Ep 26 | Brad Meltzer | The Glenn Beck Podcast

You are,

I think, one of the best storytellers alive today.

You humble me with that.

You know, what I love when we do this is

you and I, we have a history, right?

We have this amazing history and and it's this mutual love of history.

And I love that we've had all these conversations over the years that have gone on privately, depending on who's in power, depending on what's changed, depending on where the culture is.

And this is oddly, I think, the first time we've ever sat down for the in-depth conversation, it is, which I love.

I'm just, I can't wait because I'm like, you know, usually it's like, whatever, I do my thing, and I'm like, they're going to ask me these five questions, and I'm going to answer these five questions.

And I feel like I'm like, no, you have no kiddy right now.

I'm just like, oh, this is going to be a good one.

And you brought a toy.

I did.

I should have brought something for my collection,

but you brought something pretty amazing, and it kind of goes with the book.

So your new book is The First Conspiracy, The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington.

I know just a little bit of it.

I just know the execution part,

but I don't know anything else.

And you know me.

I love this stuff.

I love this stuff.

And you know this stuff.

I love George Washington.

And I even have

from 1911, I think, New York did the complete bound

conspiracy papers.

They bound all the conspiracy theorists.

So I have that.

I still don't know this.

And I didn't know this either.

This story I found in, you know, only the nerds read the footnotes.

And that means you and I.

Yeah.

Right.

And I found this nearly a decade ago in the footnotes.

And I remember thinking, a secret plot to kill George Washington?

Is this real?

Is it fake?

Is it internet nonsense?

What is it?

And it's true.

In 1776, there was a secret plot to kill Washington.

When George Washington finds out about it, he gathers up those responsible, builds a gallows.

Let's not start at the end.

Yeah, let's not start at the end.

And let's just say

it's foiled.

It's foiled.

And George Washington, spoiler alert, lives.

All right, so let's start.

Let's go back with George Washington.

Because when you look at history, a lot of people were made into heroes that shouldn't have been made into heroes.

A lot of the stuff that we read about is either bogus or just so one-sided.

One of the guys I started doing research on, Edison and Tesla, I thought I knew the story.

No, it's incredible stuff.

Edison's a monster.

Yeah,

I won't do Edison and the I Am books.

Oh my gosh, he's a monster.

And you never know that.

And so there are some things to where you look at, and we've made the problem of, we made it worse by making giant statues of people.

And that's what we do.

We do that.

But we've always done that with our heroes.

We dip them in granite.

We make these statues.

We worship at them.

And we do a great disservice because then they're not people anymore.

But this guy, George Washington, is the only one

that I could find

that

isn't Winston Churchill.

That if you talk to one set of people,

you get a a different answer.

And he was both.

Yep.

This guy, I can't find the flaw in him.

Yeah, and

I totally agree.

And we've talked about this offline as well.

But the thing about George Washington is he's not like John Adams.

He's not like Thomas Jefferson, who are writing all their feelings to their loved ones and telling you every emotion they have.

George Washington spends everything for him is close to the vest.

Martha Washington obviously gets rid of all the papers, so we lose lots of correspondence,

but

even on some of the biggest days of his life, they barely merit a warrant in his diary.

On some of the biggest

moments where he's scared.

The day

he was there when they signed the Constitution, the day they signed the Constitution, you know what's in his diary?

No.

I went to pick up my copy of Don Quixote.

Right, right, which was his favorite book.

Right, you know what I mean?

What are you doing?

You just signed the constitution, right?

I mean, that's the thing is, even, in fact, in this one, there's this day where someone dies in front of 20,000 people.

You know, if you murder someone in front of 20,000 people, you say, dear diary, had a bad day.

And his is just like nothing, barely a mention.

And it's not, it's not because he was, correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah.

It's not because he was secretive.

He was just very private and didn't.

There's this great letter.

The archives has one half.

They're trying to get the other half from a friend of mine.

Okay.

And they have the letter written to George Washington right after the revolution.

It says, George, they're going to praise your name up and down.

They're going to name cities after you.

They're going to build monuments.

He's horrified by it.

My friend has the response.

And the response is,

dear Lord, I hope not.

Yeah.

They should never praise me.

It was the God Almighty that did it, and we all witnessed it.

So he's not.

He's not trying to hide things or play it close to the vest except in war.

No, and I don't mean it right.

I don't write.

It's just not his way.

Yeah, he just doesn't boast.

And I think it comes back.

I mean, I always believe, and I don't want to get all freighted on it, but I do believe it, you know, so much of who we are comes from our childhood.

You tell me your childhood, and I'll show you who you are.

And Washington, as a kid,

you know, one of the things he does, I mean, he loses everything, right?

He loses his brothers, he loses his father, loses everything.

But even as a kid, he's writing down these 110 rules of civility to live by.

Where did that come from?

Right.

Well,

historians debate whether

he did it because he needed to or whether it was a class exercise.

Either way, it's a spectacular thing that he apparently does over and over.

110 rules of civility that exist back then.

And they're spectacular.

I actually read them because I was like, I want to read something that I know George Washington read at the most impressionable moment of his life when he's young, when it's all just starting.

You're just that kind of tabula rasa.

There you are.

And they're spectacular because one of them is, you know, don't pick your teeth at the table.

Don't spit on people when you talk to them.

All good advice we could use right now.

Don't spit in the fire is kind of got it.

But it's also about humility and modesty.

And there are ways to be.

When you say a proper Virginian gentleman,

we assume it means someone with great manners.

But I think for him, it actually meant to be a great man.

And I think that those, that's what I mean when I say close to the vest.

It's not about being secretive.

It's not about I don't want anyone to know.

I feel like when it comes to his own emotions, he's like, what I think doesn't matter.

There are bigger things to worry about.

And I feel like it's just, it all comes from this point of a level of humility that I've never seen on anyone in history.

And I always say, I don't think George Washington's greatest victory or most important thing that he's ever done is winning the war.

I don't think it's being president.

I don't think it's any of that.

I think the greatest thing he's ever done is that moment after the war where he can be king.

And when we win the Revolutionary War, he can easily be the king of America.

He was so popular, they would have made him the king of America.

As you said in the letter, they're going to praise you forever.

And

you know the famous story, we've talked about this one, I remember, is

King George is talking to painter Benjamin West and says, what's George Washington doing after the war?

And Benjamin West says he's going home.

And King George says if he does that, he'll be the greatest man to ever live.

The greatest man who ever lived, right?

And that's what he does.

And then he does it again after his second term.

He could have had a third term or a fourth term, but that's what he continues to do: he has faith in us as a culture, faith in us as a country, faith in us as a people, that we will be in charge of our own destiny.

We don't need him on there.

And I feel like when I think about that, you know, a plot to kill George Washington,

I just think, my God, would anyone else have had the character, the depth of character to walk away from that opportunity of power?

And that's, I don't know anyone else in history like that.

Not even today.

I know.

Nothing.

I mean, there's nothing like him.

So where did that come from?

Because his mother, his mother eventually kind of turned on him.

Yeah.

You know, said he was running for president the second time.

And she said, oh, he's, he's, you wouldn't believe how much he spends on ice cream.

That was the big scandal with George Washington.

And his mother actually kind of made him give up a dream.

He wanted to go and join, thank God he didn't, the British Navy.

And he's young and he gets onto the ship and his mom is making a scene.

She goes, finds out that he's joined the Navy and, you know, George,

you cannot leave me.

And he comes back down on the gangplank with his stuff.

And he says, Mother, if this is where you need me to be, I will remain at your side.

And

his whole life is about sacrifice.

But you know what I love about George Washington's life is every sacrifice he makes for someone else always pays him back later in this odd,

only God can pull it off away.

There's a moment in the book.

It just defies logic.

I don't know if you know this story, but I didn't know it and it blew my mind.

During the Revolutionary War, smallpox is just raging through our troops.

And they're trying to figure out, should they have quarantines?

They can't cure it.

They don't know what to do.

And if God forbid George Washington gets smallpox in the middle of all this, we're dead.

And they know we're dead.

He's not going to.

And so, just to tell the story for those who don't know,

and the British are putting smallpox on blankets because they're like the first.

I don't know, that was us with the bread.

And

the first levels of biological warfare.

And they figure out that when George Washington is a kid, he goes with his brother who gets a disease

and they send him back then.

The cure was go to the Caribbean and you'll be cured by the sunlight and the nice water.

But while George Washington as a kid is there, making this sacrifice to go with his brother, winds up being immune to smallpox.

And the reason he never gets smallpox in the war is because of his dead brother, who oddly is almost protecting him from beyond the grave.

You can't write, I mean, I write Thrillers for a Living.

If I ever put that scene in a book, my editor would say, You're insane.

You can't keep that, say that the President of the United States when he's a kid gets immunized for no reason by helping his brother in the Caribbean and then comes and it saves his life during the Revolutionary War.

So he is a guy who wants to be a farmer.

That's what he talks about all the time.

I just want to go back and farm.

Go back to my farm.

I just want to do my farm thing.

And yet he had this drive to get into the military.

This is what I wanted to ask you about.

Let's talk about this.

Yeah, I mean, so he goes right, the second

Congress happens and they're picking who's going to run the military.

And the only guy, everyone's wearing their usual outfits, the only guy who shows up in a military uniform, the only one, which is still shocking to me, is George Washington.

And I know he's always humble, but that's a conscious effort.

That's one of those moments where I actually wanted to hear, I wanted to talk to you about this because

there's, you know, some people, when you read about that, they say, oh, he was peacocking, which I actually don't believe.

But I do think.

Right.

That wasn't that guy.

But he is, he's clearly going for a job.

You know, you don't.

I had a guy in college, a buddy of mine, who used to take every, all of his suits, you know, all of his tests tests in a suit.

And we'd, of course, make fun of him and be like, are you insane?

You're an 18-year-old kid.

Why are you wearing a suit to take a test?

But he was clearly trying to say, this is what I do.

I'm a more serious sort.

If you're the only guy of all those founders who were there at that moment and you're the only guy who shows in a military uniform, you are making a statement.

And it's genius advertising.

But that's who he was.

Well, he's a soldier, right?

Yeah, he was a soldier.

So he's showing up.

You've got your thing.

I have my thing.

I don't think he wanted it.

Let me ask you this question in kind of response to that.

You know who Peter Lilbach is?

No.

Okay, Peter Lilback

from the Providence Project up in Philadelphia, one of the leading scholars on George Washington.

He wrote Sacred Fire.

I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Yeah, you sent me a copy.

Of course, I read it.

Of course, I read it for this.

Yeah.

Did you really?

I did.

Well, I read it years ago.

You sent me a copy

years ago.

So

Peter and I were talking.

I said, Peter, I've been reading a lot of George Washington.

I've been reading a lot of his letters and a lot of stuff that nobody ever reads.

And I said, I think you could make the case that George and our founders knew

that

the United States would play some role in the reestablishment of Israel.

And they were so religious that that meant something to them.

They weren't, I shouldn't say this, they were very

acquiescent to the Almighty.

I was going to say,

they knew that there was a greater power, of course, but they were Christian, but

they weren't like right, right, right.

You know, it's Providence, it's not God, it's the right, correct.

And he said, You're crazy.

He did a year of research, unbeknownst to me.

He comes back to me a year later, and he has written a book about it.

Right.

And he said, I think you're right.

So I wonder if

Washington had a sense of some sort of providence of destiny that he knew this is the skill I have.

I'm supposed to be here.

I'll show up

so they know my skill and everybody is aware of my skill.

And they choose me, so be it.

If they don't, so be it.

Because remember, they choose him and he says.

And then he leaves, right?

He runs out of the room.

Right.

You go.

No, no, no.

You can't talk about all the bad things about me with me in the room, please.

Right.

And he, and then when they go to tell him, they look around.

He's gone.

He's gone.

And the first thing he says when they find them, I think it's to Adams, he says, you know, I don't know if I'm up to this task.

Right.

Which is, I don't think he was.

First of all, he 100% was.

And the first thing that George, one of the first things I should say that he does is he immediately goes to a bookstore.

He orders books on how to be a better general.

He did three things right when they appointed him.

It was, I know the books.

I got the sash.

He wanted the uniform.

What were the other ones?

I mean, there are plenty that he does, but you have three in mind that you know.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I was going to say.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I said, right.

He gets the sash.

So let's start over.

He goes and gets books because he's like, you know, and it's like the idiot's guide for 1776, right?

I got to be a general and this is military strategy.

There's no time to get a uniform, but he wants to let people know he's in charge.

So he orders a blue sash.

That you'll see in the pictures from then.

And I just love that he's like, these are just the basic things, right?

And

that book thing is not a sign of weakness.

It's the the ultimate sign of strength.

I believe Lincoln does the same thing as he immediately goes and says, I'm not up to this task.

How do I get better immediately?

My God.

We need leaders, right?

Yeah, we have a letter from Lincoln in about 56 where somebody's saying, you have to run.

And he said,

I don't think I'd be up to the task, but I will tell you, if I do

ever become a position of leadership in Washington, there will be no one that will work harder to be able to do that.

Yeah.

You know, they are preparing themselves.

Right.

But back to what you said, I do think that Washington,

I just believe that, and especially then, I mean, again, it's not a science-driven time, right?

It's a faith-driven time back then.

I do believe that that sense of destiny is something that plays.

And I know, you know, people love to tell that story in the French and Indian War where he's shot at and he has the bullet holes in his outfit and, you know, and the Indian lore that someone said he was the chosen one to be the leader.

That's lore.

You're evidently.

No, no, no.

I'm saying, but the point of it is when stories like that persist,

that lore is, it shows you the belief system at the time, right?

Like, if other people are saying you're the chosen one.

So if he's, if you, for instance, in, I think it was in Trenton, he was also shot at.

He had several horses shot out from underneath him.

And he gets the biggest white stallions and rides up

goes right in the front of everybody.

And that's not, I mean, that's not lore.

That's that's true.

That's true.

And whether he knew it at the time,

he was creating this legend of, you can't kill this guy.

Right.

Well, and listen, even when he was failing, I mean, and this is what I can't get into and can't get my head around

or even pretend to say that we understand what he thought.

You know, the thing that frustrates me about many Washington Washington books is they'll tell you, and then Washington thought this.

And we don't know.

We can't know.

We can have a theory.

You can have a theory.

I can have a theory.

But no one will ever know why he did it.

What we do with our heroes in this moment is, again, what we always do, our heroes are mirrors.

They're always mirrors.

And we see in them what we want to see and what we need.

That's what being a hero is, is they give you something back in that way.

But even when you go to the concrete things that happen, Washington still measures up.

Even in the failures, in the the Battle of Brooklyn, one of the scenes I love in the book is the Battle of Brooklyn, the first battles of the war here in New York.

And, you know, we tell the story, Washington's the greatest general who ever lived.

He's got everything going.

He gets out-generaled.

He's horrible.

He gets outflanked by the British.

He doesn't have the experience that the British have.

He basically gets pinned down.

He has the British in front of him.

He's got the East River behind him.

And this is the end.

He should die in this moment.

If he's a lesser man, he basically should say, you know what?

We're pinned down.

We're going to take out as many of them as we can.

We'll show him who's boss.

We'll go out in a blaze of glory.

He'll beat his chest and show what a macho guy he is.

But there's nothing genius about being a macho moron.

There's nothing manly about that.

Instead, he does the best thing he always does.

He adapts to the situation.

He improvises in that moment.

And he plans a daring escape in the middle of the night.

They commandeer every boat along the East River.

They say, give me every boat you can find.

And in the middle of the night, when no one thinks they're going to go.

In providential fog, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, it always happens like that, right?

You feel like Spielberg's directing the moment.

You wouldn't believe it if you saw it in a movie, but they all write about it.

And basically, this fog comes in in the middle of the night.

He puts slowly, one by one, all of his men get on the boat and he makes sure they're safe.

But here's the key moment, Glenn, right?

Is that George Washington won't get on the boat until he makes sure that even his lowest men are on there first and safely away.

And they see him in that moment risking his life for them.

And there are plenty of moments that come before and plenty of moments that come after.

But to me, that's one of those moments where I think today we've forgotten the word united in United States.

And that's one of those moments where we truly come together with a leader that leads us that way.

So let me flip this around.

I think one of the low points in Washington is when he's standing, I think in New Jersey and he's lost New York.

He's lost everything.

And now they're headed south again.

Right, right.

They retreat and retreat and retreat and we should say this for anyone listening every battle is we fight and we retreat a little we fight and we retreat a little we go to long island we retreat we go they just keep leaving from boston right almost to philadelphia 100 and it's months of just retreat and so we have no chance and he's standing uh and he's looking across the water at now new england with new york all gone yep lost it all and uh

one of his uh men see him weep

And it's the only time.

I know the second time they see him weep.

I didn't know the first one.

I don't know the second one.

Wow, we are like

one brain.

If you put it together, we actually may know a lot of stuff.

We only know what happened.

So he was

standing on the bank, and he's looking at New York and the losses that they have done.

And in a moment of weakness, he weeps.

And it's at that point, the guy who sees him is like,

we are in trouble.

Right.

If he's upset, right.

This guy.

No, this guy is weak.

And it really is.

Oh, that's how he reads it, Derek.

It starts to churn.

The troops are starting to churn.

Yeah, no, they threw out the war.

Yeah, they start turning on him, of course.

By the time he gets to the Delaware,

he's done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no, I mean, and the thing that's amazing.

Wait, what's the second time?

Oh, the second time.

Let's do the second time.

So the second time is Benedict Donald is basically when he finds out when Benedict Donald betrays him,

a letter is delivered from Benedict Arnold.

Alexander Hamilton delivers this letter to George Washington as Benedict Donald writes.

He doesn't deliver it in song or in rap.

He just hands it over.

But the letter says three things.

It says,

it says, don't kill my wife, Benedict Donald writes, because she didn't know what I was doing.

Don't kill my men, because they didn't know what I was doing.

And he actually also says, in the craziest moment of letter writing in history, he says, basically, I want my stuff back.

Can you bring me my belongings?

And in that moment, you know, he's just been betrayed by someone who is obviously one of his dearest, nearest, and dearest.

And they say that's one of the only times they've ever seen George Washington weep is in that moment.

And the greater part, the PS to that story is, is George Washington actually delivers his belongings.

I mean, if you did that to me and you said, I don't give my stuff, I'd light it on fire.

I'd light your stuff on fire, and you betrayed me, and we're done.

It's not Washington.

And it's not Washington.

He actually does the gentlemanly thing and says, Here you go, here's your belongings.

Oh, which actually, if you want to do this, it works perfectly.

Right, i was gonna say there was a there was a problem

that people don't understand here and you mentioned it on unity um let's talk about that yeah um and and loyalty there's a there's a couple things going on most people don't know it's between 20 and 30 percent are actually behind this revolution

About 30 percent are dead set against it.

And the rest of the nation is like, whatever, I don't want to get involved.

That's right.

Which is no different than where we are today, right?

Exactly right.

It's the same exact thing.

You have a liberal side, you have a conservative side, you have a middle side that's apathetic.

And God, you think in all these years we'd learn, but we're the same kind of thing.

And so the middle of the country, if you will, the middle section that's like, I don't care, they'll play it either way just to stay.

If the British are in town, hey, I'm with you guys.

The Americans are in town, I'm with you guys.

Far as they're not,

they just want to live their life and be left.

Yeah.

Oh, and I was actually struck when I was researching the book because I didn't know any of this.

We always, again, we tell this is the story we give our kids today.

And my kids learn, and let's be honest, I don't want to say those kids today get off my lawn.

I mean, the way I learned it is,

you know, there's a shot heard around the world, then there's a fight, there's a Declaration of Independence, George Washington comes in, we win, they sign the Constitution, he's the president, we live happily ever after.

And it seems like a line that is just beautiful and straight and easy, and it's a giant mess.

You know, like I asked my kids the other day, how many presidents did we have before George Washington?

And they just looked up and said, what?

I said, seven.

Seven.

We had seven.

Now, they were presidents of the Congress.

Oh, okay.

But most people, you don't even think that

those seven years is like, what?

We won the war.

We're the United States.

No, we were something entirely different.

And what struck me is how divided we were as a culture back then.

What struck me was, because, again, we think that dream is we believe in democracy, we hold hands, we come together.

And democracy was a wonderful idea.

But most, you know, as you said, a third of the people were just,

they saw what was happening with the king as just basically a trade deal that they needed better terms on.

It was a financial solution.

It was no great idea.

They just said, just tax us less, give us a better deal, let's negotiate a little, and we'll be fine under your rule.

And that's why one reason why I don't like Hamilton

because as soon as the war is over, he's like, you know, let's just have a king.

Just make the money, right?

Right.

Let's just have a king.

But to me, but I'm struck by that idea.

And I love, and certainly we definitely do get to that point where democracy catches fire.

It does catch, the good idea does catch on.

I don't want to deflate the whole thing.

But what strikes me, and again, in a plot to kill Washington, you have to find people willing to do it.

And what struck me is how divided our own military, our own people were.

And we're always going to be like that.

We did a look at, we were like, what's the culture look like in 1776?

10,000 men come to New York City trying to do what 10,000 men always do when they're left alone with no women around, right?

Like they're gambling, they're drinking, they want to go see prostitutes.

That's what they want to do.

George Washington is a proper Virginia gentleman.

He is horrified, horrified by this.

He has general orders, is what they're called.

And his general orders are the rules that are coming down on an almost daily basis because there's no rules to the army.

He's got to build it.

He has to make it.

He's trying to figure out.

And so one of the rules is, you know, no gambling.

He hated gambling.

Everyone was playing cards back then, even like that.

You know, he doesn't want them drinking, doesn't want them going to prostitutes.

Like, again, all good rules, like almost as if he's a young boy again.

But also because he knows it's insane to take on the English.

You're talking about the greatest fighting force ever assembled.

It's promised

ever.

It's like the people in Toledo going, hey, let's go get the Navy SEALs.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

So he knows it's insane, and so he's playing into divine providence.

Look, we have to be on God's side.

We have to be people of merit.

And the thing that is amazing is, and the best part of it, he's right.

He's absolutely right.

I mean, there's this moment where you see him in Harvard Square, and he's got, you know, the...

Regiment from Massachusetts is there with Connecticut, is there with Virginia.

And just like any guys who get together, the Virginians wear something frilly on their uniform.

So the Massachusetts guys mouth off, as Massachusetts guys will forever mouth off.

A fight breaks out, and Washington rides in, and the story goes, you know, the first-hand account that we found in the letter is he grabs two of these guys and is shaking them and basically saying, stop fighting with each other.

We're on the same team.

And there was no United States back then.

You know, we rally around the flag.

You know, right now, again, whatever your politics are, we have leaders who drape themselves in the flag and will happily tell you how patriotic they are.

There was no flag to rally yourself around.

I mean, obviously the early parts of it, but it was George Washington insisting that we be united, pulling us together.

And to me, our leaders

that are the best are the ones who can bring us together, not those who pull us apart.

And I think it's amazing to me that if he doesn't do that, we don't get where we want to go.

He's absolutely right that you have to bring order to this chaos because we have no chance against this military otherwise.

So one of the things he does is he says you have to have a loyalty oath.

Ah, yes, let's talk about it.

So there is a, they called it the oath of allegiance.

And

I'm going to read, I think I, so I'll tell you this.

Let me back up for anyone who's listening because you and I talked about this.

So when I go, I was supposed to do an event for this book at the National Archives.

And I love that.

I got to take it to the National Archives.

We have to make that happen.

So every time I go, the Archivist of the United States

is...

is become a dear friend, an amazing guy, and David Ferriero will always pull out something.

When you go visit, he's really good at finding that secret thing you love.

For you and I, it's going to like the toy store.

And he always finds something that's just amazing.

So

because of the shutdown in the government,

we couldn't do the event.

So he said, well, let's meet for lunch.

So three days ago, we meet in Washington, D.C.

for lunch during the book tour, and he hands me this envelope in front of me from the archives.

And

basically, what happens is, is in, and I want to make sure I get the date right, 1778.

That's what I thought.

1778, there's an oath of allegiance that George Washington asks everyone to sign.

And what the oath basically is, is we want you to swear, you solemnly swear, that you're going to make sure you don't betray this, you know, this military that we're in.

And we do that same oath today.

We have our men and women in the military, when they enter, they raise their right hand and they say, I solemnly swear, state your name, that you're going to be loyal.

But what they did back then,

is

they used to number the oaths because it was the first one.

And so they numbered a one, one, two, three, four, five, and you stood in line and you dipped your pen in and you signed this oath.

And what he brought to me, what I have, and uh, is this,

this is number one, and you'll see right the center, and it's the oath that is signed, number one, by George Washington.

And the nice part of the story is,

if, and this is the great irony of it, of course, is that when George Washington signs that he's number one, and then there's number two, three, four, and then there's number five, which the National Archives also has number five.

And the oath

is Benedict Arnold.

And the oath from Benedict Arnold is, and there in that moment, is when Benedict Arnold actually became a human being to me.

I grew up, you know, like you were.

Benedict Arnold was a kind of curse word you told some, you know.

But in that moment, Benedict Arnold on that day in 1778 put his pen in the ink and stood there and signed and said, I solemnly swear I'll forever be on your side.

You can read it there.

This is what he says: I, written in his handwriting, I, George Washington, commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States of America, then it's printed, do acknowledge the United States of America to be free, independent, and sovereign states, and declare that the people thereof owe no allegiance or obedience to George III, King of Great Britain.

And I renounce,

refuse, is it

refuse

and abjure any alliance or obedience to him.

And I do,

he wrote something here, or I do swear that I will to the utmost of my power support, maintain, and defend the said United States against said King George III, his heirs, his officers, or his successors, and to their abettors.

And I will serve the United States in the office of Commander-in-Chief, which I now hold with fidelity, according to the best of my skill and understanding.

And that's the first time.

I mean, that's it, right?

I get emotional every time I see it.

There's George Washington swearing that he will forever be loyal to these United States.

And it's not just something you talk about, but they took the time, wrote it up, made them, numbered them, and said, everybody, get in line.

Wow.

Get in line.

And the Archivist United States was kind enough to bring me this one.

He'd shown me, I'd never seen this one.

He'd shown me Benedict Arnold's before, but I'd never, I didn't even know they had George Washington's.

They have in the archives, they have these treasure vaults.

And their rooms, I would say, some of them are, you know, maybe 20 by 20.

And they're dumpy.

You think they look like Goldfinger or something that

they're dumpy, they're hard, but the air is pure.

It's all modified.

It's all fireproof.

It's walls that are, you know, can prevent Nicholas Cage from coming in in the middle of the night and stealing the treasure map.

And they have the best stuff, they have the most amazing things.

I walk in, and the head of the Smithsonian meets me.

I go to the Smithsonian, and

he said,

Come on in.

So it's one of those rooms with little thin drawers and stuff.

And he said,

Oh, you'll like this.

And he pulls out a drawer, and it's George Washington's christening dress.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my God.

So much good stuff.

Yeah, I know.

The

flag that was used against Thomas Jefferson by Adams in another drawer.

They start going through these drawers and none of this stuff is seen anymore.

Right, right, right.

He gets to the very end.

We go around this corner and he's like, you like this drawer.

And he pulls it out and it's all stuff from...

from my event in Washington, D.C.

in a drawer.

Of course it is.

They have it.

Of course.

And I said,

shut up.

Right.

And he said, it may never be seen.

He said, in 100 years, we may throw it away.

He said, but we found it's much better to collect it as it's happening

than go back and try to get it.

Well, the thing that's amazing about the archives to me when you go there is you think, oh, you know, put in the word

Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, everything will come up.

And the Washington stuff, I should say, they tend to know what they have.

But as it goes forward, there's so much work product that they're still finding new things, even in their own documents.

So you'll see every like five years will be a story that breaks on a new Lincoln letter that they've never seen before because there's so much paper.

And in fact, right now what's happening is you're seeing,

thank God for the Mormons out there who are helping pay to digitize so we can search it.

Because otherwise

the government doesn't have the money to digitize all this work product.

And in fact, one of the places where some of it goes is the National Archives has caves hidden across the country, literally underground caves, because it's cheaper for air conditioning and to preserve the documents.

So I was like, I got to go see your secret on the, if you have a bat cave, I got to go, right?

Like, I got to make my way there.

So I went out to St.

Louis.

I went to these places.

And what they have, I mean, you know, they have, they have, you know, Jackie Kennedy's pink dress from the day JFK shot.

It's not just paperwork, right?

It's these amazing things.

And obviously the letters that Nixon writes, if the astronauts don't make it back, you know, if they die up on the moon,

there's the greatest job in the world.

Trust me, I feel, when I go there, I mooch off their greatest job in the world.

I feel like they have the greatest job.

What I get to do is I get to go in and look at it.

And every time I go, they have something that I go,

how did you not show me this last time?

Because this is the greatest thing ever.

Every time it's the greatest thing ever.

And you realize that's us.

Right?

It's the perfect metaphor for us as people.

We are all, you know, these amazing things and these horrible things, these unspeakable, you know, we are all of us brave and terrified.

We are all of us bold and scared.

We are all of us amazing and cowards.

And we are all of us, you know, spectacular, sometimes in the same hour, sometimes in the same, you know, minutes.

And that's what history always is, right?

It's not that straight line we were talking about from, you know, the start of the war to George Washington become president.

It's like mercury.

It flows every which way.

It moves all over.

It's contradictory.

And that's not the bad part of history.

That's the best part of it, is that it is exactly us.

And that's what the government always will be: it's us.

We always want to say the government did this, the government did that.

The government's always the people.

That's who it is.

It's just us.

And it's as messy and good as bad.

It's a reflection of what we tolerate.

And our best and our worst sides, depending on who's in power and who has it.

But the point is, it moves and it changes.

And you know, the line that has stuck out to me in the Declaration of Independence lately is, and I'm going to butcher it, but it's the line where it says,

and history will show, that man will put up with a lot,

you know, until it just gets so painful.

That's it.

And I think that's,

that's, you know, we say, oh, the government is doing all these horrible things.

Well, somebody was around in the people, and they

kind of knew it or had an opportunity to know it.

They just didn't want to know.

There's a lot of stuff now.

We just don't want to know know that we're tolerating.

That's right.

I think that, and listen, we, I always say the government is not, you know, evilly stroking their cat and sitting on their throne.

The government is, you know, the government doesn't lie.

People lie.

And they lie for very human reasons, right?

Because whether it's shame, or whether it's not strong enough, or whether it's greed, or whether it's sex, or whether it's, you know, those are the basic, it's very human things.

But I think to just, I can't let that go because it's so beautiful.

The founders

are so genius when you look at what they constructed.

And there's this, and I'll butcher it too, but right outside, I forget if it's the Senate or the House or somewhere in between in the U.S.

Capitol,

there's the line that basically says, you know, and it shows the whole government is designed to fail.

It is designed to be really hard to make change in the government.

The founding fathers wanted one thing, and they said, if it's easy, then people will just come through and plow their way through, demand all their demands, and we'll have a king again.

But if we make it really hard, we make two houses that have to fight each other, and then even if it gets passed there and it's still bad, we have a Supreme Court to look over, we have a president who can veto it.

We're designed to fight, designed to fail so no one can do it.

And it's genius in the way it's constructed.

But it takes us, because we don't know our own civil responsibility, our civil rules and

responsibilities,

it takes us a while.

Like right now,

you're starting to see in America people going, you know what, I don't really care what happens in Washington.

They can't get a damn thing done.

I agree.

Yes, yes,

that's the system working at its best.

There are people on both sides that want to take it crazy places.

Yep.

And you can't get anywhere in Washington.

And so people on both sides want to take shortcuts.

No, stick to the Constitution because eventually the American people will go, you know what, you guys are a bunch of clowns.

We'll just do it.

Right.

Oh,

if history proves one thing, it's that there are great moments where we don't care until we do.

And then when we do care, look out because it's all going to change.

And I, you know, it's funny, I've been on book tour this week and I went, I started on CBS.

I went to my friends at Fox News.

I went to friends at CNN.

I went to the local NPR affiliate.

And despite what we all think, there are things we all agree on.

America, whatever side you're on, is tired of the way we're talking to each other.

They're tired.

We're tired of the way we've been playing this wonderful game of us versus them.

Whatever side you're on, those people did this.

If you're a Democrat, you hate the Republicans.

You're a Republican, you hate the Democrats.

We hate each other.

And the way, what we do right now, we find an opinion that's opposite our own, we unfriend, we unfollow, and then we surrounded.

And you're surrounded by people who only agree with you.

And nothing good will ever come of that.

And it's amazing to me as I go, as I've been across the country this week watching.

Again,

if you watch Fox News or you watch MSNBC, you have two polar views of how the world works.

You literally have different pieces of information that is coming into your brain.

And someone said to me in one of those places, we don't do news, we do opinions.

Because if we just showed the news, no one would watch.

But if we show opinions, then people will really watch us.

And people watch and don't realize they're watching opinions.

So we have in our phones

the library of Alexandria at our fingertips at all times as much information as we want.

But the hardest thing to find today is the truth, right?

That's what you've always been.

That's the bread and butter, right?

Is the place where you can come and say, here's the truth.

And we've lost sight of it.

And we've lost sight of talking to each other.

We've just, we've entered this hard part.

And I think you're right.

We're basically saying right now,

you know what?

I don't like what's happening in DC.

I'm going to ignore it.

And then we'll get mad.

And then once again, we'll ask for that change.

It's a time of lack of courage.

Yeah, I think it's...

I think it's courage.

You know, when I was doing,

I think I've mentioned you, I'm very good friends with President George H.W.

Bush and Barbara Bush.

And years ago,

they wrote me a fan letter.

They like one of my thrillers.

And I met them and spent a lot of time.

They invited me to Houston for a week to go see what it was like to be a former president.

We became dear friends.

And I love Barbara Bush because she reminded me of my mother in the sense that she didn't care if you were the king of England or you were the guy who was sweeping the floors.

Do you have something interesting to say?

Are you funny?

Do you have something that's insightful?

If not, then get out of my face.

She's not impressed with anybody.

And we would sit and laugh and have fun together.

I spent many times, many events doing work for literacy with her.

She just believed in the value of literacy, that that unlocked the American dream, is helping people read.

And I totally agree.

And so we were honoring Mrs.

Bush on her passing a couple months ago.

We did an event in Kennebunkport, Maine.

And I get to Kennebunkport with my wife.

And I know at this point, we all know what's going to happen to President Bush.

We know he's sick.

We know the end's coming.

And I found out that they were bringing in some of his favorite authors to read to him.

And

they said to me, you know, we'd like you to read the President Bush, you know, your book, would you like to read to him?

So I say, of course, I'd be honored.

And I get in there, and

it's myself, it's my wife, it's President Bush, and it's the service dog, Sully.

The Secret Service leave.

We're alone in Kennebunkport in his private office, and this is the end.

This is the end.

We know what's coming.

And they warned me.

They said, we just want you, you're only going to read for 10 minutes because he falls asleep.

And my wife said, Brad's used to putting people to sleep with his books.

Don't worry.

They'll be fine.

She's still.

And we go in there and we pretend that everything's normal.

Like, this is just my average day in my average life.

And it's the end, right?

He's got the rocking chair with the presidential seal on it, got a little view of the ocean, but I know what's coming.

And I just, I see on his desk, he's got about five books stacked up, and one of them is the first conspiracy.

And it's dog-eared.

It's like it's been read, I mean, I can't tell you how many times.

Post-it notes in it, the whole thing, because I had sent it to him a year ago.

That's how he blurred the book for us.

And I say to him, sir, you want to read this?

And at this point, he's really only, you know, nodding in a couple of syllables and he said, mm-hmm.

And so I read my favorite part of the book, the part that makes me tear up every time I get to it when I was proofing it.

I'm going to read it to you.

Yeah.

And it's this moment.

It's the moment where George Washington presents to the troops for the very first time, has it read to them the Declaration of Independence.

I don't even need the book.

I could do it by heart.

Because it's the line you know and I know.

And I get to that line.

I'm sitting there, President Bush, and he's sleeping at this point.

It's 10 minutes and he's sleeping.

Get to the line.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

And in that moment, President Bush's eyes, boom, right open, wide awake.

And, you know, if you've ever been at the hospital room of someone who's dying and they have that moment of clarity where you just know they're back, boom, my mom died, boom, she came back.

My dad died.

Boom, they came back.

And he's back again.

It's like the Declaration of Independence is his lifeblood.

Like it's the ultimate IV.

And we get to the end of the chapter, and I said, sir, you want to do another chapter?

Mm-hmm.

We do another chapter.

Mm-hmm.

And another.

Mm-hmm.

And for a full hour, Glenn, I'm sitting there.

And at the end of the hour, of course, I say goodbye, thank him for everything.

He said, I know it's goodbye forever.

I know what's happening.

And when he died, I went to the funeral in Houston.

And when he died, the one thing I was clear on is one word was mentioned over and over in all the tributes to him.

And it was this word, decency.

Decency.

And yes, it was because he was a decent man.

But I think it was also because as a country, we're starving for decency again.

We've lost sight of the word united in these United States.

We don't talk to each other.

We yell at each other.

We talk about each other.

We scream at each other.

And to me,

I feel like we, when I look back, and I always look at the Zeitgeist for kind of where we are, I don't think it's a coincidence that the big biographies this past year were Neil Armstrong and were Mr.

Rogers, that George Bush's death was such a big deal.

I feel like we celebrated for a while those who are the best.

And what we do right now in our culture is we celebrate those who are good at getting attention called to themselves.

We celebrate the loud ones.

We celebrate those who on social media, whether it's

Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or anywhere else, are you know write with multiple exclamation points and tell us how great they are and can get the most attention.

That's who we celebrate.

That's who we like.

That's who we pay attention to.

But we're starving for that generation that taught us humility and decency.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that Mr.

Rogers was such a huge movie this year, or even that the movie, whether it was good or bad or otherwise, but about Neil Armstrong came out.

Neil Armstrong never used the word I, used the word we.

We did this.

We accomplished it.

And he wasn't just talking about the astronauts.

He was talking about the scientists, the mathematicians, the people who sewed his spacesuit together.

This was our accomplishment.

And, you know, I know Hollywood can mess up or do a good movie, but the fact that they even made it in the same time is, and it's not that it's an answer, but it's showing the desire in the population for that humility and

that decency that I feel like we've lost track of.

Who is

a modern-day example of that?

Yeah, I'm constantly, you know, my belief about heroes

is that heroes come when we need them most.

You never get the hero you want, that you always get the heroes you need.

And I think, and this, this is, I admit, and I go, I wish I could say that I'm so optimistic and I always know.

You can find me on a certain day and I say, that person's coming.

We haven't met them yet.

I don't know who it is, but they're coming.

And we're going to need them because we need them right now, the same way as you need Superman or anyone else.

And then there are days I wake up and say,

you know, in fact, they asked me to do an event.

I did an event with President Bush

for W with 43 and with President Clinton.

They did an event together that I went to.

And I asked them both, I said, how

do we come together if we're not even agreeing on the basic facts, if we're watching our own television networks, our own Twitter feeds?

I said, how do we do that?

And neither of them really had an answer.

And so some days I have the dark side of me says, I don't know how we get out of it.

And some days I go, that person's coming.

And when the need comes and the need arises, we will find them.

And it just, as anything else, it just depends what day you catch me.

Have you ever read any Tim Ballard?

No.

Nonfiction?

Yeah,

I'm going to

send some stuff to you.

He wrote something called the American Covenant.

And

it's about George Washington making that four-hour

prayer after the inauguration and

the covenant.

that he made with God.

And that

his theory is we have violated that and until we turn back and go, wait, wait, we will be your people

and you will be our God,

that

we'll just continue to go off the tracks.

But it's that George Washington covenant that has

played divine providence with this nation

really from the beginning.

And I think still is.

I mean, we've had extraordinary protection on this nation.

Yeah, no, I mean, listen, so many of the things we, I mean,

I feel like, and again, you can call it Providence, you can call it God, you can call it whatever you want, but so much, especially when you study this era, is unexplainable by anything else.

You know, you look at it and you go, how did this thing happen?

Franklin

say,

how dare you?

Right, right.

How can you deny that?

You stood there and watched it.

Right.

Man of science.

Right, yeah.

When you have the man of science, when you went over the man of science,

and

it's an interesting idea.

I'm curious.

You got to send it to me so I can read it.

It's a,

I don't know the answer.

I wish I knew the answer.

I'm searching for the answer.

I think, I personally think, and I don't know, I'd be curious your answer too, that my obsession with history doesn't come from some old quest.

It comes from a new one of an answer that I'm looking for today.

I'm just not finding it today, so I search for somewhere else to try and find the answer that will make today better.

I don't consciously do that.

I don't, you know, I wish I was so, I'm so amazing.

I'm going to find the answer to, you know, all of our problems.

I don't do that.

I go and look what's interesting to me, but I really do believe,

you know, when I grew up,

my life was by no means, you know, easy.

My dad lost his job, and it wasn't one of those moments where, okay, you got to find a new job.

We were worried about not money, but we worried about safety.

I was the first in my family to go to a four-year college.

My dad and mom moved us down from where I grew up in New York down to Florida, started over from scratch at 39 years old.

And my father never really

had the answers.

He just couldn't fight.

He just had a temper.

And his dad was a military guy who in World War II

was a boxer.

and was struck by lightning and that's how he got his discharge.

And then my father,

when he was a kid at camp, got struck by lightning.

Two men, two generations, both struck by lightning.

It defies, as we were just talking about, everything, which also means

don't walk with me in a rainstorm, right?

Right?

But I but I grew up, right?

But I grew up

never knowing if that story was true or just like George Washington's coat with the bullet holes in it, right?

Like, is it the lore or is it the truth?

And when my dad died, and

I should also say my grandfather used to put his hands on my father, and he was a boxer in the military.

It was bad.

And my father should have repeated history.

He should have absolutely beat the crap out of me because that's what he learned, and that's all he learned.

And my father's whole reason for living was to be different, that the lightning won't strike twice, right?

That it won't hit again.

And when my father died,

oh, you're getting me emotional now.

My father died.

When he was dying, I whispered two things in his ear.

And one of them was, you were a good father.

But he didn't know how to be.

He just tried to.

All the good parts of my father, no one gave them to him.

He had to find them.

And when my dad dies, at his eulogy, I wrote this story of these two lightning bolts, one after the other, that should have followed, one right after the other.

The history should have repeated every single time.

And when I was growing up, my dad never,

he'd lose his temper all the time.

He would always punch a hole in the wall when he was angry.

So all the walls and all the doors in our house, bathroom doors, his door had a giant hole and a giant dent that was in the door whenever he'd get mad.

But the only door he never, ever touched was my door.

My sister and I shared a room.

It was a two-bedroom apartment for the four of us.

Never touched our door.

Never, the lightning never repeated.

And when my dad died and I told that story in his eulogy, I even acknowledged and said, I just don't know if it's a good story, if it really happened, because I don't, my dad's gone now.

And I never knew if he was telling the truth about being struck by lightning or if that was just what he thought happened on a day when he got knocked out of camp.

And I told the story and I put it on our Facebook page or Twitter page or whatever it was on.

And a week later, it just, people started reading it and responding to it.

And a week later, a guy

emails me and says, hey, Brad, I read that story about your father, and I got to tell you something about your dead dad.

He was struck by lightning because I was there that day when he was struck by lightning when we were kids.

And I'm going to tell you the story now.

And this total stranger out there does the greatest thing that's ever happened to me when you lose a parent is they tell you a new story about your parent.

And in that moment, my father's alive again.

I get a new story.

And he told me exactly, second by second, what happened.

And he said, I know what happened because I was struck by lightning on that day too.

And he tells me the story how my father had grabbed the doorknob, a metal doorknob at camp, and the lightning had hit my father where,

and he said, my hand was on your father's shoulder.

We were both knocked out, both unconscious.

They were treated.

They put white sheets over your father.

They thought he was dead.

He took the worst of it

and verified the story.

And I tell you all that to simply say, I still feel like my love of history is trying to explain what I can't find explanations for today.

I don't know what they are.

I know I say my prayers every night.

I know what I believe

is that thing in the universe, but God, I can't find that answer.

I think I know why you and I connect so much now.

Dad thing.

My father was beaten by his dad.

And my dad, and I didn't understand this, my dad was gentle as a lamb in the house.

And

he didn't tell anybody until, and I'm the only one he told.

Yeah, I didn't know until I grew up.

35.

Same thing.

Same thing.

And

I think

what it is

we

are looking for.

I think we're looking for the

key that turns that on.

But both of our fathers didn't want to repeat history.

They didn't want to be that.

They didn't know how.

They don't know what to do.

My father, same way, did not know how to be a dad.

It was a pretty lousy dad for a while, been a pretty great dad for a while, and pretty lousy dad at the end.

But he was

up until the end, he tried.

He was lousy at the beginning because I didn't know what was wrong with him.

Right.

You know, he was trying not to be his father.

Those words are literally in my father's eulogy.

That all he was trying to do is not be his father.

That was the only, that was his true north.

Just do the opposite of that, and you got to be on the right path.

He didn't realize that that's not enough.

Yeah.

You have to, and he said it to me, but I don't think he understood it.

He also kind of like a Willie Lohman in a way.

So you have no, it's literally, my father was a salesman.

When I go see Death of a Salesman, I'm in tears because I'm like, there's my father.

He's Willie Lohman.

He is him.

I mean, it is literally the play that undoes me.

Part of me went to Michigan because Arthur Miller went to Michigan.

Like, I mean, that play, I look at it, I'm like, there's my dad.

My dad,

he would come home.

I feel like new level now, but he would come home from sales, and I knew he got paid because only on the days he got paid could he bring home the dry cleaning.

And if the dry cleaning came home, I knew he would have, he would have take out food and he'd have the, he'd have the, over his shoulder, the dry cleaning because those are the only days he could afford to come home.

But the one thing my father knew,

the only thing he knew is how to love me like a crazy person.

Like a crazy person.

I mean, he would, and I'll, you know, he would, and he would, you know, he was insane.

Like, he would go into the bookstore and say,

this is the best story for my father.

My father, when he was 18 years old, had knee surgery and he died on the table.

He flatlined, and they brought him back to life.

And when he was in, I think, his 60s, he was going in for

hip replacement surgery.

And he's worried that I don't have the body of an 18-year-old anymore.

I'm in my 60s.

And if I flatline, I'm dead.

I'm not going to come back.

So he thinks these are his last moments on the planet.

And I fly home to see him.

And he's so worried that these are his last moments on the planet that they have to fill him full of tranquilizers just to calm his blood pressure before they can give him the anesthetic.

The doctor's like, he's crazy.

He's like an animal on there.

We have to literally trank him to give him the anesthetic.

So they give him the tranquilizers, then they give him the anesthetic.

They take him upstairs.

An hour goes to an hour and a half.

Hour and a half goes to two hours.

Please let him be okay.

And after two hours, the doctor comes down and he says, you want to see your father?

I said, I do.

And I go into the room.

He's full of tranquilizers.

He's full of anesthetic.

He's flying high as a guy.

He doesn't know where he is.

And he opens his eyes and he says, I love you.

And then he says to me, I sold a dozen books up there.

And I said, I said, that's what you're thinking of when you're this close to death?

I said, that's what you're thinking of.

And I said, did you tell him about the paperbacks?

But this was the guy always selling, right?

He's on his deathbed and he's still selling for his boy.

Like, he'd go into every Barnes and Noble and say, I'm here for Brad Meltzer's new book.

He's my favorite author.

They're like, Mr.

Meltzer, we know he's your son.

We know he's your son.

And to the day he died, he was that guy, Willie Loman, forever out doing the sale, but for never had the tools to figure out his own life, but just knew how to connect and how to close.

That was what he did.

Five people, Brad,

that you think

are essential

to know about.

That's a good one.

That may be completely either on the edges of history that people would have to go find or

maybe misunderstood.

Yeah, I'll take.

I want to give you a thoughtful answer, not a quick answer.

I mean, I know I do feel George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are two.

And I'm going to take away religious because I feel like that just creates a whole different thing.

So let's just do historical.

Those are always the top two that go.

Doesn't have to be American.

Yeah, no, no.

I'll go anywhere.

See, if you say it's who I got to eat dinner with, I'd take my mom, my grandfather any day.

But if it's someone you have to learn about,

I still think, and you know, it's funny, I go, I start with Dr.

King and then I go, oh, should I go back to Gandhi?

And then should I go back even further for where Gandhi gets it from?

But I'll still take Dr.

King.

I still take Dr.

King.

I take Mr.

Rogers.

You can make it Jim Henson.

You can make it Mr.

Rogers.

But when I was five years old, Mr.

Rogers and Jim Henson on Sesame Street taught me you could use your creativity to put good into the world.

And to this day, all I'm trying to do is on some level, I hope, trying to use my creativity to put good into this world.

I never write a book about a plot to kill Washington.

To me, it's about Washington's character.

It's to inspire.

I never write a thriller just to make it turn the pages.

It's like, here's the people at Dover who deal with our fallen soldiers.

Like, these are the good stories.

This is where

we can rise up as people.

And our kids' books, the same thing is like just showing that power.

But I feel like, and I'm trying to think of who it is.

There's, you know, I'll tell you who it is.

Here's one.

This will be,

here's my good last one.

Sheila Spicer.

So you never heard of her.

She was my ninth grade English teacher.

And Sheila Spicer, African-American woman,

who I moved from New York.

My parents didn't know what an honors class was, much less a college, you know,

and she's changed my life with three words.

She said to me, you can write.

I said, Well, everyone can write.

She's like, No, no, no, you know what you're doing.

And she tried to put me in the honors class.

I had some sort of conflict.

She said, Here's what I'm going to do.

She said, You're going to sit in the corner for the entire year, ignore everything I do on the Blackboard.

You're going to do the honors work instead.

Ignore every homework assignment I give.

Do the honors work instead.

Wow.

And what she was really saying was, You're going to thank me later.

Now,

a decade later, as someone who appreciates all history, especially my own, my first book comes out.

I walk back to her classroom.

I knock on the door

and she says, can I help you?

I said, my name is Brad Meltzer.

I wrote this book, and it's for you.

Thunk, put it down.

She starts crying.

I said, why are you crying?

She said, you know,

I was going to retire this year because I didn't think I was having an impact anymore.

This woman changed my life.

The most important person beside my own family, the first person who ever told me beside my family I was good at something, changed my life and had no idea of her impact, no concept of her legacy.

And I realized with her that we all have this legacy out there.

You know, we have our family, which we all know, but you also have these people you see every day.

You have the Sheila Spicers that are out there

that you work with, or coworkers, or people like that, that are part of your legacy too.

This woman, again, the biggest impact on me and had no concept of her legacy.

And in fact,

when she finally retired, I went to her retirement party

and I said, she didn't know I was going to be there.

And

I realized as I stepped in that it was a potential disaster because when you go back to revisit your own history, you risk that history.

All your memories of what you thought it was are all at risk.

And she had actually lasted 12 more years after my thank you to her.

When I went back and said thank you and she said she was going to retire, she lasted 12 more years, is finally retiring.

I said, don't tell her I'm going to be there.

A co-worker called me and said, I know what she means to you.

And I sat there

and

I'm hiding behind a pillar.

It's a Friday afternoon.

All she's got to do is say,

you know, it's a bunch of teachers who are tired on a Friday.

It's five o'clock at night.

All she's got to do is say, I hate half of you.

I love the other half of you.

Thanks for this vase you gave me.

I'm going to have, you go have a good life.

And I realize watching this, I'm like, what if she's not as good as I remember?

All my history is destroyed.

And she gets in front of these jaded teachers on a Friday afternoon at five o'clock and says, gives a speech and says, to all of those out there who think that these kids have changed and America's changed and time has changed.

Do not give up on these kids.

Do not give up on these kids.

And she gives the rallying speech like it's the end of Braveheart, where I want to go and sign up for an education certificate.

And she has no idea I'm there.

This is not for show.

She has no concept of what's happening.

I'm like, oh my God, there's that woman who changed my life when I was a kid at ninth grade.

There she is.

And

I highly recommend to anyone listening to this,

there is someone, and I know you have it too.

who was the first person who took a chance on you, the first person who told you you were good at something.

Go find them and say thank you.

You will never believe what comes from it.

A few years ago,

a sailor on a submarine wrote me a letter and said,

This was actually a decade ago, and said, I can't tell you where I am.

I'm in an undisclosed location with the military, but

we don't have many books on this submarine, but we have one of your thrillers.

And I just want to thank you because at a time when I really needed ease, this thing brought me ease.

I thought, that's a really nice thank you.

I got to do something nice for for that sailor.

So I called up my publisher and I said, Can I get 10,000 books donated to the USO?

And they said, sure.

And I said, that was easy.

So I called another publisher, called another, called another.

We eventually got 40,000 books donated to the USO.

I got involved with the USO.

I do a lot of work with the USO.

I've gone everywhere from the Middle East and Kuwait to Cuba.

I do whatever they ask.

I always go over the years.

And when I go to Kuwait for the first one, it was during the war.

And

war was basically winding down at this point and I go there and

one of the first soldiers that I meet says I want to thank you Brad for all those books you donated a decade ago and I said how do you even know that nobody knows that story and he said well when I was stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan I'd always see stacks of your books and they'd always say courtesy of the USO so I knew that you had to have donated him I said no you but I'm here to thank you you're getting it all wrong don't thank me I'm here to thank you so I come back

from that trip and I'm like, I got to track down that original guy on the sailor.

And I got to find him and tell him what his thank you set in motion.

So I actually track him down.

I couldn't find the email bounce back.

I found his phone.

I call him up.

I said, my name is Brad Melcher.

10 years ago, you wrote me a letter from a submarine thanking me.

I just wanted you to know I got involved with the USO.

We got 40,000 books.

Donate, all these people were inspired.

Thanks to what you did and your thank you.

And I figure he's going to be all inspired.

And you know what?

You're on the phone with someone, you know something's wrong.

And I say to him, are you okay?

And he says, no.

And I said, what's wrong?

And he said, a few days ago, he says to me, my mother died of breast cancer.

And what he has no idea of is my mother had just died of breast cancer.

And I said, I think I'm here to deliver a message to you.

And he says, what's the message?

And I said,

when my mom died, everyone gave me this useless advice that I really couldn't deal with, you know, and it just wasn't helpful.

And I know they meant well, but it just didn't do me any good.

I was so mad and upset that I lost my mom.

And one person said something that really meant the world to me.

So I think I'm here to share that message with you.

And that's why we're really speaking today.

And he says, what's the message?

And I said to him, Our mothers never leave us, ever.

And he starts crying.

And because he's crying, I'm obviously getting emotional in that moment.

And I'm not one of those new agey people who feels like, you know, rainbows and glitter cannons, you know, rain down.

But sometimes in this universe, we feel like we're alone.

And other times, we feel like we're profoundly profoundly connected.

To anyone listening out there, find that person.

That person who gave you your first real chance, that person who took that chance on you, told you were good at something, track them down and say thank you.

You will never believe what comes from it.

It will always pay back.

So I take Miss Spicer.

I'll take her any day.

This has been very satisfying because I have learned a little bit about history.

I've learned a little bit about you.

And I have also discovered that you are a much better man than I am.

And so I have something to shoot for.

Vice versa.

Always, always.

The dad thing is blowing my mind right now.

I didn't know we had that.

Explains everything in an odd way.

It does.

Yeah.

It does.

That's a good one.

Brad, thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Name of the book, The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington.

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