Best of the Program | 9/13/18

The Blaze Radio Network.

On demand.

It is Stu, along with Glenn Beck.

Welcome to the podcast.

Yes.

Today we look at a brand new financial crisis.

Yes, we are around the corner.

No, not just one.

Two.

Not just two.

Three.

What would you say if I could give you four giant crashes in the economy?

Yes.

It's just amazing.

And we'll give you the details on that.

Hopefully that does not hit us.

Looks like Hurricane Florence is about to hit North Carolina.

We get into some of the details and how you can help.

Mercury1.org, please make a donation.

Do that, please.

Aaron Watson is going to come on.

He's talking a little bit about the hurricane as well.

He's, of course, country music superstar.

We also go into, we have Mike Rowe on today, which is pretty

cool.

Great.

He had a hugely viral response to the Colin Kaepernick ad.

And also, his mom

is basically besting him in life.

And we discuss how he deals with that.

I don't know how we're going to contain all of the good stuff in one hour

because we had Andrew Heaton talking about Norm McDonald and what happened with Jimmy Fallon.

We also had Pat Boone just popped in.

Yeah.

Talking about, at the time, he was the competition against Elvis.

He's bigger than Elvis for.

And bigger than Elvis in the 50s.

He explains that.

Yeah.

It's an amazing move through history on today's podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Glen Beck program.

It's Thursday, September 13th.

Glenn Beck.

Exactly 10 years ago this week, all of our lives changed.

On Tuesday, our attention, rightly so, was focused on what happened 17 years ago, the week of 9-11.

But seven years later, on September 15th, Lehman Brothers collapsed, kicking off the 2008 financial crisis.

New York City, again, ground zero for another tragedy.

The shockwave reverberated across all of the globe.

We were told, and I believe, that the entire financial system of the Western world was on the ropes.

The question that we should be asking ourselves this week.

One,

when it comes to Islamic extremism, are we better or worse than we were

17 years ago?

Are we even addressing the problem?

Can we even talk about the problem?

Two,

after a decade of trying to fix the banking system, could this happen again?

Have we fixed things or made it worse?

Are we even talking about it?

Some people say the record amounts of global and corporate debt will trigger the next crash.

Some say a global currency crisis is about to explode.

And that will be the cause.

Others fear that it's protectionism and tariffs.

To be honest, all of these things could trigger a next crash.

Each scenario has the potential to make what happened in 2008 seem like a slight road bump.

Imagine if all of these scenarios happened one domino at a time.

It would be a catastrophe beyond anything the world has ever experienced.

But I haven't even mentioned the biggest scenario, the most likely scenario.

A collapse of the bond market.

A collapse of everyone's retirement fund.

There are so many scenarios out there, and experts are even more worried about

something that I really didn't take seriously.

I didn't think anyone else was taking seriously.

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation.

They provide clearing and settlement for financial markets here in the U.S.

They released a report outlining their number one fear.

Their number one fear?

Cyber warfare.

All of the scenarios I've just laid laid out are all likely.

And on the last one, there are not just a few people worried.

A few months ago, the government published a similar report, drawing the same conclusions.

The number one fear is cyber warfare.

These findings came from the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury.

This isn't some kooky, you know, hare-brained conspiracy theory.

Both the government and private business thinks a cyber attack will be the root cause of a global crash.

This is kind of big news.

How is this information not being reported all over the country this week?

Oh, because Bob Woodward's book is out.

The report details how a nation-state cyber attack will begin by targeting what's called systematically important financial institutions.

These are banks like the Bank of America, JP Morgan, or the bank formerly known as Lehman Brothers.

But they can also be giant hedge funds or insurance companies like AIG.

The Lehman Brothers collapse was the first shot of the 2008 crash.

And experts are now saying something similar will happen during the next one.

The big one, as they're now calling it.

A hostile country like China, Russia, or even North Korea would trigger a run on one or multiple systematically important institutions.

From there, the global system would begin to unravel just as it did before.

But this time, it would happen as a global and corporate debt scheme is at record levels.

As global currency crisis brewing, with a trade war escalating,

all between the two largest economies in the world,

we should probably take a moment and talk about things that are real.

Technology is changing.

It's changing the world like never before.

We are on the cusp of something profound, and it will be profoundly devastating

and or

profoundly marvelous.

Some of it's going to be spectacular.

Some of it is going to be horrifying and extraordinarily destructive.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

So, some good news for South Carolina, kind of, and North Carolina.

The hurricane has been downgraded from yesterday.

We were thinking yesterday at this time, it might be a category five.

However, the storm surge is what they're worried about now.

Not necessarily the winds.

But this thing is coming onshore, and it's a storm surge of anywhere from, what is it, 6 to 16 feet, something like that.

And that will cause flooding everywhere.

So lots of damage.

If you can help,

yesterday we sent out a couple hundred semi-tractor trailers.

I think we had about 250 of them on the road yesterday.

They had supplies, water, you know, chainsaws, heavy equipment, everything that you would need to be able to start to dig out of something like this.

Those trucks are already parked and out of the way of danger, but ready to go in as soon as things settle down.

We also have

Operation BBQ, which is this great charity that we've done all kinds of work.

They just got out of California for the wildfires, and now they're headed over for the opposite for too much water.

They feed about 30,000 meals every single day,

and we are supporting them.

We need your help.

If you would like to help, please make a donation to mercury1.org.

Mercury1.org.

We are always

the first in and the last to leave, and we could really use your help.

Mercury1.org, make a donation.

We have Aaron Watson on the phone because he's doing something for

still the hurricane victims in Texas because everybody has kind of moved on, but a lot of people in Texas have not been able to move on yet.

Aaron Watson, country music superstar.

How are you, Aaron?

I'm good.

It's great to hear your voice.

Yeah, good to hear you.

Well, I good.

I hear your voice all the time because I listen to your music, but you know, you could listen to the show and you could hear my voice.

Well, I was just trying to be friendly, you know.

You know,

I'm a big fan.

Yeah, I know, I'm good.

Good to hear from you, brother.

Yeah, good to hear from you.

Now, what are you doing?

Because you just put out a new CD,

if you even call them that now.

And

it's your rodeo CD, right?

Yeah, so we recorded our performance at the Houston Rodeo back in 2017, and we were planning on putting it out

about the time that the hurricane hit

the

Texas coast.

And we just kind of put it on the back burner.

We just didn't feel like promoting an album while, you know, such a large part of the state was going through

such a tough time.

So we really just kind of put it on the back shelf.

And at some point, I thought we would never even put the album out.

Like, it just kind of missed its opportunity.

But then we thought, you know what?

We could put this album out on the one-year anniversary of when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and all along the south Texas coast.

And we could use that to raise some money for those 41 counties that were affected.

You know, when there's billions of dollars of damage and millions of people affected, 12 months later,

you know, the mess isn't cleaned up.

So we just thought it'd be a great opportunity for us to uh to give back.

All right, so what are you doing?

You're for every for every download sold, what

how much goes?

It's a dollar forty-one.

And we we did the dollar forty-one just to let people know that there's there's forty-one counties that were affected.

I mean, I I don't think people understand just how big Texas is, but those 41 counties are probably larger than a lot of states.

Yes.

And so, you know,

we did a show down in Houston

a couple weeks back when we released the album.

And just, it's crazy.

There's still people who have not got to move back into their homes.

So we're trying to raise some money and also raise awareness and let people know there's still folks out there that need some help.

Yeah.

So Aaron Watson, if you don't know who Aaron Watson is and you're a country music fan, you are missing something great.

He is a great, great

entertainer.

And his music is, I mean, right from the heart.

It's just really good stuff.

I was going to say, I want to make sure I'm accurate on that.

Yes, my favorite country music artist is Aaron Watson.

I love it.

And

this is a great

recording of,

I mean, if you're in country, you know the Houston rodeo is the best.

And we applaud you for doing this, Aaron.

Well, man, I tell you what, you know, when I got to play your Mercury One event, it's very inspiring.

I mean, it can be overwhelming that the world has so much need out there, but you guys,

you never flinch.

You just keep on giving back, and you keep on finding ways to help people out.

So I just want to commend you guys for the example that you're setting for all of us.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Aaron, well, AaronWatson.com.

AaronWatson.com.

You can buy it on, I assume you can buy it on, you know, iTunes or wherever else.

iTunes, Amazon.

You know,

it's got 14 tracks.

And I'll tell you this, I recorded one, there's one song on there, Glenn, that's not live.

During the hurricane,

I wrote a song called Higher Ground because while there was all this

controversy a year ago, and there still is, of, you know, whether it's politics or whatever, there's all, you turn on the news and it's bad news and bad news and bad news.

I wrote this song Higher Ground

because

I was really inspired by the way people were coming together down along the South Texas coast and helping each other out.

Different colors, races, religions.

You know, they were showing each other kindness.

And it really set a great example for all of us.

Like, you know what, we're all on the same team here.

So let's...

Let's show each other love.

So I wrote that song just kind of in honor of everyone who's been through these tough times.

Yeah.

Thank you very much, Aaron.

I appreciate it.

AaronWatson.com.

Aaron, thanks for your help.

You know, it's amazing that it was a year ago, isn't it?

Isn't that wild?

I mean, in some ways, it seems like yesterday.

In other ways, it seems like 1,400 years ago.

It really does.

It's, you know, and

next week there's another hurricane or another something.

So, man, thanks for all you do, brother.

Got it.

Thanks, Aaron.

If you also would like to donate, we could really use your help at mercury1.org.

We are so deep in so many things right now.

And it's all because of you, mercuryone.org.

Oh, really?

It's all because of you.

It's all because of global warming.

That's what it's because of.

You know, thank you for saying it.

Warming.

Well, no, it's not.

No, no, no.

It's not because of global warming.

May I pardon me?

No.

May I.

Do you deny her?

No, no, no.

Listen to me.

Okay.

It's because of Donald Trump.

Yes.

Okay.

Now

is not doing enough about global warming.

Yes.

You know, man, if he just would, if California would have banned straws a couple weeks earlier, North Carolina would be fine.

Man.

I was, I decided to go over to the New York Times, see how their coverage was going for the hurricane today, and they had three updates.

Two of them were about global warming.

Now, every time a snowstorm comes in, they say you can't

snowstorm in a time where it's not supposed to be snowy.

They say, well, of course, you can't blame any individual storm on global warming.

That's crazy.

Because every hurricane.

Every time there's a hurricane, there are stories blaming that individual storm on global warming.

Even though hurricanes are down.

Yeah, down overall.

Obviously, we went through, what, 15 years without hitting any major hurricanes really hitting the United States.

But now that we've had a couple years now with big ones, we're going to get this pushy.

And by the way, this is going to hit ground likely as a category two.

Right.

So a big one?

Right.

No, you know why this is big?

You know why this is causing so much damage?

It's because the federal government said that they would start to cover insurance for homes on the water.

Before then,

you couldn't get insurance.

So people didn't build stuff by the water.

If you were really, really wealthy and you were like, ah, if my home is destroyed, I'll just build another one, you'd build your house there.

But as soon as we said, as taxpayers, I'm sorry, as soon as the government said, as taxpayers, we will just take the money from them and give it to the people who are building their homes right on the water,

all kinds of communities sprung up.

And we're on the hook for it every single year.

Now, we have to be there to help people, but please don't tell me that that when a category two comes ashore, that this is because of global warming.

No, it's not.

Category 2s are not uncommon.

Category 4s aren't uncommon.

And in the last 117 years, since 1900, okay, from 1900 to 2017, the trend of both hurricanes hitting in continental United States and major hurricanes, because the concept, both of those, the trend is down, down.

It's not huge, a huge decrease, but it is a decrease.

And even if it's flat, right?

The concept is, of course, that it's not that at first they said they were going to be larger and more frequent.

Then when they realized the science didn't support the more frequent thing at all, they said larger.

And this is what they were doing with Florence.

They were saying, look, the water's warmer.

And the water is warmer.

And the reason, you know, that means it's going to strengthen all the way to the coast and it's going to be this gigantic hurricane.

Now we're seeing the opposite happening where it's actually breaking apart and it's going down to a category two.

There's still going to be some major problems for major problems.

This does not mean, hey, okay, I guess I'll stay at home on the coast in the outer banks.

It's still not a good idea.

But the point is when it comes to global warming is now they're saying, well, now it's the extra rainfall.

They just keep picking up these different arguments when the last one fails.

Well, even major hurricanes are down since 1900.

Major hurricanes.

If they were getting stronger, then you would not have that as true.

But yet it is what is actually happening.

And of course, the cost is solely because, as you point out, people are building on the shore a lot more.

They're not only building on the shore, they're building on the shore in large homes that are obviously waterfront property, so very expensive.

And then when those things come in and they do have problems, the cost is astronomical compared to what it used to be.

There's a graphic that's been floating around social media, which is amazing.

just showing the difference in development of North Carolina from the way in 1954 the hurricane hit and what it is today.

I mean, it's.

And you think about it.

When people used to have things on the beach or, you know, on the waterfront, they used to be like cabins.

They would be like a little summer cabin.

Now they're these giant, you know, multi-million dollar structures.

Yep.

And even, yeah, and they're really expensive and they're bigger and there's more stuff in them.

For example, since the 1970s, the average home, not just the ones on the water, but the average home in the United States has increased by 1,000 square feet.

Now, back in the day, the home I grew up in was about 1,000 square feet total.

The average house now is over 2,500 square feet.

And what they're, I mean, think about how much more.

It's newer stuff.

It's more expensive.

It's by the water.

And it's double the size.

So all of these things combine to, of course, when these things hit, there's a lot more damage.

The insurance shouldn't be as cheap and subsidized by the government.

It should be more difficult to acquire because if that were true, people would take more risk assessment into their decision to move to the water.

And look, I think it's totally your right to go to the water.

But, you know, the idea that the government should be subsidizing people's multi-million dollar beach homes is not crazy.

It's not even that.

It's not even that the government is doing it.

It's that I am.

I don't have a waterfront property.

You know,

and I could afford one.

I don't.

Why, why not?

Well, I mean, I know somebody who bought something down in Galveston a year before this storm came in.

Okay?

I mean, they were flooded a couple of weeks ago.

They were hit by a hurricane.

I don't want the hassle.

But the government should not be bailing out.

I shouldn't be taking money from your paycheck for you to pay for my insurance.

No, no.

It's a bad policy.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

Hi, it's Glenn.

If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes?

If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time.

You can subscribe on iTunes.

Thanks.

Cake bakers, quarterbacks, dresses, statues.

Much of America is getting outraged for outrage's sake.

And with all of the non-stop outrage coverage, we're actually missing out on the stuff we should be outraged about.

It's time to put the bottle down and end our bender.

In my new book, Addicted to Outrage, I talk about how thinking like an addict or a recovering alcoholic can actually help heal the country.

Addicted to Outrage.

On sale Tuesday, wherever books are sold.

Right now we have Cal Turner Jr.

on.

He is the author of the book, My Father's Business, and his father's business is the

Dollar General stores.

And Cal, welcome to the program.

I want to start right here on page, I think it's 38.

I was 15 when my dad took the step that changed everything.

It involved the kind of creative leap that comes all along too rarely and ultimately left a huge mark on American businesses.

Tell me about your dad and his idea.

My dad was amazing, Glenn.

And he, being from the country, thought he should stay on top of what was going on in in the city and he noticed that in Nashville and Louisville a lot of expensive newspaper advertising was done monthly to promote dollar days

and everything priced at a dollar and he thought wow wouldn't that be a wonderful opportunity for us in our stores in the country to have dollar stores

and it would be a way to give real value to people at prices they could keep up with in the store.

So you because you write in the book that

he saw what he saw was the expense of a full-page ad.

So if you've got dollar days going on, they must be pulling in a ton of business to pay for just that ad,

let alone to make money.

And when he went to his staff, they said,

they unanimous, Glenn.

They were unanimous.

It won't work.

That's crazy.

You know what's crazy?

When I read your book, I love this.

I just love this line.

Your father said, we have to sell everything in the store for a dollar.

I know in some cases.

Now, I'm thinking, you know,

what are you going to get for a dollar?

In some cases, it has to be multiples, like three plates or two pairs of socks for a dollar, but nothing would cost more.

Well, he had some things that were actually $20 for a dollar, but I can't remember the idea.

Yeah,

now you need $20

for one item.

I meant $20 for $1.

I know, I know.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

So they didn't want to do it, and so he said, let's just take our worst store, right?

Absolutely.

Take our loser.

And if it becomes a winner under this new format, we have something to build on.

So, what was it about your dad?

I mean, your grandfather sounds a lot like my grandfather.

He was just a dirt farmer, third-grade education,

you know,

came up all through the Depression.

Your grandfather became an entrepreneur.

Mine became a machinist for Boeing.

But,

I mean, they came from simple people.

What was it that made your dad

different?

Well,

what I celebrate is what was the same in those, in the wonderful grounding of my grandfather and of my father,

which translated

to my generation also.

There is

something there to build on.

There is a hardworking ethic.

It is a believing in other people

and the opportunity to build something with other people who can become your partners.

Do you think that spirit exists now, Cal?

I think the spirit exists, yes.

I think the

discourse at large is

largely negative, but that spirit exists out there, certainly in the heartland of America where those Dollar General stores are.

Tell me about the mission statement of Dollar General.

Well, we came up with a mission statement that really got the company going, and it was only two words, Glenn.

Serving others.

Life is about others.

It's not about me.

It's not about us.

What can we do to make a difference in the lives of others?

What do these small stores in these rural areas afford us as an opportunity to serve struggling people?

And

we do have salt of the earth people who shop in the dollar general stores, and we have learned so much from them, Glenn.

Genius is not in the cities, it's out there in the countries, and it's in the heart of good people.

you know the the number one um

I've talked to people who teach at Wharton and they have said they're having a hard time teaching ethics because they will lay out these case studies and they'll say this company made this and they made this decision and

and they're they're trying to teach ethics and they'll say they'll turn it over to the students all right so where do we begin and invariably the first question is,

well, did they make money?

And the professors

are starting to be a little frustrated because they're like, no, no, no.

No, we're talking about ethics.

Ethically, whether they made money or lost money, ethically is this right.

And it's being tied now to success or failure.

Well.

I don't think you teach ethics.

I think you learn it from life and from others.

And when we adopted that two-word mission statement, Glenn, serving others, we had the basis of applied ethics in retailing.

So,

why now?

What inspired you to write this book about your dad now?

Well,

it took me two years to be convinced to do it, and then doing it took six years.

But

it has dawned on me as I do my retrospective on life

that there are very few CEOs who have over 30 years in that job in the same company.

And

perhaps sharing the lessons learned from all of that

help others.

And we went through so many

different cycles in the company.

We went through ups and downs.

What's the biggest thing?

What's the biggest thing, Cal, that you learned in all of the ups and downs, everything that you have seen from your dad and from you?

What is the biggest thing that

an entrepreneur needs to learn first?

Well, an

entrepreneur needs to understand

his own core values and

what his greatest opportunity in life is

to serve others.

You're not here for yourself.

You're here for others.

Your greatest opportunity is in serving others and partnering with others in doing that.

And

my dad, dad, as an entrepreneur, was of the old school Glenn, and it was more retailing was more of a dog eat dog world back then.

And he his

belief was that he should only expect the competition to do

just everything to him that the competition could do.

It's a fight out there.

And I came into the business pursuing my calling.

And

excuse me.

There's time

nothing worse than somebody coming into the room, distracting you in your middle of a point.

Go ahead, Cal.

Well, is that your wife?

Yes, that was, that was, that was, that was Margaret.

Yes,

say, say hi to Margaret.

I came, okay.

All right.

I came into the business, Glenn,

pursuing my calling because I wrestled with whether to go into the ministry and I

discerned that the greatest ministry opportunities in the real world, perhaps not in the church, at least for me, and it was in that business where we could help struggling people to have a better life.

And

I was very moved by the customers that came into a Dollar General store.

I waited on an old, smelly, dirty farmer who was making a sacrificial purchase of a pair of 39-cent panties for the old lady.

And

I got a real message

from that farmer that

there are a lot of people out there who are having a hard time making ends meet, and they could use help.

Cal,

and they come into our store.

I just love it.

You remind me so much of my grandfather and my family.

I just

love it.

Cal Turner.

That's a compliment.

It is, sir.

Cal Turner Jr., author of My Father's Business.

You find it at Amazon or wherever, myfathersbusinessbook.com.

Cal Jr.

from the

Dollar General store.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

I'm a little confused because my phone screen says that it's Michael Rowe that is on the phone.

I've never had to call him Michael before, but I don't know if he, that's it, is his assistant, so insistence.

So, so, Mr.

Michael Rowe, how are you, sir?

Indeed, Mr.

You know what?

Let's go with Mr.

Micro, Glenn.

Mr.

Micro.

Okay, Mr.

Micro.

How are you, Mike?

I'm great, man.

How are you?

I'm great.

I'm just thinking of the times, you know, early on in our relationship when you were sitting in my studio and you said, this Facebook thing, should I have a Facebook page?

I'm like, yes.

Yes, you should.

You literally leaned in and kind of looked over your shoulder just to make sure nobody was listening and said, I would if I were you.

So

you just on Tuesday had, I think it was like 280,000 likes on a posting where,

you know, I guess it could be portrayed as your takedown of Kaepernick, but that's not what it was at all.

It was, it was instead a look at a hero.

You want to explain how this happened and

what you did?

Well,

as you know, you get a sort of a critical mass of people at some point, and the tail starts to wag the dog vis-a-vis social media.

And you got 5 million people there, and they look at the headlines, and a lot of them assume that I'm sort of standing by to weigh in on anything that's remotely controversial.

And of course, you can't really run a foundation and be that guy.

So I'm not.

But you also

have to say something at some point if the thing really bubbles up.

So the thing with Kaepernick and Nike was what it was.

But of course, everything sort of landed on 9-11 and people were saying, you know, say something about this already.

And I looked at the ad, really looked at it for the first time.

And look, I don't, Colin Kaepernick is free to protest whatever he wants, however he wants.

And Nike is certainly free to elevate any opinion they feel like.

It's still America.

But

it was the words on the ad.

It was the sacrifice everything part.

And I just thought, hmm, landing on 9-11, that's a hell of a thing.

And the question that I answered wasn't, you know, what do you think about the underlying protests or anything else?

It was, from a marketing standpoint, what do you think of the ad?

You know,

is it a good idea from a marketing standpoint?

And I said, well, it's a confusing idea from a marketing standpoint because you've chosen a guy that half the people in the country don't really relate to in terms of what a hero could be or ought to be.

And especially this time of year.

You know, that ad came out early in September, and here we are at September 11th.

And I just thought of Tom Burnett, you know, the guy that was on flight 93, who was instrumental in leading that revolt.

And I remembered the transcripts I had read years ago between he and his wife.

And I googled them, and there they were.

So I posted his final conversation and just politely said that if it were me, I might have gone another way.

And for whatever reason, you know, I went out, I went to work, I came home.

And yeah,

10 million people had seen the thing.

And

we were having ourselves a conversation.

Yeah, it was.

And, you know, I'd read that years ago, but I had forgotten how intense.

That conversation was and how his wife said, no, please, don't, no, sit down.

don't, don't draw attention to yourself.

And he said,

Yeah, yeah, for Delta, yeah, yeah.

And uh, he said, Honey, I've we've got to do something, uh, and we're just waiting for a, an open space, and we're gonna rush.

It's it's well, that's the ultimate irony, Glenn.

I mean, you know, you're you're talking about a Nike campaign that's built on a slogan that says, just do it.

His last words to his wife, we're going to do something.

And

that's what hit me.

It's like, good grief.

I mean,

that's not a slogan.

That's not marketing.

That's the thing.

Look, I felt the same thing a few years ago.

Remember when the guys on the train took down the terrorist, unarmed?

They charged a man with an automatic weapon.

And the thing about these moments is

it's not the enormity of the tragedy.

It's the micro element of it.

It's the smallness of it.

What would you do, glenn beck aisle seat halfway back you know what would you do and anybody who's ever been on a plane or a train uh needs to think about that question because it's the ultimate personal question and it's horribly relatable we've all been in that we've all been in that circumstance if not that exact situation and We should ask, especially on 9-11, you know, who are we?

What would we have done?

It's a gut check.

Mike, let me ask you something else.

I just think this is fantastic.

Bob Woodward has now broken all kinds of sales records.

Biggest,

fastest-selling book, I think, in 93-year history for the publishing company.

But

there has been a slight glitch on the radar screen.

Your mother.

There was.

It was your mother was actually beating him in sales for a few hours.

For the better part of a day.

That's crazy.

My mother, what happened is

my mother's been writing me stories for years.

And a couple of years ago, I started reading them on Facebook.

And one of those stories reached 128 million people.

Publishers.

obviously called and said, look, if your mom writes a story about raising the dirty jobs guy, it's a guaranteed bestseller.

I said, mom, you want to write a book?

She says, what's it about?

I told her she said you know I have two other sons doesn't seem right I'm like

write the book write the book she's like well

let me noodle on it she goes away six months later she comes back she's written 14 terrific stories I'm not in any of them they're all about her mother and they're delightful but it's not what a publisher would want right so I print the things.

I print 10,000 copies.

They sell out in a week and a half.

Now the publishers come back.

I make a deal with Simon ⁇ Schuster.

My mom's book is going to hit the stands in November.

That's the backstory.

I announced this a couple of days ago over the weekend, and the Amazon site crashes.

She went from number 2 million to number 25,

and then they couldn't take any more orders.

So the Barnes ⁇ Noble site...

was still working.

And so everybody went there who wanted her book.

And her book, which is fundamentally about hope, it's called About My Mother, beat a book called Fear.

I'm not sure what it's about, but I'm pretty sure I can.

So I just, I couldn't help myself, Glenn.

I took a picture of it and I sent it to my mom.

And then I called her on the way to church and I filmed our conversation in the car.

I'm like, mom, you're.

you're beating fear.

Hope is beating fear on a Sunday afternoon.

And I put that up on the Facebooks and then off we go.

Crazy world.

That is great.

Well, I just wrote a book, and it's all about you.

It's called Addicted to Outrage.

And you have to read between the lines to find the parts about you, but it's all really about you, Mike.

So you can mention that at any time.

I appreciate it.

I'm going to post it immediately.

Give Amazon a heads up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

You live in a

you live, you walk a tightrope every day because things

everything

now is political and you have done with micro works you have done such great stuff way ahead of of the news cycle where we're all looking at universities and going we don't need that debt that you know if apple uh even google now saying we don't need a uh we don't need a university diploma uh to to work here we're just going to see what you're doing uh and you were on this and called a madman for so long.

On top of that,

everything now is about politics and you just refuse to get involved, which I commend you.

How do you do it?

You know,

I'm not sure I've done it as successfully as you're saying.

I think I get a little on me because you can't talk about education and you can't talk about work without being completely immune, right?

I mean, work leads to labor.

Labor is unions unions is is politics right so that that that's a pretty quick trip but but in a very general way it cuts the other way too um everyone understands work because work is one of the few truly relatable things we all need to experience how we define it is completely up to us and the value we assign to various forms of education is completely within our control.

So Microworks turned 10 this

day.

I swear, Glenn, I remember talking to you about it not long after we launched it.

I know.

It was brand new.

And it's still modest by foundation standards.

We've done about $5 million in work ethic scholarships.

But

the opportunity to use social and the opportunity to keep the conversation moving.

I got kind of tired of hearing people saying, you know, we need to have a conversation.

Well, true.

In this case, though, we have to talk about debt.

We have to talk about $1.5 trillion in college loans.

We have to talk about 6.6 million jobs still open, 75% of which don't require a degree.

And we have to stop with this idea that following your passion is the only way to wind up passionate and doing something you love.

It's nonsense.

And

look, the millennials are a fun target, right?

I mean, the crying closets and the safe spaces and all these other things, but we're the

like the whole snowflake mentality, I said to somebody the other day, we're the we're the clouds from which these snowflakes fell.

And it's kind of, it's kind of on us.

You know, we're putting pressure on 18-year-old kids to borrow money that we don't even have to lend them, but we give it to them anyway, knowing they're never going to be able to pay it back, educating them for jobs that don't really exist anymore.

Right.

So, yeah, we better have a conversation.

Yeah.

Mike, I'd love to have you back sometime and spend

your free tomorrow.

I'm not.

I'm not.

But maybe your mom is.

Maybe your mom is.

You know something?

Your listeners would love her.

Oh, I bet.

She's sassy and highly caffeinated.

How would she and highly caffeinated?

How is she as an as an interview?

Has anybody interviewed her yet?

She's terrific, Glenn.

She's been upstaging me my whole career.

I've put her in every show I'm in.

She's on returning the favor.

She's in somebody's got to do it.

She's on old episodes of Dirty Job.

We might ask her to come on.

Is that a good thing or would that be too shameful for you?

Because if it is, we're definitely doing it.

Well, it would be deeply humiliating for, I think, all of us, but

let me run it up the flagpost that she reaches at least.

No, she's got it.

She's got a publicist now, Glenn.

Oh, she does?

Okay.

Agent.

So

there may be some maneuvering.

Well, if my people can talk to your people who can talk to her people, we can maybe work that out.

Mike, thank you so much.

If somebody writes a book about your book, send it to her.

I'll read that book to her.

Send her book to you.

Okay.

And then it'll be great.

It'll be fantastic.

Mike, as always, good to talk to you.

Thank you so much.

Mike Rowe from Mike Row Works.

We should totally talk to the real talent in the Rowe family at some point.

I would love.

That would be great.

You get Mike Rowe's mom on.

Oh, yeah.

And we should just keep him on on hold while that's going on.

Hey, how are things going there?

Mike, enjoying this?

Can you imagine having your mom on national radio?

Oh, my God.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Question?

I'm going to move this forward with Andrew Heaton, who is with us now, who's from Reason.com, and I think...

One of the funniest guys on the internet.

You just did something, was it this week?

It was last Friday.

We did one of the Kavanaugh hearings.

Gosh, that's funny.

Thank you.

You took all of the quotes from that madness you set in as Kavanaugh.

And who's your partner on this?

He'll be Austin.

Well, there's two.

There's Austin Bragg, who's on camera, and there's Meredith Bragg, who's off camera.

But Austin is this

wonderful human that just sort of embodies smoldering anger.

And so we do well working together because I've got this almost like, I'm going to sell you life insurance optimism thing going for me.

And he's got that.

And we took, I mean, I think, I think the operative word in that particular episode was grandstanding.

As I mentioned to you guys earlier, when I am Senate Judiciary Chairman, I think two or three years from now, I'm going to call on people in the order they're not running for president.

I'm going to strap senior wording

because it was very apparent to me who was running for president and who wasn't.

It was agonizing.

Do you think that they have, I mean, this is not the role of the Senate.

It's advise and consent.

And elections have consequences.

We got Elena Kagan.

We're getting this guy, who I honestly think if they throw him out, Trump's the kind of guy who's like, oh, yeah, well, here's Andrew Napolitano.

I'd like that were the, if that were the actual gamble, I would be in favor of that.

He wouldn't like it.

Yeah, they might put in, he might put in Gary Busey.

If you're a Democrat, there was, what, four final contenders that he had up there?

He was the best one.

Yeah, and one of them was a very socially conservative lady from, I think, Minnesota or something.

And like, that one, I think, would be far.

Kavanaugh,

he's, you know, if you're trying to, you know, assess where he's at, he appears to have a lot of respect for precedent.

So I understand why you think Roe versus Wade might be overturned, but that's not what he's blaring in with.

Although there were a couple other people that wanted to do that.

He's not great on privacy rights and things like that.

But otherwise, he's a qualified jurist.

Yeah, he's not the guy I would pick.

I think he's a weener.

Napolitano.

Yeah.

And that would scare the hell out of

the left.

And, you know,

I just keep thinking, I don't even understand your strategy other than I'm just trying to get elected.

Well, I think it's a couple of things.

I think there was a Hail Mary pass going on where, you know,

if I were a Democrat, I would be very worried about the swing seat going to the hardcore conservatives or whatever.

So I get them trying to maintain that.

It's high stakes enough.

And I think that there was some idea of maybe we're going to get this postponed long enough and then somehow we'll pick up 20 Senate seats and then we can postpone this for two years, a a real hell merry pass.

But I think the main thing, though, is I think that senators, not even Democrats and Republicans, senators all want to live in the speech scene from Mr.

Smith goes to Washington.

They all believe that they are the righteous little guy fighting the good battle, and they want to live in that moment, and they want to be surrounded by applause.

Corey Booker doesn't believe it, though.

Corey Booker is out there just

trying to get

it.

When Elizabeth Warren got that hashtag, he was like, oh, I want that so bad.

He lives.

Get a hashtag.

And they all do.

I mean,

you're so right.

This is just an audition, right?

They all want to have that moment that they can later fundraise on for their presidential campaign, which, by the way, they're all going to be announcing in like three or four months, which is so depressing.

We're almost there.

We're almost in the middle of the 2020 election.

And they're all just auditioning, trying to get their little donor email.

I think he was hoping that he would be expelled from the Senate.

Because what a great position.

He was trying

to the secret crypto racist and an illegitimate process to get him in.

And you got kicked out from the Senate because you believe.

I'm also senator.

I'm also stealing copy paper at night.

I'm doing it.

You're wondering where all that paper is going to.

It's in the trunk of my car.

And I'm willing to walk.

I'm willing to have you fire me for that.

I mean, it was crazy.

Yeah.

It was crazy.

So

I want to turn it to Norm McDonald.

And this chilling of speech,

you know, you said, you know, there could be a lot of, you know, a really, you know, hardcore conservative

pointed to the court.

I don't want a Republican.

I don't want a Democrat.

I don't want a liberal.

I don't want a conservative.

I want a hardcore constitutionalist.

All of our arguments would go away if we were just using a hardcore constitutionalist.

Somebody would stand up for freedom of speech no matter who is saying it.

We're going into a world, and you have to feel it with comedy,

where

I don't know how this ends.

I don't know how this ends.

You concerned about it?

You know, I hope that eventually we kind of burn out, although I will say in the world of comedy, stand-up comedians almost to a person will back up the other stand-up comedians when somebody's getting

railed for political correctness.

The attitude is stand-up comedy, you have entered our sphere.

This is our home if we're in a comedy club, and we're allowed to kind of say whatever we want.

And it's very rare to find a stand-up comedian that will throw another stand-up comedian under the bus.

On a broader level, I'm worried that we seem to have this kind of Orwellian

two-minutes hate thing in our culture where we have this deep need for catharsis to ruin someone every day.

And then I guess our goal is to get them to hang themselves or something.

And that I find that.

Well, by the end of the day,

we won't pay attention for two days.

We won't actually, we won't know what happens tomorrow because we will move on to somebody else.

We will move on to somebody else.

That bothers me.

I'd say from my vantage point,

I want to to live in both legally a country that has freedom of speech, but also culturally has freedom of speech.

But if there's any two realms in it that I'm particularly concerned about, it's college campuses, which

that's not a thing anymore,

and comedy clubs.

I mean, comedians tend to be the jesters that are allowed to really poke at the edges of things and go to whatever the sacred cow is.

And every group has different sacred cows.

And comedians go in and slaughter them.

And we are important for that reason because we can actually shake things up.

So I want to take a break and we'll come back.

And I want to ask you specifically about octopus.

No.

Have you ever peed on a?

Have you ever desired to pee on a pee?

I'm a bit fan of him.

And also, I'm kind of restricted to where I go to the bathroom.

Okay.

No, I want to talk to you about Norm McDonald and our comedians rallying around him.

He wasn't saying anything, I didn't think.

It's not a way I would have phrased it, but I didn't think he was saying anything controversial.

And he's basically saying, can we talk about things?

Can we talk about things?

Apparently, no is the answer.

Yeah, I mean, he did the two things that I'm aware of: he used, he, on a follow-up to the first statement,

said, You'd have to have Down syndrome to something, something, something.

That was probably not the best choice.

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