Best of The Program | Guests: Asra Nomani & Dr. Debra Soh | 4/15/21

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Welcome to the podcast.

Great show for you.

Today,

we talked to Dr.

Deborah So.

She's written a book about gender.

She's an expert on this, a scientist.

And, you know, the end of gender is what we're talking about.

Is there a real way to answer the questions your kids have?

Because they come in and they're...

What's the difference between gender and sex?

Can you answer that question?

Are you prepared to answer it when your kid asks that question?

She gets into that today.

We also talk a lot more about education.

This has been a big focus of the show this week.

And what can you do to actually

get,

what are the resources you could use to move a sensible way of teaching our kids forward?

We talked to Lori Myers about that and Dr.

Everett Piper is on as well.

And he gives actually the list of the three colleges in America that are still okay.

Just three.

Just three.

And he'll get into those as well.

Blazetv.com slash Glenn is the place to go.

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If you were tuning into the shows last night, both Studios America and Glenn Beck, we had an issue, shockingly, with YouTube and the streaming.

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And follow the Instagram controversy on my Instagram page and with

some commenter putting all sorts of crazy comments up named Glenn Beck.

That's all today on the podcast.

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

Ezra Nomani came to my attention years ago because she was the co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement.

She is a Muslim

and didn't like what was happening.

She knows the difference between Islam and an Islamist.

An Islamist wants

the Quran and a religious scholar to make all of the laws.

An Islamist believes the Constitution is nothing because it's not God's law from the Quran.

An Islamist will kill you for a difference of opinion.

They have no tolerance for a difference of opinion because they know they're on God's side and God is on their side.

It's very similar to the same kind of feeling that you get when you're talking to somebody now who is crazy climate change.

And I mean crazy climate change, but especially those who are on the bandwagon of critical race theory.

I hadn't tied these two together, but she did a while ago.

And she's now the vice president for strategy and investigations at Parents Defending Education.

She is also the editor of Indoctrination, the database and FOIA work,

co-founder of Coalition for TJ, a group of parents and community members in Virginia.

She is a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

She was the co-director of the Pearl Project,

which did the investigation on Daniel Pearl, if you remember that.

She is fearless, and

I'm honored to have her on the program today.

Ezra, how are you?

Oh, thanks so much, Glenn.

And you know as well as I do that we

act even in the face of fear, right?

That's what courage is supposed to be because we tremble in our hearts.

We

face the backlash.

We have children.

We know that there can be retaliation and retribution, but courage definitely is acting even when you feel that tremble in your heart.

Somebody gave me some great advice once.

They said, where are your heroes?

They looked at my desk and my office and they said, where are the pictures of your heroes, even if it's your dad?

And I said,

what do you mean?

And they said, you won't make it if you're doing something really tough unless you're looking in the eyes of people who have walked those walks before.

And I really learned my lesson that people like Martin Luther King,

he wasn't fearless.

He was terrified much of his life.

He just knew, I have to do this.

I have to.

Yeah.

Yeah, because it's a human emotion that we can't

deny.

And yet, even in the face of fear, soldiers, right, paramedics, police officers, all of our frontline warriors, and then now us, the accidental activists, the

advocates for children, we have fear, but that's something I want to just let everyone know as we start this conversation because to feel fear is normal and natural and an important mechanism, right, to protect ourselves.

But in this day, at Alzheimer's anyway, we have to still face that fear and still act.

So there is one thing about fear.

When you say our first responders or our firemen, our police, our,

you know, soldiers,

They have one thing that Americans don't feel they have today, and that is a sense of camaraderie, a sense of belonging to a group.

You know, it would change a lot if they thought that they were alone, if the vast majority of our brave soldiers, et cetera, et cetera, felt they were alone.

It wouldn't be the same story.

And I want to get to...

I want to get to some of those organizations, some of them which you are involved in, and help provide sources where people will feel like they're not alone and they can make an actual difference.

But first, I want you to address where we kind of left off yesterday.

We talked just briefly about the nexus between

Islamicists and critical race theory in schools.

Can you go into that?

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, for listeners who don't know me, I'll just introduce myself just for a minute, just to give them context about what I carry in my heart.

You know, I was born as the first generation post-colonial in India in 1965.

My parents lived through British colonialism.

So you could say that they lived under, quote, white supremacy because the British were white and there were my parents who were quote people of color, right?

My father literally climbed a bunion tree to support Gandhi.

as he marched for

independence.

And let me say that I am a huge fan of Winston Churchill, but the guy was a monster in India.

He was a monster.

And, you know, the truth is, this is the realities of history, right?

But

my father carried in his heart hope.

My dad is 5'3 ⁇ , because he lived through the Bengal famine that a lot of listeners might not even know about, but it was a famine that was man-made exactly by the British government because they needed to divert food from India to the British Army.

So it was their survival.

Well, my dad, even at that height,

had hope in his heart.

And he came to America and he became a student here to study nutrition, to help people with food security issues, and bring relief to humanity.

My mother came and then brought my brother and me.

They didn't come with a grudge in their heart, you know, against the, quote, systemic racism that had

held our country hostage, right, for so many years.

They came to create a new life.

And I just bring this up because there's this choice that we can all make about how we're going to navigate our futures.

And my parents made this really bold and pioneering decision to

tap America's equality and vision for its citizens to improve the condition of our family, and that's the family in which I grew up, right?

And

then

I was a

young Muslim girl, didn't go to my prom because I wasn't allowed to dance with the boys,

never dated until I secretly did,

never had a beer until my friend Danny Pearl introduced me to the delicacies of wheat beer.

Yeah.

But, you know,

this is all just to say that, you know, we're all on these journeys.

And

then 9-11 happened, and

my dear friend Danny was kidnapped and murdered.

And I had my reality check that, hey, there is this interpretation within Islam that is dangerous, that is laying siege to beautiful, innocent human beings like Danny.

And

I had to stand up and fight back.

And what I encountered is exactly what you did, Glenn.

You know, our biographies are completely different, but our analysis is similar, which is there is an interpretation within Islam that's problematic.

Just like in every other religion and every other society, there's an extremist strain.

But we got branded racist and Islamophobe.

And it was only last summer that I finally could put the pieces together that our Islamists, these people that you described really well, as folks who want Islam and religion in governance, they use

Not in governance, as the governance.

Yes, absolutely, exactly, as governance.

They want Islamic state, basically.

So our examples out there in the world are the theocracies that are in Saudi Arabia, Qatar,

now emerging in Afghanistan again,

in Iran, exactly.

And what gets denied?

Women's rights, human rights, rights,

all minorities, exactly, all the, quote, liberal values that even I embraced growing up as a progressive, bleeding heart liberal.

So you and I both have faced this and that's why I kind of remembered

this idea of fear because they've come after you.

They've come after your job.

They've

come after your reputation.

Character assassination is

their modus apparandi, right?

They invented cancel culture.

But

I finally last summer got to really understand that what they did is they had no

defense really to their illiberal ideas.

So what they had to do was create a defense.

And

one of your listeners actually put it really well in a tweet that

he wrote in response to the video you posted yesterday from our interview.

He said that they used critical race theory as a shield to protect their bad ideas.

And what they could do then is racialize Muslims, make us a race, so that you became racist if you criticize extremism.

And that is what we've faced over these last 20 years as we've grappled with this

just like industry, right, that calls everybody an Islamophobe if they dare to talk about the extremism issue.

So

how is the Islamist movement

involved at all, and why would they be involved with getting critical race theory into our schools?

Yeah, so Glenn, let me tell you how I realized this happened.

In the summer of 2020,

the Secretary of Education started secret meetings in order to eliminate the merit-based race-blind test at my son's high school in Northern Virginia called Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

It's the number one high school in America, creating scientists and inventors.

Yeah.

This method is become

replicated in San Francisco, Boston, New York, in order to destroy merit and advanced learning in the name of, quote, equity.

But this is- Right,

they're saying that whiteness, so it's important to understand when they say whiteness is a problem, what they mean are things like merit-based programs.

So

striving to achieve, actually achieving something, working for what you get.

That's the Western culture, and that's what they want destroyed.

Yeah, and ultimately, you know, it's a universal culture, right?

Also, because everybody, like in many cultures, strives to accomplish.

So you cannot attribute it simply to white supremacy as they're trying to do.

Because my family is a perfect example.

That's why I wanted to introduce your listeners to my family's story.

Because

we are 70% Asian at my son's school.

My family is emblematic of this story of immigrants pursuing the American dream.

But Glenn, get this.

That Secretary of Education, his name is Atif Kearney.

I looked up his political contributions, and he is funded by the Islamist Network in Northern Virginia.

I was like,

what the heck?

Yeah.

So we only have like two minutes here, and

I know we run out of time, but I.

And I know.

I just leave you with this, like,

what?

I know.

You're like, wait a second.

I didn't expect this to go there.

Okay, let me quickly tell the listeners and you, what's going on is the Islamists are using this leftist agenda of critical race theory in order to bring in their agenda of

anti-Western curriculum, anti-Israel curriculum, pro-Palestinian, you know,

intifada type of material from California to Minnesota.

This is the danger.

Ultimately, it's an anti-American propaganda.

Right.

And this is, we are being made into Israel and the Palestinian situation.

We are.

We are being

broken up and

you are a mean Israeli if you're just trying to defend yourself.

You're a horrible racist state and it's being done now to us and this is how it's being done.

And the left, this is why I believe the left has embraced Islam or Islamists so hard is because they both have the same goal.

As parents, how can we not feel so alone?

What can we join?

What should we do?

As

see, Glenn, beyond being this global radio host and personality, you are a parent.

And I want you two to go to defendinged.org and become a member of our organization because we are connecting parents.

In that concept that you began the show with, and you said, you know, first responders feel like they're part of a group.

We want parents to know that they are in a collective, that we are the mama bears and papa bears protecting our our cubs and all cubs everywhere and so we created this organization in order to let folks know that they're not alone and then do the thing that you're so good at doing which is follow the money and document document document and so we've created this map that you mentioned indoctrination and it chronicles district by district incidents that we're tracking and parent groups that have emerged to fight this indoctrination.

It's just phenomenal.

Every day,

after your interview, dozens of people have written to us.

Where is that map?

Do I find that at

defendinged.org.

Okay, I'm going to go there right now.

Okay, so go there right now.

What is it that you filter?

Okay, so what is it that you're doing with groups?

Yeah.

Okay, all right.

So that's what you do.

You filter

and you've

defended.

And so, for example,

ed.org.

So, for example, like you had this amazing mom and educator from the California group, Educators for Quality and Equality, they're on there.

Lori Myers, you had her on as a guest, I think.

You go to Maryland and you're going to find the Chinese American Parent Association of Howard County.

You're going to find No Left Turn chapters, another organization that's emerged.

Boston, you've got the Boston Parents Coalition for Academic Excellence.

It's phenomenal because there's so many parents like us who are enraged and really activated.

And so that's our goal is to connect folks and empower them.

I'm still trying to get to.

There it is.

Okay, so the indoctrination map,

all you do is, I see these, these are chapters all around?

Yeah, there's chapters all around, and then we also have incidents of critical race theory in our school districts.

So every day we've got parents reporting what is being taught to their kids.

Just today I was going through a case in Texas, and then yesterday we met with these families in Michigan.

You know, it's just phenomenal how much people are now waking up to this threat that we have.

So tell me, you know, we all gathered together and it seemed to just happen so quickly, the idea of Common Core and how bad that was.

How bad do you think

this is in comparison to Common Core?

It's exactly the same, Glenn, because Common Core was developed by institutions and then implanted into school districts around the country through school policies.

That's exactly the same thing that's happening with this, quote, anti-racism teaching.

In just over this past year with George Floyd's death, they have had the opportunity to bring these curriculum changes like Black Lives Matter at schools into the classroom.

And we are trying to monitor this as parents, but we're taking care of our children during COVID at the same time, right?

So they've they've used remote learning and virtual school board meetings to put us on mute.

But the joy is that parents are unpressing that mute button and saying, we're loud and we're here and we're going to fight this.

And I want everyone to know that this is an industry.

And just like any kind of indoctrination has a

hub, this has hubs too around the country.

And and we're gonna we're gonna expose them

okay I want you to go to edge sorry defendinged.org offendinged.org

this is the best of the Glenn Beck program

Dr.

Deborah Soe is with us.

She's the author of the book The End of Gender, the the host of the Dr.

Deborah Soe podcast.

She did a podcast with me.

Deborah, what was it, about a year ago?

Maybe, I don't even know.

It's time is flying now.

Oh, my God.

I know.

But anyway, it's fascinating.

If you want to go really in-depth, look for that podcast.

You can go to youtube.com forward slash Glenn Beck

or download it wherever you get your podcast and listen to that whole hour.

Deborah, thank you so much for being on with me today.

You heard the story of my son, Ruby, Sarah's daughter.

She's 12.

She had the same thing and we don't even know what we're doing.

We don't even know how to argue this.

Can you help us on the gender versus sex argument for our kids?

That's what I'm here for.

And thank you for having me back.

You bet.

So I find it so terrifying that this is being taught in kids' curriculum.

I mean, my book basically talks about this the entire way through, about how activists are intentionally targeting kids with this ideology.

So I guess the way I could start is to explain it for your audience and then maybe how they might go about approaching it with their kids.

So the difference between sex and gender, sex, biological sex, is determined by biology.

So this is determined by gametes, which are mature reproductive cells.

Gametes?

Gametes, yes.

Okay.

So there are eggs and there are sperm.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then gender identity refers to how we feel in relation to our biological sex.

So statistically speaking, 99% of us identify as our birth sex.

So you, Glenn, you were born male, as far as I know, and you identify as male.

For that 1% of the population who does not identify as their birth sex, these are transgender people or intersex people.

Some intersex people identify as transgender.

So they

identify as the opposite sex.

So someone might be born male and identify as female or vice versa.

And then you have some people who, and intersex refers to people who are born with a medical condition in which they possess both male and female anatomy.

And intersex, that used to be called hermaphroditism, right?

Yeah.

Yes, that's not considered a sensitive term today.

So intersex is usually preferred or people with a difference in sex development.

And then there are some people who identify as a third gender.

So, an example of this would be non-binary or gender fluid, or some people use the term genderqueer.

I don't like that term because I consider queer to be a slur.

But

science shows that there are two sexes, two genders.

I say people can identify however they want, but from a scientific perspective, there are two.

And so

if we stay on science, this is the part that was all falling apart because I said to my son, chromosomes,

you can scientifically

find out if you are a male or a female in 99% of

the cases, scientifically, because of the way you're built, you're either male or female.

That's science and biology.

Gender is different.

And it didn't used to be different, but I don't agree with

identifying as a hundred different things because I believe there's only two.

And I believe if you want to be transgendered,

you scientifically are not the other gender, but you are choosing to be that other gender.

And, you know, some parts have been changed on you.

And that's fine.

And I don't hate you for it.

And

whatever.

But you're not a female if you were a male.

That doesn't fly anymore, does it?

No.

So biological sex, the concept of biological sex has been deemed hateful, and I don't think it needs to be.

I understand why, because I think it can be used in a very insensitive way to marginalize people who identify as transgender.

But from a scientific perspective, Someone who, say a trans woman, she may identify as female, and I'm happy to acknowledge her as female, but from a biological perspective, she was born male.

So her sex.

Wait, wait, so wait, wait, wait, wait.

Because

this is what I'm saying to my son.

Look, if I know you and I, you know, even if I don't know you, and you're identifying as

a female and you were a male,

you still biologically, still scientifically, you are a male.

However, if you identify as a female, I have no problem saying, hi, ma'am, how are you?

You know, whatever unless that's offensive now um and identifying however

if push comes to shove and my son or i'm you know in a court of law or whatever and my son says she looks awfully manly i would say don't say that that's not nice um but he used to be a he and now he is he's had surgery and he's trying to be a woman and that's his choice and it is you know it's fine that he's his choice but I can't under oath or you know I'm not going to be a part of a lie

am I wrong on that

no no I agree with that I mean I have a chapter in the end of gender that talks about the differences between women who are born women and trans women because nowadays the the narrative is that there are no differences and again I think we can talk about these differences as you mentioned in a way that is compassionate but still also be scientifically accurate because there are differences and those differences play out in meaningful ways.

And I think, especially when it comes to this ideology, it's extremely confusing and it's dishonest to tell people otherwise.

So, how do we now let's talk to our kids?

Your kid sits down with you, Deborah, and says, Mom,

I don't,

I'm being called hateful because I'm talking about science.

And they're saying sex doesn't matter.

It's all about gender.

What do I say?

What I would suggest saying to a child is that

I would say from as young as an age you can, let them know that what they're being taught in school may not actually reflect reality, which is really sad to have to say, but plant the seed so that they know and that they feel they can come and talk to you and ask questions because they are going, I mean, this is, they're targeting kids in kindergarten now.

I heard you speak about how this is in first grade curriculum.

It's completely inappropriate and this is something that's probably going to be with them throughout their education i mean it's not going to be a one-time thing if it's not in say anti-bullying curriculum or other aspects of their coursework it's going to be in talks where they bring people to the school to you know, bring awareness to these issues, which I think is good, but the issue is it goes way too far, right?

When they're teaching kids things that are not factually true.

And like you said, 100 genders or however many people everyone's gender you would so I would say let them know that the science says that there are two sexes two genders for the for the

most part gender and sex are the same and as you said with gender reveal parties those are actually sex revealed parties because an unborn child cannot tell an adult which gender they are so yeah but wait that's that's new right i mean gender and sex used to be the same thing

right yeah yeah for the most part.

And I think sometimes people will use the word gender because they don't want to use the word sex because sex has that connotation with human sexuality and they don't want to use that word.

But I think the separation between sex and gender is this greater push from trans activism.

But then there's also this weird conflation because now what some activists will say is that a trans person, so a trans woman is biologically female, which is not true.

And I don't think it should be considered bigots to say that because it's just not factually true.

So there's so much confusion about it.

And then I would just say, yeah,

let your kids know.

People can identify as a third gender if they want or whatever.

But again,

be kind to these people, but science is what you do.

Of course.

So we're talking to Dr.

Deborah.

So she is a sex neurologist, neuroscientist, I should say.

And she has written a great deal about this.

Have you ever thought about writing something either for parents or for kids?

And when I say kids, I mean, you know, teenagers that are just being bombarded with this stuff.

I've gotten so many requests from parents to do something like that.

I would say the end of gender is written.

The feedback I've gotten has been so positive, and people have said to me that they can fully understand what I'm saying.

It was written in a way that makes the science almost fun to read, which made me very happy to hear.

So I would say teenagers could even read the end of gender.

I would love to do something for younger, like

school-age.

I mean, I guess teenagers are technically school-age, but even younger than that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

The basic information like this, you would think that putting them in school would take care of it, but that's not the case anymore.

And when they say,

that's not what science says, science doesn't say that.

When they start to argue that, you're on rock-solid ground to say, no,

you're wrong about that.

Science shows that that transgender girl is not a girl.

She still has the makeup

of a male athlete.

Or not.

Correct.

Correct.

I mean, I would say

that's another super contentious issue.

But again, I think we have to be able to talk about it because there are serious implications in this case for girls who are competing against them.

Yeah.

So

are you on solid ground with the science on that?

Yeah, what I would say is actually in my book I have all of the citations.

So you can use that as a reference because I would have colleagues who would say to me, what do I do when I go into these meetings with the principal or administration?

And they say the quote-unquote new science backs up what they're teaching.

And I said, well, that was the inspiration of my book was to offer a reference to people who just want to know objectively what is the truth.

All the citations are there, so you can look up the studies yourself and you can bring it to them and say, this is why your curriculum or your policies are not fact-based.

But yeah, when it comes to sports, especially, I'm just aghast at what has been happening lately.

It's just,

it's unbelievable.

How's your life?

Is it settled down some?

Are you still getting as much hate as you used to?

How's your life?

As much as I ever have, but I just get, I've gotten used to it at this point.

And I just feel that the most remarkable thing is that it's always the same criticisms.

Either they lie about what I've said, they lie about what's in the book.

They'll explicitly say, critics will explicitly say things, claim I've said things that I've said the exact opposite of.

Or they'll just do personal attacks.

They'll call me names, which tells me that they don't actually have a point and that they can't actually argue with what I'm saying.

I recently gave a talk at the Oxford Union, and it was...

It blew my mind the extent to which some students went trying to get that talk deplatformed.

And so I'm super grateful I was given the go-ahead to speak by the President James Price.

And,

you know, there are some people who will stand up against it.

And you, Glenn, thank you for having me on.

I mean, you've had me on multiple times, and

we just have to keep going.

Yeah, we do.

It's frightening.

You know, your book is called The End of Gender, but we are looking at the end of

truth.

We really are looking at the end of truth on so many fronts.

Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, we really are.

And I mean, it's not just with, I mean, how old is your son?

He is 16 now.

16.

So, I mean, if he goes on to, we spoke a bit about this last time.

Once you get to university, it is no different.

And it is in the academic sciences even.

So it's

crazy to me the extent to which knowledge now is being

basically taken hostage because it's not about just advocating for equal rights, which I think is a good thing.

I mean, I used to be very much in favor of social justice when I was younger.

I've come to a bit of a different perspective on social justice now, and I think it's actually quite harmful.

It's the fact that

there's no debate, there's no attempt to understand even the other side or whether your perspective is correct in terms of activism.

Activists just really want to shut down people who disagree with them, and they want to contort science to fit whatever agenda they have.

It's really really disturbing.

And it's something that I unfortunately don't see getting better anytime soon.

Dr.

Deborah So, thank you so much.

She's the host of the Dr.

Deborah So

podcast and the author of a book that we all have to read, The End of Gender.

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

Let me give you a couple of things

on why we really need to

look at the economy and be prepared for what is coming.

I want you just, I feel like my job is to warn you of the things that are coming.

When I can give you ways to navigate around,

but at least so you can hear the warning and decide yourself what you're going to do with that.

Right now, there is

a weird thing.

Millennials, now for the first time, can afford home ownership, but there's a problem: there's not enough houses to go around that are starter houses.

So, 30 and 34-year-olds are

getting into

buying their homes.

Increasing numbers of between 25 and 29 are buying their first homes.

And the issue is

there's no homes being built right now.

There's a shortage of builders.

There's a shortage of homes, not builders, but building supplies.

I don't know if you've been following the price of wood, but just trying to buy plywood has gone from, what is it, $13

to now $54.

And I've I've seen in parts of the country plywood as high as $90 a sheet.

It's plywood.

We're trying to build a shelf in our house and tried to order some wood.

And they said, well, it's going to be a while.

And I'm like, I'm not asking for fancy wood.

And they said, yeah, but you want hardwood.

And I said, yeah, but it could be any hardwood.

Still going to be a while.

There's a shortage of hardwood.

I mean, it is, if you're building a house right now,

if you're getting a loan to build the house, buy all of the supplies now.

I mean, you're risking because

you're buying in advance, and some people are saying, price is going to go down.

What makes you think that?

Well, it always does.

Oh, really?

Well, it always hasn't been like this either.

It's never been like this.

All of the things going on around the world.

So

people are

buying homes, and now they can't afford the home because there's a shortage of them.

Speaking of shortages, more food shortages are on the way.

That is because as the COVID crisis heated up, the demand for meat increased.

Grocers had to place limits on the quantities that consumers could purchase.

Remember this about a year ago?

Now analysts are predicting that a shortage of pork could send the hot dog and bacon prices soaring if it could be found

at all in the stores.

The pork shortage comes now as many states are easing up on their COVID restrictions, dropping the mask mandates and opening restaurants, etc., etc., etc.

So you have

an increase of prices of any kind of pork products, chlorine to treat swimming pools, that price is skyrocketing.

It's running out at some stores.

Some pool technicians who use it can't even get their hands on it.

Swimming pool technicians are working six and seven days a week because they can't keep up with it because of chlorine.

But one of the chlorine plants, in fact, the largest chlorine plant in the country,

is creating

some of the problems.

You try to get somebody to work there, you can't pay them enough.

With the storms that we have had,

the weather that we had here in Texas, that is hurting it.

That's also hurting styrofoam.

If you're blowing insulation into your house and it's the styrofoam kind of the foam,

that listen to this one.

I don't know if you heard this, Stu, but Chevron was promised by the state that they would never have a power outage.

Now,

would you believe the state if they told you it's a 100% guarantee that we will never have a power outage?

No, I would not.

I would take precautions on my own side.

Yeah, I think.

Now, maybe if I'm somebody who's just

cooking in my house and I'm like, okay, but I'm getting an electric stove.

You'll never have a power outage.

Okay,

maybe I believe them and then I'm inconvenienced for a while.

But if I'm building a billion dollar industry, a billion dollar structure, and it's making styrofoam, and if the power goes out, everything

sets and congeals and now the plant is useless.

I think I get a backup generator.

Yeah.

You know,

I think I don't roll that dice.

So now, styrofoam, that will be any kind of styrofoam, anything that is like that.

The biggest maker of that, the plant is down.

And Chevron has come out and said, they're working on a plan to be able to reopen

and fulfill some orders, but they don't know what that plan is yet.

So anybody who had an order in for this stuff,

You had they canceled all orders and said reapply and we'll try to get you a price and a time.

So everything is going,

is skyrocketing.

At the same time,

jobs are coming back and you can't hire anybody because you're not paying them enough.

Wait a minute.

Really?

Look at the unemployment numbers.

There's a problem getting people to go back to work?

Yeah.

Because basically you're unemployment now because of Biden, you can make about $20 an hour on unemployment insurance.

So if you're working an average 40-hour week, you're making, you know, $20 an hour.

Well, why would I go take a job that's going to pay me $9, $13, hell, even $15?

Why would I take that job?

I'm losing $5 an hour?

I don't think so.

All of these things that are happening, all of these things are happening, are,

in my view,

a way to accelerate the universal basic income idea.

All of these problems, with the exception of the Chevron plant, well, no, even that one was man-made, that was stupid.

But all of these problems are coming because of our policies.

And I told you years ago, there's going to come a time where in this place where it's a giant crunch

of

the industrial revolution, except now it's the technological revolution, it's AI revolution, it's the robotic revolution, and there's going to be fewer and fewer jobs for people to do.

And so the argument is universal basic income.

And we did a show on it years ago because I said, look, you have to start thinking about these things now because truck drivers are going to lose their jobs.

And there's going to be huge unemployment.

And, you know, high-tech will be deemed a bad guy.

Government will be deemed a bad guy because they won't have a way out.

So what are you going to do?

And when it hits, it's going to be horrible.

Well, I think that

they are moving us into

not working

as

this.

as a result of this COVID nonsense.

And COVID is real.

The vaccines are real.

I'm not a science denier or anything else.

I just think this

has been used for other purposes.

Have you read the stories, Stu, of these business people that can't hire anybody

at all?

Yeah, there's a piece in the Dispatch today about that talking about,

for example, one diner owner in Ohio.

The diner is now, of course, going out of business.

It's owned by the Andersons.

They talk about how a line cook at Dale's diner starts at $11 an hour, up $2 an hour over what it was before the pandemic.

So they've already gone from $9 to $11 an hour,

according to the owner.

That's $440 a week or $760 a month, roughly $21K a year, not including overtime or business.

It's a starter job, right?

But they're paying $11 an hour, $21K a year.

But pandemic-driven unemployment often pays more, sometimes far more.

In Ohio, according to data from

the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, the state provided weekly unemployment benefits that averaged $340.

Add that to the unemployment supplements from the federal government, which have ranged between $300,000 and $600 per week, depending on which COVID law funded them.

And you have some workers paid between $640,000 and $940 per week to stay home, between $33,000 and almost $50,000 on an annualized basis.

So if you're a person who's looking at a job for a dishwasher and your argument is, do I work a full week for $440

or do I stay home for a minimum of $640 and maybe up to $940?

What decision are you going to make?

And the guy who owns the diner says that he would normally get,

you know, he would put out a call for a new job

and he would get anywhere from six to 12 applications in the first week or whatever.

And we get to take our pick.

We'll get to pick the best of the bunch.

Within the last couple of months, we don't even get a call when he posts a job.

There's a story in the New York Post that's very similar to this.

They're talking about

a firm, a law firm, that is offering $40,000

for

just being an assistant, an executive assistant.

$40,000 is starting pay.

They said that they are getting...

calls and applications, but when they call them back and say, hey, we saw your application.

We'd love to have you come in for an interview.

They're not getting even callbacks.

And this law firm said it's because they're just fulfilling their unemployment

obligation.

Have you filed for any jobs?

You've been out looking for a job.

Yep, I've sent my applications out.

They're not even returning the phone calls.

I mean,

we are in

such a bad place.

And here's what's happening at the same time.

Did you see the Taco Bell in New York City?

I've seen lots of Taco Bells in New York City, frankly.

I used to work there, so they're there all the time.

But there's a new one that has

no order takers.

It's all automated.

The entire Taco Bell is automated.

So you have some people working there to keep the machines and keep things moving, but they've cut the staff by more than half.

So now these companies are having a hard time filling those jobs, and at the same time, technology is able to replace those jobs.

Those jobs aren't coming.

They're not coming back.

They're not coming back.

Also, in Houston, I think it's Pizza Hut

just introduced the first robotic driverless delivery service.

So you order a pizza, and it's on a trial basis now.

You have to opt in on it.

But you call for a pizza, you give the order, you pay for it.

They give you a code.

Within 30 minutes this robot pulls up in your driveway you go out you put the code into the side of it the side of this thing opens up and there's your pizza and it's still warm because it's been this this thing has been made to keep food warm and that you know that the pizza isn't upside down there goes all of the pizza delivery entry jobs I mean, we are creating this perfect storm right now where universal basic income is going to be embraced by people because they don't want to work anymore.

And then, if they did, they can't get a job.

That's incredible.

I mean, it's all lining up to that same thing.

I mean, and it's Andrew Yang's dream world here.

Yeah.

And let me tell you this:

the problem with all of this is, if you can't get starter and entry-level jobs,

how do you find others?

how do you replace people you know this is what clear channel did back in the 90s they just fired all of these young people because the it the business wasn't viable anymore so they fired all the weekenders and everybody else well now there's nobody in the industry that's coming up in the industry and so now you have this this almost impossible thing to fill the jobs Because you don't have any starter entry-level jobs.

How do you grow the next talent?

It's just this nasty cycle that we are beginning and we're watching it unfold right in front of us.

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