Best of The Program | Guests: Dave Isay & Spencer Coursen | 5/10/21

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Welcome to the podcast.

Today, we go into the economy.

What is going on with it?

Why did we have such a disappointing jobs report?

Is it because the government is shoveling money at people who would otherwise be back at work?

We get into that today.

Spencer Corson joins us.

He's Glenn's former head of security and also has a new book out called The Safety Trap: A Security Expert's Secrets for Staying Safe in a Dangerous World.

He comes in to talk to us about all the threats that are going on right now, what is wrong about the advice you're you're getting from all the quote-unquote authorities, and how to keep yourself safe.

We get into that today.

And we get into the new woke world we all live in, including an update on what's going on at Disney, which is incredible.

We'll get into that today.

Also, that's going to be our focus on Stu Does America tonight.

You can get that podcast right here in your podcast app.

Make sure to click subscribe, rate and review that podcast, this podcast, and any other podcast you like because they tell us it helps us.

I have no idea if it's actually true or not.

I mean, I don't know if rating and reviewing actually helps us.

Subscribing certainly does, and listening does as well.

We really appreciate it.

Here's the podcast.

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

This is the Glenbeck program.

I want to introduce a friend of the program and a friend of mine, Dave Isay.

He is the founder of StoryCorps.

StoryCorps is this really cool thing that started years ago, collecting stories of Americans, and then they are kept at the National Archives, so we are able to preserve the voices of today.

And there's some amazing moments that happen.

He's been working on not only StoryCorps, but he has also

been working on one small step, which is bringing people of different ideologies together and letting them find their way to each other.

And it's an amazing, healing kind of thing that's going on.

We were supposed to have him on a Friday because of the build-up to Mother's Day, but I thought, you know, we can still use some good news.

So, Dave, I say, welcome to the program.

How are you?

Glenn, I'm doing great.

How are you doing?

Thanks for having me on.

I'm good.

I'm good.

So,

how was your Mother's Day, first of all?

It was great.

Thanks.

Yeah.

No,

my mom is thankfully still alive, and we celebrated with her and with my wife and my kids.

So we had a great day.

And how about you?

Good.

I know a year ago we were talking about your son being very, very sick

and,

you know, grandma Hussein, you know, giving kind of some hope there.

Everybody's healthy?

Everybody's fine.

Yeah, my kid had a long-haul case of COVID.

He was one of the earliest people diagnosed, but he's fine now.

Thanks for asking.

He's doing good.

Okay.

So

we went out here in Texas.

Everything is so different around the country.

We went out yesterday and nobody was wearing a mask and it was almost back to normal.

I know

I think it's Wednesday of this week that New York opens up and still people are.

you know, a little bit in a panic about it.

We're handling this really differently all across the country.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Dave, why don't you share with us the mom's Q ⁇ A?

Set this up for us, will you?

Sure.

So, we'll share a couple of stories, Glenn.

And, you know, again, it's always great to be on, and I appreciate how deeply you believe in StoryCorps and One Small Step.

And as you said, you know, StoryCorps is families coming together, everyday people, to talk about their lives.

And One Small Step is a new project that we've developed, partly in partnership with you, that deals with the issue of the toxic polarization in this country.

But we're going to listen to a standard StoryCorps story.

And, you know, it's okay to stretch out, like you said, Mother's Day for one more day.

I think we're going to start with,

this is an interview between a mom and

her son.

He actually brought her to a Story Corps booth.

We have these booths all across the country.

And he was 12 years old at the time.

His name is Josh Littman, and he has Asperger syndrome, which, as everybody knows at this point, a form of autism where

people can come across as eccentric and often develop obsessions.

A lot of times in New York City,

a lot of kids who have Asperger's develop obsessions with the subways, for instance.

In Josh's case, it's animals.

And he came to StoryCorps with his own questions.

Usually people use the kind of standard Storycore questions to ask.

He came with his own questions

to talk to his mom.

And you'll notice actually an interesting thing.

He was born in England and he moved to the United States when he was one, but he still has a British accent, which is one of the things that

kids with Ashbergers

often hold on to accents.

So let's listen to Josh Littman,

who, again, who has an obsession with animals, interviewing his mom,

Sarah, at StoryCorps.

From a scale of one to ten, do you think your life would be different without animals?

I think it would be an eight without animals because they add so much pleasure to life.

How else do you think your life would be different without them?

I could do without things like cockroaches and snakes.

Well, I'm okay with snakes as long as they're not venomous or it can constrict you or anything.

Yeah, I'm not a big snake person.

But cockroach is just the insect we love to hate.

Yeah, it really is.

Have you ever felt like life is hopeless?

Um, when I was a teenager, I was very depressed.

And I think that can be quite common with teenagers who think a lot, you know, and are perceptive.

Am I like that?

You were very much like that.

Do you have any mortal enemies?

I would say my worst enemy is sometimes myself.

But I don't think I have any mortal enemies.

Have you ever lied to me?

Hmm.

I probably have, but I try not to lie to you.

Even though sometimes the questions you ask make me uncomfortable.

Like when we go on our walks, some of the questions I I might ask.

Yeah, but you know what?

I feel it's really special that you and I can have those kind of talks, even if sometimes I feel myself blushing a little bit.

Have you ever thought you couldn't cope with having a child?

I remember when you were a baby, you had really bad colic, so you would just cry and cry.

It's when you get this stomachache and all you do is scream for like four hours.

I'm louder than Amy does.

You were pretty loud, but Amy's was more high-pitched.

I think it feels like everyone seems to like Amy more.

Like, she's like the perfect little angel.

Well, I can understand why you think that people like Amy more.

And I'm not saying it's because of your Asperger syndrome, but being friendly comes easily to Amy.

Whereas I think for you, it's more difficult.

But the people who take the time to get to know you love you so much.

Like Ben or Eric or Carlos.

Yeah, and like I have better quality friends, but less quantity.

I wouldn't judge the quality, but I think

first it was like Amy loved Claudia, then she hated Claudia, she loved Claudia.

Then you hated Claudia.

That's a girl thing, honey.

The important thing for you is that you have a few very good friends and really that's what you need in life.

Did I turn out to be the son you wanted when I was born?

Like, did I meet your expectations?

Oh my gosh.

You've exceeded my expectations, sweetie.

Because, you know, sure, you have these fantasies of what your child's going to be like, but you have made me grow so much as a parent.

Because you think.

I was the one who made you a parent.

You were the one who made me a parent.

That's a good point.

But also, because you think differently from, you know, what they tell you in the parenting books,

I really had to learn to think out of the box with you.

And it's made me much more creative as a parent and as a person.

And I'll always thank you for that.

And that helped when Amy was born.

And that helped with Amy was born, but you are just so incredibly special to me.

And I'm so lucky to have you as my son.

That is such an amazing, frank conversation that you just don't.

It's weird.

You're listening to a very personal conversation with a very tough kid.

Yeah.

He had some tough questions.

Great.

On real life, you know, and again, I mean, we've talked about this before, but what I like to think Storycourt does is just shake us on the shoulder and remind us what's important because we're stuck in so much nonsense, Glenn.

And we've talked about this before.

I just want, she told me a story that Sarah had a column in a newspaper in Connecticut on education, and she's very liberal.

And after that story aired, someone wrote her a note and said, you know, I've read your column for years, and I haven't agreed with a single word you've written.

But after hearing this, I realized that we agree on all of the most important things in life.

You know, and that's really what Once Fall Step, this effort under Story Corps that you and I are working on together, is just trying to remind us about.

You know, this, this, I know it's Monday morning and like, who wants to

jump right back into the misery of where we are in the country.

Right.

You know,

more than half of Americans say the greatest threat to this country comes from our fellow citizens.

You know, we've gone from disagreeing with one another to hating one another.

We can't remember why we like each other or why we live in the same country anymore.

You know, I have to disagree.

I don't think it comes from, I don't think it comes from our fellow citizens.

I think it comes from us.

You know, it is, it's not our we have to stop thinking about the greatest threat coming from our fellow citizens and start thinking about coming from us.

We are all one.

And one way or another, no matter which side you're on, we're in many ways, we're doing the same things to each other.

We're demonizing one another and not pausing.

I mean, I think COVID helped me and my family out a great deal.

We learned so much about us as a family.

We are a much stronger family than we were a year ago.

And I don't know if you know this about me, Dave, but I'm a painter, and I have

been painting these different heroes of our past.

And one of them is Lou Gehrig.

And

I call it

Lucky with an asterisk because the actual name of

the title of the painting is Grateful.

Because as I'm painting these people, I really listen to their words.

If anything was recorded, I try to get to know them.

And

as I was painting Lou Gehrig, I thought, here's a guy who, as he's, he knows it's a death sentence.

He's going to be dead in two years.

And he gets up to the microphone.

He says, I feel like the luckiest man in the world.

That's gratitude for what you have instead of focusing on what you don't have.

And we've lost that entirely.

Yep.

Yep.

It's, it's, um, and and you know things are not going in the right direction.

You know, I've been I've done StoryCorps for all these years and you know, it's families talking to each other and it's incredibly successful.

But I'm obsessed with this, with one small step, with this across the divides piece, because, and I know, you know, you and I have had a lot of on, you know, face-to-face and also kind of behind the scenes communication.

I know you're worried about this as well, that, you know, this, this is, this, this kind of intractable conflict, the high conflict that we're seeing in the country is an existential threat um and you know it's easy again on the monday morning after mother's day i don't want to think about it you don't want to think about it but it's there and we have to deal with it um and you know i was the the crazy thing about it is that your audience you and your audience i mean

you could single-handedly uh the your audience could could you know set us on the road to fixing this problem it's a massive audience um i i really believe that that.

And we just have got to take the first step towards recognizing that the people we disagree with,

that we have to not treat them

with contempt, but just see them as human beings.

Arguing is not a problem.

It's when we start to see each other as less than human, and it's easy to do that.

So the StoryCorps, what we're doing with StoryCorps with one small step is putting people across the divides together just to talk to each other, just like Sarah Lippman would talk to the guy who read her column about their lives, just to remind us.

You know, it's not everything, it's just one small step, just to remind us that, God, we share so much more in common than divides us when you get down to it.

How can people get involved?

What can they do?

So,

we have, if you go to takeonesmallstep.org, and again, I hope everybody listening will do this: takeonesmallstep.org.

And you sign up for a newsletter, and you can also sign up to be a part of one small step where we will partner you with someone across the political divides.

You take a quick,

you take, you fill out a quick survey.

It's completely safe.

Everything is

locked down and

there's no risk whatsoever.

And we put you for 50 minutes to have a conversation with someone different than you.

And again, like, look, this is just,

it is just one small step away from this abyss.

But the only thing we know for sure is that if we don't start dealing with this problem of hating each other,

things are just going to get worse.

So you go to the website, pickonesmallstep.org, sign up, fill out a questionnaire.

And as soon as we can, we'll match you with someone across the divides and you have that conversation.

And more than that, just talk to people around you.

Post it on Facebook.

Let people know, you know, the idea of social norming.

If people can see that what's normal is to treat each other with respect, not to treat each other with contempt,

that kind of norming can spread like a virus, like wildfire, a good virus, you know, and remind us that this is not okay.

And, you know,

like you said about Lou Gehrig, that we can focus on who we are

at our best.

You know, we live in a country now that is unforgiving,

that

none of us are, all of us are are the worst things we've ever done.

And it doesn't,

you know,

if we can't

see the best in others, if we can't recognize the best in others, we're just in deep, deep trouble.

I just did a podcast with Jordan Peterson last Thursday, and I was re-listening to it again today, and

most of that conversation is about that.

I mean, he's deeply, deeply concerned about what we're going through as well as you and I are.

Thank you so much, Dave.

I appreciate it.

TakeOneSmallstep.org is the address.

Dave, we'll talk to you again soon.

Thank you.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Axios reported last week a job report for the ages.

April could see more than 2 million jobs added.

Reuters, U.S.

economy likely created nearly a million jobs in April.

CNBC, April jobs expected to top 1 million as consumers boost the economy.

MarketWatch, a million new jobs?

That's how many Wall Streeters think the U.S.

created in April.

Barons, get ready for a blockbuster jobs report of 1 million or more.

New York Times, jobs report is expected to show a big gain.

Live updates.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That didn't happen.

In fact,

we didn't get

job growth.

We actually lost some jobs.

And so that's.

We were well under expectations.

There was still some growth, Glenn, but it was just, they just missed it by, you know, four or five times.

That's all.

I mean, it was, sure.

That's not.

Is that a big deal?

I mean, what?

It was a few hundred thousand jobs among friends.

It was unemployment rate increased in April.

It grew by 100,000 people.

Well,

it was 200, I thought they were expecting about a million new jobs, and they got 225,000 new jobs.

Contrary to the bullish expectations, the unemployment rate actually ticked up a tenth of a point to 6.1% in April.

The economy did add 266,000 jobs, far fewer than the 770 revised number added in March and the 536 added in February.

This jobs report actually

is a job report of the ages.

You know what this is?

You know,

I was going to say it was,

you know, a misfire, but this president wants us to look at this differently.

Here's the audio of Joe Biden talking about the jobs report.

This month's job numbers show we're on the right track.

Shows that we've

stopped.

Stop, stop.

Stu,

would you say that this jobs report shows that we're on the right track?

Well, the track, as you mentioned, was

increasing for it was January, February, March, all increased.

And then we had a major drop-off in April.

So would you consider that?

I would not.

I would not consider that on the right track.

We should also

point out that

all of the job gains were in the hospitality

areas, which again, you know, look, it's good to see.

We like to see that the restaurants are coming back a little bit and hospitality is popping back.

That's good.

Yeah, that's good.

But I mean.

That doesn't make things that we can sell to other people.

Yeah, look, the service industry is an important part of our economy, no doubt.

But

the fact that

restaurants are opening up because restrictions are being lifted in certain areas, but then we have

reactive of policies for

minus jobs in all of the other areas outside of hospitality.

We're actually losing jobs.

That's frightening.

And then you add on to the fact that we're in an era where we're spending multiple trillions of dollars to prop this economy up.

Yeah, we haven't spent enough yet.

You'll see.

We haven't spent enough.

That is.

But I want you to listen.

So, first of all, we're on the right track, according to this president.

We're on the right track, and there's even more.

This month's job numbers show we're on the right track.

We still have a long way to go.

As I said, my laser focus is on growing the nation's economy and creating jobs.

My laser focus is on vaccinating our nation.

And we're making continued progress.

My laser focus is on one more thing.

Making sure working people in this country, hardworking people, are no longer left out in the cold.

They're going to get a share of the benefits of a rising economy.

It's been a long time since that happened.

I called my plan

to the blue-collar blueprint for America.

That's exactly what it is.

So let's not let up.

We're still digging our way out of a very deep hole we were put in.

Nobody

in.

You should underestimate how tough this battle is.

We still have a job to do here in Washington.

All right.

So, Stu, what was his laser focus again?

Did he have three lasers or only one laser?

I don't know.

He's seemingly laser focused, I know,

on COVID and vaccinations.

COVID.

Yeah, yeah.

But also, his laser focus is on equity.

And equity.

So

we got that.

We got that.

Not equality.

Yeah.

I don't know if he's a Cyclops, so he only has one eye,

but if so, his laser focus should move towards the economy because without the economy, we really don't have anything.

And, you know, there's some simple things he could do like,

hey, cut the extra $300

from unemployment that people are using as an excuse to not go back to work.

I mean, that's just...

I know, it's

crazy.

We can call it an excuse all we want, but people are making a pragmatic cost-benefit analysis

of whether it's worth going somewhere for 40 hours a week to make less money.

I can't blame them for saying that's a bad return on investment.

No.

No, I mean, we're being encouraged to stay home.

And, you know, they know exactly what they're doing.

The Chamber of Commerce just came out and said, can you cut that?

Because after the jobs report, I think it's pretty clear that's

not the way to go.

Yeah, two states

are going to abandon it already, and that is going to pass.

It's going to continue to pass, especially in red states around the country.

Yeah.

Well, red states lost fewer jobs.

Red states are recovering faster and will continue to lead the way and then be blamed for everything.

The other thing is that he missed on his laser focus was the cyber attack of the gasoline pipeline.

Kind of a big deal, you know, seeing that it is, what was it, 50%

of the East's gasoline and jet fuel.

Just it was just, you know,

somewhere between 40 and 60%.

So it's not even worth mentioning.

But

they say if they don't have this solved by Tuesday,

then it's going to really skyrocket prices.

But only in half of the country.

And fortunately, it's the most populated half of the country.

You take up from the Louisiana-Texas border, and

if you're looking at the map and you go right,

yeah,

you might have some problems with some oil and gas prices, maybe, you know, because there's going to be a shortage.

But don't worry, it's not like the driving season starts in a couple of weeks, you know?

Just drive half as far.

If it's 50% of the gas, just drive half as far.

These are easy solutions that we can common sense solutions.

I don't know why people don't listen to you more often, Stu, because that is really, really, really true.

Here's the thing, Glenn, and you walk me through this because you're the historian around here.

You have all these artifacts.

You got this whole museum right across the walkway here.

And

my impression of the job of President of the United States was you needed to focus on multiple things at once.

I didn't know

you came in and kind of laser focused on one thing and let everything else go to crap.

I didn't know that was the thing.

No, it's if you can't laser focus on just one thing.

That's the way it used to be.

But now it's, you know, you need a nap at three o'clock.

Take a nap, you know, after dinner, which is at two.

So to have some dinner, go to sleep, wake up maybe 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning.

Do you remember how many times they said that

Donald Trump is going to bed early?

Oh, yeah.

All he does is watch TV and then he goes to bed early.

Yeah.

Yeah, he goes to bed.

This guy,

I think at least Trump was watching the news.

I think Biden, maybe at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, is watching Matlock or Murder She-Rogue and then going to bed.

You know what I mean?

I have a 16-year-old pug

that his entire day is just sleeping, waking up, eating, going to the bathroom, going back to sleep.

He's only up for, I think, legit an hour a day.

That's it.

If you combine all the times he's actually up with his eyes open, you're you're at about an hour a day.

And I think he's awake more than Joe Biden is.

Well, let me ask you this.

Let me ask you this.

Let's pretend your dog was president of the United States.

Okay.

And you're the chief of staff.

And I find out that Russia, that Russian hackers

for the second time in just a couple of months,

have now given us a cyber attack where they cut, quote, the jugular

of our oil and gas supply to the East Coast.

And it happens Friday

and we knew about the, you know, the

hack in on Thursday because they took so much data.

And now they're holding this pipeline hostage for ransom.

And I come over to your house and I say,

is President Miles available?

I've got some really, they've just cut the jugular

of the oil pipeline.

Well, and I think we need to meet.

Here's the thing with Miles is he's mostly.

You mean Mr.

President?

Yes, President Miles.

He's mostly

blind and basically completely deaf.

So

if you try to wake him up, he's always completely stunned.

Like he's terrified.

Whoa!

Like if he's awake and he's facing away from you, he never hears you coming.

So he always is, is, you know, scared

and stunned and jolted every time.

So a lot of times I don't, I try not to wake him up or try not to because I don't want

to be cutting of the jugular, this is the cutting of the jugular of gas

for the entire East Coast.

But you don't want to jolt Joe Biden awake.

You don't want to scare him.

So maybe wait a little while to tell him about this incredible international incident that's ongoing.

Okay, so you would give the, you, you would say, wait until he's awake?

Yeah, like, wait until he's awake and you're in front of him.

Don't walk from behind him because then he'll be scared.

But if you kind of are already in front of him and walking toward him, he'll see kind of your shadow coming and then it'll be okay.

Okay, so you would give, if your dog Miles was the president,

you would give the same advice that apparently was given to, you know, colonial, the colonial oil pipeline people or the NSA or anybody who should have seen this one coming, they knew about it on Friday.

They didn't brief the president until Saturday.

It's just a day.

I mean, what could happen?

You know, a day is a day.

Like, if the missiles are in the air, you just say, we'll let him know if one's coming here, maybe.

What are we going to do about it anyway?

Look, Orlando used to be Orlando.

It's no longer Orlando.

He'll have to reschedule a vacation, but I mean, that's not urgent.

It is insane.

It's just insane.

And every country that was afraid of us just recently, they're now

like, hey, I don't know, they're negotiating with Iran.

Let's set them on fire.

Let's collapse their economy.

Let's go ahead and

just hack into all of their financial stuff and their military stuff and their energy stuff.

We can shut them down within a week and they're not going to do anything.

Maybe we have a problem with our stance in the world, maybe just a little bit, seeing that Hunter Biden keeps losing his dog tags at his Chinese secretary's apartment.

You mean his doggy chain necklace?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It might be for Miles.

He might even be getting something for President Lee.

I'm not sure.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Well, I never thought the day would come

when I would welcome Spencer Corson to the radio program.

Spencer is, if you've ever been, if you've ever been to any of our shows, especially, you know, Kashua has a long, how long has it been?

Maybe 10 years ago,

you would see Spencer.

Spencer was the chief of my detail for security in the golden era of death threats.

And

it was a special, special time.

Spencer, welcome to the program.

Mr.

Beck, great to see you, sir.

Yeah.

So

you started your own security group, Course and Security Group,

and you're a threat management expert now.

I can't be more pleased for your success.

You were.

Let me just say this and see if you know, see if you can respond.

Mr.

Spencer, do you have a six?

Remember the response?

Yes.

And it was, no, Cheyenne.

I don't have a six.

Go fish.

I thought you were going to say when we were all sitting around the table, and that would just be like, boom, winning.

Every time a card got thrown down, and that became the mantra of the weekend, which I almost got fired for.

Yes, I remember that.

I do remember that.

No, you were with us and the family and our kids.

You don't even know this.

Up at our ranch, we have, you know, we measure everybody.

And the kids wanted me to put my height there and mom's height and everything on the doorframe.

You are about a foot higher because the kids said, I remember Mr.

Spencer being so big and so tall.

And I'm like, he was shorter than me.

They're like, no, he wasn't, Dad.

No, he wasn't.

So you are up on our doorframe.

Anyway,

you've written a book called The Safety Trap.

And I wanted to have you on because I think it's really important

that people understand.

I mean, Spencer, we have had an incredible time.

You know that we still have great security.

We've had a home invasion.

We have had an

IT attack.

on us.

We've had all kinds of stuff happen to us.

And you know us.

We're really prepared and really secure.

But I think that goes to what you're talking about called the safety trap.

Well, and I can't agree with you more.

I mean, as seriously as you take your security,

I take my own security very seriously.

And I had an attempted home invasion in my house on Monday.

Really?

One o'clock in the morning.

It's a terrible idea.

You don't invade special house.

It was wrong house.

Wrong house.

I know, I know.

But went to bed around around midnight, 1.10 a.m.

I have a service dog.

Just goes from zero to hero.

And I look over and I see that my motion lights are turned on outside.

My alert notifications on my security system are going into overdrive.

Ronan is just like begging me to let him through the door.

I check the security feed.

I see that there's a bad guy trying to get in through my back fence.

I let Ronan out the back.

I grabbed the shotgun and go out the front.

And I was like five seconds too slow.

And the guy got away.

But they report, they wound up catching the guy about a half a mile down the road.

Because he was trying to break into other houses on the street, too.

Yeah.

So the next morning, of course, all the neighbors started talking.

And he had attempted to get into the apartment complex, which is to the left of me, hit my house, hit the house next to me, hit their, their neighbor's house.

And we all just, you know, I got immediately on the phone right after I

cleared the property.

It was like 5'10, gray shorts, black shirt, tan cap, red backpack.

And he had obviously known what we, what security, like I always talk about how you want to just like, you know, present yourself as having a strong protective posture, you know, to sort of make that a deterrent factor, which is the first level of deterrence.

And some people take that as just putting the sign in their yard with nothing else.

And the problem with that is that 85% of home invasions is because the guy can just walk through the front door because it's unlocked.

And on the security cameras, you see the brazenness of this.

He knows that I have the lights.

So he puts

his arm up to cover his face, but has no problem just trying the front door to see if he can just walk right in.

Wow.

Just

drug-seeking behavior was looking for territories medicine.

And that's, you know, that's the thing.

You have to be really careful because people who come during the day are typically coming for your stuff.

But people who come at night,

good chance they're coming for you.

So you really need to be of the mindset that you're willing willing to participate in your own protection.

That's the one thing that I learned from you and others is that robbers don't want to meet you just as much as you don't want to meet them.

They come when the house is empty.

They don't do it at night like you see in the movies.

Generally speaking, they do it during the day.

Somebody comes to your house at night, they got a problem.

You know, they're either a drug person that's desperate or they do want to harm you or they're doing something more than stealing your stuff, generally speaking.

right of course there's always exceptions to every rule but yeah more often than not and especially and when they don't come through the front door which i think this guy was trying to do is by coming in through the back is if you hear if your neighbors hear one loud crash they're probably going to go oh well that was strange but if they hear a second loud crash then they may investigate but if your front door is open or if it's a weak door that they can just get in with one quick kick or you know just one break of a window you know you cannot expect your neighbors to be willing to protect you any more than you are overly willing to protect your neighbors.

Yes, we all have a neighborly responsibility to look out for one another,

but we no longer live in a world where we can simply hope that nothing will happen and then solely rely on the first responders to save us once something does.

That is something that came actually out of the Carter administration.

He's the one that started calling police and fire first responders.

We never thought of it that way.

Up until Carter, we all believed we were the first responders.

Yes.

And

that change alone has changed our society.

So talk to me about the paradox of the safety trap.

So the safety trap.

The safety trap.

The safety trap is a turn of phrase that I came up with a few years ago to explain to my clients the false sense of security that tends to hide behind.

our own outlook when our fear has been abated, but risk remains.

So if we take

a school shooting, for example, tragic event happens, there's this rush to that we have to do something, the politicians say

we're going to ban guns and

public safety officials say we need to do something about mental health.

But then

nothing really happens.

The news cycle moves on.

The fear has abated.

But the risk is still there.

We have done absolutely nothing to, maybe we'll do some things that will help to mitigate that risk once it has been realized.

But we don't do anything, we don't put any kind of like preventative countermeasures in place to prevent that bad thing from happening.

And that is the very essence of the safety trap.

We are sometimes the most at danger when we feel the most safe because when we have just a little bit of fear or when we're a little bit hesitant or we're a little bit aware, we have our guard up.

We're looking around.

We're present.

We're very much in the moment.

But then, you know,

things go on, nothing else happens.

And we have this

swinging of the pendulum between hyperplacency and conv and hypercomplacency and vigilance.

And everyday safety is really about finding that happy middle, a healthy sense of skepticism, a moderate dose of vigilance, very simple strategy.

You know, I have a story that probably very few can relate to, but I tell it for a reason,

because you don't appreciate the skills that you actually have, these these warning signals, these

things in you that

you will see

without recognizing that you're not consciously looking or listening for things.

You just notice things, and that gives you that sense of, I should be a little hesitant.

When you were the head of my detail, I had gotten so used to, and I think we may have talked about this, I got so used to always 24-7

having protection with me and usually it was more than one guy in the bad times it was a lot of people and uh and so i just knew that i was safe no matter where i was and or at least i felt that way and i lost those skills and i remember distinctly maybe 10 years ago the first time i went out again just by myself just to go to the store Spencer, I was so freaked out

because I didn't have that natural ability anymore.

I mean, it came back, but it was so foreign to me, I was paranoid about everything.

It's this weird balance of

still sensing the danger, but not living in fear.

Does that make sense?

No, it absolutely does make sense.

And I think this is a very

similar frame.

And I use a couple of, I cite a couple examples in the book.

The way I structured the book was I identified these like 16 quote-unquote safety traps traps that all of my clients throughout the years kept falling into, whether that be complacency, whether that be avoidance, whether that be false equivalence.

And what it really always comes down to is

everything in our normal everyday life.

Like most of us are never going to experience a terror attack or be in an active shooter situation or experience a home invasion or any other like horrific incident.

But that doesn't mean that the risks aren't real.

One of the things my global experience has always shown me is that

there are always pre-incident indicators.

There are always warning signs that come before the bad thing happens.

And staying safe is about training ourselves to see them.

When we drive our cars, We are looking for the person who's flying up behind us.

We're looking for the person who's erratically changing lanes.

We're looking for the person that may, we, you know, in leadership, they always talk about like anticipating the needs of others.

Safety is about anticipating the idiocy of others.

Is this person going to like, and if we could just like

apply those same

safety defense strategies that we employ when we're driving to our everyday life, we would have that ability to notice, hey, you know, this person.

Even when I was on your security detail and we had all of the advanced teams and the overwatch and the counter surveillance and everything, You would still very often come up to me and be like, something just doesn't feel right about this route.

And all of that, and we would absolutely take that into our route planning or our threat matrix or whatever, because you not negotiating against your own survival instincts allowed us to keep you safe.

Yeah.

Spencer, I thank you for all of the years of service that you gave my family and kept us safe in some really terribly frightening situations at times.

So,

the two things, Spencer, I want to talk to you about is why is it in the book, you answer the question, why is it so many emergency response plans do more harm than good?

And why is run, hide, fight such a bad idea?

Those are both things that we're told we have to pay attention to, and you're saying, nuh-uh, the bad ideas.

Horrible ideas.

Okay, so on the

evacuation protocols, why you don't want to go where everyone else is going.

Okay.

Let's say that

one of the reasons, okay, let's just accept the premise that everyone who calls in a bomb threat,

there's no bomb.

Because to get the components for that bomb, to build it, to construct it, to then breach security, to get it in place, why are you going to sabotage your success?

But what you do have readily available is

where is that evacuation zone?

Yeah.

Right.

And that's typically outside of the security zone.

So I can put it and I can go on, I can put in hashtag fire drill or hashtag bomb threat and I can see on social media where everyone's gathering points are.

I can very easily put an explosive device there.

Now, if there is a real, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, I was just going to say this.

I think they did this in Beslin, if you're really.

There's a movie called The Kingdom where they put a small diversionary explosive device inside a building to get everyone to the evacuation point.

And then that's where

the real bomb goes off.

Because schools, buildings, office places are all these interconnected, compartmentalized pockets of protection.

And then you give all of those up to

all move to one centralized collective.

We're all going to go to the parking lot.

We're all going to go to the bleachers.

Horrible idea.

If there's ever a fire drill or an evacuation drone, or even if it's just a rehearsal, go anywhere else than where they're telling you to go.

Go to Starbucks, go home.

If the crisis is so severe that they had to stop what they were doing and get everyone out, they have bigger problems than getting you back in.

Go, just participate in your own protection, be disagreeable, and go away.

No, no, no, no.