Best of the Program | 1/27/22

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Welcome to the podcast.

It's Patton Stew in for Glenn.

He is back tomorrow.

Today, we go into the Supreme Court pick.

What's coming up for Biden?

How are the Republicans going to play it?

What are the ramifications of this?

We get into all that today and how dumb the decision-making process was from Joe Biden.

That's today what's going on with COVID.

We're seeing a real lifting of restrictions in European countries and hopefully we're finally getting to this point where this craziness is going to end.

We'll see.

We get into that as well.

And we talk about the controversy with Neil Young and Spotify and Joe Rogan.

A decision was made by Spotify.

Not exactly shocking in my view, but how could this go wrong?

Could it get uglier for Spotify and Joe Rogan?

We'll get into that as well.

You can listen to the podcast, of course, every day and subscribe and rate and review it here.

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Here's the podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Glenbeck program.

Glenn is out today.

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So the big announcement yesterday was that Stephen Breyer is going to step down as Supreme Court justice, which means there would be an opening at the end of the session.

And I think the session ends, you know, after they make all their pronouncements in the summer.

So,

could it be Kamala Harris?

No.

Some Some are speculating it might be.

That would get her out of the way, at least, of the administration, and they could try to find somebody who might help the administration and the administration's likability.

And

she's not helping.

And I think they know that, but I don't know that she goes to the Supreme Court.

Yeah, I would say that one does not.

This does not seem likely to me.

Didn't he say, though, he will appoint a woman and,

in fact, a black woman to the Supreme Court?

And that's how we know

right away that no one can make the argument that the best candidate will get this job because he's eliminated almost every person in the country.

Yes.

I mean, if you look

again,

a black woman may very well be the most qualified person for the job, but there's no way to argue that you went through a process where you could determine that.

And that's the problem here.

Think about how stunning that is.

You're talking about

the most important judgeships in this nation's history, and you just said,

I'm just going for essentially aesthetics.

Yes,

I'm going to base this decision on skin color and the way they look.

Yep.

Yep.

Gender and skin color are going to be my two first decisions

on the Supreme Court justice.

Not who the person is, not what their legal background is, just the fact that they are black and a woman.

I mean, it is crazy.

It's so

offensive.

And so, anti-American,

full stop.

You don't, it would have, it would be anti-American to say, I am going to select the best white male to be on the Supreme Court.

That would be anti-American.

It would be anti-American.

I mean, think about what it is, what it means to an Asian American right now.

No chance.

You're eliminated.

You're right.

If you're a Hispanic American, no chance.

You're eliminated.

If you're a black man, no chance.

You're eliminated.

What if you are one of the other 927 genders and are also black?

What if you happen to be a white person, a white male that identifies as a black woman?

Well, I guess that one could maybe slide through.

But if you're non-binary, you have no chance.

Let me ask you this.

How many hermaphrodites currently serve on or have ever served on the U.S.

Supreme Court?

Just the one.

Just the one.

And that was.

No, I just want people to guess at who it is.

As of right now, I think the number is zero.

I think the number is zero.

So think about this, Pat.

African Americans make up 12% of the the population.

You've eliminated 88% of the population with decision one.

Then approximately half of African Americans are men.

So now you're down to 6% of the population.

Of course, in that 6% of the population, approximately one-third is too young, and approximately one-third is too old.

So now you're down to 2% of the population.

And honestly, like...

That's just a wide range, but you've eliminated 98%

of the available candidates for this job.

Well, and then

how many of that 2% have been to law school?

Right.

How many of them are judges?

And they don't have to be, but I think the precedent is that that's who we appoint.

And you're supposed to be trained in the law, I guess, is the standard.

But that could mean a lot of different things.

But the bottom line is, even if you just take out, obviously in every population, all those things apply, right?

A lot of white males have not gone to law school, too.

But if you look at the population overall, you're eliminating at least 98% of the

legally available options to you, which means that even if, and it may very well be true, whoever they name is the best liberal justice to go to the Supreme Court, the most qualified, they can't possibly claim it because everyone else was already eliminated when they had, without any standard,

other than this color of their skin and what they have underneath.

their robe.

It's a complete, it's a

we used to have this thing, pat

and and I

some may argue this isn't better, but I will argue that it is the old way we did these things

was behind closed doors someone like Joe Biden will say I want a black woman for this role and then we would fake it and we would act as if we considered everyone and at the end of the day the most qualified person was a was a black woman.

Okay.

Now, again, may very well be the case.

I'm not saying it couldn't be, but

a person in politics would make a political decision based on some dumb, immutable characteristic.

And we would all,

they would bring in, just like the NFL does right now, right?

The NFL, like if you want to pick a

coach, you have to, you have to interview African-American candidates, right?

Now, even if you know exactly who you want to hire, You come in and you still have to hire African-American candidates.

I think that's, again, a bad idea because it's based, you're making decisions based on skin color.

Here with the Supreme Court, a politician may very well say, I would like to attract black voters.

And we know this from all of the post-election writing, that James Clyburn went to Joe Biden, this is a true story.

Went to Joe Biden and said, if you want my endorsement, which we all know is the reason he's president of the United States, James Clyburn, getting him over the hump in South Carolina.

Because he had been beaten badly in the first two states and he was almost written off.

Almost written off.

If you want my endorsement, you will put a black woman on the Supreme Court.

And there are multiple reports that in the middle of a debate,

in a commercial break, James Clyburn went to Joe Biden and said, you need to announce this on stage.

And Joe Biden did.

That is how pathetic this is.

It is completely politics.

And he's apparently locked in from that time till the actual nomination.

Yeah.

So, okay, so Clyburn puts political pressure on him to name a black woman.

He says he will.

He comes out.

He announces

that intention.

And the old way would be, you know, this would happen behind closed doors, right?

He would not say it on stage.

He would come out and he would go through a bunch of candidates.

He'd bring in some white candidates he knew he wasn't going to hire.

He'd bring in a Hispanic candidate that he knew he wasn't going to hire.

And then he he would pick the black woman and say she was the most qualified.

And like, we all know stuff like that happens.

But at least there is a possibility of a claim that she was the most qualified.

You can't claim it with this process because you've eliminated all of the other candidates.

I mean, it's completely crazy.

If you started out at the beginning by saying, I want the most qualified candidate and and we already know that's a black woman that would be different, right?

Because then you've at least considered everybody, but what you found out was the best candidate is a black woman and that's why I'm going to nominate a black woman.

Sure.

Like that would be a process, right?

Yeah.

If you named a specific person and said, like, I've really put a lot of thought into this and this particular black woman is the best, most qualified candidate, that's who I'm going to put on the list of this review.

And then at least it dissuades some of the

Some of the concern we have about just basing something like this, this important, on the race of the person and the gender of the person.

Right.

You shouldn't make decisions based on the color of somebody's skin or their gender.

That used to be the thing.

And it's the thing.

And I don't even know.

Frankly, I don't even know why we celebrate MLK Jr.

Day anymore because they've gone the opposite of everything he said,

every principle he laid down.

They are the exact opposite of it.

It's become a conservative holiday.

It's like

July 4th.

It's like July 4th.

There's only one side of the aisle that actually supports or that celebrates the history of this country.

And MLK Day is becoming the same.

I'm telling you,

we are not that far away from people on the left tearing down statues of Martin Luther King.

We are not that far away from it.

They've already done it with Abraham Lincoln.

How far could we possibly be?

Not far at all.

They've done it with Ben Franklin.

In fact, wasn't one of the MLK Jr.

statues defaced?

I wouldn't be surprised.

Probably not.

I don't think it was on MLK Day, but it was a few months ago.

They actually spray painted and defaced it.

And you will see,

they might not know it, but the same groups that marched in Charlottesville will be doing the same stuff

that the left wants to do.

And look at the policies.

They're not that different.

You'll note the alt-right is pro-abortion.

The alt-right is pro-universal health care, among other policies that are very similar.

Because of course they are, right?

You know, we don't need to go back into European history to find out what these groups tend to believe.

They tend to be socialists.

And by the way, when you look at the policies of people like Richard Spencer, you find all sorts of overlap, not with our philosophy of limited government.

You can't have limited government if you want to enforce racial quotas and all sorts of terrible racial identitarian policies.

You need a big government to do that.

You know, it's not said enough by us on the right that

the alt-right

that's continually thrown in the face of conservatives in this country and Trump supporters in this country.

They are the antithesis of virtually everything we believe.

Yeah.

They're big government people.

I mean,

Robert Spencer is it

Richard Spencer.

Yep.

It blew me away when he was talking about his

political ideology.

It's nothing like what we believe in.

Right.

I mean,

the way alt-right has been explained is an alternative version of the right.

In reality, what it is, is the alternative to the right.

Yes.

It is not, it's not part of the right.

It doesn't make any sense that it would be part of the right.

But, you know, these political lines aren't always drawn on policy, I know.

And

that's part of the reason why that sort of thing happens.

But still, it is

a way to vilify.

your average person who just wants lower taxes.

I mean, that's what this comes down to.

But with the Supreme Court, it's just an embarrassing,

you know, everything Joe Biden does is a giant embarrassment.

It's hard to not be embarrassed by this person.

He's just terrible at all of these things.

And again, like, I don't, it's not any better.

He's dangerously terrible.

Yeah, too.

He is.

Well, he may be launching us into multiple wars.

Yeah.

So that's even worse.

But we all understand these things happen behind the scenes.

They shouldn't happen, though.

And when he's doing it overtly like this, it is acknowledging, it's codifying this terrible

identity politics standard where we just pick people based on the color of their skin.

I mean, you could have done what Trump did, right?

Release a list of 20 Supreme Court justices.

Right.

On there are several people of color.

Probably you know who you're picking before you walk in day one, but at least it gives the

appearance to the public that it's not okay to pick on color of skin.

At the very least, you're sending the message that

you don't want to do that,

even if you do.

And Biden was like, I'm so desperate.

I'm just going to say it.

I mean, he was so desperate at that point in the campaign.

He just blurted it out.

We forget sometimes that he lost Iowa and New Hampshire badly.

And Nevada.

And Nevada.

Yeah.

So there were three losses piling up and he was being written off.

And then all of a sudden, the South Carolina comeback brought him right back into it.

I had people coming on Studos America telling me Bernie Sanders said won the nomination.

It was over.

Oh, wow.

And it wasn't over.

No.

Things turned around quite quickly.

I mean, and you know, honestly, you'd say normally, thank God it wasn't Bernie Sanders, but what would you notice?

Would you notice a difference here?

No.

The only thing I think would be different is I don't think Bernie Sanders would say, I'm definitely picking a black woman to be the Supreme Court justice.

The spending levels would be similar.

Yeah.

And the loss of freedom would be similar.

Yeah.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

It is Patton Stewart, Glenn 888, 727BECK.

I love the fact that an ultimatum was laid down for Spotify.

You got to make a choice here.

You got two artists on your site,

and one of them has to go.

Tough call.

Tough call.

What do you do?

Well, you choose the other guy.

Neil Young.

I don't know if he thinks this is 1969 still, 1970.

Even then, I'm saying, okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Neil.

Neil Young demands that

Spotify drop Joe Rogan.

First of all, you should be able to noodle this out.

They just signed a $100 million deal with Joe Rogan.

Think you're not going to win this fight.

But he told them, you can either have my music on your site or Joe Rogan.

You can't have both.

And they summarily dismissed his music.

They agreed.

You can't have both.

Yeah, right.

And we will not have you.

Darn it, we're going to miss.

Old man, look at my life.

I'm a lot like you were.

What are we going to do without that song?

What are we going to do without it?

I don't know.

I have this opinion.

I don't know how mainstream it is.

But that Neil Young sucks.

Yes.

He's actually terrible.

Neil Young sucks.

What's the classic rock opinion of Neil Young?

Because I know Crosby stills Nash.

Yeah, they like him as a songwriter and a singer.

Yeah, I don't know how you can like him as a singer.

It's like the Bob Dylan experience to me.

It's bad.

There's a lot of people who

love Bob Dylan.

It's not my thing.

I don't get it.

I don't either.

The Neil Young thing falls into that category.

I really don't get me.

I've had relatives who love Neil Young, live and die with the guy, even though he's obviously, you know, no conservative and many of these people are conservatives, but still love the guy because he was like, you know, I don't know, speaking out against the man back in the day or something.

Sure was.

And that is called a war guy.

Big,

you know, he was always bumping up against the government.

But now

I guess he's all in with the government, which is kind of interesting.

You know, you got this 60s protest singer, and that's really kind of what he was, what you kind of identify him with.

And he was sort of counterculture.

And now you're all about

this administration and everything they say.

Yeah, I remember back in 2006,

with Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, they sang the song, Let's Impeach the President.

And they were talking about George W.

Bush against the man, fighting back against the man.

Against the man.

Now, of course, the ironically named free speech tour that he was on at the time in 2006,

He's kind of given that one up.

It's ironic, isn't it?

The free speech tour now turns into get Joe Rogan off of Spotify.

Oh my God.

I mean, what a pathetic group of people.

You can't hear a different opinion.

You can't.

And you know what?

There's no way Neil Young is listening to this opinion.

He's not hearing Joe Rogan's opinion.

That's right.

He's heard that Joe Rogan has said certain things.

That's what he's doing here.

He wants people to not be able to hear those things.

He doesn't want you or me or anyone in the audience to hear that Joe Rogan likes some other treatment for a virus.

Like, that's how pathetic this is.

And it worked for Joe Rogan, right?

So how is it misinformation if he's just telling you, here's what worked for me?

I mean, it's hard to tell what works and what doesn't, especially with COVID when the overwhelming majority, especially Joe Rogan, who's a guy who's in pretty good shape, relatively young, you know, doing absolutely nothing probably also works for Joe Rogan, right?

That's not something that the left a lot of times wants you to hear, but I mean, most people are open.

That's what I did.

That's what I did.

I did mostly nothing.

I took some vitamins and steroids.

That's what I took.

And you felt sick for a little while and then got better.

It was miserable for a couple of days, but I lived.

Exactly.

And everybody on the show got it.

You know, Keith got it.

He went with ivermectin.

Rob, producer Rob got it.

He went with ivermectin.

His wife got it.

She went up with, finally, in the end.

First, she started with the Merck pill, which didn't do anything for her, but give her bad side effects.

And then she started on ivermectin.

That worked for her.

I mean, how many times do you have to anecdotally hear about it working for people before you say, ha, maybe we don't understand everything about this?

It's just, it's just, the bottom line is.

And I keep coming back to this with the COVID thing, and we don't need to go deep into it, but it's like we have a lot of tools now that we didn't have two years ago.

This is not March 2020 anymore.

People have choices.

And you might say that choice is dumb.

A lot of people think that ivermectin is a dumb choice for COVID.

A lot of people think that the vaccine is a dumb choice for COVID.

All right.

You know, we are at least, Pat, six months away from anyone being persuaded on either side.

There has not been a single individual persuaded either way in six months.

Okay.

Or more.

Or more.

I mean,

when you look at the vaccination data

in Trump counties and Biden counties, it's almost identical until May.

It's almost identical.

I mean, they rise at all the same paths and then they diverge and more blue counties

have higher vaccination rates.

Though, to be clear, it's not that dramatically different.

I mean, people make a big deal out of these differences.

The majority of both parties have been vaccinated at this point.

You know, there is a split.

So what?

Let people make their own decisions.

There are a lot of things out there.

If they believe it's ivermectin, you know what?

It's not your responsibility to micromanage their health.

You're not their dad's.

Okay.

Let them make their own choices.

If you think,

as was stated in the New York Times recently, that the, that COVID for a vaccinated person is less dangerous, less dangerous than the flu.

Right now.

This is not something in the future.

This is right now.

This is, it doesn't matter if you, as a conservative or you, as maybe a COVID skeptic, believe that statement.

The important thing is that they believe it.

They believe their sources are telling them.

A vaccinated person has less risk than the normal flu.

That is what their science tells them.

Who cares what your science tells you?

Who cares what the opinions of all these other people are?

The bottom line is the only people who want restrictions are people on the left.

And that's what they believe.

They don't act like they believe it, man.

I'll tell you that.

But that is what their science tells them.

So this is

over.

The point, the fact that Joe Rogan

talks to an audience of mainly younger people who are incredibly likely to have no problems with COVID anyway

and tells them to take, let's just say it was a completely BS solution to this problem.

Let's say it's tree bark.

He was like, you know what?

You got to chew tree bark.

If you go out to your yard and you start biting on the nearest nearest tree and pull off a good chunk of bark and you chew it up into little pieces and swallow it, that'll cure COVID.

Who cares?

If you're going to Joe Rogan for your health advice, that's the thing.

You know, he's not a doctor.

He's a guy trying to figure the world out.

And everybody who listens to him knows that.

They know he's just a guy talking on a podcast about his opinions.

And, you know, look.

Well, that doesn't mean I'm going to run out and do everything he said he did.

Yes.

Do you know, Joe,

one of the first interviews I heard about COVID was on Joe Rogan's show, and it was with Michael Osterholm, who

was an advisor to Joe Biden.

Okay.

And he came on and said, hey, you know, this actually could be bad.

Like, this is, this one, this one is not like some of these other ones that have come and gone.

This one, we could have real problems with.

And he went through the whole situation.

And he said in that interview, we should point out that it's not at all obvious we should close schools.

In that interview, it was in like January or February of 2020.

So before any of this stuff even

hit us here, he said, schools,

that's probably not a wise choice.

But in addition to that, Joe Rogan during the interview asked him, asked a virologist if one of the cures could be saunas.

What if you went into a sauna and breathed in the really hot air, would that kill COVID in your lungs?

That was one of his questions.

Now, but now that he said, no, that's not how the body works.

And Rogan was like, oh, okay, I just heard it online.

But that's Joe Rogan's approach.

Like, he's looking around, he's asking questions.

He doesn't.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with it.

It can be very entertaining.

It can be very informative.

A lot of people probably heard that same rumor at the same time and had it disproved on Joe Rogan's show.

Because he brought it up.

Because he brought it up and was willing to ask a question that some journalists might feel like, oh, this is a silly question.

He doesn't care.

He's a regular guy.

He reads something.

He wants to know more about it.

And

he's not embarrassed to say, sometimes I don't have all the knowledge.

right?

And instead of treating him as a really, you know, this will be an important thing.

Like, what's his face?

Sanjay Gupta went on his show.

On Rogan's show and talked to him for an hour.

And,

you know, there were times in which he was, I would think, I thought was evasive to what Rogan was talking about.

But there were times he brought up things that maybe that audience hadn't heard and maybe it convinced some people

of different solutions.

The bottom line is just have the guts to go on and talk to the guy instead of silencing him.

If you think he's wrong, then go on the show and say that he's wrong or disprove him with some science.

And Joe Rogan himself has said he's not a COVID expert.

He's not a doctor.

In fact, he said, I'm an effing idiot who does a podcast.

He's not claiming to be a scientist.

So, you know, everybody listening doesn't just run out and do what Joe Rogan said.

Look,

as Joe Rogan would tell you, if you go out and listen to every piece of Joe Rogan's health advice, like man's talking about doing drugs like 80% of his shows.

It's not necessarily.

Elon Musk smoked pot on his show.

Does that mean every American listening is going to run out and buy pot and smoke it now?

No.

No.

No, it does not.

No, it does not.

There's this weird thing the left wants to do, silencing speech.

And it's not about them hearing it.

It's about others hearing it.

Because, God forbid, they might be convinced to an opinion that's different than what Neil Young believes.

And look at Neil Young.

Does he look like the picture of health to you?

Guy looks like he could keel over at any second.

But he's 117.

He's 117.

But when he was 40, he looked like he could also keel over at any second.

He's never looked like the picture of health.

So you shouldn't listen to Neil Young's advice and you shouldn't listen to Joe Rogan's advice either or mine or yours or

do your own research.

How many times has Glenn said it?

For, you know, 20 years, he's been saying, do your own research.

And I will say,

you might get the wrong answer if you do your own research sometimes.

That might happen.

But first of all, it will be your decision.

And second of all, you don't have to do this alone.

You have a doctor of your own.

Go to them and ask them what you should do.

You don't need to listen to Anthony Fauci, who might be an infectious disease expert, but has no idea what your individual situation is.

He doesn't even know who you are.

Go to your doctor, talk to your doctor.

That's a great way of handling these situations.

And Anthony Fauci hasn't actually had any patients for over 40 years.

Come on.

He doesn't treat people anymore.

That's not what he does.

It's not his role.

And so you shouldn't take specific, like, you know, he can say as a public health expert what he believes should be done.

And those suggestions can be processed by politicians who are supposed to be experts in political science and care about

their

constituents,

not just go blindly along with every expert that passes by.

That's not how this is supposed to work.

That's a different country.

That's a different alignment.

That's a

technocracy.

That's a bunch of technocrats running the country.

There you go.

There you go.

It's that.

That's not what we have and not what you want.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

with Patton Stew today.

Glenn's back tomorrow.

We've been talking about the Neil Young Spotify situation where I bet they really had to think long and hard.

Now it's either Neil Young or it's Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan.

I think it took that long.

I didn't take that long.

I do.

Oh, I don't think so.

You don't think it was that long?

I think it was more like, it's Neil, Joe Rogan.

I don't think they got through the full Neil.

But what we take for granted now is Spotify itself.

Incredible.

That is the most incredible thing

that 20 years ago, 15 years ago, really, you couldn't have imagined such a thing.

I guess it was just starting to be a thing with

what was the initial.

Oh, Napster.

Napster.

My gosh.

Napster.

Napster was the thing.

And you could illegally dump it.

Illegally.

And then iTunes, Apple said, hey, you know what?

Maybe we can make that legal and actually let people stream stuff.

And then it just exploded into Pandora and Spotify and, you know, a million different outlets.

But the ability to think of a song and think, wow, I haven't heard that in a long time.

And five seconds later, you're listening to it.

Yeah, this happened to me last night where my wife just said a random word that reminded me of a band and then 10 seconds later I was listening to that band that was totally obscure.

But I was trying to think about

how to explain to my kids what my younger life was like.

listening to music.

Oh, they totally can't relate to that.

Yeah, I remember I used to go, I used to drive around the state with my friends who were, who were, you know, we were largely fans of like the same bands and we would go and like look for rare releases and like B-sides and remixes and like for, you know, overseas releases of albums that had an extra track.

Right.

And like you'd hunt these things down.

Like you're searching, you know,

you were in a river looking for gold back in the 1800s.

And it was so difficult.

And

you'd luck out.

and find you'd find one copy of it.

It would be like $38.

You'd be like, screw it, get it anyway.

You know, like you didn't care because you wanted to get your hands on this.

Now they have everything they could ever want immediately.

A hundred different versions.

You know,

we miss how good things are in so many ways these days.

I think often because of the obvious and important bad things that are going on, we miss a lot of the good things.

Yeah, and it's changed things to the extent where there are certain things that just don't exist anymore, like calling 411

or,

you going to a music store or

trying to find sheet music.

You don't need to do any of that.

And I wonder, we haven't worked in music radio for a really long time.

Do they even take requests anymore?

Does anybody make a request?

You don't need to.

I don't need to be listening to my favorite radio station and call them and say, hey, would you please play the new song by Olivia Rodrigo?

You go to Spotify, you're listening to Olivia Rodrigo immediately.

We should.

No, you have called Station.

I have called the latest Olivia Rodrigo

with that voice because you want them to think you're 14.

Hey, would you please play what's the name of the song where it's good for somebody or whatever?

See, the fact that you know that much is already too much, really.

It's too much knowledge about Olivia Rodrigo.

Yeah, that's, are you the person I always hear blasting Olivia Rodrigo when you pull into the parking lot?

I thought so.

I thought so.

But it is amazing.

And look, there are always ups and downs for this.

If you owned a music store, you probably don't think this is as wonderful as many of the consumers do.

But it is incredible what you can get.

And you can, with a few commercials, get it for free.

I mean,

I subscribe to that.

I think Spotify is the one I subscribe to.

And it's, you know, this is as much music as I could ever want,

always available.

Yeah.

It's incredible.

A similar thing has happened with movies at home.

Yep.

Anything we want.

Last week, we have a little tradition at my house where the kids come over and we do movie night, steak and movie night every Friday.

And we lost access to the internet.

I'm like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do?

We can't watch anything tonight.

I don't know what.

And

we've got a little room that has about 500 movies in it that are on DVD, but I forgot that that's even an option, a thing.

I mean, DVDs are pretty much archaic now.

Oh, you don't even

use them.

Yeah.

You can, I mean, there's just, it's too much of a hassle.

It's like

thinking about actually going in and putting, it's unbelievable how fast that stuff happens, too.

You know,

back in the day, you had the iPhone where you just type in the code

and then it was the fingerprint.

And I remember thinking,

why the heck would I need to just do a fingerprint?

It's so, it's like, it's what, what is it, one second you're saving?

And within a week, it was irreplaceable in my life.

And then.

Wait, I have to type in four

numbers?

I can't do that.

It seemed completely insane within a week.

And then they came out with a face ID thing.

And I'm thinking to myself, wow, they're scanning my face, all this information they have.

Within a week, it was irreplaceable in my life.

I can't imagine putting my finger on the phone now.

It just seems insulting.

They shouldn't even ask you to do that.

No, don't ask me to do that.

Like every once in a while, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know the mechanics of it, but like

maybe you turn your phone off, and when you turn it back on, you have to type the code instead of the face ID one time.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

I want to burn Apple to the ground when it happens.

I think about trying to hire arsonists in China to burn their factories down every time they ask me to do it.

That's how insane you get.

You're thinking about a killings pre, aren't you?

It's like, why?

You should not have to do that.

It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

It's just incredible how people are.

You take for granted are amazing.

Yeah.

And, you know, I mean, like, even in times like this, where we've had, obviously, not only the battles that we often discuss on, you know, talk radio with the restrictions for COVID and all the terrible side effects they have had on our children and all of that, not to mention the actual health effects that have gone on and, you know, all the people who have suffered and lost loved ones and all the terrible things that have happened over the past couple of years.

You know, you go back and look at death rates from 10 or 20 years ago and we're still doing better than them.

I mean, we're doing worse than we were a couple of years ago, but still much better than we were doing in the 90s.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

We've, all this stuff is improving all the time, and we always miss it.

You know, so that is an important thing.

I mean, we often talk about how

the example I think is the most pressing is, you know, since

we were younger, and you can go back to the 90s, for example.

This show started,

let's see, I started working with Glenn back in 1998.

So that's a long time ago.

You go back, obviously, even further than that with Glenn.

And, And, you know, just since those times, in our lifetime, we have taken billions of people out of poverty.

Global capitalism spreading has saved billions of lives.

The number is so remarkable, just in the difference in the last like about 20 years, the difference in the amount of children who die of hunger.

Right and malaria and various diseases around the globe that number has gone down considerably.

The difference is something like 18,000 kids a day that used to die now live.

That's a staggering number.

It's just our lifetime.

And if you ask people, has poverty gotten better or worse in your lifetime?

It's like 80% think it's gotten worse.

And the total opposite is true.

This has been, I mean,

I don't think it's even arguable.

It's the greatest accomplishment of humankind in the past thousand years, probably.

And it's still disparaged.

And it's still happening, too.

Yeah.

You know, but it's totally disparaged.

And we see nations around the world turning against capitalism, including our own.

How remarkable is that?

Especially our own.

Yeah.

I mean, it's the most symbolic one, right?

The country that brought capitalism to the globe, proved that it's the best system, became the global superpower, now is hiring people who hate it.

Right.

And want to change it completely.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know.

The difference of of, you know, maybe China moving a little bit into the world of capitalism and then now moving back the other way again.

I mean, that's notable, sure.

It's certainly notable for the Chinese people, but it's not notable like the United States, who, you know, brought this system to the people, brought this system to humanity and is now turning against it.

Which reminds me, since we're talking to Neil Young, we can go to the other side of the spectrum.

And somebody who talked about capitalism, a rock star that you would not expect to

sing the praises of capitalism.

You remember what Bono said about capitalism a few years ago?

Imagine for a second this last global recession,

but without the economic growth of China and India, without the hundreds of millions of newly minted middle-class folks who now buy American and European goods.

Imagine that.

Think about the last five years.

Rockstar preaches capitalism.

Wow.

Sometimes I I hear myself and I just can't believe it.

But I mean, that's a really cool thing, though, that he recognizes that.

And, you know,

I don't think, certainly Bono's not a conservative.

Oh, no.

But he understands what capitalism has done for this planet.

And the hybrid even of capitalism in China has brought 400 million people out of poverty.

Yeah, it helped them for a while.

I mean, we have an author on, I think it's next week who's written a book.

He's a Wall Street Journal reporter who wrote a book.

I think it's called Red Carpet.

And it's basically about how China has influenced Hollywood and the other way around.

And we hear these stories where they edit things out.

There was a great one.

It actually happened today.

I don't have the text in front of me of it, but it was The End of Fight Club.

Have you heard this story?

Oh, I read a headline.

I didn't read the story.

It's amazing.

Basically, The End of Fight Club, if you've never seen the movie, is

the main characters of the movie.

Spoiler alert, by the way.

Spoiler alert.

They're standing there looking out the window, and they're, which we can only describe as a terrorist revolution, is underway.

They are getting, they're bombing the

financial buildings and watching all the buildings collapse into the ground.

That's how the, it's a wonderfully uplifting movie.

And so that's basically the end of the movie.

In China, right before the buildings blow up, they cut it off and they just put on the screen, like,

I can't remember,

they're like, thanks to Tyler's advice,

Tyler's tip, the police uncovered the plot and arrested all the people.

And they were put in jail and were eventually put into lunatic asylums and were released in 2012.

It's like, what's the end?

The end.

Not only are they editing scenes out of the movie, they're changing the plot to the exact opposite

because they want to show that they won.

And so anyway, this book is about the influence.

And one of the interesting things that China did with this capitalist expansion, that wasn't never really capitalism by any means, but it was access to markets, is they came over, they dumped tons of money into places like Hollywood, learned how they did everything,

and then went back and just started their own film companies that are now making as much money as Hollywood is.

No longer is American culture dominant around the world, but now a lot of Chinese culture is dominant in many areas of the world.

And so they've totally changed that dynamic by basically coming over here and stealing our ideas and going back and and replicating them.

This was obviously part of the plan for a long time, and President Xi has made things much, much worse.

But it's interesting to watch that play out because

it's going to have really long-lasting implications.