That's why they play lacrosse 500 hours a month or squashed or whatever it is. It's, it's all about
00:46:37.160
college. It's not about a great experience for my kid or my kid enjoying a rounded life. It's all,
00:46:43.480
we're all so screwed up with all of this college stuff. It's, it's really perverted everything.
00:46:47.620
And this is so unfair because if you have a kid who just studies hard and goes into class and is
00:46:53.740
ready to take the test, what they get disadvantaged by this. They've got a kid with obviously equal
00:47:00.540
abilities. Yeah. But has a little money. So they get a doctor's note that says he has this problem.
00:47:06.040
It's diagnosed. Right. We could all get this note very easily and use it to advance our kids future
00:47:12.480
or get extra time for our kids on their tests. And this is not to disparage those who have genuine
00:47:17.320
disabilities. There are that, that few, that those numbers in 2014 sound real to me about 3%,
00:47:22.040
but all it's now it's gone from three to 34 bullshit. Those 31% are fucking faking it to get
00:47:29.740
an academic advantage. And it's, it's a disadvantage for the kids who just work hard and show up and
00:47:35.720
want to color within the lines. They want, they'll play by the rules. You just have to hope that
00:47:39.680
after college, when junior with the note went to Cornell and someone else without the note went to
00:47:45.800
Syracuse. What? They're going to meet in the workplace one day and who's going to win?
00:47:52.040
Right. Oh, see, Doug caught my, well, Doug caught my illness. Sort of, sort of. I'll explain what
00:47:59.000
happened. But, um, let me remind me to explain that in a second. Um, I really think when I was
00:48:04.880
reading this, I was like, okay, so then when you apply to college, you don't have to put on there
00:48:08.060
that you got the extra time. The colleges don't get to know. Yeah. You're not actually allowed to
00:48:12.200
ask and you don't have to put it on there. So the colleges have no idea who, who took the SAT in nine
00:48:16.280
hours. So do they have to resubmit the note when they get to college for the tests? No, no. Oh yeah. Yeah.
00:48:21.060
Of course. Yes. But who cares? By that point, their only goal is to get hired by Goldman Sachs or
00:48:25.680
what have you. Um, but I think like, what, what if we just play this out and said, there's no time
00:48:32.300
limit. There's no time limit on any tests. Tests are now held like whatever. If you want to take
00:48:38.560
your history tests at your history class, which starts at 1 PM and most students have to finish in
00:48:44.560
40 or 50 minutes, whoever wants to stay for two hours can say for two hours, like God, all of you
00:48:49.720
you'll, you'll then have to make up the work that you missed in the classes after that. Good luck with
00:48:55.060
that. Like that's a disadvantage. That's a you thing. But like, what if we just said to all students,
00:48:59.680
if you want the extra time, you can have it. I actually think this could help solve it because
00:49:03.860
this would be like a nightmare for the teachers. They wouldn't like it. It would eventually kill
00:49:08.260
itself, right? This system. And what would happen to like the kids with the disabilities wouldn't
00:49:13.280
much like all the other kids having all the extra time either. Yeah. But they can take 10 more hours
00:49:17.340
if everyone's, yeah, I don't actually, that would be good. I kind of, I'm tempted by it. But so here's
00:49:21.740
what happened with Doug's illness. As you guys know, I was sick last week. I still have a hangover on the
00:49:25.640
voice, but I'm fine. Um, but Doug got it. Obviously he's my husband, so he got it, but yours was less
00:49:33.900
bad. Yeah. And would you like to tell the people how you fought it? I, I, I claim that when I first
00:49:40.880
started feeling something, you know, it starts in the throat. So as soon as I felt something,
00:49:46.040
I'm like, Oh my God, I had a couple of things that were going to be hard to reschedule. I was
00:49:49.000
like, I really would like not to get sick as I now am. So I started, I cut a lemon in half and I
00:49:56.760
squeezed it into tea and I took a sauna. Like every, I've got one. Thank you, honey. Yeah. I was going to say
00:50:01.340
you need the water. Um, and I, and I did that basically every day for like five days.
00:50:06.120
Took a sauna and squeezed lemon into tea. Yeah. And you were taking the Zycam.
00:50:10.040
The Zycam. Yeah. Which is like, I don't know, zinc is in there and some other stuff.
00:50:13.440
Yeah. And you think it minimized your experience. I think I, so I did get it, but I feel like I got
00:50:18.780
it about 10% the level you had it. You were really hurting for a while. You lost your voice and I
00:50:24.520
never had it anywhere near what you had it, but I did have it. So you did want to discuss it.
00:50:31.340
It is amazing. The different, I don't know if this is a sex thing or what, but I do talk about
00:50:38.300
it more when I'm sick and I'm a little bit of a baby and I want to just like be under the blankets
00:50:41.840
and have someone tell me it's going to be all right. And, uh, meanwhile, Meg, like you've lost
00:50:47.140
your voice. You're taking steroids so you can keep your voice. And I'm like, you know, I feel a little
00:50:51.420
tickle and you're like, would you shut the fuck up? I said, we don't have to talk about typhoid Mary over
00:50:59.120
here, but we definitely should not spend too much time talking about that tickle.
00:51:06.560
That was very funny, but I am sorry that I got you sick. Now that you actually have it.
00:51:11.060
It's all worth it, honey. Watching our Christmas in Connecticut.
00:51:14.340
Yeah. We actually fired that up this week for the first time in a year. It's so fun. I, I don't know.
00:51:19.880
I love everything about it. I love the way I feel when those Christmas specials are on the TV. I love,
00:51:24.080
it's not even like, it's not like a great movie, you know, it's no, it's such kind of weird in a
00:51:29.620
few places. It like gets the atmosphere going. Yeah. Like she's kind of supposed to be married
00:51:33.800
to this guy and cheating on him, but whatever she's not though. She's not actually married to
00:51:37.440
the guy. Um, I just love the feeling. I love the, first of all, I love the feeling of old movies,
00:51:42.700
right? It's like a very cool vibe. And second of all, I love the cinematography with a sleigh ride
00:51:47.360
in that movie. I love like all the snow outside. Reminds me of my childhood up in Syracuse,
00:51:52.100
New York. I miss snow. I miss tons of snow. Like I miss where snow is the default as opposed to
00:51:58.600
green and Brown in the winter. Well, Brown and Brown. Um, and I just love this season so much,
00:52:05.060
you know, like these little twinkling lights in the studio. I'd love to keep these past December,
00:52:08.180
but even I, who am a diehard Christmas fan, can't do it. Cause when Christmas is over,
00:52:13.360
you got to move on. Come mid January, you're just ready for warm weather. Yeah. It's enough.
00:52:17.280
You got to clean it up and move on. It only comes once a year, which is why you must treasure it
00:52:20.840
for the next X number of days because it comes and it goes. So what are you getting me for Christmas
00:52:25.920
this year? Not telling. We don't really do Christmas presents for each other is the truth.
00:52:30.560
Lately it's like write a letter. Yeah. I love that. That's an important thing. And then, um,
00:52:35.620
I'll find a little something. One, one year, a couple of years ago is either my birthday or
00:52:40.860
Mother's Day. I don't remember, but you gave me a beautiful letter, which I always love. That's
00:52:44.460
really what I want every year. And a, a little dumb pillow.
00:52:55.540
No, it was a CVS pillow, like a shamrock. I was like, what is this?
00:53:00.400
It doesn't go anywhere. Like it was cute. It was a little shamrock. It was like a statement pillow.
00:53:05.380
Like the house has been decorated by somebody who knows what he's doing. He, he will not approve.
00:53:11.100
Yeah. It was the thought that counts. I really loved it. Yeah. I, uh, by the way, so I, I know you
00:53:17.460
had Elliot Ackerman on earlier this week and you were discussing my lack of faction, which I cannot
00:53:21.380
deny your observations there on my, on my fashion, but I was bleeding edge on the quarter zip,
00:53:27.980
which apparently is the thing now. Totally. You were, you were black diamond sexy before it was
00:53:32.060
popular. Totally. We will find the episode with a fifth column to explain to the audience what that
00:53:36.160
means. Although the diehard fans at the Megyn Kelly show already know about your black diamond sexy
00:53:40.860
and how you're the saboteur. And I was wrong. I was, I was wrong about it all. You, you were always
00:53:47.100
sexy. It's just a question of how sexy and what it was encapsulated in. You got there, got there in
00:53:54.980
the end, babe. Here's to that. Cheers. Love you, honey. Love you, honey. Merry Christmas. Happy new year.
00:53:59.800
Don't forget to go and get Doug's new book. It's called the lost empire of Emmanuel Nobel. You guys are
00:54:07.060
really going to love it. I promise. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS,