The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | 8/9/19

Episode Date: August 9, 2019

Is President Trump approaching a watershed moment among conservatives? A Leftist thinks it’s possible to boycott everyone who is a conservative or Trump supporter. There really isn’t anything you can eat that isn’t linked to an increased risk of cancer. The latest study on sugar intake is alarming but should be taken with a grain of salt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Pat and Stu in for Glenn here. He is back next week. Apparently still works at this company, and we're happy to see him coming back on Monday. He's going to be picking the show back up. I know he'll have lots to talk about. I will also, right off the bat here, make sure if you are here and you're listening to a podcast

and you're looking at your telephone, it would be advisable for you to click on a little magnifying glass there and type in Pat Gray Unleashed. And when that comes up, you should click subscribe to that. A good idea. It is a great idea, isn't it done? Yeah, yeah. It's really wonderful.

Make sure you listen to Pat Grand Leash every day. You get the new podcast. It's two hours. So you get lots of great takes on all the big issues of the day. And you can listen to it anytime. So if you happen to be here for the podcast today, we did a bunch of stuff. The CNN Town Hall, kind of a ratings flop, unfortunately for them. Fortunately for us, because maybe there won't be another one.

But unfortunately for them. A brand new set, a plethora of Joe Biden's screw-ups today. Because, I mean, his were, it was not a good day for Joe. No. Joe's having a hard time. He is. It's not been pretty so far, but he's trying his best. And he's still way ahead, so far at least.

We talk about the number one language in America, which is it? I thought it maybe should be English, but apparently that's controversial. Oh, it is? Now you've given it away. Will sugar give you cancer? Well, of course it will. And Walmart, people trying to now do pranks and stunts at Walmart to make points for and against guns.

Oh, man. Really bad idea in both cases, but we'll give you the details on that as well. And the latest about the Dayton shooter. It's all on today's podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Pat and Stu for Glenn. He's back Monday. Man, the time's gone by fast.

Triple-8-727-B-E-C-K. Now, you can hear my show immediately preceding this show live on the Blaze Radio and TV network, Packray Unleashed. Or you can listen to it. anytime you want, wherever you get your podcast, iTunes or SoundCloud. Sound tunes. Sound tunes. Soundtoons.

SnapFace. Snapface is another place where you can get it. Friendster. Mm-hmm. Myspace. Get it anyway. Ask Jeeves is probably the most prominent place people go to get their podcast. Ask Jeeves, big.

And Lycos. Big of you're big on Likos. That's true. Lycos and Metacrawler. A lot of people say, well, Likos, Ask Jeeves, what are those? it's amazing how that stuff seems I mean that's like ancient history isn't it I know I love throwing in the friendster jokes

It's my favorite one because if you don't know It was a social network before Facebook and really I can before I think my space was around there It was like the one that everyone said was going to make a big run But never really caught on right And we're like it's like 12 generations ago now Like my references are getting it really is You get to a point where you're we always used to make fun of you

Because all of your impersonations are dead They're either dead or long retired. There's no active person you impersonate. All the people have passed away. Their parents, their children barely remember them. It's a weird thing. As they're current, I can't do their voice. As soon as they die, I can get there now.

So, yeah, I know. It's a long road, Pat. It's a long road. Yes. Anyway. I think eventually we're going to get to that point where people feel the same way about CNN. You're going to make a CNN joke

and people are like, what? What is CNN? What is that? If they keep going as they currently are, that will happen. This is pretty bad. You know, they did this big gun town hall thing

over the last couple of days. Which I'm sure they thought was going to be massive. Well, the last one was, right? I mean, the last one was a big deal at least. I don't know how it did in the ratings. I don't remember, but...

I think it did pretty well in the ratings that night. Actually, let's see. Yeah, so Jake Tapper did the first one. and it did a little bit better. So last night they did America Under Assault, The Gun Crisis. aired at 9 p.m. drew in 1.2 million total viewers on average.

Hannity, who interviewed a Democratic candidate in last place, Bill de Blasio. Oh, wow. 3.1 million. And Rachel Maddow did 2.3 million. So they only lost... Jeez. They came in third place and came in,

half of second place is how many people actually watched. Jake Tappers Town Hall had 58% more viewers than Chris Cuomo's. So this did not work very well this time. No, look, it's the same trick they tried last time, right? You come out and you try to take advantage of a tragedy and you try to ramp up ratings and that's not a good idea. I don't think people think of that as in bounds. You know, it feels really icky.

to try to take advantage of something like that. Maybe the first time you do it, people are like, all right, look, they're trying to get solutions. They're trying, you know, when you can hear the voices of some of these people in the community. I mean, you can make those arguments. You trotted out again after how bad it went last time when you got to a point where the people that you brought in as guests. Completely stacked the deck against Dana who was there to be a spokesperson for the NRA. Yeah.

And they just tried to bludgeon her the whole time. And in some ways, literally, I mean, like, that was a legitimate security threat for her. Right. And, you know, luckily she was able to get out of there. But they did not treat it well. They did not handle it well. The biggest mistake they made as far as the actual program went was having the large, loud, cheering crowd. Because that's not, look, if you're trying to make an argument that you're coming up with real solutions, we care about this and we care about the community, you know, you don't turn it into a WWE event. Yeah. And that's what they did last time. I don't know if they did that this time. I don't remember seeing a crowd. It could be that they invited a crowd, but then they heard it. It was Chris Cuomo so they didn't come. That's a very possible thing here, but it did not do well.

Finish third place for their big gun town hall. And, you know, at some point, you've got to pull the plug on the Chris Cuomo experiment, don't you? I think so. At some point, you just have to realize. I think so, yes. Yes, he has a famous name in the state you're in. Okay, that's about what you have with Chris. I think it's about time to just, you know, just turn it off.

You know, sometimes you try things and they just don't work. Yeah. You know, you saw a guy. He said, hey, I remember that guy. to be governor and now his brother's, or his dad used to be governor, and now his brother's governor, maybe we should put him on TV. And it seems like a good idea at the time. And then it falls apart.

And you can try to, you know, put it back together over and over and over again. But at some point, you just have to say, look, this is not working. And I think we're there with Chris Cuomo, are we not? Oh, yes. We were there day, I think, two for me. But if it takes CNN in a little while to catch up, okay, but they should be caught up by now. All right, much more coming up. 60 seconds.

This is the Glenn Beck program. Pat and Stufer Glenn on the Glenn Beck program. Triple-8-727B-E-CK. Big headline about the NRA warning President Bush, or President Trump, and warning him that his supporters just aren't going to be supportive of gun control. I really believe that's true. I think even the hardest core of Trump supporters would oppose

getting into gun control legislation or gun control executive orders. And he's seemingly, according to these stories, been asking around with his aides, people close to him. And he's also said it publicly that he wants to go after it. Yeah. You know, he hasn't been specific. So what does that mean? You know, he wants to have expanded background checks and, I mean,

red flag laws. And he's spoken, you know, some support for those ideas, but, you know, in passing and walking up to a plane, who knows what this actually means. That being said, when you go after a core belief of your voting block, you risk things, even when you are incredibly popular. I mean, you know, George W. Bush came out of that, his reelection, beat John Kerry, was incredibly popular.

And this was 0506 when he did the comprehensive immigration reform thing. And so one of the first things he did was to use some of his political capital to go after immigration reform. And that was what essentially destroyed his presidency. Really heard him. You know, there were multiple things. I'll also give you Harriet Myers as a Supreme Court nominee, which the base rejected. And in addition to that, his handling of Katrina really wiped out a lot of his, you know, he really was known as sort of the competent in crisis sort of president because of everything that happened with 9-11. The war, though, started turning the wrong way.

And then Katrina happened. And, you know, while the reporting on a lot of that was really bad and a lot of that wasn't him, you know, screwing those things up, it still didn't help at all. But really, it was, it was never a big deal. People were like, oh, well, his, you know, people lost faith in him because of Katrina. Well, some did, right. But it was never a case of... I don't think a lot of conservatives lost faith in him because of Katrina. They knew that wasn't his fault.

The difference in his presidency between terms of... one and term two was not that the people in general lost faith in Bush, it was that his actual the conservatives did. Because of things like immigration reform, they were like, look, I mean, he's not even, you know, we'll walk through him with a lot of the stuff. If he makes a mistake, we're okay. But like this is violating. He's trying to do something against us.

Yes. You know, it's not that he's screwed up. He's trying to do something that we don't, like he's coming after our core values. And conservatives were making a lot of noise about it. how much they opposed it and we don't want you to do this. Well, he tried to do it anyway and that did hurt him. And they stopped it. And then later, yes, conservatives did stop it.

Later he also, not only did he still want the comprehensive immigration reform, but then he went after the Border Patrol agents, Ramos and Compion, and would not budge on that at all until the day he left office. Those guys languished in jail for a couple of years because, you know, they shot a drug dealer in the butt who, by the way, they thought had a gun and was aiming it at them. And so that really hurt him too. And when he cited, that he further cited with Mexico, as Mexico tried to stop the execution of that heinous illegal immigrant from 1993 who raped and murdered two 15-year-old girls in Houston. and he'd been on death row for quite some time

and Bush sided with Mexico against Texas for that. Yeah, right. And those were all huge issues I remember for the audience at the time. And it turned his base. And that was a violation of something they believed was a core value, rule of law on the border. And it was something that really, you know, I think really was the thing that turned his presidency from what was beforehand

and largely on partisan lines. You know, certainly after 9-11, he was much more popular than that. But, you know, it had come down to a point where Republicans basically liked Bush and Democrats basically didn't. And after that, that Republican support eroded. And the reason we bring this up is because when, you know, Trump risks a lot violating a core belief of his own audience. Yeah. And this is definitely one of those. Yeah. I mean, it's risky, man.

It's pretty core for a lot of people. You know, if he wants to win this election, you know, I was talking to, David Harris Jr., who's a, you know, he was on News and White Matters, and he's a big social media personality, very pro-Trump. And we were talking about this, and he said, you know, look, my audience is pissed off about this. David's audience is very pro-Trump. I mean, he's a very pro-Trump guy loves him.

He's been to the White House a bunch of times, like he is, you know, in that pocket completely. You know, he is the, you know, he's a loyal guy. He believes his Trump is doing a great job. And he said his audience is doing the same thing. they are really scared about this. They do not want him to do this. And he made the point, and this point is true, that, look, right now, they're going to be mad about this.

But when it comes down to it, what are they going to vote for Elizabeth Warren? What are you going to do? I mean, like, you're going to have a choice there. And that's true. That is a good point. Yeah. When it comes down to it, he's still going to be a better choice than Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.

The issue, though, is you have passion. Enthusiasm. You know, some people, you know, look, are they all going to turn out? Are they going to donate? Are they going to campaign? Are they going to be telling every one of their friends how great Trump is? Or are they going to be like, well, I mean, look, he's better. And, you know, he pisses me off on this issue, but I'll pull the, I'll pull the lever for him without all of that extra stuff.

You know, one of the big stories I think of Trump's presidency has been passion. You know, you have a really passionate base that's going to go out there. They're going to fight for this guy no matter what. And if you start eroding that, if you start just on the edges, you're right? You know, you can't afford to lose a lot of votes. This is an election. remember obviously, not that this matters electorally, but he didn't, you know, he lost the popular

vote. This is a, so and I don't say that to say that, like, oh, he lost. I say that to say it was close. It was a lot closer than memory might serve you if you look at the electoral college. I mean, basically it was about 70,000 votes that were the difference in that election. That's not a lot. No, it's not.

And, you know, so you have to be careful and you start going after Second Amendment rights. And that might just be enough to take away at the fringe and give us some socialist to come in here. and be president of the United States. And nobody wants that. At least I don't.

Yeah, me neither. And I think we've mentioned that a couple of times. You don't want a socialist as a president in the United States? Yeah, I think I have. It's come up. AAA 727BECK. More in a minute. Hi, it's Glenn.

If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do 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. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. With Pat and Stu, Pat Gray, Stubergier. You can check out Pack Gray Unleashed every weekday morning.

It's on 6 to 8 Central, which is 7 to 9 Eastern. And then if you don't like to get up that early in the morning, you can listen to it anytime you want on a podcast wherever you get those podcasts, like iTunes or SoundCloud, MySpace. There's a little bit too much urgency in your show. You're really covering the news of the day. I like to listen to podcasts from several months. months ago. Are those available? Yes. Yes, you can listen to those as well. I like to just know what's going

out. What was the news of the day in April? Yeah, we have that. We have that. That's available. I can get that anytime. It's available anytime. I just don't want to pay as much as I need to probably. It's probably too expensive. How does zero dollars sound? Wow. Yeah, very good. Yeah. Very good. It's an incredible bargain. It's a good value. Yeah, normally that sells for 99, 95, 99. Really? Yeah. Wow. But now it's free to, it's 100% off. Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, Pat... Limited time only, of course.

I think you might want to raise those prices because I think you're about to be boycotted. Really? I do. I do. I've been hearing a lot about this. And my understanding is if you're a Republican, if you're a conservative, you need to be boycotted. If you voted for Donald Trump, especially... Well, because you're a white nationalist.

Right. Right. Automatically. A racist and a white nationalist if you voted for Trump. That is what MSNBC is letting you know. And, I mean, they're just one example. But this is an MSNBC analyst, Rick St. dangled talking about Trump supporters and whether you should boycott them or not.

Okay. People boycotted apartheid products. Remember years ago, you wouldn't buy stock or a product from any company that supported apartheid South Africa. Why isn't there not that same thing with people who support Donald Trump and their products and their companies? And there has been with Equinox this past week. Great question.

Oh, God. I've got a lot of it. Why isn't there? Why isn't the same thing, Pat? Can you think of, let me. I'm asking you this honestly, you're a smart guy. You put a lot of thoughts in the thing. Can you think of one difference between 2019 America and apartheid South Africa?

Is there any distinction you would make between those? Because I can think of one minor one. Can you? Because I'm hard pressed. I can't. Want me to give it to you? All right. Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere.

Okay. That's the only thing I could come up with. I should have found that one. You know, I mean, it's so close. Yeah. It's basically the same policies. as you know, black people are not allowed to be employed here in the United States. They're all separate.

Now, some people would note that the black unemployment rate is as low as it's ever been in history. Some people would note that and say maybe that's not the same situation as apartheid. Maybe it's a little different. Yeah, maybe. Maybe stealing the land and raising the people. And, I mean, the destruction that went on in apartheid South Africa, a tad. Different. Isn't that the same guy who did the Nazi thing with him, too?

Didn't he? Is that the same? Is it the same guy? I don't know. I think it is. I do remember that. What is this guy's name? Rick Stengel.

Wow. Maybe it's a different guy. Yeah, that guy was, was it figly usy or something? Oh, yeah, yeah, that was a different guy. That was thinking about the H-H-H guy. Yes. He said because Donald Trump was putting the flag back up on August 8th. He thought it had Heil Hitler significance.

Yes, because 8-8 is H-H-H, the H-H-H is the eighth letter. of the alphabet, so H.H equals Heil Hitler. Said this on national television, by the way. This is a point, a serious point made on national television. Just like this one from apartheid. And it's amazing. What I find most amazing about it, though, is not

that there's people who are a little bit unhinged when it comes to Donald Trump. We know that. It's not people who are unhinged coming against any Republican president. We know that happened. I mean, they used to call Bush a terrorist every day on television. I mean, this is not new. What I'm fascinated about, though, is just the lack of ability to learn

to learn a very important lesson. Arguably, Hillary Clinton is not president of the United States because she made a statement about the Donald Trump supporters being a basket of deplorables. You, of course, remember this,

it was one of the biggest things in the entire campaign, and everyone went around and said, we're the deplorables, and it became a rallying cry. And remember, this election turned on three states and about 70,000 votes.

So this is not something that needed to be, you know, to take over the entire election, it was a very close election. And, you know, I think you could make a sensible argument that that moment for Hillary cost her the election. It's, you can't exactly tie it scientifically. Of course, you're never going to be able to pull it up. But, I mean, 70,000 votes was not a lot to move on a statement that well publicized.

Now, to go back to 2016 for a second, you can make a really legitimate case that what Hillary Clinton said was true. And actually, you can make a case that what she said about deplorables is true about every candidate that has ever run a race. In every single instance, every candidate has followers who are, you would put in a category of I'm proud to have those followers and you'd put some in the category of, I mean, I'm glad they're voting for me, but I really don't want to be associated with them. Right.

And all Hillary Clinton was doing was saying, look, there is a basket of deplorables, these awful people that actually are racist and all these things. And we don't, we're never going to get them. But there are a lot of other people in the Republican Party who we can get to vote for me, right? There are a lot of those people who are open to voting for us because they don't like the way Donald Trump acts or they just are moderates or whatever it is. Like the way she stated it was really bad and I think it may very well have cost her the election. However, the actual context of that statement while she exaggerated it is largely true.

and it's largely true with every single candidate. What have they done to learn from that moment, though? They now are saying there is no exception. Everyone who votes for Donald Trump, who is a Republican, is a racist. Everyone should be boycotted. Everyone should be vilified. Instead of saying a slice of them are bad, which is what Hillary said,

they're now saying all of them are bad. They have just tripled and quadrupled down on the strategy that lost them the last election. And they continue to do it day after day after day. If there was a book, a tell-all that came out after this election, and we found out that Democrats were doing everything they could do to lose by as much as possible, I would believe that it was actually accurate.

It's fascinating the way they are handling this. They're going as socialist as they can. They're vilifying every voter that could possibly come into their pocket. They are just, they are trying to lose this, and they may very well do it. Let's hope so. This is the Glenn Beck program Triple-8-727 Beck is the phone number

Pat and Stu in for Glenn. Glenn is back on Monday, by the way. So get excited. There is a story that kind of would tie into what we were just talking about, about the deplorables, but it is being, I think, completely, completely misrepresented

to the American people and largely by conservative audiences and conservative media right now. There's a new movie coming out called The Hunt Now, if you saw, if you watched the Democratic debates, they ran a bunch of ads in the Democratic debates for this movie The Hunt. And I, when I saw them, I was like, oh, I'm in. I can't wait to see this. I know. I like these types of movies.

It is a movie about essentially people kind of wake up in a field and realize they're being hunted by some other people. And it's, you know, the way they kind of explain it is they, it comes off. The previews are great. They're just like, it looks like you need to get away to a upscale experience where it's like a hunting lodge. It's like a commercial for a hunting lodge. And then you realize about halfway through that they're hunting actual people. You know, so it's a horror movie and pretty intense. It comes from Blumhouse, which is, they made a lot of the big horror movies over the past, you know, five to ten years.

And they usually make a lot of money. They make a lot of money. Costs very little and then make a lot. Yeah. And they've had some, you know, some of their movies have been up for Best Picture. I mean, they've had some, you know, real success. And they've told great stories. The issue here, though, is that people, and you don't get this from the previews,

but the reporting about the movie, they are saying that essentially what happens is the people in the field being hunted are, were called in the movie deplorables. And they appear to be essentially red staters of some sort. I don't know that it's specific to Trump, but it's some sort. of like, you know, red staters and they're being hunted by, like, liberals. And this is apparently like, apparently to somebody, I don't know who, but apparently to somebody, this is offensive on the conservative side. And because they're saying, well, these people are being hunted.

They're going. And this is a bad message to send. Now, there's been some controversy about the movie because in the wake of, you know, the shootings and all of this, sometimes these things get rescheduled. places have pulled ads for the movie because, you know, it's obviously a violent storyline. And this happens, it's happened a million times in the past. I mean, I can remember Arlington Road. Do you remember that movie Arlington Road had Tim Robbins in it? It was in the mid-90s was supposed to come out, I want to say it was a week or two, maybe it was a month or two after Oklahoma City,

the Oklahoma City bombing. And it was a movie about a white terrorist who was kind of Timothy McVeigh-ish, who was, you know, setting off bombs and such. And people were like, I don't know if we want to release this right after and they wound up delaying it and it came out later. So this stuff does happen. And there's nothing you can do

if you're a movie company, right? You can't predict the news. But what I keep coming back to and I just don't understand how you could look at it any other way is that I don't know there's ever been a movie in history in which this setup is the same.

Let's say that there is a bunch of really rich, evil people that kidnap a bunch of people, throw them into a field and start hunting them. Who is the good guy in this situation? It's not the liberals. The guy's in the field. Right. Exactly. This is a movie that I think quite clearly

is set up that the red state team is the good team. Right? The other people have kidnapped them. They've drugged them. They've left them in a field and have started firing without explanation at them in the field. This is not a movie that is set up to vilify the right. This is a movie in which you have to imagine

The Right is the hero of the movie. Yes. The people in the field are the ones. You would think so, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine it's a five second movie. It opens up. They're in the field. They all fire at them.

They're all dead and it's over. Like, that's not a movie. And again, this comes from Blumhouse. This is the same company that produced the movie Get Out. Now, Get Out was, I believe, nominated for Best Picture and a bunch of other things. but if you ever saw that movie, it is a movie quite clearly

about white liberals and their racism. That is what the movie is about. It is the topic of the movie. And, you know, in there, the most evil people in the movie who are trying to do really bad things

to black people, at one point they actually say, he defends his racism. This is a guy who's, you know, basically murdering African Americans, defends his racism by saying, well,

but I voted for Obama. Right? Like, this is... Now, I'm not saying that Blumhouse is some right wing outfit. It's not. But they are willing to chase a good story no matter what when it comes to politics.

That's what they will do. And they've shown this over and over again. Like, it's a really interesting concept for a movie. It's balzy. And I mean, the idea, though, that conservatives would be the one complaining about it. Exactly.

I would expect liberals to be pissed off at that concept, not conservatives. Yeah. I mean, unless the movie takes a really strange twist, I can't imagine the people in the field getting shot at are the bad guys. Right? Like, that would be a very, that's way beyond M. Knight-Sharmelon when it comes to the twist. You know what?

The liberals, with all the millions of dollars that kidnapped people, they were doing the right thing. Innocent women in the field? Oh, that was right. The end! Vote Elizabeth Warren. I don't think that's how this ends. Pat and Stufer Glenn,

AAA 727 B-E-C-K, got a new study about sugar being the poison, that it is the can't it well it's it's it's a cancer poison or a poisoned cancer um it tastes good but it's killing you dead and uh you're gonna drop over from it any minute now that's basically do i basically have it you do a small glass of juice or soft drink a day is linked to increase risk of cancer um in case you didn't know that a small glass of juice or soda days linked to an increased risk of cancer study finds from is there is there anything not linked to an increased risk of cancer. Thank you. Everything is. Is there anything I can ingest that doesn't do that?

This is like the, I don't think the answer to that is, is, I think there is anything that's safe. Like they had a, one thing they do all the time is they'll be like, did you see that cell phones are linked to cancer? Brain cancer? And they're like, the UN has said that it is possibly carcinogenic. And you're like, okay, well, that sounds pretty bad until you realize that the UN has, I think, tested 300 different substances through this program and they have how many have they decided are not carcinogenic

none literally not one of them they have come up with no that doesn't cause cancer right because I mean who know at any at some dosage right who knows like things like pickled vegetables for example

are possibly carcinogenic according to the UN it's it's like to that level Every single thing that pops up is possibly carcinogenic. Now, what if I eat just raw kale? Raw kale. Well, that's possibly suicidal. You'll kill yourself. You'll kill yourself.

You will kill you just from the taste. Yes. I don't know if they've tested kale or not. I do have a really good recipe for kale. Okay. You put coconut oil in a pan, you know. And then... Some of these are really good, actually.

How does it work? So it's just like a drizzle? Yeah, like a drizzle. Yep. And then you just kind of swirl it around. Sure. Okay. And then you put the kale in the pan with the coconut

Is it high heat or? No, you don't even turn on the heat yet. Okay. Then you take the pan and you put it over a garbage can and then the kale slides off right into the garbage really quickly because it doesn't even stick to the pan at all because you put that great. Oil in there. Because a lot of times I have that issue where the kale leaves are still on there and get

it wash it off. It takes a while. It's like icky because you have to touch them and stuff. You don't have to do this with my recipe. Oh, wow. So that works pretty well. I got to try that when I get home. Yeah.

Would you put that out on your Twitter feed? recipe just kind of so we can walk people through it. I think that would be really nice. Another one, cancer risks should not be sugar-coded. Do you see what they did there? Oh, wow. Do you see what they did there?

I do. A new study points to a possible link between higher consumption of sugary drinks and increased risk of cancer. Then you get soda and fruit juice linked to cancer and major study of sugary drinks over and over and over and over again. If you saw these, if you have had hassles from family members that have now said you could never have. another cookie or another glass of soda in your life.

Or juice. Or juice. Yeah. Right. If this has happened to you, it's interesting to look a little bit deeper into what the study actually says because if you think political reporting sucks in this country, and I do, you wouldn't even imagine how much worse health and science reporting is. It is because, you know, at least in political reporting, like if someone comes out and says something about Republicans, right? Republicans will at least fight back against it.

They'll at least say, wait a minute, no, that's not true. Here's our argument. With health and science stuff, there's not really, like, you know, the only people who make any noise about this stuff are like the corporation that sells you the soda. Like, they're the only people who come out and say, wait a minute, actually, like, look at the study and no one believes them, right? No one's going to believe them because they're the one selling you the soda and they think,

oh, there's a profit motive there. And not these pure scientists. that are just saying this. And I will say largely, it's not even a problem with the scientists. A lot of times I think we say, you know, give us these crazy studies.

You know, we always say this about like, oh, first it's butter is bad for you and then margarine's bad for you and then it's none of it's bad for you, then all of it's bad for you. What really is true about that is the reporting on those things suck.

It's not the studies. Largely, it's the reporting on it that makes you, the reporting presents it as if the study says butter was bad and now margarine is bad and now butter is good and now margin is good.

When you look at the actual studies, a lot of times what you find is it's very nuanced. It says things that probably are true. It doesn't make one of the two things the devil and the other thing God, like the reporting does. So we'll come back here in 60 seconds and we'll go through if your wife or your husband has said, hey, you can never have another glass of orange juice

because you're going to die of cancer. We'll give you the truth here in 60 seconds. This is the Glenn Beck program. So the study about sugar and cancer involved 100,000 people. They asked them a bunch of questions about their lives. It's a big one. It has some credibility to it. They monitored them for a decade.

So 100,000 people in France monitored over a decade. That should be a solid study. Yeah. Now, it's an observational study. And observational studies are different than the highest levels of scientific study. Like when you have the blind studies and there's sort of a hierarchy of scientific study. You have a control group. Did they do all that or not?

No. So this is an observational study. It's a lower, basically we would say it's a lower quality study, though large. They split the group, they split the people into the groups of how much sugar they drank, either from juice or sugar sweetened beverages. This is just drinking sugar. This is an ingesting sugar through like candy bars or cake or whatever.

Which is a major thing. Yeah. If you happen to be a person who drinks a lot of water, but then nine slices of cake a day. That's me. Right. Well, not nine slices of cake. Or not water. be some pie in there too.

You want to spread it around among all the baked groups. And we can't leave out ice cream. That'd be ridiculous. Ridiculous. So researchers found that people who drank more sugary beverages were about 20% higher risk of cancer, which is pretty significant, 20% higher risk. Yeah. They also found that drinking just a little bit of soda, like one bottle of Coke per week, could increase your risk of cancer. What?

And this includes fruit juice. One Coke a week. Right. increases your risk of cancer. You just clicked on the story. Who in just 15 a day or whatever? Randomly, are you saying this generally?

Yeah, I'm just generally taking it a guy who might drink let's say diet Coke. Okay, well hold on. We'll get into that because what I'm fascinated is Pat just did the thing that people do with the media. It's why they write stories like this.

Wait, just one soda and I'm going to get cancer? Yeah. Click. Share! Right. Retweet. You know, like, and that's what happens

and why they write the stories like this. And you're saying that's... Let me give you the actual perspective. And look, there is something here, but let me tell you what it is. Okay. First of all, few issues with the study.

The first thing to notice, cancer isn't one disease. Cancer is a huge group of conditions that we lump together. They looked at a whole range of different cancers, including pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer, prostate cancer,

lung cancer, and bowel cancer. And while there was an increased risk from drinking sugar, for all cancer, it was only true for one specific subtype, premenopausal breast cancer. So the idea being that every other type of cancer, it didn't show any increase at all.

It only showed an increase in premenopausal breast cancer. Now, right off the bat, you think to yourself, you know, is it possible that drinking sugary drinks? And I'm thinking I probably don't have a risk for premenopausal breast cancer. I feel like it's low. That's my first feeling and I'm going back to juice. Right up the bat, you're going to eliminate a bunch of people here. I don't want to go into identifications here.

I'm nervous about having people. I don't want you to tell you how you identify. But, you know, like for example, if it happened to be post-menopausal drink up, right? There was no increase there, no increase for any of these other cancers, just pre-menopausal breast cancer. And I find it interesting, too, that while they are different in some ways, pre-menopausal breast cancer, huge effect. Post-menopausal breast infection, uh, cancer, no effect. Now look, they're a little different, but still you'd think they'd at least be some effect

for both. Okay. So it found no increase from, uh, any of these other cancers. The absolute risk, and this is the biggest thing you'll find in these studies, more than anything in the world to look for when you look at health and science reporting is this. The difference between relative risk and absolute risk. every headline will tell you what the relative risk is. Relative risk is different than absolute risk.

So here's the difference. They say there was about a 20% increase in the incidence of cancer. Sounds really scary and it does sound really scary. But the absolute risk is about 1%. So to put it another way, when they say, okay, it's about a 20% risk in cancer, this is how this works out. on average the people who had the lowest incidence

in the study three out of every 100 people had these effects of cancer okay with all if you were to go to the highest risk which is I think four sodas a day okay that gets it to four out of 100

so it was three out of 100 with no soda if you drink four sodas a day it goes to four out of 100 chance of getting cancer wow so it's not a 20 you think people think 20% like you're going from 3% to 23%

No, it's 3% to 4% 4% It's a little bit There's fractions in there But that's the basic thing So there's a slight uptick And you wonder over 100,000 people if they can really measure that accurately

Because there's other things That go on This is an observational study First of all it's people just telling The doctors how many they have They're also not looking at any of the rest of what they're doing Well yeah exactly They try to control for some of it

You know so some of it like When it comes to income and there's certain parts of it. But like, for example... Are they looking at what else is in their diet, though? They, I think, well, partially they are. The interesting part about that is when you talk about an observational study, I come in, you're Dr. Pat, and I come in and you say to me,

hey, Fatso, how many sugary drinks you have? Pretty good bedside manner, obviously. Yeah, you're really not the best doctor. You're a little rude. Really? Yeah. And you say, hey, fatso, you look like crap today. How many sodas have you had? and I say two

and then I go home and have nine or I go home and have none there's no way you know that you're actually measuring when I'm drinking I'm just telling you and think about this is like a visit once a year I'm like well I've been having about two per week like how many sodas do you have per day per week

how many glasses of juice if you had to estimate that now out of nowhere you wouldn't be able to do it accurately and that's just one of the things the false reporting is a major problem in these studies all the time but it's entirely possible even likely that some other factors might be causing

both the cancer and increased sugar drinking. For example, we know that wealthier people drink fewer soft drinks and we know that we also know they are at reduced risk of many cancers. So being rich might be confounding the relationship between cancer and sugar drinking. And that's just one of the examples. They try to control for these things, but you know, they're doing estimates. That's kind of a strange thing too. Since when do rich people not drink soda?

Is that a thing? Is that really a thing? Again, it's on average. so some people do. But I think a lot of times you find that wealthier people wind up spending more time on their health. You know, they spend more time going to the gym. They spend time, you know, they'll afford the organic, you know, salad that, you know,

instead of McDonald's, right? Like there's some of those things that wind up being true over long periods of time, but they're not universal. Yeah. Point is, though, again, basically, like, if this study is right and there's a million questions about it and it's not the highest quality of study, if it's right, if it's right and you drink all the soda you want in your entire life, they're saying it goes from a 3% chance of getting pre-monet menopausal breast cancer

to a 4% chance. Now, look, as a person who loves soda, and I should give you this because you did mention it, Pat. This is everyone who writes these crazy things about, you know, these headlines, they say like every, these are sites that live off of this. Cancer, you know, cancer scare websites are an entire industry. and one of the things they always fear monger on is artificial sweeteners. They're always saying those things are going to give you cancer all the time.

And they all put this study about sugar giving you cancer in their headlines. What they don't put in the headlines is this part of it. Even fruit juice was associated with an increased cancer risk. The only safe option, aside from water, were artificially sweetened drinks, which were not associated with any health issues in this research. What? And that's been, by the way. So, like, saccharine or...

Speretam, any of that stuff. Splenda, any of them. Wow. There's no effect at all. Now, that's very consistent with scientific research over multiple decades. But these sites

that would praise this if it showed that there was a artificial sweetener increase in cancer, that would be all over every freaking news source. That gets buried in paragraph like 90 if it's mentioned at all

in these studies, stories about this. Bottom line is... You should not be worried about how much sugar you drink and if it affects your cancer. I know as a person who loves soda, if this said to me, and it was completely true, if I had 12 sodas a day, it would increase my cancer risk by 1%. I still have 12 sodas a day. I like soda that much.

Oh, you would. Right? So you got to, it's better to have the information. You can actually make decisions and not freak yourself out. I feel like people just beat themselves into a panic constantly about what they can and can't eat, where they can and can't ingest, what they, when they have to sleep at certain times and get up at certain times and do all of these crazy things

and take 9 million pills and it's like, guys, the human body is relatively resilient. You know, try not to dip yourself at a vat of acid. You'll probably be fine. More in one minute. Hey, it's Glenn,

and I want to tell you about something that you should either end your day with or start your morning with, and that is the news and why it matters. If you like this show, you're going to love the news and why it matters. It's a bunch of us that all get together at the end of the day and just talk about the stories that matter to you and your life.

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