Best of the Program | Guests: Sec. Chris Wright & Peter Schweizer | 8/14/25

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We started the program, the podcast, with Secretary Wright on energy because Maryland is going through blackouts.

There's a new report out, came out, what, yesterday,

from Goldman that talks about how we are going to be experiencing all across the country blackouts.

Why Chris Wright is here to explain and what we're doing about it.

Also, there are some big explosive things coming out in the Russiagate story.

It's much, much deeper than that now.

It's all becoming clear what the deep state was and is and who's involved.

He talks about that.

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You're listening to

the best of the Glenbeck program.

Welcome to the Glendbeck program.

Well, there's some more breaking news, and and it just doesn't get better for the deep state.

Just the News has come out with

an FBI timeline.

It's a bombshell release that just came out that exposes political interference in the Clinton corruption probe.

No.

We have a guy who has written the book literally on the Clinton cash, Peter Sweiser, who is with us to kind of tell us what this means, what is in the memo, and

are we moving closer to coming to the truth about the corruption of the Clinton Foundation?

Peter, welcome to the program.

Hey, Glenn, always great to be with you.

Thanks for having me.

This one must make you feel good.

I mean, finally,

some proof and you're vindicated.

Well, you know, it's funny, Glenn, and I can talk about this openly now because the New York Times last year outed me as

working as a confidential informant with the FBI.

What that really means is I shared information with them.

I didn't get paid, but as we did research, we shared it.

And we got involved with the FBI back in 2015 when Clinton Cash came out.

They approached us.

And at one point, there were four FBI field offices.

So in other words, these are the agents in the field, Little Rock, Arkansas, Washington, D.C.,

New York, and also, interestingly, the FBI extension office in Nigeria.

Because remember, with the Clintons, it was global corruption.

And they actually had in Nigeria an audio tape of a very corrupt oligarch bragging on a phone conversation about how he had donated to the Clinton Foundation and gotten favors in a return.

So this was an investigation.

I mean, Clinton Cash was part of it.

It certainly wasn't the only part of it.

But the field offices were rare and to go.

And they were investigating.

They were talking to people, they were gathering information.

And immediately FBI headquarters basically said, hey, you know, we don't want you doing this.

And now what you have with the great reporting of John Solomon and Just the News is Sally Yates, Department of Justice official, telling them

a year or so later, shut this down.

You are not to look at this anymore.

And that, of course, is highly, highly, highly unusual

because field offices are supposed to organically follow leads and investigate.

And to have the headquarters shut down an investigation on somebody as important as the Clintons

speaks, of course, of the problems of the deep state that you've highlighted for so many years.

Yeah, the deep state is really becoming clear right now.

I did a show last night, Peter, where you can now see the outlines and you can see where they learned it and how they perfected it, you know, beginning in 2020.

And it's the same group of people, you know, it's kind of like when we were doing the progressive thing from the 60s, you'd see, wait a minute, it's just one group of people.

It's just like, you know, I don't know, 20 to 100, maybe 200 people, but it's the same ones.

They're always there at the scene of the crime.

Sally Yates, I remember that name because I think Donald Trump, that was one of the first controversies he had.

He fired her for some reason.

Do you remember why?

Yes.

I believe it was because of things that were being

extruded at the Department of Justice.

And yeah, she's one of these figures that you're talking about there that's part of the, you would call it the permanent apparatus in Washington, D.C.

And what they do is they serve in senior government positions.

They may leave for a while and they'll go and work for a powerful law firm or they'll work for an investment fund or whatever, make a little extra money because, of course, government doesn't pay them all of what they want.

And then they go back to government, but oftentimes they end up up doing favors, of course, for the people who paid them when they were on the outside.

And they are invited back into government because they're all kind of involved in this revolving door.

And, you know, again, for Yates to take that position, to say,

essentially, I don't care what you guys are seeing and or what you're investigating, shut it down.

And by the way, she felt comfortable doing that.

She's not protecting the people in power.

She's doing this in 2017 when Donald Trump is in office,

which again speaks to the fact that for all the rhetoric and the claims from the deep state that Trump somehow politicized the Department of Justice, further proof that he did not, that the permanent state still ran those institutions during his first term.

Listen to this.

This is a timeline released by the FBI through Just the News.

The timeline stated that in July or August 2015, an FBI supervisory special agent at the Washington field office had, quote, a brief discussion, end quote, with a member of the U.S.

Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, quote, regarding the Clinton Foundation allegations, which had been focused on by the, because of the book Clinton Cash by Peter Schweitzer.

At the time, an investigator, whose name remains redacted, was in the process of attempting to predicate an investigation based on the allegations.

I mean, what is it like to know that

the government was revolving around you and what you had exposed?

Well, I tell you, Go ahead, I appreciate that.

I mean,

we always base our information on paper trail, as you know.

We don't use anonymous sources.

And what happened is we were approached by people at the FBI, and they said, hey, we're interested in this.

What can you share with us?

And we said, everything.

We kind of pushed all the chips on the table.

And so that includes, you know,

the timing of financial transactions.

A lot of the investigation started as it related to this uranium-1 deal.

You and I talked about this multiple times in 2015.

Yeah, and this is the one where

the Clintons ended up getting $145 million

from the Clinton Foundation.

They also got speaking fees from these group of investors that Bill Clinton helped.

arrange the sale of American Uranium Company to a company that was owned by Canadians.

But by the way, the origins of that company was Russia.

So, you know, all sorts of alarm bells were going off on that.

But as the FBI investigation continued, they became involved and interested in other areas, the Nigerian investors, for example, because when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State,

we got these emails through the Freedom of Information Act.

And when they were doing the Haitian reconstruction after the earthquake, for example, which Hillary Clinton was in charge of, people would send emails to the Secretary of State's office saying,

we want a contract for Haitian reconstruction.

We are an FOB.

And I thought, FOB, what's that?

Turns out it was shorthand for friend of Bill.

So the investigation began with Uranium One, but it included contracting with the State Department on Haitian Reconstruction, Nigerian deals.

There was an Indian component.

So this was a global investigation.

And what they, of course, as investigators had was subpoena power, but that was thwarted as well.

There were instances I know where they wanted to access banking records, for example, and they were denied the ability to do that by the Department of Justice.

So the investigation never really got off the ground.

And yet these FEAL agents, and I can't speak highly enough of them, they doggedly continued those investigations because they saw how much much smoke and fire was actually there.

And this is what Loretta Lynch, and we now know, and Bill Clinton kind of spoke about on Clinton's plane on the tarmac in Phoenix in 2016 because she was

apparently she was delivering a message that don't worry,

these scandals are going away.

I have word from

FBI, and we've got it under control, and it's all going to be shut down, correct?

Yes, that's exactly right.

so so again you know there's a clear example you have an attorney general oletta lynch who flat out lied to the american people she was asked about you know what that conversation was about and they basically said they were talking about grandkids grandkids and golf

yeah yeah grandkids and golf geez um and and you know and and you're flat out lying to the american people and and of course you've got bill clinton involved in it and this is the reason as much as the left wants to say the reason people don't trust government is because people like you, Glenn, are trashing it all the time.

No, you're exposing what it does.

And they continue to lie to us and to deceive.

And this is why we're a state in America where people don't trust governmental institutions.

And I think rightfully so.

So are we any closer to anybody going to jail?

As it relates to the Clintons, and of course, I always predicate this.

I'm not a lawyer.

But what I would say is part of the challenge with those financial crimes is the issue of statute of limitations.

But when it comes to the cover-up, I think you have some real,

real possibilities there from a criminal standpoint.

I think it's great that Congressman Comer's committee subpoenaed the Clintons.

They're going to be coming in

under oath to be asked about, I think, a wide variety of questions.

Do you think they actually are going?

Do you think they actually go?

Seriously.

I think Clinton is, Bill Clinton is going to claim executive privilege, which he really can't because this all happened after he was president.

That will be tied him in the courts.

I think Hillary Clinton will probably have to show up.

I think she has more

constitutional responsibilities to do that than Bill Clinton does as the next president.

And I think she's probably going to get more of what we've gotten testimony in the past, which is, I don't recall, I don't remember pleading the fifth.

What difference does it make?

One last thought on this.

I see Clintons, the Clintons, what they got away with in the Oval Office, you know, with the

I didn't have sex with that woman and drawing us out for 18 months into this nightmare

all based on a lie.

But then when it was exposed, he didn't pay a price because by that time, everybody was so tired of it, they just wanted to go away.

That set up this kind of system where you just deny, deny, deny.

And then by the time you find out, everybody's tired of the story.

But also their corruption during the administration and then after the administration with the Clinton Foundation, that's what really set

the Bidens up, right?

Do you think that Joe Biden kind of learned from all of that, saw them getting away with it and like, well, I can do that.

And he just did a

more grotesque, obvious version of it?

Yeah, Glenn, I think you absolutely nailed it.

Because here's the thing.

Before the Clintons, yes, we've had corruption in American politics for really since the beginning,

but most of it was the sort of rank and file.

You know, I get a deal for my cousin who's a contractor back in my kingdom.

The Clintons were the first to globalize it.

They said, hey, we're this powerful nation.

We can go to China.

We can go to Russia.

We can go to Ukraine.

We can go to Nigeria.

All these foreigners want something from us and their corrupt political institutions.

So we can bank even more cash there than we ever could trying to get something from Wall Street or some contractor.

And the Biden saw that.

And that's the reason that Hunter Biden,

shortly after the Clintons started doing this and it became known, Hunter Biden set up a quote-unquote investment firm, didn't go to London, didn't go to Japan, didn't really go to Wall Street.

He went went to Russia, Ukraine, and China.

So it was a mirror image of what the Clintons did.

And it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on, Republican or Democrat, we have got to deal with this because we don't want elected officials or unelected officials in D.C.

realizing this is the way to make money.

And if we know one thing, Glenn, we know that corruption gets imitated.

If you don't deal with it and you don't pay a price, Republican, Democrat, doesn't matter.

Other people are going to start doing it too.

Well, it's the same thing that's happening on the the streets of Washington, D.C.

You see, kids see other kids getting a free ride and they can run the city at night and do whatever they want and never pay a price.

More kids join in.

And that's exactly what's happening in Washington, D.C.

Peter, thank you so much.

And thanks for all of your hard work over the years.

You've done incredible work.

Peter Sweiser.

Well, thank you, Glenn.

I appreciate it and appreciate your friendship.

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Now back to the podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Okay,

we have

Chris Wright on,

U.S.

Energy Secretary.

We are concerned about our energy.

And

thank God, Donald Trump, can you imagine how bad this would be if Joe Biden's policies would have continued?

Thank God we're doing a lot of really good things.

But I wanted to get a sense from Chris on where we are and what he thinks of what's happening in Maryland and the warning that Goldman is giving this week.

Chris, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me, Glenn.

And yeah, you're hitting a hot topic right away.

Okay.

So I would assume that you agree with what Goldman said.

Oh, absolutely.

In fact, we released a report from the department just a few weeks ago.

And if you had continued the Biden policies, which are to permit and subsidize energy sources that might be there, might not, and generally aren't there at peak demand, if we had continued those policies, they would have shut down another 100 gigawatts of firm production capacity that's there when you need it.

And they had permits to approve and plans to add 22 gigawatts to that.

Shut down one hundred, add twenty two.

So a net loss of seventy eight gigawatts to an electricity grid that's already tight, that already delivers blackouts at peak demand.

They were on a trajectory to increase blackouts by one hundred fold by the end of the first Paris term if she had won that election.

It is just we were driving over a cliff and they were hitting the accelerator to go faster.

You know what really?

What really bothered me was the policy that that when they shut these plants down, that we would actually pay the power companies to shut these down if they dismantled the coal-fire plants.

They actually could get subsidies if they made sure there was no going back into that, which I found terrifying and horribly irresponsible.

Glenn, just crazy.

Like the environmentalists melted down a few weeks ago when I used my authority at the Department of Energy to to stop the closure of a one and a half gigawatt coal plant in southwestern Michigan.

Oh, you're going to impose tax costs on the ratepayers.

We don't need that coal plant.

It was slated to close.

Two days later, there was a blackout in MySO, the Midwestern independent system operator.

Two days later, that plant was running at full capacity.

It would have been massively worse.

Prices would have been massively higher.

You just talked about Baltimore.

We also stopped the closure of a very old power plant in Baltimore, but a critical power plant to keep the lights on at peak demand.

That's also running at full capacity as we speak today and has for much of the last few weeks.

Oh, no, we don't need it.

We're going to close it.

It's just when politics gets in the middle of energy, it truly impacts people's lives.

It leads to blackouts, fiking costs.

We had thirty percent rise in power prices during just four years of President Joe Biden, and now we're going to launch the AI race against China, and we're going to have our lights going off without data centers, without any new industry in our country.

Just thank God the American people overwhelmingly elected President Trump.

We've brought common sense back.

We're swimming seven days a week to try to fix the train wreck they left us.

So it's exciting.

It's more stressful than I'd like.

But we are, I can assure you, we are headed in the right direction now.

So, you know, what really bothers me is we have heard how dangerous nuclear power is and how we can't use that, even though that solves the global warming thing.

We've never been able to have that.

We have to reduce our power usage, you know, go back to the good old days and, I don't know, medieval times.

And, but now that AI is here, now that the big tech companies step up and say, no, no, no, we have to have power for AI.

Now all of those rules are out the window, which

bothers me so much because it is as if the left and the power structures don't really care about the average person and them having power.

They care about these big corporations and AI being able to have compute power, but not the average person.

And

it's disgusting.

It's really disgusting.

I think that's right, Glenn.

It also shows that they never really cared about incremental changes in greenhouse gas emissions.

The climate change thing is mostly a clamor for power.

We're going to decide the way the world works and make rules for you because you stupid rubes out there in America, you can't make your own decisions.

We must make them for you.

But yes, they were never about a rational approach to reduce greenhouse gases.

They don't even know that much about greenhouse gas emissions.

As you said, they hated nuclear then.

Now they see we're on a train wreck.

They don't want to admit their climate alarmism was wrong and wildly exaggerated.

So now, oh, nuclear power is okay because

we need these data centers, these big companies need power.

It's not just those crazy rubes in middle America like you and I.

So, you know, in your report, you said, you know, we will increase blackouts by 100 times in the next five years if we don't keep more baseload power online.

How rapidly are we going to see these nuclear power plants, et cetera, et cetera, being built?

And is it only to serve those server farms or are we going to redo the American power grid itself?

It will be across the grid.

So it is an exciting development, Glenn.

But it's a government.

It's this overweening, fear-mongering government that actually smothered and killed nuclear industry for most of the last four decades.

So since it's been smothered for so long, it'll take time to get that ball really moving.

We'll have an already closed nuclear power plant back open in Michigan later this year, January, hopefully at the latest.

So there's some developments that will happen in the next few months, but most of it's going to take a few years.

Really, what's going to feed the data centers that are going to be built and the reindustrialization of our country and keep the lights on and our air conditioning on in the summertime, most of that is going to come from stopping the closure of the coal plant that the Biden administration and Obama administration wanted to shrink our ability to generate electricity.

And it's going to come from the expansion and rapid construction of new natural gas burning power plants.

Natural gas is by far our biggest source of electricity.

It's by far the lowest

cost source of new electricity.

So we are doing everything we can to permit, allow the construction of natural gas plants as fast as possible and removing these ridiculous requirements that, well, if you spend a billion dollars to build a new power plant within six or seven or eight years, you're going to have to capture all the carbon dioxide emissions and inject them underground, no matter how much it costs, no matter how much it burdens our power sector.

Just the direction they were in just didn't care about American people or American businesses.

How long before we see these things?

I mean, you know, China is building at the speed of at least one coal-fired power plant a week.

They are building nuclear plants.

They are on an energy surge right now.

They know what's coming.

When should we see this actually starting to happen?

And how long before power prices come down?

Oh, man, that is the big question.

President Trump asked me that every single day, every single day.

Let's get oil prices down.

Let's get gas prices down.

Let's get electricity prices down.

And it takes a while to build infrastructure.

Fortunately, quickly, we can stop the closure of coal plants that still have lots of lifetime left.

We've already done that.

That's why we don't have much worse blackouts already today.

We do have new gas plants coming on this year, a lot more coming on next year.

We'll have nuclear plants on later this term.

We'll have a whole whole bunch of them under construction.

But yet to turn the giant aircraft carrier that is the electricity grid, that's going to take a few years.

But hopefully we can stop the huge rise in prices.

We can build the capacity so the United States can keep our lead on artificial intelligence over China.

We get behind China and they control AI.

Our national security is at risk.

So the whole administration is seven days a week working on this effort.

You will see dramatically fewer blackouts this summer than you would have had the election gone the other way.

And I think we'll be in a little bit better

situation next summer and somewhere in between there this winter.

We're rapidly swimming the right way.

I wish I could say power prices are going down 20% next year, but it's simply not possible to do that in 12 months.

But I will tell you, President Trump is seven days a week doing everything he can towards that goal.

What regions are the worst in the country as far as stability and prices?

The Midwest, you know,

where that Michigan coal plant was kept open, where that nuclear power plant will reopen later that year.

The Midwest independent system operator, that's our tightest region.

The Southeast and PJM where Washington, D.C.

is and the mid-Atlantic states, they're rapidly getting tighter as well.

Everything in the interconnection queue that was new to come on is a wind or solar project.

Peak demand in the wintertime is when it's dark out.

And in summertime, it's when it's really hot and you're in a high pressure system and the wind doesn't blow.

Those things don't help to meet peak demand.

They just provide electricity.

Well, you don't know when, but at some points in time, that's not very helpful for our electricity grid.

So, but we're going to stop the closure of the firm capacity and we're going to do everything we can.

We are permitting and approving plants every week, new construction, new plants that will be get built and that'll be here to provide relief to Americans in the next 12 to 24 months.

And the most stable region?

The most stable region actually is Texas, which is by far the biggest electricity grid.

They produce more than twice as much electricity as California and just a little bit less nonsense in Texas.

They still went crazy on the wind subsidies.

Yeah, they did still have more expensive and less stable grid than they had 10 years ago, but they also have the mindset and the regulatory regime to fix their problem.

Texas is rapidly growing its firm capacity, and they're going to skate out of this crisis probably a little faster than

the more Biden-influenced rest of the country.

I can't thank you enough for everything you guys are doing.

I'm amazed at

how rapidly you guys have turned things around.

I'm just, I'm thrilled at the work you're all all doing.

And, Chris, you're really leading us in energy, and I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Appreciate you, Glenn.

Appreciate all your viewers.

We're doing everything we can.

We think about American people.

That's the only agenda we have.

Thank you so much, Chris.

That's our U.S.

Energy Secretary, Chris Wright.

I mean, you want to talk about it.

Remember, you were saying the other day, not only do we have competent people, we have people who communicate.

That was a good communicator.

That was somebody who I think spoke right directly, at least to me, it felt like he was speaking to me.

And I felt like they at least were saying, I think he really meant it, but I think at least he was saying, we care about the average person.

That's what we're focused on is the average person.

And you just don't hear that from government very often.

What about the kings and queens of

nations?

Somalia, for example.

Yeah.

Where is

Guatemala?

Yeah.

He didn't even mention it.

He didn't even care about Guatemala.

No.

No.

He was like, ah, we care about America and Americans.

Wow.

Okay.

If that's what you want to do, Chris.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

I want to start this hour with

a name that you've never probably heard before.

Her name is Jill Smolya.

She's 75 years old.

She's a retiree, and

she has spent her whole life working as an aide, taking care of the elderly.

She said we'd play games, we'd put puzzles together, so they had somebody to talk to.

They weren't just sitting in a chair doing nothing.

But now she's 75, and she's sitting in a chair.

Her husband has died, she has a lung condition, and she doesn't have human interaction anymore.

She said, I can go weeks on end without seeing someone.

She can't drive.

She can't leave her home in Orlando.

But according to CBS News, who brought this story to me,

she did gain a new companion.

And she likes this new companion even more than her daughter.

I read this story from CBS News a couple of days ago, and I jotted down some thoughts that I want to share with you.

And I honestly, up until this morning, I didn't know if I was going to share these thoughts with you because I don't know.

I'm in this really unique place right now

where

I started.

here here's my first thought on this my first thought on it is she found a new companion you know who the new companion is AI

AI

she says I spend five hours a day with my new companion and we play games we do trivia we just talk and I like her more than my daughter Wow

So my first thought was, this has got to stop.

We can't do this.

We cannot allow.

We're losing our humanity.

That's what I was saying.

We're going to lose our humanity.

And then as I was thinking about this and what I wanted to share with you, I thought, gosh, maybe we've already lost our humanity in a different way, in a different way.

And then I just started going down this rabbit hole about me and like, you know, who are you to say any of this stuff?

He says, I mean, I'm in a weird place right now.

It's a good place, but it's a weird place.

You know, this isn't ideal that she has found a companion.

And I want to say we have to stop this.

But then what do you replace it with?

Then we just have this old woman at home by herself, rotting away, not talking to anybody?

Have we lost our humanity?

My thought was, what have I done to exercise my humanity?

Instead of just getting on the radio and just la

la la,

you know what you should do, you know what we should do, and then not do any of it.

What am I actually doing to close the distance between knowing and doing?

Very little.

Very little.

Because we do know.

We know what the intellectually, spiritually, we know exactly what we should do.

We know what Jesus would do.

What would Jesus do?

He'd stop.

He'd notice the old lady.

He'd sit down.

He'd eat with her.

He would chat with her.

He'd spend time.

He touched the untouchable.

He didn't outsource compassion.

He didn't like, you know what?

Yeah, she's a lot.

Let her have the AI thing.

He wouldn't have done that.

He made room.

And so I started thinking, this is why I didn't want to share this necessarily with you, because I don't know if you can relate to this, but why don't we do this all the time?

Because really, in the end, this is the kind of stuff, this is the only stuff that matters.

It's the only stuff that matters.

Human connection.

And I am so bad at that in many ways.

Look, my best friend has always been this.

I started this when I was 13 years old, and I could tell

this anything, and it never rejected me.

And it became my best friend.

But in that, my relationship is with this, which in a way turned into a relationship with you.

When I was a kid, I was just in a room by myself and I I was just yapping.

But now I feel like I know you,

but I get so,

I just, I, I don't know.

Sometimes, do you ever feel like there's a hole of you, there's a hole in you, that you're missing something?

You're like, I think I'm missing a piece that other people have, you know what I mean?

Because

at times, there is something that keeps us

from doing the most human things.

And I think part of that is fear.

And this is something that goes not just to the elderly, but it goes to you.

And it also goes to our kids.

Look,

why are we embracing fake AI friends and talking to them and everything else?

Why are our kids on social media?

Because real face-to-face stuff, real kindness

is really risky.

It's really risky.

If I step into your loneliness, it means I have to feel my own loneliness, you know?

Let me give you a example.

Hey, how are you?

You don't really want an answer.

You don't want an answer.

So we all say the same thing.

Fine.

Pretty good.

Hey, you're not.

You're not really fine.

You're not probably pretty good.

You might be having a great day.

You might be having a horrible day, but you'll say, fine, pretty good.

And this, and you're doing it out of a courtesy because you know when you ask the question, you don't want somebody to say, you know, I'm really struggling right now.

Because then you're like, oh dear God, I've got to stop my day and sit down and talk to you.

I didn't really want to know.

I know, I don't have time for this.

You know what I mean?

We stop being human and we just play this little game because I don't want to have to rearrange my afternoon.

I'm really busy.

So we keep that risk at arm's length.

And now we're eliminating it because

AI is always fine.

Machines never cry.

They never ask for a ride to the doctor or to the airport.

You don't have to sit with them after, you know, you, wait, I'm waiting for some test results to come in.

Would you sit with me?

No, no, it doesn't have to.

No, it will sit with you because it has nothing else to do.

It's part of, we bury this human part of us because of convenience.

And it's weird because our economy makes everything easy, except all the things that actually matter.

Because I don't know if you can make those easy.

You know, we can get groceries in an hour, get them delivered.

I just saw somebody, who was it?

Is it Walmart or Costco?

Somebody is delivering things by drone now, just dropping it in your backyard.

I mean, wow.

I mean, you can get anything, movies in seconds,

opinions in a second, but friendships, actual friendships, they're slow, They're inefficient.

They're messy.

It happens in the blank space between the calendar blocks,

the spaces that we all have learned to hate, I guess.

We've optimized our life to the point where love

and

falling in love, all that is like a bug in the system.

And part of it is habit as well, fear and habit.

I mean, our kids know the non-stop playing on, you know, the gaming, the endless scroll, it's just hollowing out inside.

They know that.

They know.

But the loop is sticky.

It was geared to be sticky.

The short hit of engagement, you know,

beats the slow growth of a relationship.

And

I think we're all becoming experts.

At something that we should just at least notice, and that is, we're all experts at

almost connected.

I'm almost connected.

How are you?

I'm not having a good day.

Anything I can do?

No.

Okay.

I'm almost connected.

The other part is pain that stops us from being human, I think.

I mean, I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I, boy, I know this one.

I learned the hard truth.

We will not change.

We can be in pain, but we will not change until the pain becomes absolutely unbearable.

I went to a store to look at a bike the other day, and I sent a picture of this bike to my wife, and she said, I don't know who has my husband's phone, but where is he?

Because I'm not going to do that.

I don't have a ride about.

I'm not riding a bike.

God wouldn't have let us invent cars.

Okay, bikes.

She came home one day and I was swimming in the pool and she's like, What is happening to you?

And I'm like, My back is killing me so bad.

I've got to exercise.

Okay, well, that's at 61.

That's a genius move.

Finally, until the pain becomes unbearable,

until the comfort of staying the same is more painful than the cost of change, we don't do it.

You know, the real question on AI is

with AI,

will we feel the real pain that it is going to cause humanity soon enough to change?

Or does the machine just soften the edges just enough that we just adapt downward?

You know, just lowering the temperature a few degrees at a time.

You never notice the temperature drop.

It's just slowly.

That's the danger.

That's the real danger.

Not that a chatbot runs your life, but it makes a diminished life tolerable.

It's an anesthesia.

Sleep a little bit.

An imitation of companionship that never asks for anything in return and never interrupts.

You know, she probably likes it more than her daughter is because your daughter probably has edges she doesn't like.

The AI will get rid of all those edges.

And if we're not careful, the lonely will not just be alone.

They'll be alone with an elegant coping mechanism.

So, yeah,

I want to warn of the line of humanity being blurred.

I'm going to argue, and you're going to hear a lot of this, personhood, personhood is really critical that we pay attention to this.

Presence.

Really important.

But that's only really half of the sermon given by the man the least qualified to preach to you.

The other half is a question.

Here's the question that we really have to ask ourselves.

No, I have to ask me.

You're probably fine.

What am I going to do to exercise?

I hate that word, exercise.

What am I going to do?

to exercise my humanity and not in theory, not in outrage, in actual practice.

This has been,

I read this story maybe two, three days ago, and the reason why I didn't want to bring it to you is because I'm like, I can't say this unless I'm willing to do so.

I mean, what a hypocrite.

I'm just telling you, you know what's wrong with this country, and then I'm not doing anything about it.

I mean, what does it sound like?

What does it sound like when we

enhance our humanity?

It sounds like a chair

that's scraping the floor as it's being backed out from the table because you've made an extra room at the table for somebody else in the neighborhood that eats alone or maybe just your family.

You know, the kids coming over.

Sounds like a phone call that

you didn't want to make because it's awkward.

Man, that happens to me all the time.

I can't call them now.

What?

Make it.

I mean, in extreme cases, I mean, this is where I'd love to be.

It means visiting the nursing home once a month until it becomes

once a week.

And then you learn names, and then you remember stories, and then your kids start asking when they can go back.

It's when your kids can see the difference between bright screens and bright eyes.

That's what it looks like.

regaining your humanity

it looks like this you pick somebody older a peer and a young person and you put them on your presence list

every week you give them one undistracted hour if you have it 15 minutes five minutes one undistracted five minutes not a text you know not a comment time actual time you just listen.

You can ask questions, but you just listen.

And the most important part, you don't post about it after.

Look what I just did.

It could look like family rules.

Phones down at the dinner table.

Sunday afternoons belong to human beings.

That's what it can look like.

It looks like teaching, through example, teaching your kids how to sit with somebody who is grieving and not try to fix it.

In my case, it looks like

the awkward art of small talk

that somehow or another gets easier and maybe turns into beautiful big talk.

I don't, I don't.

It's a church that acts like a church, not a stage, not a logo.

But when people see somebody missing, they actually call and say, hey, where were you today?

Is everything okay?

And you actually want to hear the answer.

It looks like men who check on other men and ask straight questions, and women who hold up other women when the world is heavy for them.

It looks like we were born for this time,

but

not as a slogan,

as a schedule.

That's the key.

Does it make it to your calendar?

It looks like humility.

Because if we're honest with ourselves,

maybe the reason why we prefer the machine is because we control it.

Can't control others, but I can control the machine.

Because real people are inconvenient.

And they interrupt our narratives.

They force me to practice patience and forgiveness and humor and endurance.

My gosh, they make me deal with my pride.

A chatbot never challenges my self-image.

A friend will, but a chatbot won't.

How can you tell the difference between a real friend and a chatbot?

A chatbot will make you comfortable.

A friend will make you a better person.

Our houses are growing quieter and quieter and more and more people.

It's an epidemic.

Loneliness is an epidemic, and I get it.

Sometimes silence feels like gravity.

But let's find ways in our own life.

This is not a monologue for you.

As I said, I've been working on this one for days because

it has to be me.

Before I tell the world how dangerous this is, I need to start knocking on doors.

Before I preach presence, I have to practice it, be present with somebody 15 minutes a day, undivided attention for the person sitting right in front of me.

Now, my wife is like, oh, well, it's about time you figured that one out.

But before I worry about how AI is going to remake us, I'll remember that just time,

listening, being present

remakes us fasters.

Much faster than AI ever will.

Change usually comes when pain finally wins.

Let's not wait for that.

Let's make the change because the truth wins.

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