The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guest: Chris Hansen | 9/30/26
Episode Date: September 30, 2026Iran’s state news agency posted a 26-page letter addressed to the “honorable” people of America. Glenn breaks down why Iran posted the letter, who Iran hopes will read the letter, and how this l...etter exposes how desperate Iran has gotten. Glenn speaks with journalist Chris Hansen about A24’s latest movie about him, "Primetime," which seems like a hit piece on his work on “To Catch a Predator.” After Glenn spoke about the epidemic of children cutting off their parents, subscribers sent in very similar stories. On a similar note, Glenn speaks on the abuse of the word “narcissist” to become a catch-all insult for anybody who disagrees with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Okay, a lot on today's program.
Today is a really important show.
I mean, you get a lot out of you.
You listen to the whole show, but if you only have a certain amount of time, this is the podcast for you.
Iran's letter before the collapse, this letter, no, I have not heard anybody talk about that.
This is a training manual.
This is a cry for the universities.
Help us, help us, help us, help us.
Also, Chris Hansen, I saw this movie because he was going to be on.
I asked for him to be on because I've been reading about this movie, and I decided I'd go see the movie.
What was it, prime time?
Oh, the worst movie. Literally the worst movie I've ever seen.
I mean, there's nothing in its category. It's so bad.
And why was this movie made? Is it a love for pedophilia? A hate for Chris Hansen?
We talked to him about that. And broken families and toxic narcissism.
You don't want to miss that if you're having a problem with friends or family that have cut you off.
All this and so much more on today's podcast.
You're listening to.
The best of the Glenn Beck program.
So Iran's state news agency posted a 26-page open letter to the, quote, honorable people of the United States of America.
Not to the president, not to Congress.
It is addressed to our scholars by name, to our scholars, our students, and our media.
They know exactly who it is that they want carrying this message and who is most likely to carry it for them here in the United States.
The letter says Iran has won the war, and it lists 12 strategic victories.
It says, our bases are ghost towns.
Our ships have fled into the Indian Ocean.
I don't know if they know we have GPS.
Our troops ran from their barracks in their underwear.
It says 40 million people mourn the late Supreme Leader,
and the procession, if it would have been held in New York, we would have wept as well.
Yeah, probably because we've been like, do you know what you're doing to traffic?
Nations that win wars, I want you to know, don't mail 26 pages to the other side's college students explaining that they won, okay?
They send pages insisting that death to America doesn't really mean death to America.
They assure us in writing that not one store shelf in Iran has gone empty and they invite us to fly over and see for ourselves.
Oh, okay, I'll do that.
A competent government does not do you think President Trump is going to write them a letter and says, you know, I want you to know there's cocktail weenies and every grocery store in America.
No, you don't brag about your grocery store shelves if you're winning.
A confident government doesn't need to do things and say things like it's a chant.
Now, read closely on this.
If you read it closely, you realize this isn't one letter.
This is five letters stapled together.
And I will bet you, Dugan or somebody else, maybe here or even America, help them write this.
So there's five letters.
First one is for the left.
And it's all about Gaza, the police shootings, prison rates, climate, slavery, the no king's rallies, which they praise.
by name. Then they have one for the right. Endless wars, the swamp, the billionaires,
$40 trillion of debt, the factories that left, illegal immigration. Then one is for the anti-war
crowd. Close all 800 bases and bring everybody home. One is for the conspiracy crowd. It floats
September 11th as a false flag run by our own intelligence agencies. And one is for Christians.
It quotes Jeremiah. It quotes Matthew and Luke. And it holds up the golden rule.
They even work in the White House ballroom and the name on the Kennedy Center. This thing is absolutely amazing.
They are throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, into this letter.
Every faction in this country gets a paragraph that sounds like its favorite show.
So what are they doing? They're reading our fights in social media and
feeding them back to us.
They know you're not going to read this letter,
but they know the college students might read this letter.
They know the people like Antifa will read this letter.
They know the Palestinian support groups in America on the campuses will read this letter.
They know the college professors will read this letter.
They're sending this and saying,
this is how you help us fight.
Now, a letter written to please everybody is not meant to unite anyone.
Okay?
It's meant to find the crack.
that you already have and then slide a crowbar into it.
It is exactly why our Declaration of Independence says a unanimous declaration.
And we've gone through this before.
But we've been here before.
We've seen this.
The reason why we have a unanimous declaration is because we knew our enemy,
King George, would find the crack and then try to split us apart.
That's what they're doing.
They found five cracks in our society.
and they're using that crowbar sentence after sentence,
and there's one sentence repeated throughout.
We have no quarrel with the American people.
We just love you guys.
We only are quarreling with the men in the White House,
which they rename the House of Oppression.
Hmm.
Death to America, they explain, is a prayer for the death of our ruling elite.
then on page, I think it's 25, they tell you who empowers that elite, their words, quote,
you are the ones who empower with your votes, the government, end quote.
Okay, so by their own logic here, the people they pray will die are the people you chose.
Death to the ones you elected is death to your right to elect.
I don't know if you've picked that one up.
You know, when somebody says their quarrel isn't with you, only what you choose,
their quarrel is really with your right to choose.
And if you disagree, then their quarrel is with you.
And then they tell you what would put it in its place.
Okay.
The letter holds up, and I love this part,
the letter holds up the Iranian system,
the guardianship of the jurist.
The supreme leader must be an expert in Islamic law,
just, pious, politically aware, and brave.
Well, he was as he wet his pants,
before he died. Then they ask you to grade your commander in chief by those five tests.
Is he politically aware? Is he just? Is he pious? Is he aware? Is he brave? I don't know.
He stood up and said, fight, fight, fight. I don't know. Pretty good. He didn't wet his pants.
Anyway, then they tell you how to vote because they know the election is coming.
Entrust your affairs to the wise, not the wily. Oh, okay. Now, who decides the wise here
America. Because in Iran, a body of clerics does that. They're not asking us to be better Americans.
They're asking us to measure our republic with their supreme ruler. You know, this is where the two
systems part for good. In theirs, authority flows from God to a guardian and from the guardian
down to you. He'll tell you what to do. Kind of sounds like Satan's plan. Anyway, in ours, rights flow from
God, then to you, then you lend a little bit of that authority to the government on loan.
and you can call it back at any time.
Their system only works if the right man sits at top.
Hours was built on the assumption,
the right man is never going to sit at the top, okay?
That's why they have a guardian and we have a constitution.
And that's why they call us in this letter the greater Satan.
And it's not because of the president.
Presidents come and go.
Because the idea that a free man answers to God directly with no jury,
standing in between, that's the idea their system cannot survive.
And you don't sign a treaty with Satan.
You don't coexist with Satan.
You cast him out.
If they think we're Satan, then they've got to cast all of us out.
So when the letter promises peaceful coexistence, yeah, you should keep reading.
Because the same page quotes Imam Ali.
And I want to quote, I want to quote him here.
I love this.
No, this is really good.
The day the oppressed triumph over the tyrant will be more dreadful than the day the tyrant prevailed.
So it warns that the world's anger will set fire to America's interest and assets everywhere.
Now, that's a threat dressed up as a cute little prayer.
But if you understand that their religion is nothing but violence, you understand that prayer.
Then the final paragraph.
They say they await the return of Jesus Christ.
alongside the Mahadi.
I love this one.
They invite us and the American people to stand by their side.
Oh, I'm going to.
I'm thinking, well, I'm not going to, but I'm thinking about, no, I've thought better.
No, stand by their side.
Christians, you need to understand what that means.
In their tradition, Jesus does come back, but not as a king of kings, as the Mahadi's companion.
He prays behind him.
He testifies to the Mahadi being the Savior and like Christians, you got it all wrong.
They quote our scripture on page 25 and demote our Savior on page 26.
This is a mess.
This is not an olive branch.
That's the terms of surrender written in the language of friendship and prayer.
And if you wonder how they might treat Americans who would disagree, the letter answers that too.
It complains that no American president will ever sit for an interview with an Iranian journalist.
Then a footnote clarifies they mean only true, honest Iranians, not the ones who have sold their souls to the devil.
You know, the people.
The same letter blames the CIA and the Mossad for more than 2,000 protesters dead in January.
So when they scooped everybody up and put them into prison and then killed them, who did that?
the Massad and the CIA.
Is anybody rethinking
which side they're on?
I don't know.
I don't know.
A government that talks about the will of the people
while deciding which people count
has already told you where you would stand.
Okay?
Okay, so why write this thing?
Because it's a mess.
Well, they're losing.
A government that feels strong
talks to governments,
doesn't talk to the people,
and especially doesn't narrow the people down
to their little sources of cancer inside.
Okay?
Government that talks, that believes in itself and believes it's strong,
it doesn't offer concessions, then say it's going to blow up the world,
and then reach out to the country and say, hey, here's a letter of peace,
but address it to the media.
Why would you do that?
Because they're in cahoots with them.
Whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not,
they are carrying Iran's water.
The same of our universities and our students.
Okay? A regime that feels corner talks past the government and talks to the students and the professors and the reporters, all the people that gave them the 1979 revolution in Iran, hoping that someone here will do what its missiles couldn't.
They can't reach our Constitution with a drone.
So they're aiming it at the only place that it actually lives in the people who might still believe in the Constitution.
Now, the letter closes, you know, with a line about the earth being inherited by God's virtuous servants.
Good. You know, we got a line for that one, too.
Rights come from the creator. Government gets its power from the consent of the government, and no guardian is required.
So here's what you need to know, and this is all you need to know.
They're losing because this shows all weakness. They wrote a letter to our college professors,
the students and our media.
I suggest we make sure our students can read it
with the caveat that somebody helps them understand
what they're actually reading.
More in a minute.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program,
and we really want to thank you for listening.
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This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.
Okay, so I wrote a review.
you'll find the whole thing, but let me just give you a little bit of this review.
And I don't think this was scathing enough.
Chris Hanson spent years luring the worst people in America into a kitchen and making them sit down.
A-24 has returned the favor.
For 110 minutes, the audience is the one caught on the hidden camera, wondering,
how the hell did I get into this room and why didn't nobody warn me?
Prime Time looks like it was shot during the pandemic by people who were never allowed in the same room.
Every seam feels assembled by phone footage mailed in from separate quarantines and stitched together by an intern who is paid in exposure.
The lighting has the warmth of a gas station bathroom.
The color grading suggests a 1970s adult film that ran out of money before anybody took their clothes off.
So nobody gets the fun, only the shame.
The acting is bad.
The script is worse.
Neither is the film's biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that somebody watched all of this in an editing bay, nodded and sent it.
Venice. Robert Pattinson, who plays Hansen, I've seen Charlie Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer portrayed
with more humanity than this. Chris Hansen never killed anybody. He certainly didn't eat anybody.
He asked grown men to why they bought beer and condoms to me with a 13-year-old, and in this
movie, that seems to be the crime. So for 110 minutes, now in the theater I saw, did not come
with the ad. Hansen has bought pre-show ads in front of the movie. Here it is. I'm Chris Hansen,
and I'm going to need everyone in the theater to take a seat right over there. You know, I've spent
decades working with law enforcement to catch predators before they exploit our children. Now,
there are more platforms than ever before where this disturbing crime is being committed,
and we are there to take down the predators. Join us undercover.
every day on my streaming network
True Blue.
I have to tell you,
uh,
that gets,
you know,
three stars.
The movie gets no stars,
no thumbs up.
I would have cut my thumbs off and all of my fingers
to be able to be,
to able to be leaving that theater within 10 minutes.
It's an awful.
I don't know what their,
their goal was on this.
It certainly wasn't to make a good movie because I mean,
it fits in,
crimes against humanity, the cinematic division. I mean, it is awful. And anybody who recommends this
movie to you is, have you ever been to a restaurant where somebody eats something and they think
it's rancet, maybe poison? And they're like, oh my gosh, oh my, I think this is, I think this is rancid.
Here, try it. Anybody who says, let's go see that movie is that friend. Stay away from this movie.
It's horrible. And I think it does a grave
injustice. All of that was just about the movie.
Grave injustice by a guy who,
for all accounts and purposes,
has only tried to put predators behind bars.
Chris Hansen, welcome to the program. How are you?
Thank you, Glenn Beck. I'm great.
Thanks, sir.
So, I have to start with,
you didn't even know this was being made.
They invited you to see the movie,
a screening of it,
But they said, you can only see it if you sign a release to promise to not sue us.
Honestly, I didn't sign a release.
I'd like to sue them for the time I wasted watching this horrific film.
You didn't do that.
What is the purpose of this film?
I don't know, Glenn.
It's so hyper sensationalized.
It's so dark and so disconnected with reality.
There is about as much connection.
between this film and reality as there is from a Scooby-Doo cartoon movie to what I do for a living.
What's the motive?
You'd have to ask 824 and the director of this film, Lance Oppenheim.
We had heard about a year ago that a film was in the works.
I had somebody I know who I work with who knew Lance, reach out and say, you know, what's going on?
Are you guys going to reach out to Chris Hansen on this film?
And he said, well, the studio is going to do that.
We want his input.
We want him involved in promoting the film.
But rest assured, it's a love letter.
Well, Glenn, if that's a love letter, I'd hate to get a poison pen letter from this particular director.
My gosh.
Oh, my gosh.
I have to tell you know, Chris, it does expose you had an affair, but it showed that you tried to end it honorably.
You, you know, you've, you do this in the really, you know, you know.
bad section.
Here's why even that part of it's dishonest.
That tabloid stuff was after to catch a predator, right?
Had nothing to do with it.
So they took something that was a tabloid two-week deal,
and they mixed it in with the to catch a predator scenario
and had nothing to do with each other.
It was irrelevant.
The other thing they try to do to you,
the other thing they try to do to you,
but I just have to say,
you know, I'm not a fan of affairs, but things happen.
People make mistakes.
You seem to try to be doing the honorable thing,
except for the way they spun this whole thing.
And then the other thing they try to do is make you into somebody who is just craven for ratings.
Well, that's just not true.
I mean, they didn't talk to me about making this film.
They didn't want my input.
They didn't want the input of any.
who is involved in the film.
So here's what I think happened.
They set out to do a very dark, dramatic film.
And the reason they didn't reach out to me
or to anybody who was involved in the series
or who's involved with our takedown series today
on my streamer True Blue is because they didn't want the truth.
They didn't want anything, including the truth,
interfering with their dark delusional vision of this.
But then why is my name?
The question is why I use my name and they used it because they wanted to exploit it for commercial value.
They know it's a brand.
I just don't understand what, I mean, honestly, it looks like it has all of the joy of a snuff film.
And it was like it was either written by somebody who just has a personal vengeance against you.
or it's somebody who honestly doesn't like the fact that you've taken down pedophiles.
Because I can't figure it.
This is either a personal vendetta or it is a personal message.
Because the only ones that look good in this really are the pedophiles.
Well, and nothing happened in this movie that actually happened in real life.
You know, as if I would have a dressing room in the Stinghouse.
sitting there shirtless with dressing lights all around me.
That's just ridiculous.
It's taken to such a absurd level that when my wife and I went to go look at the movie
to watch it here in New York City,
I mean, we couldn't even, it couldn't, it was hard to get upset because it was so over
the top and so detached from anything remotely realistic.
I mean, it was just, it's absurd.
And I feel bad for all the people in this movie who are particularly.
trade the way they are. I never had those discussions with my producer. I never had those
discussions with the police. They make the police look like buffoons, which is unfair. They make me
look like an egotistical rating is driven evil guy. They made me look like a detached father and
a bad husband. And those things are just not even close to reality. They make the people who
actually agreed with what you were doing on taking them down, they made them look. They made them look
Craven as well, just craven for blood.
I mean, that guy, that scene with a guy on the airplane sitting next to you, like, you haven't done
enough.
You just need to kill him and, you know, spill their blood or whatever.
He said, it was horrifying.
It was horrifying.
So it made anybody, anybody who was on the side of stopping predators look like they were
monsters or idiots.
And why would they do this?
I mean, let's remember that this is an industry that was ruled for years.
by one of the most prolific predators to walk the planet, Harvey Weinstein, who was just sentenced
a week ago today in a courtroom not far from where I'm sitting in another case where he preyed
upon a woman, sexual assault. And this is something that's been going on for years in Hollywood.
And did that have something to do with the making of this film? I don't know. I wasn't given the
courtesy of being consulted or being considered or having any input in it. Yet again,
felt that they could commit identity theft essentially by using my name,
image and likeness.
The case in Murphy, Texas, with the DA, that's how the movie ends.
And I'm not spoiling anything because don't go see this movie.
And I'm not saying for political reasons, you will never get your time back.
And it's, I mean, it's something that, I mean, rots your soul.
It is so bad.
It is so dark and ugly and, oh my gosh, I've never seen a movie this bad.
Anyway, it ends with, you know, the DA that kills himself.
How much of that is true?
Here are the facts of the case, Glenn.
When we were conducting an investigation with the Murphy Police Department in Murphy, Texas,
there was a man who was an assistant district attorney, Bill Conrad,
who got caught chatting with decoys posing as two different 13-year-old boys.
The conversations were sexually exploited.
explicit, which in Texas, like most states, is against the law just to have the chat, right?
And in this particular time, it was election season in Texas.
So commercials are running all over the place about people cracking down, people running for a judge,
people running for a state attorney general, people running for a district attorney who, you know,
the videos were showing law enforcement guys rushing into a room and capturing predators.
I mean, they were taking a stand against this.
In this environment, this assistant DA services chatting with decoys posing his 13-0 boys.
Now, the Murphy Police Department makes the decision that they have enough evidence to go for a probable cause warrant and go arrest him on the next day.
There is also evidence and some concern that he might be destroying evidence.
Now, if you're worried about casting a television show, you'd wait until Monday when he was in his office at the
attorney's office and go get them there and make a big show out of it. They decided that they were going
to arrest him on a Sunday at his home. We knew this, obviously. We followed along and were watching with
our cameras from the street. They went in to arrest him. He had his laptop, apparently, according to the
police, and a subsequent investigation by the Texas Rangers, and he had tried to extract the hard drive.
He looked at them, said, I'm not going to hurt you guys, something to that effect, and pulled out a
and sadly took his own life.
No, nobody wants to see that happen,
but nobody can predict it from happening.
And so later, there was an investigation by the Texas Rangers,
which revealed that there were images of child pornography
found on the hard drive of his computer.
As an assistant, district attorney,
he would have known that each one of those images
could have put him in prison for 10 years.
Now, he made that decision.
Tragic, horrible.
I feel terrible for his family.
Obviously, it would be better had he had his day in court and hired a lawyer for a vigorous defense as everybody deserves in this country.
But that's not what he chose to do.
Now, there was no attempt to cover this up.
I went on the Today Show the next morning.
We reported it in detail.
What happened, what we knew, and where it was going.
When that episode of To Catch a Predator was aired, the same thing.
We reported it as it happened.
factually. No attempt ever in at any time in this in this series glen every time all along the way from
the very beginning in 2004 and including the stories we do today the take down predator
investigations that we do all over the country. We have been and are painstakingly transparent
about our methodology. People ask sometimes you know what's the weirdest thing or most shocking
thing you've left on the editing room floor? Nothing. We show you every.
We show you exactly how we do it, with whom we do it, and you see the end product.
So the, you weren't there on the front lawn crying, quoting pornographic conversations.
No, no, no, no, decoy was singing show tunes to him.
I mean, it's just, it's so absurd.
Insane.
I mean, it's insane.
Look, I understand the decoy was interviewed in a documentary and regrets being involved and feels
bad that he actually talked to a man on the phone and commit suicide.
Sure.
I get that.
And then he's entitled to do it.
But the rest of it didn't happen.
Feel that way.
Exactly.
Okay, real quick.
You're still, you're on True Blue.
You're still doing this.
Correct.
Tell us where we can watch you.
We produced the takedown episodes on my streaming network, True Blue, watchtruBoo.com.
We also produced documentaries on everything from extortion to we just had a documentary
come out called Dangerous Games, which delves into the problems with,
Roblox, the online gaming platform where so many kids are being approached by predators.
And in fact, there was another documentary.
I'm not a producer of it or executive producer, but before this film, before we even knew
about this film, there had been a documentary in the works called I'm Chris Hansen, which is
finished.
And it's a, you know, it's a real profile of me and my work.
And so that's, apparently there's going to be announcement about where that's going to go
in the next week or so.
Okay.
Chris, thank you very much.
I really appreciate your work all these years.
And I'm sorry, I've never seen, I've never seen anything like this.
I mean, it's, it's what we talked about it.
You know, the great news for me, Glenn, is that, you know, I've also got two podcasts,
predators I've caught and have a seat with Chris Hanson.
And, you know, we went to the movie.
We interviewed other moviegoers afterwards.
And we did a big piece on it that is on the Have a See with Chris Hansen YouTube channel
and podcasts where people can check it out.
And none of the people I talked to really liked the way I was.
portrayed and I don't think there were
sick.
It's there.
Well, it's just me and my
wife and one other guy all by himself
which was weird but
that's, you know, it's not going
anywhere I don't think. Chris, thank you very much.
I appreciate it. God bless.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. You bet. Chris Hanson.
This is the
best of the Glenn Beck program.
So a couple of days ago we told
you about what was happening in Chicago. These 200
parents get into a room. They have grown children
that aren't speaking to them anymore. And by the
time we were off the year, I got to tell you, our inbox looked like that room. It was packed.
A grandmother who hadn't seen her 14-year-old granddaughter since April. Her and her son were close,
but now she's just a label that she says he picked up someplace else. A listener whose brother
actually stood in his front lawn and screamed that he was voting for a pedophile and a rapist.
he hasn't spoken to his brother ever since.
A listener who is a single mom who raised two kids in church
whose son was told by his new church cut her off.
A mom who cut off her oldest son
that they had a disagreement.
Two years later he was dead of fentanyl.
Now his sister has cut her off.
One woman wrote in,
Last week my daughter texted.
She wants to reconnect.
I never gave up hope.
Boy, that one story helps.
I mean, so many of us are dealing with these things.
It's a pain that just doesn't go on.
It just doesn't stop.
It just goes on and on and on.
It's honestly like a death with no funeral.
Nobody's bringing a casserole.
Somebody at church asks, how are the kids?
And you smile and you say, oh, they're fine.
They're fine.
And it's killing you inside.
There's a family therapist named Pauline Boss, and she calls this grief for someone who's still alive, still out there, still posting pictures of grandkids that you're not allowed to hold.
She says it's the most stressful kind of loss because there's nothing to close.
And if you've wondered why you can't get over it, it's not because you're weak.
You're just, you're grieving something that hasn't ended.
and keep calling, just keep calling.
Isn't enough?
And we start with this.
Forgiveness and reconciliation.
Well, they're not the same thing.
And most of us have welded them together and it's crushing us.
You know, Jesus said, you know, when you're praying, forgive, forgive, forgive.
He didn't say, wait for them to call.
Forgiveness happens in you.
So you have to forgive first.
It needs no permission and no phone number.
And you can do it right now on your knees.
And it might take you months.
I've done it.
It'll take you months to get there.
But one day that miracle will show up and you'll be like, oh my gosh, I don't have that anymore.
But reconciliation is different.
That takes two people.
It takes trust.
And trust comes back really slowly.
There is something happening in our society.
Because there's a word that just keeps showing up on both sides of the door.
And that word is narcissist.
kids now say it about the parents the parents say it about the kids then the ex-wives the bosses
the pastors the guy who cut you off in traffic type type it into tic-tok well better yet don't
you'll find billions of views gaslighting was webster's word of the year in 2022 now add toxic
trauma triggered and boundaries we have built an entire vocabulary for describing what everyone else
is doing to us.
We are breeding personality disorders.
Or are we just handing out labels?
Because that's what they have. We're doing both.
And it matters which is which.
You know, there are personality disorders.
And that's not a bad day.
It's not a selfish teenager or a dad who yelled too much.
It's a rigid clinical pattern.
And it shows up in every relationship and every season of life.
and it wrecks them one after another,
the clinical kind of narcissism,
the kind of doctor would diagnose.
It shows up somewhere in between one and six percent of people,
okay?
Depending on who's counting.
Borderline personality,
marked by explosive swings between I love you and I hate you,
that runs about 2%.
And it's real.
And if you live with somebody like that,
you know it's real.
But one to six percent doesn't add up to billion.
of views. If every mother is a narcissist, then the word doesn't mean anything anymore. And the people
who actually survived one lose the word they need. Traits are different than disorder. There is a psychologist,
and she tracked college students on the standard narcissism test for decades now. I want to tell you
what she actually came up with.
By the mid-2000s, two out of three were scoring above what had been the average a generation
earlier.
She called it an epidemic.
Then there was a large federal survey, found out people in their 20s had nearly three
times the lifetime rate of narcissistic personality disorder as people over 65.
Then another researcher pushed back in 2017.
Study found that classic chest-thumping narcissism actually dipped among college students
after the 1990s.
So who's right here?
In looking at this over the last couple of days,
I think both are.
Because the narcissist changed shape.
Because there's two kinds.
The grandiose one, it's loud,
it's a big ego, big mouth,
sucks all of the air out of the room,
and you see this guy coming a mile away.
The second one is vulnerable narcissists.
They're quieter.
They're anxious.
They're easily wounded.
they're convinced the world owes them and keeps failing to pay them.
That one doesn't brag.
That one keeps score.
Every slight is an injury.
Every disagreement is an attack.
And he is always, always the victim.
And I got to tell you, there's a lot of people I know like that.
A lot.
The second kind, the one I'm talking about now,
that's the one our culture is building and growing right now.
and look at the reward.
We were told,
we were told everything's going to be fine,
listen to the experts.
And so we tell this generation
that they were special
when they hadn't done anything.
We handed out praise like candy
and then took away the scoreboard.
Everybody's a winner.
Self-esteem without accomplishment
is not confidence.
It's a balloon.
And a balloon spends its life
afraid of pins.
Then we gave them a phone
that puts them on stage
24 hours a day. Every picture gets a grade, gets likes, every opinion gets a crowd. You learn to
curate yourself, perform yourself, and measure yourself in likes. That's a narcissist training
program with a charging cable. Then we taught them the language of injury. Your truth,
not the truth. What's your truth? Your trauma. Protect your peace. Protect your peace.
Do you need a safe space?
Are you offended?
Have you been injured by words?
Now, some of that language helps people with real wounds.
But you hand it to a fragile ego and it becomes armor.
Now, any criticism can be called abuse.
And any parent who says no is toxic.
This is called, according to researchers, concept creep.
The definition of harm keeps growing until,
Disappointment Qualifies we're there gang. I've been harmed. I didn't get picked. I didn't do this. I didn't do that. They didn't give me this. We lost the game. We've turned diagnosis into a game. One study of the most popular ADHD videos on TikTok found that more than half were misleading. You can watch a 90-second clip. Diagnose yourself with one thing and your mother with another and never.
ever, ever meet a doctor. Congratulations. And we did it too. We're not innocent. We're not just
bystanders. We built our own feeds. We watch cable news that tells us half the country is evil.
And if you watch the other cable channel, that half of the country is evil. We snap at waitresses
and then post about grace. Narcissism is not a generation. It's a temptation. And we're all being
offered it and we're being fed it constantly. We have to start figuring out what's real and what's
not. What's the real thing and what's just somebody you're just angry at? First, it's the pattern.
Not every fight, not every job, not every friendship, every marriage. If it ends the same way,
it can't always be somebody else's fault. You know, you need to start going, but wait a minute,
what did I do? Is there a pattern here?
Second thing, empathy completely disappears when it costs somebody something.
They can be charming and generous when there's an audience.
But watch what happens when your need gets in the way of theirs.
Third thing to watch for is criticism.
If it produces rage or collapse, not reflection,
a small correction feels like an assassination attempt.
That's what you're dealing with.
Fourth, history will get rewritten.
Something you both saw happen.
They remember differently.
They are certain.
And any trying to change that, boy, you are abusive.
And last, a narcissist can't actually ever genuinely apologize.
They can say, I'm sorry you feel that way.
They can't say, I was wrong.
You're right.
I was wrong.
And here's what I'll do differently.
And then go do it.
Now, hold that up.
Before you hold that up to all the people in your life that you might have lost,
hold that list up to your own face.
Because that's the test that nobody takes on TikTok.
If every relationship you've had ended with you as the innocent party,
the common denominator is in your mirror.
if you've diagnosed your mother, your ex, your boss, your brother,
ask who's doing all the diagnosing here?
The irony is that narcissist has become one of the most self-centered words in the language.
It puts the whole story on the other person and lets the one who says it walk away cleanly.
Boy, this is so our culture today, isn't it?
So if you're still raising kids,
praise the effort and character.
But don't tell them they're special.
They're not that special.
They're not.
They might have special things that they do,
but they're not universally special.
Let them lose.
Let them be corrected without calling it harm,
without being a helicopter all the time.
Teach them that feelings are real,
but they're not facts.
And they're certainly not a verdict on anybody else.
Oh my gosh, I've heard that person is, no.
You can verify your feelings.
That's how you feel, but that's not a verdict on somebody else.
And with ourselves, practice the one skill no narcissist has.
Just say this.
I was wrong.
I want you to say that out loud to somebody this week, to somebody who deserves to hear it.
Don't, if you truly, truly are dealing with a disordered person, get real help from somebody who has met you both, not a stranger with a ringlight.
But go to somebody this week that needs to hear it and don't say anything else.
There's no but after there's nothing else.
You know what?
I've been thinking about this.
You're right.
I was wrong and I'm really sorry for that.
And don't expect anything.
Okay.
Well, thank you for saying that.
Well, thanks for listening.
I just wanted to let you know that.
Click.
Don't expect anything in return that will confuse them.
That will make them think.
And don't let one person's disorder become your personality.
This one's so hard.
I deal with this.
I have to tell you, I just, I deal with exactly what you're dealing with right now.
And it is really hard.
And it is hard not to continue to go.
But Paul warned there,
will be in the last days, people who are lovers of themselves, they're proud, they're unthankful,
and they're without natural affection. That's not a diagnosis, but it describes what happens to
any people who put themselves at the center. And the cure has never been a better label. It's
humility. Humility makes every broken relationship repairable. Pride is what makes every single one
of those things permanent. Humility. It may not happen. It may not ever happen. It may not ever happen.
but it won't change you.
Don't let it change you unless it's changing you into a softer, more kind, and more humble person.
Back in just a second.
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