Best of the Program | Guest: Keith Wilson | 10/2/25
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Today's podcast, what you're about to hear is the edited version.
So if you don't have a lot of time, it'll give you everything that was really important in today's show.
We start with Barry Blautermilk and what's going on in Washington today.
Also, I wanted to speak to you about loneliness and
feeling like maybe you're alone or it's just you, you're not.
Also, we spoke, and I don't know if it's going to make it on this edited version, but on the longer version, we spoke to Pastor Rod McCoy, Charlie kirk's pastor he just got back from south korea i did a show last night on south korea and how bad it is getting we are about to lose an ally in south korea it is happening fast they're going into authoritarianism and china is just flooding their borders with people um and canada is in the same kind of situation keith wilson is an attorney up there he is working with um
Alberta and Saskatchewan.
They look like they both kind of want to break away from Canada.
The Supreme Court of Canada said you can hold an election if you decide to vote that way and break away from Ottawa and Canada and start your own thing.
You can do it.
It's getting really serious up there
because Ottawa is becoming like Portland and they are dictating all of these crazy things to
Alberta and Saskatchewan, which is really kind of more like Texas here in America.
Keith explains all of this and what's next.
What does it all mean?
All on today's podcast.
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You're listening to the best of the Blend Beck Program.
Keith Wilson, Canadian Attorney.
Hello, Keith.
How are you?
I'm great.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me on.
It's an honor.
It's great to have you on.
We've been trying to talk to somebody up in,
you know, in Ottawa, I'm sorry, in Alberta, about what's happening for a while there.
I know things are moving at breakneck speed.
Bring us up to speed.
Can we start with the gun thing?
What is happening in Canada with Ottawa going after all the guns?
Well, it's really remarkable.
You know, here we are, your closest neighbor.
And,
you know, I'm sure Americans have this image of Canada, you know, strong and free and that visual of our Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their red serges riding horses and
all those sorts of things.
And the reality is, Jeff, we've just slipped very badly since the COVID
mandates into a very authoritarian, dystopian type phase like we're seeing in other countries.
And the gun grab is a good example.
A few years ago, the leftist federal liberal government, they have a hate on for anything to do with guns and freedom and Christians and religion.
And so they announced that they were going to start building a list of guns we're not allowed to have.
They started with what they called assault style rifles, which were really just scary looking guns, anything that was black.
Anyway, over the years, they've expanded that list now up to
three or four hundred different models of hunting rifles, shotguns, sport shooting guns.
And there's over 500,000 guns that are now illegal.
We still hold them, and this year they've announced they're going to start a confiscation process of rounding up and taking our guns.
Boy, that is not going to end well, especially in places like Alberta.
I mean, do I have it right?
Alberta is kind of like Texas.
It's a ranch kind of area.
It's a wilderness.
It's tough, tough people that are independent-minded, right?
Not only that, you know, like, first of all, Alberta is just north of Montana.
We're a huge province.
We're about the same size and landmass as Texas.
And our origins are actually from Texans and people from the Dakotas and Wyoming after the Civil War moving up here and doing cattle drives.
So our background is our origins.
Our founders are Americans.
But not only that, we have Alberta has the third largest reserve of oil and gas in the world.
And Texas has a lot of oil.
There's so many similarities.
Yes, we have a cowboy culture.
We're Texas North.
Guns are important to us.
We're hunters.
We've got that rugged individualism.
Our religion and our Christianity is really important to us.
So there's a huge amount of parallels between Alberta and Texas.
So I know how Texas would respond to this.
And it would be, get the hell off my land.
How is Alberta going to react to this?
Well, I mean, we all know that history has taught us that good things don't happen after governments take guns away from citizens never
and so Albertans are very mindful of that we're fundamentally distrustful of the federal government in Ottawa and this may sound provocative but they basically hate Albertans they hate our conservatism they hate our Christianity they hate our sense of freedom our belief in property rights and the rule of law and all those things that doesn't abide with the new progressive leftist leftist Marxists.
So, what are our province is like a state, the province of Alberta.
So, we have a premier, which is like a governor, and our premier, Premier Smith, has been very adamant that
the police forces in Alberta are not to cooperate with the federal government when they come for the gun grab.
She's done some other really interesting legal things, like said that
the federal officials will have to get a seizure permit from our Attorney General.
And she says she jokes, she has it on good authority that our Attorney General won't be issuing them.
But I mean, it will come to a head at some point.
It's frightening to think about that.
I don't know where it's going to go, but it's part of a pattern of many other events up here in Canada that
have led to so many Albertans to say, we want out of here.
We want to form our own country.
We want to be like Canada once was true, North, Strong, strong, and free.
Okay, so
that is just terrifying, really terrifying.
Because, you know, especially with all that oil,
no country wants to let that go.
Do you think the rest of Canada will just be cool with that?
Yeah, well, you know, Alberta really has a unique culture.
And,
you know, there's great variety, as you know, variability in the culture of the United States.
I've traveled extensively with my family over the years.
You know, there's a great difference between the folks up in Connecticut and then there is the folks in Texas.
But, you know, the rest of Canada primarily,
our sister province to the east, it's called Saskatchewan.
They're very much aligned with us on everything.
And they not only have oil and gas, they also have the largest reserves of uranium in the world, as well as potash, which goes straight down into the farm fields of Iowa and so on.
So we're important
strategically for the United States, and these two provinces are aligned.
I think if Alberta votes to separate, Saskatchewan will come.
But other parts of Canada,
they're like these blue states in the U.S., the hardcore Democrats.
They think the most important thing to do is to display pride flags and,
you know we started off with having pride week and LDGTQ stuff as a day and then it became a week and then it became a month and it's a national celebration for a month and and all of these extremely progressive views wide open immigration our immigration numbers are out of control so Their mindset in the rest of Canada is very much left-leaning, very much wanting government to look after everything, wanting government to care for every aspect of their life.
Whereas those of us in the West on the prairies in Alberta and Saskatchewan, no, we don't think government's very good at doing much of anything.
We'll look after our own problems.
We're rugged individualism, so there is an incredible divide in Canada.
Canada is not a united nate is not a nation that's united with common values anymore at all.
The rest of the country's gone very hard left, whereas Alberta and Saskatchewan have stayed true to conservative principles.
As a Canadian,
how does that feel to you?
It's very frightening.
You know, my wife and I have four kids.
Actually, you and I are the same age.
And, you know, so you know the things we think about, right?
And it's a scary time up here for the future of our kids.
The, you know, just the economic aspect of it alone.
There's the social cultural, which is downright frightening.
The gun grab, what's happened to Sean Foyt and other examples, which we can talk about more.
But
the economics,
Alberta
is the largest generator of wealth in our country through our oil and gas activities, our petrochemical, our refining, all of these things, our agriculture and so on.
And we have this goofy thing in our constitution where if one province is doing well, we have to send our wealth to the provinces that aren't doing well, notionally.
So they call it equalization.
Well, a number of the provinces in the other part of the country to the east get 20% of their budget from hardworking Albertans, and then they impose policies on us.
So for example,
the federal liberals are all these green, you know, this green leftist stuff.
So we've got a net zero rule, we've got a production cap, we've got a tanker ban, we've got all these things because they don't want Alberta to produce our oil and gas.
So they're holding it in the ground.
They're holding our economy back.
Albertans would be richer than citizens of Saudi Arabia or Dubai if they would let us produce our oil and gas.
They're not.
So all of these things are layering on top of one another.
This authoritarianism that we're seeing that started with the COVID mandates,
Canada had some of the most restrictive mandates in the world.
Many people don't realize that.
So it's become a dark time up here.
The
thing is the progressives, the lefties in the rest of the country seem to be really happy with this and want government to give them more.
We have our notional free health care.
Now we have free dental notionally, free prescriptions,
and almost free daycare.
Of course, the government can't deliver any of those things.
They're all, you know, they're as real as Mickey Mouse.
Ike would contend their Mickey Mouse is realer than that, but
the State Department, the Mouse is very powerful, at least south of your border.
The State Department had a meeting, a second high-level meeting
in Washington, I think, on Monday.
And our administration is eager to recognize Alberta as an independent state or country.
Can you give me any insight on what is happening on this side of the border?
And what does that mean with our relationship with the nutjob parts of Canada?
Well, sure, I can.
I received a briefing from that delegation yesterday.
You know, I think the Trump administration is very concerned about what's happening in Canada.
You know,
your largest land border.
You know, what's interesting too, just
a friend of mine, actually one of the people involved in the Freedom Convoy protest is a retired army captain up here, and he explained to me that part of the defense doctrine for the United States post-Cold War is a concern about, you know, Russia and or China teaming up and coming, invading the United States from the north.
So that would invasion would come through Alberta, right?
And you're smart enough.
You're not going to wait till they get to Montana.
You're going to come up here.
So Alberta is very important strategically as well.
In fact, we have the most amount of military bases in Canada are in Alberta and the largest ones.
So
we're very important strategic for a number of reasons.
Also geopolitically, look what just happened with our
leftist ideological prime minister, Prime Minister Kearney.
He and his colleagues Steiner and Macron and one other unilaterally announced that they were going to recognize the state of Palestine at the same time that the Trump administration is making progress and trying to negotiate a peace deal.
You know,
the administration in Ottawa is doing a lot of things.
We have this Chinese corruption political inference thing.
The Chinese government has police stations.
So there's a lot of things for the U.S.
administration to be concerned about.
about what's happening in Canada at many levels from many different lenses, as I've just described.
Then you have Alberta where our Supreme Court of Canada has said that if a province and the people of a province hold a province-wide referendum, a vote, and the vote is to leave Canada and become their own nation,
that they can do so.
Canada is unique in the world in that we're the only democracy where the government, the Constitution, the courts have laid out a legal process for a region, a state, or a province to secede and become their own independent nation.
And one of the critical steps in that process is international recognition.
So,
my understanding from the meetings that have occurred that the Trump administration officials have indicated that the U.S.
would recognize a vote by the people of Alberta to become independent.
So, that's very important to us as we go into.
We expect the vote to occur in 2026, sometime around around this time next year and
I think I think I think the Trump administration also recognizes you guys have right above your border in Montana the third largest reserve of oil and gas in the world look at the power of that the the energy independence it takes you from an energy superpower to a mega superpower so and then we're completely culturally aligned um
so i I think there's a recognition.
And Canada's the leftists in Ottawa are being global disruptors.
They're not helping.
They're helping build
these governments with this anti-freedom, anti-Christian
phenomena that we're seeing that it's hard to believe it's happening, but it is.
So
it's an encouraging fact that these discussions are occurring.
Heath, please stay in touch with us.
Anything that we can do to help, but I want to make sure America understands
the world that we are right on the brink of losing or changing and how dangerous these times are if we don't all keep our level heads.
And I've been watching you with great, great interest on what's happening because
if we have better access to Coulter Wall, I am I'm all for it.
So
God bless you.
Thank you.
Thank you for for everything you do.
And please pass on to your Canadian friends.
There are millions of us who pray for you and
are with you in this fight.
God bless you.
That means a lot.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
You bet.
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Now back to the podcast.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening
from the great state of Georgia.
Congressman Barry Lautermilk is with us.
Barry, how are you, sir?
Doing good, Glenn.
How are you doing today?
I am really good.
I have to tell you, I want to spend a couple of minutes as we get past some of this other stuff in the interview talking about a book that you wrote this summer.
I didn't hear anything about it.
It somehow or another arrived on my desk
and I picked it up and I was going on an airplane.
And I have to tell you, Barry, I read that thing cover to cover.
And I don't even know if anybody really knows about this book.
I think it is one of the best history books and the most appropriate for its time right now.
I actually want to talk to you about recording it myself.
I think it would make a series of podcasts that are just fantastic.
I just love it.
That would be awesome.
Yeah.
It's called And They Pray.
One of our goals.
Yeah, go ahead.
One of our goals is to do an audio book on this.
I just haven't had the time to do the recording yet.
So my family's been after me to do it, but I've been a little bit busy with investigations and
legislative work.
Well,
I'd love to make it in podcasts.
I think it's fantastic, Barry.
It needs to be heard.
We'll talk about that in a second.
First, let me talk to you about what is going on.
First of all, let's start with the pipe bombs.
What is the latest on these pipe bombs?
Well, Glenn, it's amazing what having an administration that actually wants to get to the truth
can do to change a narrative.
What we have learned, and the premise that we went on in the previous two years that I was investigating, is that these pipe bombs were placed in the evening of January 5th.
And so everyone was going off of that premise.
We start,
and of course, I had reached out to the FBI several times during that time period.
Of course, the Biden administration were not, they were not forthcoming with information.
Basically, they always use this excuse, this is an ongoing investigation.
So we can't share that information.
I'm like, goodness gracious, how long is this investigation going to go?
So what we've learned through the Trump administration is that story doesn't fit with the facts that we're finding.
It appears to us, and let me give you credit because you brought this up on a show I was doing with you over a year ago, that the pipe bombs had a 60-second egg timer on them.
So how could you play,
I mean, a 60-minute.
uh egg timer right yeah you brought that up i started researching that i talked to some bomb experts and they said, well, quite often that is an override.
In other words, you have an electronic trigger that actually sets off the bomb, but you put the egg timer on to basically set it and it triggers the other trigger.
You know, it enables it.
It just basically gives you time to get away.
So we were going on that premise.
Well, one thing we get is a lab report from the FBI on the pipe bombs.
Just got that recently.
There was no electronic timer.
The only timer was that 60-minute egg timer.
So it's impossible that these pipe bombs were placed and armed on the night of January 5th.
They had to be placed at some point,
not long before they were found on January 6th, because a lady that lives close by to the one that was placed by the Republican National Committee, in her testimonies, which have been consistent, she said there were still 20 minutes left on the egg timer when she found it.
Right.
So that's one huge inconsistency.
The other is mysterious data or data that has been mysteriously, it's disappeared.
And it was when the FBI was doing geofence searches.
They went to all the major cell carriers and asked for all the precise data
of people who were in that area
on January 5th and 6th.
All the carriers provided information except for one, ATT.
ATT
apparently corrupted the data.
Now,
we kept hearing that the data was corrupted, and this is in my previous investigation.
ATT claimed they didn't corrupt the data.
The FBI did.
The FBI, we found out later, said, no, the data was corrupted when we got it.
Now that we get the real information, it becomes even more mysterious.
There is a
entity entity known as FirstNet.
FirstNet was created by Congress after 9-11
to preempt cell service for law enforcement.
So they only serve law enforcement first responders.
So in a time of emergency, their calls take priority.
So FirstNet
is actually sits on the AT ⁇ T backbone.
For some reason, and this is where my suspicions started growing, is when the FBI contacted AT ⁇ T, gave them a preservation letter, said, save all of this data specifically around the areas where the pipe bombs were
because they have to go through the legal mumbo jumbo to actually get the subpoena.
So they don't want stuff to disappear.
They send a letter telling AT ⁇ T to preserve the data.
ATNT responds and says, you have to go to FirstNet to get this data.
Which raises my suspicion.
Why are they telling them to go to the carrier just for law enforcement?
Well,
according to
FirstNet,
that data was going to be deleted within just a few hours.
So they were in this massive hurry to download all the data before it was deleted, and somehow it just got corrupted.
I'm not buying the story.
Okay, so wait a minute.
Why would FirstNet have access to the data?
Why wouldn't it still be with ATT?
My question, I've questioned that, and this is what we're seeking right now.
Was it law enforcement information that the FBI was seeking?
Our first responder, why were,
first of all, there was a reason AT ⁇ T sent them over to FirstNet.
We don't know.
And we've been told that FirstNet had just signed a contract with the FBI, and so they were handling all the data retrieval.
That's a possibility.
I mean, these are questions we don't have that we are seeking right now.
But the bottom line is the narrative that we were sold on is not even close to what the evidence is bringing up.
So what does that imply?
Who is giving us this false testimony and evidence?
Well, that's what we need to find out.
Is it AT ⁇ T?
Is it FirstNet?
Is it, and probably likely to an extent, the FBI?
So we're going to be requesting more information from from the FBI
as far as details of their investigation.
And, you know, what the FBI had claimed, the Biden FBI, was, well, obviously the person who placed the pipe bomb, their data was in that AT ⁇ T set that got corrupted.
I'm still having an issue with the corruption.
I spent 20 years in the IT business.
When data, data is never really deleted, it's always saved somewhere.
It may be archived.
I can't understand how such a
carrier like AT ⁇ T
would just arbitrarily delete data literally within a few days of a major event.
In our previous investigation, we contacted all these carriers and one carrier says, look,
when it's a significant event, we keep that data forever.
They said, we even still have data from the Oklahoma City bombing.
Wow.
So if that's the case, I'm not really
buying the story that
they seem to have found everybody, every grandmother.
Was any other data corrupted other than this particular area?
That's what we need to know, but my understanding is no, just the area around the pipe bomb.
And it was very precise data that would actually give you the distance from the cell tower.
So this is what we're, you know, kind of dealing with: you got to go off of some kind of premise.
Well,
we've learned who claimed to have corrupted the data.
And what they're saying is they were in such a hurry to download it before it automatically deleted that it
overloaded the server and the server corrupted all the data.
I'm thinking somebody needs some better servers if that's the case.
Yeah, yeah, that's weird for ATT.
Let me give you one more question on this, and then I want to move on to the shutdown.
What about the FBI saying that the bombs were viable
and lab never using that word viable?
What does that mean?
And also, is there a chance that this was some sort of a training exercise or these were training exercise bombs?
Well, that is something I've recently brought up is when you look at the lab report from the FBI, and we're looking a little deeper in that lab report too.
It never does use the word, as you said, the word viable.
It does say that there were explosive
components in it, but it never says that it was enough to cause a massive explosion.
And so from my time in the military,
we did a lot of different training exercises.
And if you're going to do a real training exercise, you made things as realistic as possible.
I mean, I remember when I was in the Air Force, we had a simulated attack on our base.
We literally had jets flying overhead shooting blanks, right?
You try to make it as realistic as possible, especially for an exercise like this.
You want a device that looks like a bomb and it smells like a bomb for a bomb-sniffing dog.
But here's the issue.
We have video of the Secret Service with a bomb-sniffing dog walking literally within feet of where the bomb supposedly was placed the night before and never hits on anything.
So if it was, which makes my, if it is a training exercise, if it is a training exercise, the bomb wasn't there when the dog was walking by,
or he should have hit on it.
So there's more questions than answers, but at least we have a direction to go.
So I think there is a possibility that these were, whether it was a training exercise or somebody just used training type devices to put out there.
But if you go back and you look at the videos we released a year ago, law enforcement were letting people just walk by these devices.
There's one video of a guy in a suit walking within feet of the robot that's about to destroy the device.
That makes no sense, unless somebody knew they weren't viable.
You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck.
To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts.
I'm talking about loneliness.
But first, I just want to say, I don't know your name.
I don't know where you're sitting right now, what's in your hands, even if you've spoken to another person today, but I do know you're there.
I can feel it somehow or another.
I don't know how, maybe just the same way you know that I'm speaking directly to you,
even though this is mass broadcast.
But I want to thank you for meeting me.
here again today
and remind you that you're here for a reason.
We all are.
We're here for a reason.
And
something wild and miraculous is happening in our country right now.
I just want you to recognize first, you didn't have to be here.
You could have not turned on the radio.
You could have listened to another podcast, but you didn't.
For some reason, you're listening to this one.
And you and I are both trying to just make sense of a world that just doesn't seem to make much sense.
And sometimes that can make you feel incredibly lonely.
More and more Americans right now are spending more and more time alone.
We have a loneliness epidemic going on.
And it's weird because we live at a time where communications have never been easier.
You can talk to people all around the world and yet we're alone.
I'm experiencing this in my own life in a weird way.
My kids have moved out.
My older kids moved from next door.
They left for the snowy tundra of the north.
My younger kids are now on their own and we're selling our house and we've had time to walk around that big empty house filled with memories.
And it's really lonely when everybody is gone.
It's really lonely.
You know, people always say, Nobody on their deathbed ever said, I wish I would have spent more time at work.
I'm going through that right now.
I'm living a future that
it might be, you know, perhaps like you.
A life well spent, but everybody's spread all over the country, and you have a ton of time on your hands alone.
And that plays games with your head, doesn't it?
Loneliness is a strange thing because it's not just the absence of people.
You can be surrounded by people, packed shoulder to shoulder on a subway, hearing their laughter through the apartment walls, feeling the vibration of life all around you, and yet it's like you're sealed inside of a glass room that nobody else can see into.
They don't look at you, they don't hear you.
And maybe after a while, in dark moments, you start to wonder, am am I even really here at all?
I can only relate to this in the way I have seen.
I lived in New York City, and that is a lonely place to be.
You're surrounded by people.
I saw this play out in front of me when I was in New York City.
I was waiting for my daughter at lunch, and she was running late, and there was this restaurant that we would eat at, and it was down under, you know, Rockefeller Center.
It was right at the ice rink at Rockefeller Center and I was sitting on a table for two by a window that looked right out on the ice
and I saw this woman.
She looked much older than she was I'm sure.
Kind of like Adrienne from Rocky.
Do you remember in that first movie?
That's how I think of her now is Adrienne from Rocky.
She was pretty but
She didn't see it, and maybe it was because nobody in her life saw her that way.
I'm not really sure, but she came out
and she sat down on this bench and she pulled out of this tattered bag her own ice skates.
And they were really nice ice skates.
Didn't match what she was wearing or her bag.
And they were not new.
They were just really well cared for.
And I watched her take off her shoes and put each one on and lace them up tightly.
And then
She stood up and she stood on the ice and this this frumpy woman that honestly if she hadn't have sat right in front of my window and maybe because I didn't have a phone to scan I may not have ever seen her
and she stands up and she gets onto the ice and she is so graceful she is floating like she became like a natural element one with the ice it was amazing she
every move was angelic or like a ballerina.
And my daughter came to the table and I said, look at this woman.
Look, watch her.
And we watched her for 30 minutes or so.
And she was so graceful.
She would gracefully just, I mean, it looked like art.
She would skate around the clods like me that were about to crash into her.
And she was in her own world.
I sat there, and my daughter and I talked about her.
Was she a professional skater, do you think?
Was she in the Olympics at one point?
I mean, she's really good.
And then she came off the ice and she sat right back down in front of our window and she opened up that frumpy, worn bag.
She took off her skates,
put them in, and put on her shoes, and she once again became the woman who
the world, I don't think, ever really saw.
And it didn't take long before she just blended into the sea of people and just disappeared.
I think about her almost, I think about her all the time.
Because it's not just her, you know?
I wondered, does she come here for her lunch every day?
Who is she?
Where does she work?
Does anybody know what she has in her bag that probably sits on the floor next to her desk?
Does anybody know she's really an artist inside?
I've thought about her for years, and perhaps more lately.
I've written movies in my head about her.
Movies that aren't ever ever going to be made, but I see them on the screen of my mind.
She's the star in a world where
she does her nine to five.
She doesn't dress for anyone because she knows who she is and what other people think is not just important to her.
Her job is just that.
It's a job.
She has friends there.
But her real life, her real joy, is at home.
And when she gets home, her husband sees her as the beautiful, graceful, angelic woman that she actually is.
Imagine she was there alone
on her lunch hour
because her kids were in school.
But most evenings in the winter, you'll find her skating with her children, and her daughter watches mom skate as she holds onto the side of the wall until she can find her own balance.
She thinks while watching her mom that I want to grow up to be just like her.
How many people exist all around us that no one knows, that you don't know?
You walk by the desk every day and you don't really know them.
Have you ever just sat down in a park and just really looked at a crowd
and seen the ones that are alone and unseen by the crowd all around them and wondered, what is their story?
Where do they come from?
What do they do?
And no one stops to notice.
And there are millions of us.
And maybe sometimes you're left with a gnawing in your chest that whispers,
have I been forgotten?
I mean,
does my story even matter?
My mom
thought before she killed herself that the world would be fine without her.
In fact, she thought it would be better off without her.
And that was a lie.
The game's loneliness plays with your head.
And it convinces you to stay quiet, stop reaching out, because why would anybody care?
I just want you to know you're here for a reason, and maybe, maybe, that reason is
because you need to hear people do care.
I care.
Or maybe it's because you're supposed to send that message to somebody else today.
That right now, in this moment, you're not invisible.
You're not forgotten.
You're heard.
And you're seen.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.
Perhaps too much.
I don't know yet.
Looking over the horizon, see what's coming or what is possible.
And that's a blessing.
It can be a curse on some days, bad days.
It's a curse.
But in the end, I always come back to no matter what's happening in our world or our life, it's a blessing because
we write the future.
It doesn't write us.
And that's something that is lost too many times.
Don't allow
time
to write your future.
Take control of it.
Write your own future.
Know that things can always change, but wherever you are is the right place for you right now.
What is it you're supposed to learn?
What is it you're supposed to do right now?
What is the next right thing?
Knowing that with God, all things are possible and with Him, you're never alone.
I want you to know
that we may never shake hands, we may never share a table, we may never laugh over something small and stupid together.
But if I could,
I would look you straight in the eye and tell you without blinking that you matter, and I am grateful that you are here.
The world is different because you're in it.
And maybe you can't see that right now,
but I promise you it's true.
And
if you're not struggling with this, somebody else you know is,
and you need to tell them what I just told you.
In this sea of loneliness, so strange, in this epidemic of loneliness
people begin
to feel it's because they're broken loneliness is not proof that you're broken loneliness is proof that you're human
maybe there's not enough human stuff that we do every day
Because we were built for connection, one-on-one.
Look each other in the eye, talk to each other,
feel somebody's hand, their shoulder, whatever it is, that connection, that love,
that meaning that we all search for.
And every time we reach for someone,
every time we put those lies behind us, every small act of defiance like that, against those whispers, you are punching a hole in the glass wall that's all around you.
We need to tell each other
you're not as alone as you think you are.
Nobody wants to say it out loud, but we're all alike.
We just have different things that are going on in our life, different things we're ashamed of.
We're all alike.
That is the thing that will break the spell.
Understanding that we are all alike, that we're not that unique.
It's so weird because we are all individuals and we all are unique and we all have our own talents and our own gifts and our own role to play
that does not
duplicate.
I can't duplicate you and you can't duplicate me because we're all unique.
But then again, we're all exactly the same.
It's this weird thing that
but once you get your arms around that once you realize i'm not
different
we all feel these things we all
have something inside of us that we're afraid of in some way or another we're afraid we'll be exposed we're afraid that people will figure out we're a fraud we don't really belong here we're not really good enough to be here we're whatever it is
once we realize now everybody in the room feels that way.
Some people have just
recognized it
and conquered it.
And the way I conquered it was to talk about it, talk about the flaws in my life.
I remember Stu was with me one of his first days.
He was an intern.
And somebody had called up and said, oh, you're Mr.
Perfect.
Because at the time, I had this squeaky clean image, but I was a raging alcoholic, raging alcoholic.
My life was all screwed up.
And somebody said, oh, you're Mr.
Squeaky Clean.
And
I stopped.
Do you remember this, dude?
And I stopped in the middle of this conversation with somebody.
And I said, you know what?
Let me tell you something.
You don't know who I am.
Let me tell you who Glenn Beck is.
And it was at this time that I was.
I didn't want to do radio anymore and I was going to throw my career away.
And I just, I was looking for a way to implode.
So give me an excuse to go back to school and honestly become a chef.
That's what I really wanted to do, is be a chef at the time.
God, what was wrong with me?
But I said, you know, let me tell you who I really am.
And the whole room went quiet.
Everybody,
all of the producers, everybody on the show looked at me like, oh, dear God, what is he doing?
And I said, you know who I really am?
I got this problem and this problem.
You know, I'm struggling against, you know, alcoholism right now.
I'm getting a divorce.
And I shut the air.
I was really raw about it.
And I really did say some of the worst things about me.
And I turned the mic off and I looked at Stu and I said, Stu, write this dad down.
This is the day Glenn Beck ended his career.
And the exact opposite happened.
It was the weirdest thing.
The thing that I had been afraid of, that people would know who I really was,
ended up being the thing
that
taught me we're all alike.
Because I had people come up to me after that,
and they said in whispers, they'd glance around like, is anybody listening?
Hey, what you said the other day?
I can't believe you had the balls to say that.
Thank you for saying that because I'm going through exactly the same thing.
I just didn't want anybody to know.
I thought I was alone.
And after I had multiple people come up to me on the first day and say things like that, always in a whispered tone, hey, you know, don't say anything about this, but
I realized, oh my gosh, we're all struggling with the same self-doubt.
All of us.
You know, I look at my kids now and they're struggling through so many things.
And I want to say, I know, I've been there, done it, but they don't hear it because
it's something about I don't know teenagers or 20 somethings that where you have to just go through this yourself and you think everybody else who's older is stupid
and can't relate but we can and they'll figure that out at some point
because we all do it we all go through the same thing I just
I just want you to know
you're not as alone as you think you are And if the only proof you have is, you know, my voice in this moment,
let it be enough for you to know that somebody,
even though strangely he was the guy on the radio or on the podcast, somebody saw you today.
And I'm glad you're here.
Really, truly.
I'm glad you're here.
It makes it worth me showing up every day.
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