Best of the Program | Guest: Zachary Levi | 5/30/25

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Speaker 2 On today's Friday podcast, Washington State has gotten so far, they are so crazy. Even Mao has to be impressed.
This is what happens when you adopt the attitude of the ends justify the means.

Speaker 2 It's a really important part of the program today. Also, Zachary Levi, the actor, and he's the guy who's starting his own studios in

Speaker 2 Austin, Wildwood Studios.

Speaker 2 He's talking to me about AI and the new Google

Speaker 2 AI that will, it's going to change the industry. I mean, is there a reason we will have photographers and actors and everything else?

Speaker 2 Just what has been released this week from Google has changed things dramatically. And a thank you to Elon Musk as his fight against the swamp comes to an end.
Don't miss a second of today's podcast.

Speaker 2 You ever watch a dog try to hide

Speaker 2 a limb that's hurting? It'll limp for a second, then it'll snap to attention like, nope, nope, totally fine. Watch me.
I'm not going to run around in circles.

Speaker 2 You do things like that sometimes, pretending my body isn't falling apart.

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Speaker 2 You know, for Democrats, if you don't think you're playing with communism or socialism, talk to the people in Washington State. Talk to anyone who is sane in Washington State.

Speaker 2 I'll give you his number.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 they are going to full-fledged communism, Marxism.

Speaker 2 You have

Speaker 2 every giant corporation now moving out of the Seattle area in Washington State because they're going to, I'm telling you, they're going to go to wealth confiscation. They're going to do it.
There is a

Speaker 2 place, Lake Washington is by Bellevue, in between Bellevue and Seattle. And it is beautiful.
It is just the most beautiful place you've ever seen.

Speaker 2 And this is where Bill Gates and everybody else, and when I was a kid,

Speaker 2 it was not like that. It was, you know, there were still normal people that lived there.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 now you can't even get close to it. And there's this place in the middle of the lake and it's called Hunts Point.
And it is where, you know, these are

Speaker 2 60 to 100 million dollar houses.

Speaker 2 And they're not necessarily fancy.

Speaker 2 They just happen to be in an area where there's not very much land and it is the place to live if you like water and you're living right on the water and it's it's just spectacular.

Speaker 2 It used to be that when a place would go go up for sale, even when I was a kid on Hunts Point, it would never last.

Speaker 2 They'd never come up for sale. People that would, they wouldn't want to sell it because you couldn't replace it.
You couldn't get anything like it. And so

Speaker 2 they would come up for sale and they'd be gone before anybody would even know.

Speaker 2 I am told by a friend who

Speaker 2 knows that area quite well. that I think he said 17 homes in Hunts Point are up for sale.
17.

Speaker 2 And some of them have been up for sale now for over a year and there are no buyers. All of these people are trying to get out of Washington State and nobody's buying their home because

Speaker 2 nobody, you're going to, are you going to buy that? Hey, rich person, where are you going to move from? You're going to move to Washington? No.

Speaker 2 Washington, the property values are going to start plummeting and you've got crazy people, not only crazy people all around you. I'm telling you, I grew up in Washington State.
I grew up listening to,

Speaker 2 you know, hippies and everything else.

Speaker 2 You know, my friends and I, I remember going to a friend's house and we were standing on her front porch. And, you know, we were, this is the Alex P.
Keaton days.

Speaker 2 And not politically, but just, I mean, I guess a little politically, but my friends, not all my friends, you know, agreed with Reagan, but we didn't talk politics.

Speaker 2 It was just, you know, we weren't hippies. And I remember standing on a front porch and my friend was going to open up her front door.

Speaker 2 She had her hand on the doorknob and she, before she opened it, she turned to me and she said, I really apologize. My folks are probably in the living room getting stoned.
Just never mind.

Speaker 2 We were the adults.

Speaker 2 And we opened up the door and I'm like, I get it. And it's open up the door and there they are getting stoned.
And they're like, hey, kids, what's going on?

Speaker 2 I mean, that's where I grew up. Okay.

Speaker 2 And it was crazy back then. And there's these people that believe in this thing called Cascadia, which is a communist state to get out of America, start a new communist country called Cascadia.

Speaker 2 And it is Washington, Oregon, and I think they want parts of Idaho. Thank God Idaho hasn't gone nuts yet.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 that's what's coming. That's what they want.

Speaker 2 And you see people like, you know, the mayor of Seattle? Do you see what happened in Seattle over the weekend, Stu?

Speaker 2 Where there was this. Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 3 A little bit. You're talking about the mayor and this accusation going on.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 The Christians that had a revival out in a park, and all of these revolutionaries came. They were threatening them.

Speaker 2 The police came and shut down the Christians, and they deemed the Christians, the police against their will, I think,

Speaker 2 but under the direction of the mayor, shut down the Christians, excused all the radical revolutionaries, and said, you know, it's the Christians here that are causing all the ruckus.

Speaker 2 I mean, it was, it's crazy what's going on. Well, now what you were talking about is the scandal that's going on with Bruce Harrell.
He's the mayor of Seattle.

Speaker 2 Who is the mayor of Seattle? Who is this guy? Okay. Well, he's just like you.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, just like you, if you had been arrested in 96 for brandishing a firearm over a parking space,

Speaker 2 in 1996, this has been out for a while.

Speaker 2 He was a young attorney and he had just been appointed to the Housing Authority Board in, I think, Council Bluffs, Iowa. And he was at a casino and he was pulling up to a parking space.

Speaker 2 And this other couple in their family, it's a husband, wife, a mom, and somebody else, they pull up and they pull into the parking space and he gets pissed off.

Speaker 2 And they say he pointed a gun at them and they were afraid for their lives.

Speaker 2 He admitted at the time to say, yeah,

Speaker 2 I had my gun, but I wasn't pointing it at him. What are you doing? Just showing it to them? Hey, I just, I'm so proud of my gun.
I just wanted you to see. That's called brandishing a firearm.
Okay.

Speaker 2 You can't do that. It's against the law.
Well, the charges, you know, fall apart or whatever. And so he's charged with it, but he's not convicted of it.
Nobody says anything.

Speaker 2 Well, it comes up again recently, and now he's saying, no, I didn't have a gun. They mistook my watch

Speaker 2 for a gun.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 I'm a watch guy. I'm a watch collector.

Speaker 2 I like watches, and I have some big watches, but

Speaker 2 I've never.

Speaker 2 had anyone

Speaker 2 at any airport or on the street go, oh my gosh, you've got a gun strapped to your wrist. No,

Speaker 2 it's never happened. Has that ever happened to you, Stu, where you're like, that guy's got a gun on his wrist.
And you realize, no, it's just actually

Speaker 2 a watch.

Speaker 3 Well, you're talking about the watch gun. Yeah, I mean, I try not to wear that at night because people do make that mistake.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, besides the watch gun. Right.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Besides that watch. Okay, so that's his excuse.
Now, when it's brought up, he's like, no, I didn't have one. He said at the time he did, but he he wasn't pointing it at him.

Speaker 2 Now he says, No, they mistook that for a watch.

Speaker 2 And justify the means.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you're going to, if you're going to elect radicals, if you're going to elect people that don't, you know, they just don't care about the law, the Constitution, you know, they don't care.

Speaker 2 Well, you know,

Speaker 3 well, people just say anything now.

Speaker 3 There's no, there's no even attempt to come up with stories that even sound sound real.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 No. Because basically, and if you think about it, there's some pragmatic sense to it in our current day, which is like, in reality,

Speaker 3 what's going to happen is the people who already liked you are going to support you no matter what you say.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I just,

Speaker 3 they just, you might as well just say something. And everyone's going to like nod along and say, well, yes, I like his other policies or I want him to succeed.

Speaker 3 So therefore, I believe his gun watch story. Right.

Speaker 2 Who is the guy? Oh, is it Jesse Smollett? Yeah. Jesse Smollett.
Does that say his name?

Speaker 2 He's still saying that it was, you know, he was targeted. Still saying it.
Yeah. Yeah.
There's no consequence for any of this.

Speaker 3 No, it's true.

Speaker 3 I mean, we talked a little bit off the air a few minutes ago about, and this is the sort of conversation we have, which is the WNBA and the situation with Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, where, you know, again, these are two basketball players, one white, one black.

Speaker 3 The white player fouled the black player. There's some sort of rivalry that seems to be basically one way from Angel Reese toward Caitlin Clark.
Caitlin Clark walks away. Angel Reese freaks out.

Speaker 3 You know, the team, Angel Reese's team lost by like 30 points in the game. Afterwards, she's doing her press conferences.

Speaker 3 And of course, as you have 100% can just fill in the blank, even if you know nothing about the story, claim that there was racism. That was the reason why all of this happened.

Speaker 3 And there was people in the stands yelling racial slurs at her. She says this to a press conference.
It's a major controversy. Everybody's talking about it.
They're batting it back and forth.

Speaker 3 What does this mean? Can you believe this? Full investigation launched.

Speaker 2 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 Now remember, this is not, this doesn't happen in the woods. This doesn't happen like under a bridge, you know,

Speaker 3 in Madagascar somewhere. This happens

Speaker 3 in an arena.

Speaker 3 That's being televised. So of course there are hundreds of fans around the area where this was supposedly going to happen.
There were dozens of employees around this area.

Speaker 3 There were cameras and microphones everywhere. Of course, they do the investigation.
Of course, no one can find any evidence that this happened at all. No one can find one example of this occurring.

Speaker 3 And then, the end of the story is not a massive controversy about how this player could be falsely accusing all of these people

Speaker 3 that are fans of the other team of being racist

Speaker 3 and manufacturing claims of racial slurs. No, no.
The story is a two-paragraph statement from the WNBA. Hey, we looked into it, couldn't find anything.

Speaker 3 No follow-ups from any of the journalists who were concerned about it at the time. They just, it just, we just all move on.

Speaker 2 And, and why no follow-up on the investigation of how that began? Who started those charges? What are they going to, are they going to pay a price for starting those charges? Shouldn't they?

Speaker 2 And didn't I see that very player sitting on the the bench talking about white girls?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, well, that's that. In a derogatory way.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Hard to see many conversations without that phrase used

Speaker 3 from that particular player.

Speaker 2 I mean, well, what about the racism there? I mean, it's just,

Speaker 2 it doesn't seem to matter anymore. The truth doesn't matter anymore.
You know,

Speaker 2 somebody said to me the other day, have you seen that Donald Trump is now saying that if you're working for the government, you have to go through, I think it's a 100-hour class on the Constitution.

Speaker 2 And somebody said, well, wait a minute, I don't want that. I don't want that because I don't want them doing that with DEI.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 The Constitution is the owner's manual. And right now, we have a bunch of people that are trying to put our country together and they've never read the instructions.
And, you know, it's like,

Speaker 2 it's like our country came from IKEA. And, you know, I can build this.
I'll just put it together. And it's being built upside down.
The legs are in the wrong place.

Speaker 2 It's never, and you've got like 47 screws left over at the end. Okay.

Speaker 2 Read the instructions.

Speaker 2 Okay. They're not in Swedish.
They're in English. Read the instructions.

Speaker 2 This, I think, is one of the best things that the president has done so far.

Speaker 2 You want to work in the administration? You want to work for the government? Good. You got to go take a course on the Constitution of the United States because that's the owner's manual.

Speaker 2 And there's no excuse. Oh, I didn't know that that was in the Constitution.
I didn't know we couldn't do that.

Speaker 2 Even though they're not even saying that, they're now saying 200 people, Democrats, are now saying, yeah, I knew that he was, I knew that he was gone, but,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 we couldn't lose the election.

Speaker 2 Wow, I think you need a refresher on the Constitution because none of that is part of our country.

Speaker 2 None of that. There's no place in the Constitution that allows that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, one of the ways it's interesting, they talk about that in the book of those decisions being made, right? Why would you hide this from the American people? Like, how could you justify that?

Speaker 3 And, you know, it is exactly what you're saying.

Speaker 2 And justify the means.

Speaker 3 Right. And they said that one of the reasons why, especially the really close

Speaker 3 group around the Bidens, including the family and some of these advisors, basically said, number one, one, Donald Trump is, you know, basically Hitler, right?

Speaker 3 Like he's an existential threat and he's the worst thing that could ever happen to us. So we have to do anything to beat him.

Speaker 3 And the people really close to Biden believed the only person who could beat him was Joe Biden. Now, that part's another part.

Speaker 3 That's another level of delusion, I suppose, to think that Joe Biden was uniquely qualified for this victory. But he was the only person who...
who did win in an election against him, right?

Speaker 3 So there's some, maybe some sense to that.

Speaker 3 But as I think it was Alex Thompson, one of the authors pointed out, it's like, when you, when you exist, when those two things are true, you can justify anything. Yes.
Right.

Speaker 3 Like, if you believe Hitler's about to come into power and the only person who's going to be here is this old doddering fool you work with, well, of course you're going to justify all of this.

Speaker 2 If you believe that Elon Musk is evil, I can. I can firebomb and terrorize anybody with a Tesla.

Speaker 2 If you believe that global warming is going to wipe the entire earth out, I can kill anyone with an SUV. This is why you can never adopt the ends justify the means, which is Sololinsky.

Speaker 2 That is the motto now of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 2 So you're in debt. You're behind the eight ball.
You've got high interest credit cards. What do you do?

Speaker 2 First thing you do, stop avoiding looking at it. Okay.
There are mornings when you log into your bank account. I mean, who was it?

Speaker 2 The comedian that said, you know, I'm just thinking about, you know, letting that thing chill for a while. I've seen this movie before.
I'm just not going to check my bank account. Okay.

Speaker 2 I want you to

Speaker 2 look at things and get somebody that is an expert that can help you that is not trying to sell you something.

Speaker 2 This is American financing. You know, your mortgage most likely sold to you by a bank and by people who got a kickback for selling you that mortgage.
That's not the same with American Finance.

Speaker 2 They work for you. Call them now.
See how they can help you. It's AmericanFinancing.net, AmericanFinancing.net.
Now, back to the podcast. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Speaker 2 And don't forget, rate us on iTunes.

Speaker 2 Zachary Levi is with us. Hi, Zach.
How are you?

Speaker 4 Hey, good morning, Glenn. I'm doing all right, man.
How you doing?

Speaker 2 I'm really good.

Speaker 2 But I'm not in your business.

Speaker 2 How concerned are you by what Google released this week?

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 I'm very concerned. I mean, you know,

Speaker 4 you and I talked about this when I came on your show last.

Speaker 4 And I hate to

Speaker 4 sound like

Speaker 4 a doomer and gloomer,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 this is something I've been foreseeing for a really long time. I've been banging this drum for a really long time and trying to wake people people up and say, hey, listen,

Speaker 4 technology, it moves exponentially. This is one of the things that I think most people just don't understand, whether it's people in my industry or other industries.

Speaker 4 And might I say, yes, this is knocking on the doorstep of entertainment right now, but understand that AI is knocking on the doorstep of all of our industries.

Speaker 4 Your industry, radio, you know, everything in entertainment, certainly, anything that can be recorded and

Speaker 4 broadcast. But every industry, we are, I mean, there are

Speaker 4 huge, you know, experts in many fields that say within a year, two years, certainly within five years, every white-collar job will be gone.

Speaker 4 And a lot of blue-collar jobs are going to be right behind that because you have to recognize that AI is not just moving exponentially, but also humanoid robots.

Speaker 4 and the development of human-oid robots is developing exponentially. And exponential growth is something that people just don't understand.

Speaker 4 Most people see growth as, you know, kind of just, you know, multiplicative, meaning like, okay, every year it gets twice as good. No, no, no.
It doesn't get twice as good every year.

Speaker 4 It gets 10 times as good and then it gets 100 times as good and then 1,000 times as good and so on and so forth. And so

Speaker 4 years ago, I was telling people, guys, if what we have right now, you know, like, for example, two years ago,

Speaker 4 AI was generating images

Speaker 4 and, you know, but, you know, humans had six fingers.

Speaker 4 And so people said ah this is schlock look at this you know this is never gonna get good it can't even get the amount of fingers right on people's hands I said yeah yeah right now it can't right now it cannot do that but six months later it did six months after that you had video and now you've got video with audio that is almost indiscernible as you've been seeing with these new examples.

Speaker 4 It's almost indiscernible. Now people say yeah but I can still tell I go yeah right now you can but six months months from now, a year from now, two years from now, we're going to

Speaker 2 be in the world.

Speaker 4 No, probably not even that long. No.
And

Speaker 4 so people have got to wake up. And so for people in my industry, I think that, yes, we should all be very, very concerned, but everyone should be very concerned.

Speaker 4 And it's not even just, you know, like, for example, yes, this could very much replace my job. This is partly why I am building Wildwood Studios in Austin, Texas.

Speaker 4 It, you know, has always been, it's a 25-year-long calling that God has put on my life to create a better Hollywood, to give artists a better life, a better work-life balance, to give audiences better content.

Speaker 4 These are all things that we've deserved for a really long time. But AI is really the kind of, I think, most

Speaker 4 galvanizing

Speaker 4 force in all of this because if we don't do something about it, if we don't hold the line, if we don't build the arc, which is really kind of what I've always felt on my life, I felt this kind of Noah calling on my life that God's like, hey, listen, a flood is coming.

Speaker 4 It's not going to be water. It's going to be something entirely different.
And that is this AI. And if you can build the ark, then you can at least save as many of those jobs two by two as you can.

Speaker 4 But if you don't build the ark, then the flood just wipes everything out.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 go ahead.

Speaker 2 Let me interrupt you on that because

Speaker 2 I believe, I mean, I'm developing some things with AI and I've been on this for a very long time as well.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I believe you're absolutely right that you have to get, you know, you have to get into a boat because floods are coming.

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 2 you have to,

Speaker 2 you can't dismiss it. You have to, I think, use some of the skills that it has in a positive way because I think it could, it will enhance.

Speaker 2 As long as you don't surrender to it, it will enhance what you can do. So are you talking about building something that has no use for AI and it's just this island?

Speaker 2 Or are you saying that we'll use it, but we'll use it in ethical ways and we'll never allow it to become the master. We will always use it as a tool.

Speaker 4 Yes, that's exactly right. So I'm a firm believer and have been for many years that, you know, philosophically, you cannot stop progress.
You can only hope to guide it.

Speaker 4 That is the bottom line, right?

Speaker 4 So it would be folly to look at new technology that, by the way, is going to do some really cool things in this world. Example being we're at the brink of nearly having our ear pods.

Speaker 4 You know, Apple, I think, will start, but other companies will be right behind it, if not simultaneously. We'll have real-time language translation.
It's going to happen.

Speaker 4 It's happening very, very soon. Now, that's incredible.
That's something that as a human race, we've all been wanting really since, I mean, since I guess the Tower of Babel, right?

Speaker 4 The ability for all of us to be able to communicate across the world, no language barriers whatsoever. That is huge.
That's a huge leap forward for mankind.

Speaker 4 Now, that's going to absolutely displace what is a smaller, let's say, industry of translators, right? It's not, there are many translators in the world, but it's not the biggest industry, let's say.

Speaker 4 And I feel for those people, and I think we have to be very conscious about trying to rehone them in other jobs. But

Speaker 4 you always have to ask yourself, is the juice worth the squeeze? Is it ultimately worth it for the betterment of all of us, right? So I don't think that we can't embrace AI.

Speaker 4 We must embrace AI, but we must do it in as ethical a way as possible and be mindful of what is it doing? How is it disrupting and how is it displacing jobs?

Speaker 4 Because that's the only thing that we can do. Now, when it comes to entertainment, there's going to be all kinds of ways that we can implement AI to make the process more efficient, more enjoyable.

Speaker 4 And I have every intention of utilizing AI like that.

Speaker 4 I don't vilify it

Speaker 4 writ large, but I think that we must be very mindful about how we implement it in still holding on to human creativity.

Speaker 4 Human

Speaker 4 art and entertainment is at the brink. But I also believe,

Speaker 4 with Wildwood example, being like,

Speaker 4 I think that not only is it necessary

Speaker 4 to prevent, let's say, the extinction of human art and entertainment, but there's also a market opportunity in this. Because similar to vinyl, for example,

Speaker 4 you know, once upon a time, all music, we all listened to vinyl records. That's what it was.
And then the cassette tape came out. And everyone said, oh, well, I don't need vinyl anymore.

Speaker 4 I'm going to go with these little, you know, rectangular plastic, you know, cassette tapes. And I'm going to do that.
Great. And then the CD came out.
Even more people left vinyl. And then streaming.

Speaker 4 And now even more people have left vinyl. But the people that held on, the people that said, you know what, yes, everyone is going to zig, but I'm going to zag.

Speaker 4 I'm going to, I'm going to hold on to this. I'm going to keep printing vinyl because I believe that there's something special about it, unique about it.

Speaker 4 And sure enough, vinyl sales have gone up because people are looking for something that's more human, more tangible, more

Speaker 4 slightly imperfect with a little crackle, a little, you know, whatever. So what Wildwood, that's what we intend to do.

Speaker 4 We intend to hold on to, we're not, I'm not trying to, I can't save the entire industry. That's impossible.
But I'm going to try and save as many jobs as I can.

Speaker 4 And in doing so, provide audiences the alternative. And I think a lot of people are going to be looking for that alternative.

Speaker 2 So, Zach, because I, like you, I've been on this for a long time and I have put a lot of thought into,

Speaker 2 because my job is, you know, at stake. Everybody's job is up at stake.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I've always felt, well, there's something special about humans that we have a different sense to us. But I don't know if you heard, there was a study done of, I think, 100,000 songs and

Speaker 2 they did, you know, what's called hook testing to see which tested the best.

Speaker 2 I think it was seven out of the top 10 were AI.

Speaker 2 And people didn't know it was AI. Seven out of the top 10.
We used to say AI couldn't, you know,

Speaker 2 art can never be done. So what is it that

Speaker 2 you think is going to be unique quickly? I mean, I believe that there is going to be a huge draw back to handmade, individual. You know,

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 2 machines came out and you had factories and they started producing shirts, nobody wanted a homemade shirt. Nobody wanted a handmade shirt.
They wanted one that was from the factory.

Speaker 2 But now handmade is the best of the best. So there's going to be a

Speaker 2 renaissance, if you will, of handmade and human-made stuff. But what is it right now that will bridge this gap that humans can do that you don't think AI can do?

Speaker 4 Well, I think that, you know, obviously live performance, that's going to be huge, right? So people,

Speaker 4 in this rebound effect of people saying, ah, you know, it just flooded with ubiquitous AI content. A lot of people are going to say, oh, I want something authentic, right?

Speaker 4 And authenticity is the most important. In fact,

Speaker 4 there's been studies done where,

Speaker 4 you know, just from an energy level, like, you know, as humans, we, we have,

Speaker 4 we produce an energy when we have various emotions, right? And there's lower energy if you're sad, depressed, angry. And there's higher energies when you're joyful and happy and you feel love.

Speaker 4 But there's an energy even higher than love, as they've tested, and it's authenticity.

Speaker 4 That is the highest energetic level that we can all reach and so people yearn for that they really do yes so live performance obviously is going to be that uh sports is going to have a big a lot of people are you know uh investing in and in sports and live performance because that is going to hold on the longest at least as you know long as long as let's say you know um robots and and holograms that's going to start to kind of eat into that market a little bit we'll see how long that goes but but ultimately i have to tell you

Speaker 2 may I say something on that? Have you been to London and seen the ABBA experience?

Speaker 4 I haven't, but I'm very well aware of it. And it is incredible.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no,

Speaker 2 it's beyond incredible. It is.
My son and I said, I didn't tell my daughter, who was a teenager at the time, you know, 17 years old, that ABBA wasn't really performing. We just didn't tell her.

Speaker 2 And two songs into it, I said, do you think they're real? Does it look like they're real? And she's like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, That's not real. Those aren't people.

Speaker 2 And she's like, What are you talking about? And she couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 And the first couple of songs, my son, who was probably 18, 17 at the time, kept looking at me, going, Dad, this changes everything. This is not good.
This changes everything. And I mean, everything

Speaker 2 is about to just turn upside down.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.
Well, it's, yeah, it's already. It's like in front of our eyes.
It's happening already. Yeah.
And

Speaker 4 I

Speaker 4 not one of those people.

Speaker 4 Many people that I talk to,

Speaker 4 a common pushback that I get is people saying, well, it will never be able to fully

Speaker 4 replicate, let's say, human emotion or, you know, we'll always be able to tell. And I just don't believe that.
I mean,

Speaker 4 we ourselves, no, we are.

Speaker 4 amalgamations of everything that we've taken in, right? So we're, we are, we ourselves are kind of LLMs. We We scrape our entire lives.

Speaker 4 We scrape information from our parents, our community, people around us,

Speaker 4 the internet, whatever. We're learning all the time and then we are replicating from the things that we learn.
AI is doing that and it's doing it at scale. And it's happening exponentially.

Speaker 4 And we're very, very close to it becoming AGI, general intelligence, which is then just a few steps away from super intelligence.

Speaker 4 And it will be then at that point, it will be more intelligent and more capable than not just any individual human. It will be more capable and more intelligent than the sum of all humanity.

Speaker 4 So we're stepping into some insane, insane territory. And when you start

Speaker 4 powering

Speaker 4 video agents like Google and others that will that will keep popping up,

Speaker 4 it's terrifying to acknowledge that. A lot of people just don't.

Speaker 4 They're kind of burying their head in the sand and saying, no, no, no, no, it won't happen. It won't happen.
It's going to happen.

Speaker 4 At that point, I think that what we have to, and what I'm hoping that Trump and the administration are going to be working on in earnest, is legislation that at the very least requires all content that is AI generated to be watermarked, right?

Speaker 4 So that therefore we know, we can say, okay.

Speaker 4 I can't tell the difference. I don't know the difference.

Speaker 4 But just by looking and listening to it, I can't tell if it's real humans doing this or not. The difference will be that there will be some some kind of watermarking that indicates that.

Speaker 4 And therefore, that is what people are going to be looking for.

Speaker 4 In the same way, if you go to the supermarket and you're looking at blueberries, and these ones on the left look the same as the ones on the right, but there's packaging that says these ones on the right are organic.

Speaker 4 Oh, those are the ones I'm looking for. I want the organic ones that aren't sprayed with glyphosate.
I'm trying to make certified organic human-made content for free-range artists.

Speaker 4 That is what Wildwood Studios is going to be about. And also at Wildwood Studios, we're we're not just going to be making

Speaker 4 and really focusing and dedicated to making human film, television, music, and video games, but also providing amphitheaters and live performance venues so that it's a one-stop shop.

Speaker 4 So people can really know that when they go there, they support us. They're supporting humans in that process.

Speaker 2 Zachary, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
And anything we can do to help you at Wildwood, let me know, please. Zachary Levi, Wildwood Studios owner, actor.
He was, you know, Chuck. He was Shazam.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's a ton of great movies and everything else. So Zachary Levi.
You're streaming the best of the Glenn Beck program, and you can find full episodes wherever you download podcasts.

Speaker 2 So Elon Factor,

Speaker 2 Elon Factor, Elon Musk is leaving Washington, D.C. today.

Speaker 2 He's not in defeat. I don't think he's in retreat.
We all expected this. In fact, many of us believed that there was no way this was going to end well with him because, you know,

Speaker 2 he was a strong individual. Trump is a strong individual.
How are these two strong individuals going to get along? They got along famously.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we're losing today one of the few individuals in our time that is willing and has been willing to challenge the most sacred assumptions.

Speaker 2 Here's a guy that when he,

Speaker 2 you know, when they were talking about, I think it was the X Prize about, you know, making rockets for NASA, he went to NASA. This is early on, and they said, okay, so here's what we want.

Speaker 2 And he said, great. And what kind of money do you want this to come into?

Speaker 2 I mean, what do you want? What do you, what's your goal that I could hit

Speaker 2 that would make it affordable for you? And they said, what are you talking about? And he said, what... What do you want to spend on this? And they said, don't worry about that.
Just make it fly.

Speaker 2 And he's like, well, there's got to be a budget. No, don't worry about it.
It's not about budget. No, it is about budget.
And he knew that that was wrong.

Speaker 2 And he really, really bothered him a great deal. And so here's a guy who comes in, reinvents absolutely everything

Speaker 2 and then goes to Washington because he actually believes in something and he's vilified for it. I mean, I don't know of anybody that has been this vilified,

Speaker 2 you know, so vital to progress

Speaker 2 and what humans are experiencing and going through and solving huge problems. I don't think I've ever seen anybody do that and been this vilified.

Speaker 2 Here's a guy who didn't ask for the power. He didn't seek the favor.
In fact, when he said, because he believed something, yeah, I think I'm on the other side.

Speaker 2 They tried to literally kill him for it.

Speaker 2 And all he was fighting for was the freedom to invent, the freedom to think differently, the freedom to speak your mind, and also

Speaker 2 the freedom to remain free by not becoming a slave to an out-of-control government and out-of-control waste and out-of-control spending.

Speaker 2 He wanted just the chance to build something, and he knew America was the place to do it. And build he

Speaker 2 he gave us the first reusable rockets I mean think if I would have said to you six years ago yeah we're gonna send up some rockets and you're gonna see it instead of just casting into the ocean it's gonna it's gonna reignite and it's gonna come down and control and we're gonna just grab it out of the sky

Speaker 2 no

Speaker 2 not only did he do that he thought that crap up

Speaker 2 you here's a guy who completely thinks out of the box american made American-launched, restoring capability that we had already given away.

Speaker 2 He forced the auto industry to evolve, dragging it unwillingly into the 21st century with electric vehicles that shattered the idea that sustainability has to come at the cost of performance or ambition.

Speaker 2 Here's a guy who, remember, the big three didn't want him around.

Speaker 2 He had to break that entire system and look what happened. Then he took

Speaker 2 a brand new platform, speech that was supposed to free us up and it had become oppressive, ossified, monopolized. It became the public square and what did he do?

Speaker 2 He went in, bought it with his own money and was like, this can't stand. We have to have free speech, cracked it open and gave us, again, raw, uncomfortable at times,

Speaker 2 but vital free speech. It was all back into your hands now.

Speaker 2 And now with Grok and AI, he's fighting to ensure that the machines of tomorrow are actually aligned with not centralized power, but with human liberty.

Speaker 2 But for all of this,

Speaker 2 all of this that would earn anyone

Speaker 2 a chapter in the history books of the history of man.

Speaker 2 How is he leaving Washington?

Speaker 2 I mean, think of that. He has endured the public efforts all around the world to ruin him, coordinated efforts to deplatform, demonetize, to destroy.
He's received death threats.

Speaker 2 His companies have been targeted. His cars are burned.
His employees are harassed. His customers are harassed.
All the while,

Speaker 2 he just keeps on doing what he does.

Speaker 2 And that is,

Speaker 2 boys and girls, courage.

Speaker 2 You don't see it very often. That is what real courage looks like.
Without getting angry, without being vengeful, spiteful, any of it. He just keeps going.

Speaker 2 This is real courage. This is the real thing.
Real high personal risk, high stakes, sleepless nights, relentless attacks, and the refusal to sit down or break. He's like, no, I believe this is right.

Speaker 2 That's America. He is, he is really, we have a few great symbols that we didn't have 20 years ago.

Speaker 2 We have some great symbols of real leaders, real examples of courage and innovation that we didn't have.

Speaker 2 And he's right up at the top.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 history is riddled with people like this. Nikolai Tesla, Nikola Tesla is probably one of them.
Penniless, mocked in at least his later years.

Speaker 2 Galileo was, you know, imprisoned because he was telling the truth too early. Winston Churchill, because he was telling the truth too early.
Nobody, I mean,

Speaker 2 he was cast aside until people realized, oh, the barbarians are at the gates.

Speaker 2 These are people that saw over the horizon, saw the storms of life, or saw what was capable of being.

Speaker 2 They came, they spoke up, and they paid dearly for it.

Speaker 2 Churchill said once,

Speaker 2 you have enemies? Oh, good.

Speaker 2 That means you stood for something in your life.

Speaker 2 Elon Musk, as he stood up again and again, technological sovereignty,

Speaker 2 speech, enterprise, for the radical, dangerous idea that the individual, not the institution, should shape the future.

Speaker 2 I think there's going to be a time, and hopefully it's not too far in the future, when the heat has cooled and politics have moved on, that society will acknowledge not only what he's done, what he's given, but the sacrifice that he just went through.

Speaker 2 But that'll happen, you know,

Speaker 2 at a time when

Speaker 2 the real effects of everything, I mean, when

Speaker 2 the future that he is helping shape right now, better or worse,

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 really taking root,

Speaker 2 that's when he'll be recognized, once this nonsense is over.

Speaker 2 The thing I like about him, he never asked us to trust him. He never asked for our loyalty.

Speaker 2 But I think he does deserve our respect.

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 2 I don't care what side of that. I don't care who you voted for.

Speaker 2 How do you not recognize what this man has done for humanity, especially if you're somebody who believes in global warming, what he's done for humanity, what he is still trying to do, the

Speaker 2 incredible strides that he has made, and the bravery that it has taken for him just to stand up? I remember he...

Speaker 2 He walked away from his side, didn't expect his side to leave him. But once he had a different opinion of their, they just abandoned him.
He lost all of his friends, he lost everything.

Speaker 2 So, today, as he is leaving, I would like to say, Elon Musk, thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you. You didn't play the game, you changed the game.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you for reminding me and so many other Americans

Speaker 2 that progress has never come

Speaker 2 in polite little packages. It's never been polite.
The truth rarely comes dressed in approval.

Speaker 2 But I think you did some things that are absolutely remarkable, and you're going to continue to do things that are remarkable. Go in strength.
Know that history will catch up to you.

Speaker 2 You're way ahead of the game. Thank you, Elon Musk.

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