Best of the Program with Malcolm Young - 10/4/18

The Blaze Radio Network.

On demand.

Hey, welcome to it.

It's the Thursday broadcast.

Just a note: you do not want to miss tomorrow's radio program because, as you know, Stu, I'm a scientist.

Of course.

I'm a doctor.

I have my doctorate.

Do you have your doctorate?

I do not.

Yeah, I do.

So I'm a doctor.

So I am, I'm going to take something that we talk about in today's podcast and examine the truth of what was said.

Barack Obama had some interesting things to say about when he was growing up that if the press were consistent would say he's not qualified to be president of the United States.

But it's not about truth with the Kavanaugh thing, as we all know.

But on

tomorrow's broadcast, we're going to take this revelation a little further, taking it to the Beakers or to the Brigiers, otherwise known as Stu.

I don't feel comfortable with your direction.

You're going to like it

or not, or not.

Anyway,

so today we're going to talk a little bit about Kavanaugh.

We also have somebody who has done so much on memory.

He's done a whole season of his revisionist history podcast on memory, disconnected from the Kavanaugh thing, but we talked to Malcolm Gladwell about can we trust our own memory?

Should we just somebody's memory and take their word for it?

And he gives you a completely airtight answer on that

with real evidence and scientific study behind it.

But also, like, you're going to hear this and be like, wow.

Yeah.

That's incredible.

It's really going to affect you beyond the Kavanaugh thing.

It's pretty stunning.

Also, David Barton joins us.

He has a new book out called This Precarious Moment.

And we're talking about millennials.

Millennials get a really bad name.

And it's.

And that's why we're going to.

No, I don't think it.

I mean, it kind of is, but it's really not because no one is teaching them anything.

He's going to talk to us a little bit about millennials and what's really happening with millennials.

And of course, Pat joins us for the podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

It's Thursday, October 4th.

Let's go to Brian in Colorado.

Hello, Brian.

How are you?

Good.

How How are you doing?

Very good.

Yeah, so quick question, just kind of going off of your book.

Now with the whole Kavanaugh thing going on, all the attention seems to have turned away from Trump because there's no outrage there.

All the outrage is with Kavanaugh.

And I'm just kind of wondering how you see the interplay between that.

Because Kavanaugh is an easier target because Donald Trump has not responded in the fashion that they probably expected him to respond.

And the reason why,

I would imagine, is because, he doesn't have a good record on speaking about

moral issues.

And so somebody has said, hush up, and he has.

That has given him real power because all that Trump

is involved on this is,

is he going to keep standing?

And because he has a spine,

yeah,

he's standing.

And that's what the president needs to do at this point.

And it is also allowed for the very first time,

it's given a spine to the Republicans.

So they had to go after Kavanaugh.

What else are they going to do?

He's the target.

But Kavanaugh also has remained cool

until it was really appropriate.

Had he come out and made crazy, you know, angry statements prior to?

No.

But

his timing of being angry is not a sign that he has a reckless temperament.

It was appropriate for the time.

If you are a thinking human being and you are looking at things for you're looking at the fact level, you completely connected with Kavanaugh's opening statement where he said, this is ridiculous.

You have destroyed me.

You've destroyed my family.

He made a statement that was full of facts refuting the things that she had said it was totally appropriate what's the result the result is i think kavanaugh is going to uh win the uh nomination

if he doesn't it will because be because

a republican or maybe a couple of republicans lose their spine

Because there is there are no facts on this.

So they lose their spine.

If they do it, they will be the losers in this.

Does that help you, Brian?

Is that what you were thinking?

Yeah, that does make sense.

It's just kind of finding the weak target as opposed to the strong one.

And because that's what they do, they exploit the weak.

And

yeah, so I appreciate that.

Do you want it?

I'm going to send you a book for getting on the air.

If you get on the air, we're going to start sending you books.

Did you want the book or the audio?

Yeah, the book, please.

I would love it.

Okay, and Brian, B-R-Y-A-N.

B-R-I-A-N.

Okay.

Glad I asked.

Thanks, Brian.

Appreciate it.

It's in the mail.

Let me go to...

Liar.

It's still sitting right in front of him, Brian.

Don't believe it.

It's not in the mail yet.

What a liar.

Let me go to Phyllis.

Hello, Phyllis.

Good morning, Glenn.

How are you?

I'm very good.

The reason for my call is I wanted to tell you a couple of things.

I appreciate you taking my call,

and I've learned a lot from you over all these years.

So I thank you for that.

You're welcome.

I was a victim of sexual child abuse.

My father was a pedophile and I suffered for many, many years until I put an end to it.

And unfortunately, Glenn, no one believed me.

No one.

So, you know, I just kind of felt I have to deal with this.

I have to get over it.

It's not easy to do that, but I knew that blaming my, you know, what happened was not going to get me anywhere in life.

So I understand in a way why no one, you know, talked up in those days, you know, 20, 30 years ago.

It was not,

it was, it was not,

we weren't, we didn't think people were like that, and we didn't want to look at it if it was.

It's horrible that we've made good progress on that.

Yes, we have.

However, we've swung from one end all the way to the other with no middle ground.

So what I'm upset about is that everyone believes this doctor, okay,

just on her

testimony, which wasn't even

significant.

And

they just believe it because of the health they went through.

And to me, I don't understand why they don't listen to the facts.

And this is one of the things that's so disturbing about this.

Obviously, the Me Too concept is really

important.

And important.

It could make a real difference.

And instead, what it's turning into is: here's a tool for Democrats to use to destroy people's lives, which is an awful outcome.

Or, what a great outcome would be out of this, in my opinion, is that going forward,

people like Phyllis

would be believed, would at least be taken seriously.

Not believed, taken seriously.

Believed if they have the evidence, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But taken seriously,

and would not fear coming out because if you had evidence and you had a real story to tell, it would be believed.

Correct.

And

that is the outcome that I think rational Americans are looking for.

They want this to end.

They think this is horrible, but they don't want to go the other way.

This has become

a vendetta.

You know, Phyllis, as you said, you knew that the anger wasn't going to get you anywhere in life, so you had to deal with it.

If you deal with the situation,

you have a chance to grow.

It is much better if the person who has done it to you has

reaped its consequences or

has

admitted it at least or something.

It's hard when people don't apologize or don't admit it and they just get away with it.

It is really, really hard.

But that's sometimes what happens.

By

moving on with your life, you're not trying to convict every man.

And that's what's happening right now.

There are these women who have suffered this and have not healed.

And so they want everybody to be believed because no one would believe theirs.

And so

they don't know if it's true or not, but nobody believed me.

And this woman's going to be railroaded.

Well, no.

Your situation is not their situation.

And we have to base it on facts.

Phyllis, thanks for for your call.

AJ in Oregon.

Hello, AJ.

You're on the Glenn Beck program.

Hi, Glenn.

Hi, Sue.

I'm a recovering addict of outrage.

Okay.

So what I want to go and talk about is I've been listening to the audio book.

It's great.

And my wife and I kind of had like pivot points.

And it really hit me when I was listening yesterday is the social media outrage is what's driving this country more than anything.

Like you say in the book, you know, Tommy 36,

Becky, whatever.

Right.

And it's got to the point where we've just, our life is so much happier by not engaging with politics online

and part of that social media mob.

It got to the point where my wife and I just were like looking at each other, oh my gosh, I can't handle this.

And I

even took on more volunteer opportunities.

I help with youth basketball, different things like that.

And I feel so fulfilled now.

Did you give up social media or

did you just cut down on it?

I cut down on the

outrage, the absolute engaging with some family members that were progressive, where

you couldn't even talk to them.

It was like beating your head against a brick wall.

It was so frustrating.

I mean, we don't even, when we go to family dinners, we don't even talk about politics.

And we're all, you know, a lot of us are constitutional conservatives, but we don't even talk about it because it's so bad right now.

This book is perfect.

It's perfectly titled.

It's perfect for, I think everybody should be reading it.

Thanks a lot, AJ.

I appreciate it.

I'm going to send you a copy of the book.

Do you want the book since you were listening to it?

Yes.

Autographed to you.

Yes, absolutely.

I would like a hard copy, and God bless you.

You got it.

Thank you very much.

It is,

you know, the next step is

once you have calmly done this and you have backed up, the next step is to re-engage with your relatives, but on bigger principles.

Don't talk to them about Kavanaugh because they'll immediately go to the talking points.

Don't talk to them about that.

Talk to them about the bigger issues.

Everything that we need, our unum is the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, e pluribus unum.

I've spent a lot of time thinking, okay, so what brings us together?

What is the uniting thing?

What can we all agree on?

Well, not all of us, but a grand majority of us should be able to agree on all men are created equal, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and

the 10 amendments to the Constitution.

Okay, let's start there.

That's what brought people here.

And that's what's being lost in the conversation.

We're arguing over parties and and personalities.

That's not what Kavanaugh is really about.

It's not about did he do it or did he not do it.

Is she lying?

Is she telling the truth?

It is about,

are you innocent until proven guilty?

Do we presume innocence?

Do we look for facts?

Is there a system in society outside of the legal standards?

Where did the legal standards come from?

The legal standards came from a group of people, our founders, and prior to that, here in America, they came here and said, you know what, I can just be taken off the streets.

I can be destroyed if somebody just says, hey, I'm the king, or I'm a lord, or I'm a duke, and this person did that.

They're believed, and I'm not, no matter what the evidence is.

That's not right.

I don't want that.

Those are the big principles.

And those are the things that we need to slowly start to re-engage our loved ones with, because that's where you find unity.

the best of the Glenbeck program

I mean

they are so desperate to get this guy off the Supreme Court that they will do anything Rodin Farrow is burnt is lighting his career on fire right now to try to stop this here is the best thing Donald Trump has done during this whole thing

he has allowed the press without mucking it up generally speaking he's been pretty good yes without without tweeting stuff and becoming the story himself, he has allowed the press to prove

everything that he says about the press is true.

That is the way to fight.

This is the way, and it's outlined in Addicted to Outrage.

Doesn't mean surrender.

It means

change the way you're fighting and don't surrender unless the facts change.

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

Like listening to this podcast?

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David Barton is here.

And

David is a friend of mine who was for Donald Trump because he kept saying in my ear, Glenn, he is going to be really good on judges.

And I kept saying, David, you're an idiot.

He's not going to do any of that.

And you were exactly right, and I was wrong.

Welcome to the program, David.

How are you?

Good to be with you, bro.

So your guess on Kavanaugh.

It's going to go down.

I think it'll happen.

I think the ones that are sitting on the fence will go the right direction.

The one that makes me the most nervous is Flake because he's retiring.

Everybody else is going to face the voters and be accountable, but Flake has been his own guy since he was in the House.

So he's the biggest issue, biggest problem.

But that went 50-50, and then Pence goes for it.

What did you think about Ben Sass's

comments yesterday?

You know, Sasse,

it's like

he's like Mike Lee, but he's a lot more vocal than Mike is.

He's a lot like an adult in this thing that every once in a while gets you a reality check.

He goes off and has these great speeches every once in a while like he's teaching a bunch of kindergarten kids.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, he is.

He is, that's right.

He is.

And I love him.

I mean, I did not see that in him before he got there.

And he's been an independent guy that's been an independent thinker.

I really like him.

He is positioned for, I think, 2024.

He's positioning himself in a really, in a good place as being a reasoned, likable,

calm individual.

He's a working individual.

He's very reasonable in the way he goes and stuff.

He teaches.

He's great.

So

David has written a new book with another friend of mine, James Garlow, This Precarious Moment, Six Urgent Steps That Will Save You, Your Family, and Our Country.

And David, it's a great book, and

everybody should read it.

Again, it's a book that is talking about the steps that you take right now.

And what I love about this, David, is let's just start on the millennial step.

I have seen this work.

You know, it's kind of my book is

I I put it into action myself in my own life, and I've seen it work.

You've done the same thing, and you've seen this work with millennials.

Talk about the millennials a bit.

Millennials, right now, are one of the reasons we have a precarious or a dangerous moment because we have 242 years of being an American nation under the Declaration 231 under the Constitution.

No nation's ever survived that long.

And so we just kind of think we'll always be here.

And yet, at the same time, you have 5,500 years of recorded history, and there's never been a socialist nation that's increased freedom or increased prosperity.

And yet, right now, 75% of students in college support socialism above all forms of government.

We cannot survive if that becomes the belief when they become leaders.

In the same way, four out of five millennials believe there is no absolute moral truth.

Man, if we can't agree that things like rape or murder are wrong, you've got no chance for having a nation in the future.

You've got 53% of millennials who believe that free speech should be limited, 19% who believe that violence is the right response to free speech you don't like.

You can't survive as a nation.

So that's why we call it a precarious moment.

But when you look at millennials, they are really

easy to change relationally.

They are hungry.

They are hungry.

If you create a relation, a one-on-one relationship, they really don't care about your age.

They don't care about how you look.

They care about whether you're sincere.

And if you are sincere and say, and what we have found works so well is just asking questions because they really have had a load dumped on them by their professors and by the culture, and they've not thought it through.

And when you start asking them questions and

not trying to win, that's right, not trying to win, just think about it.

That's an interesting thing.

Let me ask you a question: How does whatever fill in the blank?

They start to engage, and

I find that they actually

begin to move toward you faster and not just blindly accepting things, but because you're engaging them and asking them to think, as long as you're not trying to win.

That's right.

Nobody does that.

That's right.

In college, they're being told what to think, join in, chant this, and if you have any other thoughts.

So when you challenge them, They actually like that.

It's the first time anyone has done it.

They really do respond to thinking well.

and once it gets going, they are a killer with thinking.

They are really.

I'm sorry, that's an old school old school.

Killer went on.

I'm sorry.

Trigger warning.

That's right.

I can't say that.

I've edited that out.

Yeah, that's right.

But they really are.

And they're the most of all groups in polling, for the hundred years we've been in polling, they are the most relational group in American history.

What does that mean?

They respond more to relationships.

For example, they're the only group in polling that wants to spend more time with their boss.

Everybody else wants to spend time with employees or get away from the boss or whatever.

They want time.

They want to be mentored.

I mean, they have a desire to spend one-on-one time with people who can influence them and help them and thank them.

Now, that's not necessarily their motivation, but what is interesting is they respond really, really well to that.

And so when you create a relationship that is a genuine relationship, as you said, not trying to win, just a genuine relationship,

you can make so much progress in turning them in a different direction.

And we've seen it ourselves.

Things are not as bad as you think they are.

They are bad.

This is a pivot point for our country.

And if we fall down on our job, it will change and it will go away.

And I think it will become very bad.

However,

it's not the battle that you think it is.

You've been convinced by media and social media that everybody is thinking this way.

They're not.

David Barton is with us.

He has a book out called This Precarious Moment.

He's written it with James Garlow, who's just a great, great guy and good thinker.

And they have the stats in the book and they have different things.

We're concentrating just for a second on millennials because I know David has seen it and I've seen it because we're doing it with Mercury One.

And when you present the facts to millennials,

if you're not trying to win, They say,

wait a minute, what?

David, talk about a few of of the millennials that we have had in for our two-week training course, and they have actually come a little hostile somewhere.

That's right.

We have a number that have come as skeptics, and they're here to disprove us and show that we're all wrong.

And it's all right.

We don't run from that situation.

We just embrace them and say, let's have a conversation.

As long as you'll engage in the conversation.

That's right.

And so we start asking them questions, and they have their opinions, but we just ask them questions, and it's kind of like they sit back and,

I don't know.

And so once you ask the questions that lead them to the information, it's amazing to see that they then take those questions and go back to those that taught them and change them.

We literally, we have a girl that came in that, you know, learned all sorts of stuff.

She went back to her professor, started asking her professor questions.

He got all befuddled because he didn't know the answers.

He now has asked her to meet with him once a week and

teach him what she learned in all these classes.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

And he said, she wrote a report and he said, you are either a liar and you're going to get an F, or this is the best paper.

See me in my office.

That's right.

And

he said, okay, I want to talk to you about your sources.

And she had him nailed down.

Here's a professor that didn't know this stuff.

An economics professor, and he found out that founding father John Witherspoon had the greatest impact of any person in American history on American economics, and he didn't know that.

And she showed him that and then showed him the documentation.

And he said, Okay, I want more because I clearly deny.

But that's the thing of asking questions with the relationships.

And we take these guys that come in hostile or otherwise, and just because of relationships, and as we tell them, we have a lot of fun with them.

I mean, quite frankly, we tell them that sarcasm is our love language.

If we don't make fun of you, it's because we don't like you.

So, you know,

we kid and joke and have a great, great time, but they come out transformed, and they are some of the most mature individuals.

And these guys are all, it's in their mind to become leaders.

And I tell you, they are so, so good.

It is just amazing.

We were in a meeting in February.

I don't think I've announced this formally.

May I, David?

Go for it.

We are going to do Black History Month, a museum here at our studios in February.

If you don't think that's a little controversial,

but we have worked on this and we're working on it with the Lincoln Museum, and it's going to be a little mind-blowing and really, really eye-opening to a lot of people on both sides.

And it's black history, but not all the black history that everybody knows.

Let's tell the black history that really nobody knows.

And that's going to be here at our studios in the month of February.

And yesterday we decided that because

we're going to have docents, we're going to have people that are going to tell these individual stories about these people

here on stage 19 as you come through.

And they're all going to be, I said yesterday, let's get some of the kids that we've met that are even 15 years old that just will learn it and really know it.

It's really quite exciting to see millennials what happens when they're unleashed and told the truth.

David's new book, David Barton and James Garlow's new book, This Precarious Moment, The Six Urgent Steps That Will Save You, Your Family, and Your Country.

Grab a copy of it.

It is really, really good.

And I agree with the steps.

And all the way through it,

you are making the case using facts.

This is a book that you can take and read and learn all kinds of facts about the country that you didn't know.

For instance, let's talk about immigration, David.

Immigration, a fact we didn't know is until 1875, 1876, the federal government had no part in immigration.

Immigration belongs solely to the states.

When you came to America, you didn't move into the United States, you moved into Texas or Maryland or Virginia or wherever, and it was the states that controlled immigration.

The U.S.

Supreme Court in 1875, 1876, two decisions said, hey, we think we'll take this over now.

And so the first time we have federal immigration is in in 1892 when Ellis Island opens.

That's the first federal immigration facility.

Everything before that was the states.

We have no clue.

And then when you look, now the Founding Fathers are very good because Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution says they can establish a uniform rule of naturalization.

So they did.

They passed three laws, 1790, 1795, and 1798.

Said, okay, we can set the rule of naturalization.

Here's what you got to do to come to the United States.

And let's go through first

what they set forward.

The immigrant must have good moral character.

Are we doing anything to check on good moral character?

No, no.

Background check.

And by the way, Ben Franklin said that when you came, you needed to have a certificate from a religious society attesting to your good moral character from the country from which you left.

The immigrant must not only support the Constitution and our governmental laws, but renounce allegiance to any other nation or loyalty to any other system.

Sharia?

Sharia.

And by the way, we had Muslims in America since 1619.

But to be part of the country, you had to agree to the Constitution, not come here to overturn it.

The immigrant must believe in the equality of all Americans to renounce and renounce any title of nobility.

So would I have to,

if I was coming in, would I have to declare that I was not a member of the press?

I'd have to give a title of nobility.

Or a professor.

Or a professorship.

That's right.

There must be a residency requirement of five years in the United States before citizenship.

Now, let me hit that one because I was really shocked about that.

In the Constitutional Convention, seven of the 39 guys who signed the Constitution were immigrants.

They were themselves immigrants.

And so Alexander Hamilton was one.

He came from West Indies.

Pierce Butler was another.

And these guys said, and I mean, the debates are great.

They said, look, when we got here, if we had voted, we would have voted the way that we were thinking from the West Indies and Ireland and elsewhere.

And Pierce Butler said, you should not be allowed to vote until 14 years here because you need to learn to think like an American.

Oh, my gosh,

Texas needs to do that with Californians.

Oh, you're right.

Texans, I'm telling you, we're going to lose Texas because of the Californians.

They are just going to vote the way they voted.

And we are not the same place.

We're not the same place.

And they think like California.

And it takes a while.

So Alexander Hamilton said five years, and that's what they went with, was five years.

But you could not vote in America until you've been here five years.

Otherwise, you would turn this place into wherever you just left.

No anchor, babies.

Citizenship goes from parents to child,

not child to parent.

Wow.

Security risks can be deported and permanently banned from the United States.

The government must protect the borders during times of war.

States will have a definite role in immigration.

So that is what they

found it fascinating in the book that we have

argued as if these things were not settled long ago.

We have argued common language.

How dare you insist as if this was just some idea that a bunch of racists had.

Yeah, Ben Franklin is a great example because Ben Franklin talked about how so many Germans are moving into Pennsylvania, and they were.

And he said the problem is they're speaking their own language.

They're starting to create signs in German.

They're starting to create documents in German.

You can't have a nation if you don't speak the same language.

So Franklin was one of the first ones out.

Then Thomas Jefferson, the same thing.

He said, we have immigrants coming in, which is great.

And by the way, they were so pro-immigration that in the Declaration of Independence, one of the 27 grievances was, we're separating from Great Britain because he's trying to stop immigration.

We want immigration.

It's just we wanted assimilation with immigration.

They were huge pro-immigration.

Yeah, assimilation.

I mean,

here's Thomas Jefferson.

They will bring with them the principles of the government they leave, imbibed with their own early, imbibed in their early youth.

These old principles with their language they will transmit to their children.

In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us in legislation.

They will infuse it into their old spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it as heterogeneous, incoherent, and distracted mass.

He says the solution.

It is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, and they should distribute themselves sparsely among the native for for quicker assimilation.

This goes right with this.

It seems to me necessary, this is Franklin, it seems to me necessary to distribute the

Germans

more equally, mix them in with English, establish English schools

where they are now too thickly settled.

I am not against the admission of Germans in general, for they have virtues.

They're industry, frugality, blah, blah, blah.

They're great farmers.

He's saying we have to get them to be Americans.

This is the opposite of what we're doing now.

No dearborn Michigans.

I mean, we want people assimilating.

We don't want them creating a parallel culture where it's almost a no-gozo now for police.

Simulions in Minnesota.

Exactly.

And we've got groups in West Texas creating their own separate communities.

And that's not it.

It's assimilation.

You want to become an American.

You don't come to America to take over and move it to whatever your country was.

You come here to be an American.

Now, that's where the professors, the elite groups really are into, well, America is really bad.

You know, we need to be like Europe or whatever.

One way to lose it is to not pay attention to what they did.

And one of the things we try to do in the book is

we're not into government solutions.

We try to give things that every single individual can do because America gets healthy from the bottom up, not the top down.

You say that racial healing is

fairly easy.

All we have to do is do it.

What is the plan for racial healing?

You know, there's several things.

One is you've got to change some of your knowledge base.

This is what we find with millennials.

They are taught about race from the way their professors see it.

And we show them seven things that everyone needs to know about race.

And generally, they don't.

They're historical.

Do you remember off the top of your head what those are?

Oh, yeah, there's several things.

The first

permanent slavery was introduced in America by a black man, Anthony Johnson, who sued to own other black men.

We show the fact that

43% of free blacks in South Carolina owned black slaves.

That

one out of, yeah, nearly half.

One out of eight Native Americans owned black slaves in major tribes.

And that didn't stop

with the Emancipation Proclamation.

When did slavery stop?

It didn't even stop with the 13th Amendment when we abolished slavery, because we only abolished slavery in the United States, but Indian nations are their own nations.

They're not bound by majority.

So when did they stop?

It was years later.

It was probably a decade later before slavery stopped in Indian nations.

So what we do is show slavery is a human problem.

It is not a black-white problem, despite what your professors say.

It is a problem in the way you view humankind.

So, we go through and show, for example, Tim Scott and James Lankford in the U.S.

Senate have come up with this thing where you invite other people from other races to come eat a meal with you on Sunday, come into your house and learn and touch.

You don't solve racism institutionally, you solve it one person at a time, changing a heart at a time, seeing people different, and not having this black-white polarization that we often try to make today.

How worried are you, David, about

the

level of anger now?

Level of anger is a real problem, but

what it's derived from is the bigger problem.

And that stereotypes and all these things where we really don't know each other.

And once you get to know each other and once you do this interrelational stuff, like with millennials and like with folks of other races and other groups, once you start doing individual stuff, that's where it breaks down.

And that's where you're able to demonstrate that, you know, what you thought about me or what you thought about this group is not accurate.

We're individuals.

We're made in God's image.

We have equality.

And we can get along great if we'll sit down and talk.

It's what you're doing to your book, Glenn.

I mean, addicted to outrage.

That's exactly it.

You sit down and have conversations on bigger things.

So real quick, just one last.

Give me the six things.

that you say are these are the six urgent steps the six there are actually six urgent areas What we've got to do in immigration, what we have to do in our relationship with Israel, what we have to do with millennials, what we have to do with

people of faith doing a terrible job right now as people of faith.

So we go through those six areas.

Let me just touch on Israel.

Our relationship with Israel is pretty good.

You're concerned now.

You're concerned in the book about Christians are starting to become anti-Semitic?

They are becoming anti-Semitic.

What has changed?

This last year.

Well, we don't know the scriptures well anymore.

And we have the highest level of biblical literacy of any generation in American history.

And so

we're seeing 1,600 anti-Israel events a year on college campuses.

People don't know much about the Palestinians, but they're told they're oppressed people, and Israel's doing it.

So we have a real individual turn against Israel, and a lot of denominations are coming out against Israel, denominations that used to be very pro-Israel now.

Really?

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

These are the more liberal churches, though.

They're what are called mainstream denominations.

So, you know, it's kind of like the United Methodist Church, PCUSA, those guys.

So they had never been anti-Israel before, but now they are.

They're coming out and they're wanting to do the BDS kind of stuff, the boycott, the vestiture, and sanctions.

So there is a growing anti-Semitic movement among people of faith in America, which is certainly a problem.

Now, this administration has done a great job on restoring things.

It's just

been absolutely amazing.

But that doesn't solve the individual problems we have at college campuses and at churches and people of faith.

David Barton and James Garlow, the name of the book is This Precarious Moment, Six Urgent Steps That Will Save You, Your Family, and Our Country.

We are at the edge of the cliff.

And as

the righteous among the nations

woman that I met in Poland

told me, were you there, David?

You weren't there, were you?

I don't think on that trip I was there.

And she said, the righteous didn't suddenly become righteous.

They just refused to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.

We are at that cliff.

Learn to stand.

Teach your family to stand.

I'm thrilled to have Malcolm Gladwell on with us.

I'm a big fan of his.

His writing also, Revisionist History, is fantastic.

I think I started listening to the last season on a Friday.

I consumed everybody was like, you know, hey, the kids are throwing up, they're sick, they're on fire.

And I'm like, shut up, I'm listening to Malcolm.

It's unbelievable.

His latest

latest season on revisionist history, you don't really know until kind of, you know, towards the end of it that, oh, wow,

this is all about memory.

And I've learned that everything I thought about memory is probably wrong.

I'd like to tell you what it was, but but I don't trust my memory anymore.

So, Malcolm Gladwell is here.

Hello, Malcolm.

How are you?

Hey, Glenn.

I'm doing very well.

I thank you for your podcast.

There's just so great.

Oh, thank you.

That's very kind of you.

I've been thinking about you a lot lately because of the Kavanaugh hearings and everything else.

And I don't want to get into the Kavanaugh hearings.

What I do want to talk about is our memory and how it can be changed, manipulated, how it's natural for these things to happen.

I mean, you explained the Brian Williams story in

such

a different way, because you didn't condemn him and you didn't exonerate him.

You just said, let's look at the facts on memory.

Yeah.

Can you take us through it?

Yeah, the so memory is something that in the last generation,

psychologists have spent an enormous and neurologists have spent an enormous time

amount of work and effort trying to understand how it works.

And the more we learn about memory, the more we realize how fallible it is.

And we more, and when we systematically go back and we test our memories, we find they don't do very well.

So there's a famous set of studies that are called flashbolt studies where a famous event happens, 9-11.

the Challenger explosion.

And you go to a large group of people, the incident happens, and you say tell me everything you were doing thinking

on the moment when you heard that news where were you who did you talk to first how did you feel you know what happened that day and then they go back to the same group of people a year later five years later ten years later and they ask them the same set of questions and they compare their answers and lo and behold what you discover is that not everyone but many of the people substantially alter their memories of the event without realizing it.

In other words, they are, the first time they'll say, when I heard, when I saw the towers fall, I was standing in the streets of Manhattan with my best friend Jim, tears streaming down my face.

And then ten years later they'll say, when I first heard the towers fall, I was watching it on television in my dorm room.

And I ran out, you know, and then I ran and called my friend Jim, who was in Boston.

And they're as convinced 10 years later that that's what their memory was

as they were the first time they they they related their memories on the day of the of 9-11.

And so that kind of stuff, my point in doing the Brian Williams thing was when you understand how fallible memory is, you are a lot more forgiving of what he did.

He did something which turns out a lot of us do all the time, which is we make what's called a time slice error.

We confuse the timeline in our minds, and

we think we're one place when something happened and we're in another place or some we've heard a story been told so many times that we slowly incorporate ourselves into the story without realizing that we're doing it and my my point was that these are not sins of character these are these are just facts of human memory and we so often want to make someone's faulty memory into a test of their

of their character.

And I think that's a mistake.

There are people who deliberately lie, absolutely, but a lot of what we think might be deliberate lying is just a manifestation of the

frailty of human memory.

So I really don't want to get into politics on this, but I do want to ask you this question to see if the way I'm

when I when I finished with the hearings last week, I felt, okay, I think she believes that.

And it may have happened that way.

I don't know.

And I felt Brett Kavanaugh, I believe he believes that.

They both could be telling the absolute truth, correct?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

They both, I don't think either of them are deliberately lying.

I think, I mean,

the

thing about memory is that we may honestly believe that this is what happened, even though it isn't.

You know, my best friend Bruce, I honestly believe I met him on the first day of first grade.

I can picture it in my mind he honestly believes that we met in the principal's office at the end of first grade and we didn't we didn't even meet throughout that entire year right this is one of the most important events of my life my best friend and we are off by eight months right and he thinks we met because we we had got into a fight and I think he came up to me and introduced himself and we were best friends you know from the beginning like I you know I am I'm not lying about it it's what I remember, but one of us completely made up that memory from Holocaust.

In fact, when you were talking about the 9-11 study, there were people who came back 10 years later.

They wrote out,

you know, within a few days, if I'm not mistaken, was it a few days or was it a year after 9-11?

The original writing, well, the original time, they went to the next day.

Okay, so the next day, they asked them to write out exactly where they were, what happened.

Ten years later, some of them said, I don't know why I even wrote that.

This is a lie.

This is not what happened.

I don't know why I was lying then.

And they were convinced, somehow or another, they made something up that was different than what they knew to be true now.

Yeah.

People,

one of the most important things that memory researchers will tell you is you cannot confuse confidence with accuracy.

In other words, the fact that I am absolutely certain that

what happened happened is not a reliable guide to its accuracy.

So I am convinced I met my friend Bruce on the first day.

That does not mean it's more likely to be true than if I said, you know,

if I expressed it with more doubt.

So I think what it a lot of what this, the lesson of all of this is, is that we just need to approach our memories,

and not just our memories, our entire lives, with a lot more humility.

You can't

we're not our brains are not Superman.

We don't have a video recorder up there taking down everything perfectly.

And we need to when I say I remembered something one way, I need to be I need to check it.

I need to talk to others.

I need to be open to the possibility I might be wrong.

I need to that's why we have legal systems and investigators and right to compensate for the fact that our memories are not what we would like them to be.

Everyone outside, let's take it outside of this political nightmare.

This Me Too movement, I think, has been very good.

On whole, it's been very good.

I am concerned about the

women need to be believed.

I don't care if it's a man or a woman.

No, they need to be heard and taken seriously.

But we can't just believe what someone says for a myriad of reasons.

And I fear it's dangerous, this road that we're going down, because

we need more than just your word and your memory, because

you might believe that's true, but it might not be.

Yeah.

Well, so it's funny.

This is exactly the point that Ronan Farrell, you know, the

the journalist who has been responsible more responsible than anyone else for breaking these Me Too stories.

I went to see him give

a public interview, and he was interviewing the actress who was the source, I've forgotten her name, of course, because my memory is very faulty, the actress who is the source of many of the MeToo allegations.

And they were talking about this very point.

And he very explicitly said, my job as a journalist is not to believe the women.

It is to to listen to them and then try and corroborate through careful reporting those aspects of their story that are

corroborate their stories through careful reporting.

And if I can't corroborate them, then I can't write the story, right?

My job as a reporter is to compensate for the frailty of human memory.

And that is a beautiful

way of expressing what the responsibility of media investigators is in these cases, is okay, someone has gone clearly believed they've gone through something very traumatic let's systematically try and figure out

did it happen that way and if it didn't happen that way let us not then judge the person and say they're a liar

right that's the crucial part when it's like it is we we can't lose our humanity over this We have to say, we have to say if we do an investigation and it's not the way that person says, we have to very respectfully say,

you have, you, like all of us, have a memory that is imperfect.

That would be wonderful if we lived in that world.

But Malcolm, I'm so concerned that, and you've said it now twice, and

it's what made me successful in the first place.

And I am so glad that I have discovered how dangerous it is.

Certitude.

We are a population that is certain about

everything.

And it's good to have a core set of beliefs and principles, but you must be open to hear new information and other information that doesn't give you

what is it, cognitive dissidence is good.

It's good.

That's a sign that something in you isn't quite right.

Don't shout your way through it.

Step back and go, okay, which one of these two don't fit with the principle I believe?

Do I need to change the principle or do I need to throw out that information that I'm now acting on?

Right?

Yeah.

But

people don't want to do that.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny.

I had a conversation last night with a friend of mine.

who was a Mormon and who was talking about the tradition

among Mormons of keeping journals, which I had not known about.

And she had years and years and years of journals.

And she was talking about what that means for when you have a contemporaneous account of

your life, your feelings, your actions, your interpretations of what you've done, you can go back and

it obviously serves a function far greater than simply checking your memory.

But it's a way of keeping yourself honest.

And what I loved about that was that notion of if we live in such a kind of difficult and flawed world, then we have to take responsibility for our own stories.

And that, to me, is

what that tradition of keeping a journal is about.

It says, as a human being, you have a responsibility to yourself and to others to understand the road that you have taken.

And write it down so that when you, 20 years later, you can look back and you say,

I had forgotten.

I did this then.

Maybe I regret it now, or maybe I've learned from it.

But

that, to me, I just thought that was lovely.

I really did.

I thought that was

an example of a kind of

a practice.

And you obviously know much more about this than I do, but the idea that that is part of what it means to be a righteous actor in the world is to take your history seriously.

Have you heard from Brian Williams since your podcast?

No, no, I have.

I'm sure I will run.

One day I will run into him.

And I mean,

he can't publicly say, that's true.

That's great.

Poor man.

I think he was like, part of him, I'm sure, was like, I can't believe he's bringing this up again.

Malcolm, thank you so much for being on the program.

I really appreciate it.

Pleasure is all of us.

You bet.

Malcolm Gladwell.

You can follow him on Twitter at Gladwell.

And also, if you have not heard this podcast, it is so relevant for what we're going through right now.

Especially listen to, I wish I would have asked him about the German,

the spies.

Oh my gosh, that's a great story.

But listen to the one, it's a two-part about the German spies.

Listen, just even start with the Brian Williams.

And you will see, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

No,

do not believe people on their memory alone.

Take them seriously.

Season three, episode three and four are the two that you're talking about.

It really isn't.

And the Brian Williams thing was incredible because I 100% just thought he was just trying to lie to make himself look better.

And when you look at the way he did it and all the details around it, it will at least make you uneasy about that conclusion.

You know what?

I always say, do something this week that makes you uncomfortable.

Listen to this because it will, especially if you think that Brian Williams, absolutely, he's just a pig.

Listen to this because it it will challenge you.

And you, if you're honest with yourself, will go, well, wait a minute, I'm not quite sure.

And if you're really honest, you'll go, gee, I wonder how much of that has happened with me.

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