The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program with Movie Director, Nick Searcy | 9/20/18

Episode Date: September 20, 2018

Ep #185- The Daily Best of GB Podcast: 9/20/18  -House of Kavanaugh & Lobster Paranoia? -Dumpster Diving for Whales? -Glenn's Hero of the week? -'Gosnell: America's Biggest Serial Killer' (w/ Nick Searcy) -Dopamine & Social Media (w/ Judith Donath)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Blaze Radio Network On Demand Coming up on the podcast today We look at an interesting set of connections as far as the kind of hit job that's going on with Brett Kavanaugh right now We get into that. We also get into how not to dispose of a dead whale. We learned some important lessons on that one.

There's some great audio from one of the Parkland students who actually was one of the people who were really against guns and kind of partnering with David Hogg who has kind of changed his tune and learned something interesting about America as he's gone around it, and it's a pretty amazing moment. We'll have that for you today as well as an interview with Nick Searcy.

He directs the new movie Gosnell, the Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer, which is, you know, it's a horror show, but an important one for you to know about and we talk about Kavanaugh as well. What's going on? The latest developments, another person came forward, said they had heard about it. Now they've reversed their claims.

It'll be all the details on today's podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. It's Thursday, September 20th. Right, you know, I'm torn. Some days I want to live. Some days I don't. And, you know, the thought is, you know, it's, really kind of nice, his sun's out, it's beautiful, but then I have to look at the people that I

live around. Has everybody gone crazy? Democrats during the Kavanaugh hearings at least are being transparent here. Let's look at what's happening. I'm amazed how the left is giving the entire country, a direct insider look on how they go about business. Look at the confirmation charade here. It has everything. It has mic check, mic check to shout down your opponents, political grandstanding to gain favor for future elections. I mean, if you want to talk about virtue signaling, I am smarticase.

Then shady plots involving big money don't. that are just advancing progressive agendas, false accusations that we, at least, at least accusations that there's no way to prove them, this is a look at social justice, period. This is the way America's going to work. If you fall in line with the left and you think, you know what, we got some real hope and change coming, this is it. This is what your life is going to be like. on all levels. It's open for everyone to see. They don't really even appear to, you know,

give a crap about hiding it anymore. Let's take the allegation from, you know, Dr. Ford. Grassley has given Ford until tomorrow to commit to a testimony that will be conducted in the next 72 hours. He wants it complete by Monday so they can move on with a committee vote. but Ford and her lawyer are now delaying.

They want the FBI to do an investigation. Okay, well, that's not the way the law works. And by the way, maybe that's what should have happened in the first place. Maybe when you had this accusation, you should have gone to the Maryland police before you wrote a letter to the good senator. The good senator, when she got the letter, she should have said, Maryland State Police, you should look into this. It's a state crime, not a federal crime. By the way, it's a state crime that appears to have a statute of limitations of one year. But that's the way it

works. You don't come out and make this public accusation. Lay out all of these charges, have zero evidence, and then say, oh, by the way, I'm going to let that smear hang out here. I'm not going to answer a single question until the FBI do their job, which, by the way, this is not the FBI's job. It's a delay tactic. So why? Of course we know why.

Democrats want this delayed as close to the November midterms as possible. They study history just like everyone else. When this nearly identical scenario happened with Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill back in 1991, it triggered what is now known as the year of the woman in the 1992 elections. Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee,

was a product of that surge. Let me say that one again. Feinstein, you know, the woman who got the letter, whose appears office leaked the letter, she got into office because of Anita Hill. The Ford accusation reveals a lot more than just that, in August, a large group of left-leaning groups co-signed a letter to both Senator Feinstein and Grassley demanding Kavanaugh's records. It was basically the same narrative that Corey Booker and

Kamala Harris were using during the opening day of the confirmation hearing. This group demanded they had organized to stop Kavanaugh. One of the groups that co-signed this letter was called the Project on Government Oversight or Pogo. Who's the vice chairperson of Pogo? That's a woman named Deborah Katz. Yes, the same Deborah Katz. She's now the lawyer for Kavanaugh's accuser. Don't worry, this gets even more ridiculous.

Pogo directly funded by, guess who? Spooky Dude, George Soros, the open foul, Open Society Foundation. Soros has his fingerprints all over this. In June, the Daily Caller reported that a group called Demand Justice had launched an effort to try to stop Kavanaugh's confirmation. They allocated $5 million to the project. Want to take a guess where they get their money?

Yeah. Well, no, not Soros. They get it from the 1630 Fund. The 1630 fund gets their money directly from George Soros and the Open Society Center. So that's, you know, it's, what was that money laundering? Oh, yeah, Tides Foundation. They're used to this kind of stuff. Recently, they've given over $2 million from the George Soros Fund.

We're seeing play-by-play, almost in slow motion. and everyone can see it. A live hit job. For anybody who thought that Netflix's House of Cards was fiction, was over the top, was ridiculous, I urge you to go back and watch it again and tell me that doesn't look like little house on the prairie compared to what's happening in real life today.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Okay, so there's cage-free chickens, cage-free eggs, range-free chickens, grass-fed cows, meat-eaters who, you know, are doing everything they can to, you know, lessen the guilt about eating a chicken? Well, I want to eat this chicken, but how many square feet did it grow up in? Yes, I agree. I mean, I don't eat veal for that. I don't want my, I don't want my cows tortured so they're a little more tender. You know, I don't know. Not quite tender enough. Could you just keep that cow in a box from the day it was born for me?

I mean, I don't want to be cruel, but, okay, so here is in Southwest Harbor, Maine, Charlotte Gill. That's an interesting name for a woman who runs a fish store. Charlotte Gill runs Charlotte's legendary lobster pound. And she is now getting the lobster. high before boiling them alive. She said, I feel bad when lobsters come here and there's no exit strategy. Okay, first of all, hang on just a second. Charlotte, the lobsters aren't coming there.

They've been captured. It's not like a lobster walks in the door. Ding, ding, the doorbell goes off. They walk in. Oh, we've got customers. No, they're lobsters. They've come in for something else. What is that?

It's like in the late 1700s. There's a lot of African tourists that are coming to our land. Have you noticed that lately? These tour ships are showing up. I'm like, no, that's not why, that's not what those are. No. Sorry. I feel bad when lobsters come here.

She owns this place. I feel bad when lobsters come here and there is no exit strategy. I got news for you. There is an exit strategy. You boil them and we eat them. That's the exit strategy. Can I tell you something? I'll bet you she's inherited.

I bet you this was her father's or her family's thing, do you think? And she's grown up her whole life, you know, being torn. I mean, look, you know, this is, you've been saying the veal thing ever since I've known you that you don't eat it for that reason. And as America's only conservative vegetarian, I would say that most of the time I, you know, whatever. You know, people like to goad me into these conversations about this stuff because it's fun. But the lobster thing's insane, guys. We're throwing them alive into boiling water. It's completely nuts.

There are a million. What are you going to do? Shoot them. Yes. Anything. Like, first of all, I would argue, of course, the answer to that would be no. But still, if you're going to kill them, putting them into boiling water is completely nuts. Do we have some vendetta against these things?

Like we, dude, did they, did, are they responsible for like the Adam and Eve thing? And I'm not aware of it. Were they in? No, here's the thing. Come on, you know this. If they weren't living undercover of water, we'd all be exterminating them. We'd be terrified. If they were crawling out from underneath your refrigerator, we'd not be eating them.

We'd be exterminating. Which is another weird thing. If you had a freaking red bug walking through your house like that, you're not bringing it. You're not going to, oh, let's put it in. in the oven or let's boil it and eat it. That would be weird. Right. I never my daughter Mary when she was very young. I went on vacation up like you know, Nantucket or Cape Cod or someplace like that.

And we went and we bought lobsters and I put them down on the floor and let them crawl. And Mary freaked out. She was like, you're not going to make me eat bugs. I won't eat bugs. I won't eat bugs. That's really what they are, man. How hungry were you to go, I don't know, that big thing that just crawled out of the water. What do you say we eat that? I know and I think that's it. I think because they're so ugly and creepy, we're like, sure, we can go all Hannibal Lecter on

them. Let's just boil them. Like there's every, we hear this, you know, the, I don't want to, we're going to hunt with, you know, we don't want to be cruel. And, and you put all these things in place. And like, blopsters were like, ah, just rip them out. You know what? Let's put them all in a cage and let's look nice and close to the little tank and we'll meet them all before we throw them in the boiling water. We as a society despise those things. Let me ask you this, though, Stu, seriously. Okay, let's just say you're, I don't know what your plan is.

We electrocute them. What is your plan? I would, my plan would be not to eat them at all, as I think you're aware. But still, if you're going to do it, it needs to be something else other than boiling them. We don't boil anything else. We don't be like, hey, cows, here's a giant vat of water. Get in. And then, oh, they're nice and boiled.

Let's put them in stew. We don't handle anything else like that I don't understand why they're like It's like you could hear them making all the noises And they're trying to climb out And we're like oh this is okay It's a weird thing as a society that we do There's a few of them

You've pointed out the veal thing The foie gras is Fogra is another thing I love Fogra will not eat it That is just horrible There's a few of them If anybody doesn't know how they make foegras

They tie They force feed a goose and then they tie their neck closed and so their liver becomes diseased so they're I mean it's they force feed them right they force feed them

and again who said you know what would make this goose live a little better is if we jam all this food and then we put a rope around its neck let it live and it will become diseased ick yeah that is uh it's like

it's as if we decide it's like as if we decide it's like as if we decided they were like responsible for the Nazi movement and we're just like extracting revenge over multiple decades. It's just it might have been the Nazis. It might have been the Nazis. There is

Gustav. That's right. Maybe. It might have been, you know, one of the lesser known Nazi doctors that were like, how can I make disease liver into something yummy? Right. That does sound like a Nazi experiment. It really does. It really does. This is the best of the Glenn Beck

program. Hi, it's Glenn. If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes? If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time. You can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks. Stu, I just tweeted the lobster, I'm not sorry, the lobster story, the whale story. Have you seen the video? Go to my Twitter account and at Glenbeck.

And just look at the whale story. Now, here's the thing. they've taken a whale. Now the sheriff said it was a mistake. Sorry, we were trying to put this whale in a dumpster and, you know, that was a mistake. And the reason why he's saying this is because people were videotaping them, taking this big bulldozer and picking up this whale off the beach and driving it to like, you know, behind the grocery store and just dumping it into the dumpster. Now, it's clear the whale has rigamortis because it's flat as a board and does not move. Right?

Okay. Have you seen it yet? Well, let's see. I'm getting commercial. I'm getting a computer issue is what I'm getting. Thank you. Awesome. Would you please buy Apple, please?

This is an Apple. It's not Apple's fault. It's the website. It's just playing the commercial over and over again. Oh, okay. So it's going to take me a minute. But go ahead. So they are taking the, they're taking, I can see the picture of it.

and it does not look like it would have made any sense to attempt this. Right? It's in, it's bigger than the bulldozers loader. Yes. All right. It's, it's barely in that.

It's like, it looks like a mini dealership recommended one of their cars to Michael Moore, is what it looks like. Exactly right. This car's not for you, Mike. It's not going to fit. It's not going to fit.

It's not going to fit. As they're squeezing him in, all of the salespeople are just pushing his fat into the car. It's not going to fit, guys. It's not going to fit. This is flapping out the back windows. It's like pushed up against the windshield. It looks good on you.

It looks good on you. Okay, so it won't even fit into the loader. And then they drive up to the dumpster and they just let the loader go, plop. And the thing, the poor thing, I mean, it's horrible. It's really horrible. I mean, we have to remember it is dead. but it's horrible. It just kind of lies across the dumpster for a second and then falls down.

Because there's no way it's going to fit. It's not even remotely close. Right. Okay, so this is how, this is how sheep-like we are. How did that happen? Well, they, somebody said, hey, there's a baby whale that's died. It's not a baby whale. This is just a small whale.

Baby whale it's died washed up on shore. So the, I don't know, the beach pickup police or whatever they are, they call and say, what do we do? We got a baby whale. What do we do with it? The sheriff said, oh, it's a baby whale? Just throw it in the dumpster. That's not a baby whale. There's more to that conversation.

The guy's like, he just said the baby whale's going to dumpster. Nobody said, I don't think it'll fit the dumpster. It's a pretty big baby. I mean, I am not a waste management engineer. However, I would, you know, you got to think past step one here. Like, it's in the dumpster. Can I mean, maybe it can, but can one like garbage, garbage truck that picks up those dumpsters? Can they lift a 4,000 pound whale inside?

You've never, excuse me, you've never thrown a little fish out into the garbage? I, well, no, but I would assume this is not this is not a little fish. It's a baby whale. It is a baby whale. All baby whales should fit into a dumpster, right? You know, that's the other thing I thought of. First of all, I mean, who owns the dumpster? Is it like the grocery store?

It's like, oh, crap, who put the whale in the dumpster? Now we don't have any room. What are we going to do now? Yeah. I hate it when people put whales in dumpsters. Have you ever, like if you, think of right now in your head, Glenn. And if you're listening to the show, think of this number in your head. How wide is a dumpster, a normal dumpster.

How wide is it from left to right as you're facing it? 10 feet? I mean, I'm, I was thinking about six or seven. Seven, maybe, seven, twenty. Yeah. The whale was four feet. The whale is 27 feet. Who would look at it?

The only thing I can think of is... The only thing I can think of is... All baby whales in the dumpsters. The only thing I can think of is I think they may have thought when they placed it on top, it would just fold itself into the dumpster because it's dead and like maybe it was so... Okay, but, okay, I thought of that too,

but look at it in the, you know, the dumpster. I mean, the, you know, the shovel thing. What do you call it? That's such a man. The bulldozers, the loader or whatever that thing, you know, the big shovel thing in the front. Right.

If you look at it, it's not bending. No. It doesn't fit into that either, and it's not bending. So who's like, hey, don't bend it down by, what we put it in the dumpster? Sher said, baby,

well, it's a dumpster. There's no brain power here at all. Mm-hmm. I would tend to agree with this analysis, but I feel like we're going to have very few of these situations going forward. I feel like they've now proven this is not the most reliable way to dispose. I mean, it was only a few years ago they tried to blow one up. Remember when they blew one up on the beach?

Remember that one? He just like filled it with T&T and just made it explode. Case of the baby whale? Because those are the dumpsters. Big whales? Sheriff says blow it up Like that's good hell Think of that

We got to what are you going to do to dispose of this Put a bunch of dynamite in his mouth It's going to scatter whale Everywhere We are a weird It just disappears I see it in I watch in a six million dollar man Once he blew stuff up and there wasn't anything left

What? We are too stupid to run a country. We really, we should, we should just give up. We really should. Yeah, we really should. You know what, America? Put your tools down. I think we're done as a country.

Just walk away. I don't know if you're working the bandsaw. You probably shouldn't be working that. Just put the tools down, turn it off the machine. Let's go home. This is why I argue for the Matrix, and I've been doing it for a long time. If we can just be fuel for some alien culture, and then we just lay down in like a pool of, you know, some sort of jelly. and everyone's like, oh, we need a red pill.

You had the author or the director of that documentary, Red Pill, right? Red Pill, yeah. On Cassie J. the other day. And I was thinking, I kind of want to go Blue Pill. I kind of want to go Blue Pill and get into the gel. And then in like in my mind, I'd think things were kind of normal. Except I don't like the Matrix because they made it real enough to where, you know, if I swear to, if I find out that we're.

We're in a Matrix, and I'm actually in a pod in gel. And I still am fat in my matrix life. And in my Matrix life, I can only eat the crap like kale. And I still get fat. And I still have to exercise. I'm telling you, I am taking the entire Matrix down because that pisses me off. It's fair point. They said that in that documentary of The Matrix in which they discussed.

They tried to make it perfect for humans and make everybody happy. But then we were such whiners. We're so addicted to outrage. We couldn't handle the perfect life they designed for us. I can handle it. I can handle it too. I am not on that bandwagon. I am not on that bandwagon.

I will tell you. I will tell you, I met somebody here in Southern California yesterday. I said, so what's Texas like? And I said, you know California? Yes. Not like that. No. It's not like that.

And I said, oh, it's beautiful. I said in a different way. You know, California has mountains and we don't. You have trees and, well, we don't. You know, you have beautiful green grassland. We don't, we don't. But we have sky. The sky, actually, I'm down to, I'm down to the sky.

Sky is beautiful in Texas. It's beautiful. And I said some of the most beautiful sunrises in sunset. It's like Arizona in a way where it's just beautiful, these cloud, formations and they're huge and blah blah blah and she said man clouds you know we don't even get clouds here sometimes i just look up in the sky and there's not a cloud and i'm like can we at least get a cloud and i wanted to say shut up what did you needed to say we don't even get clouds it's it's it's always 75 degrees and perfectly blue oh i'm so

tired of it. Shut up! It is frustrating, and in Texas we don't have everything that California has, starting with a 13% state income tax. That's right. There's your cloudy day. Every April 15th. Okay.

When we come back, either Kavanaugh, either Kavanaugh, or the woman who's getting the lobsters high before she puts them into a tank because there is some controversy surrounding that act of mercy. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program and we really want to thank you for listening. Stu, I just heard some amazing audio and it came out, I think, last night about what's his name in Florida? He was part of the March for Life. Yeah, Cameron Caskey.

Okay. he's one of the guys that was one of the big movers and shakers in the March for Life the kids of Parkland he said yesterday he really regrets what he said to Marco Rubio and you know he was part of the group

that was like Marco Rubio you are taking money from the NRA and yours want kids to die I want you to listen to what I think is one of the bravest people I have heard especially considering his age. Here's a high school kid who is now in Parkland.

If you're part of this, you see how the media has torn apart, anybody who disagrees. You've seen how people have torn the, you know, the conservative kids, how they've just been dismantled. and you're willing to say this? Listen to this interview. This summer, when March for Our Lives went on the summer tour that we embarked on, I met that person in Texas who's got that semi-automatic weapon because that's how they like to protect their family. I met the 50-some-odd percent of women who are pro-life,

even though I thought that it was preposterous that a woman could be pro-life and not pro-choice at the time. I learned that a lot of our issues politically come from a lack of understanding of the perspectives. And also just the fact that so often young conservatives and young liberal will go into debate, like I said earlier, trying to beat the other one as opposed to come to an agreement. And, you know, that's natural.

It's important for things to be competitive because I think competition is very important for everything. But it comes to a point where all we're doing right now is driving each other apart. I mean, the people who were okay with Trump will not forgive him for anything. and the people who didn't like Trump will pretend that every single thing he does is pure, utter evil. And it's a direction we need to head away from. So I'm working out some efforts to encourage bipartisanship

or at least discussion that is productive and help a lot of people avoid the mistakes that I make. Is this kid unbelievable? This is unbelievable. What is he saying? He's saying absolutely every day. that so many people are fighting against. He is making the message of my book.

Look what he did. He was part of an angry, I think, almost a mob, an angry mob of kids that were at least portrayed on television as all David Hogg. David Hogg's not listening to anybody. He is full of certitude. He's right. You're wrong.

No ifs, sands or but. This kid was part of that. And then what did he say? When I was in Texas, I met that person that uses an AR to protect their family. Well, now, how did he meet that person? Do you think he met that person because they were holding up a sign that said, you kids are idiots, was holding up a sign that said, you have to be stopped, was screaming names at them, was, was, was,

was tweeting horrible things about these kids, I highly doubt it. He met a woman who was pro-life. He said, at the time, I couldn't believe a woman would be pro-life. He said, I met her and I talked to her. What does that mean? That means there were reasonable conservatives, and I think we all try to be, reasonable conservatives that were calm enough, rational enough, to find the one, not to go to David Hogg, but to find the one in the group that was honestly listening. And they changed his heart. That's exactly the point of the book, Addicted to Outrage. And it's exactly the point I've been saying there are people, they are not necessarily the David Hoggs. They're not necessarily the ones you see on TV all the time.

But there are people who are truly sick of this. They know this doesn't work. They don't want to do it anymore, but they can't find anybody reasonable to talk to. I congratulate this guy. You are my hero of the week, dude. Congratulations, and if there is anything we can do to help you meet with other people of different perspective, I'm all in. The Best of the Glenn Beck program. I want to talk to you about something serious here, and I, I, I, it's a really, it's a really strange thing.

I am fascinated by this story and repulsed by the story at the same time, but the parts of the story that really fascinating, me are the parts how you don't know this story you even conservatives think they know this story they have absolutely no idea i watched this movie a couple of weeks ago the trial of america's biggest serial killer and it blew me away it doesn't even have to it is but it doesn't even have to be a good movie the story the facts of this story are so incomprehensible that it has happened recently and no one found this interesting to cover. It is one of the craziest stories you've ever seen and they bring it to life in a new movie that had to be impossible to make. Gosnell, the trial of America's biggest serial killer.

If you don't remember who Dr. Gosnell is, let us remind you, the director, Nick Sircey is on with us now. Hi, Nick. How are you? Hey, how are you? I was hoping that I was going to be hero of the week, but I guess I'll set it. Well, you can be unpopular with all the girls just because you made this movie. Nick, I have to tell you, I thought I knew this story. I mean, we covered it.

I thought I knew this story, but until I saw your movie, I didn't connect. visually with what that place was like. And I also didn't know that this was a local, they were looking for doctor shoppers. They stumbled into this guy. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the fascinating aspects of the story, is that they went after him because he was writing prescriptions for opioids and selling them.

And it was a drug case, basically. And so when they raided the clinic, It's when the lead detective, James Woods, who we call Woody in the film, is he's just appalled by what he sees in the clinic, and he just goes back to the DA's office and says, I don't know what's going on in there, but it can't be legal. So it's really stumbled upon because of looking for the drugs. So, Nick, was it, I mean, look,

I understand dramatic storytelling and everything else. was the clinic really in that kind of shape? We could in the film, but when you see the real photographs and the real footage that James Woods took

when he went into that clinic, I mean, there are you know, garbage bags sitting lining the hallways because he says, you know, that he had a dispute with his medical waste company

and the bags contained fetuses. I mean, they were just sitting in the hallway. Some of the, them were stuck in the freezer. Some of them were stuck in milk cartons with name tags on them. And the place was filthy. It was cats running around and rats. And I mean, it really was, you know, I don't think we could have made it look as bad as it really was. So I mean, I was

really struck by how filthy everything was. I mean, filthy it was. And, and, and, and, And you could almost smell it through the screen. The, you know, when you've got, you know, rotting body parts in the hallway and cats all over the place, I don't know how, I mean, how did anybody, anybody think I shouldn't report this place? Yeah, well, I smell of vision, but I got shut down on that. Yeah. Well, you did it with just imagination. I think that what happened and part of the story is that this clinic was not inspected from I guess 1993 until 2010.

There were no inspections done by the Board of Health at this clinic because of the political climate. You know, the governor, Tom Ridge back then, who he did not want to appear to be anti-reproductive rights, quote unquote, or anti-woman. And so he told them to stand down. And that's my understanding. He told them to stand down and don't inspect these clinics. I have to tell you if you, if, I mean, a simple, a simple inspection of that clinic would have to shut it down years before. Yeah, I have to tell you, whether he was doing abortions or not, which he clearly was, and I'm just trying to make a point here, any clinic, any clinic for, for male, female, for, dogs, any clinic that was in that kind of shape, it is an insult to say, you're just against

reproductive rights, you're anti-women for inspecting or closing that place down or testifying against it. Are you kidding me? I mean, the infection, the disease, and the, let alone, not just the kids that were killed, but also the patients that died. And happen is exactly what you were talking about before, about not being able to talk honestly about these issues because we demonize each other. I mean, that's sort of part of the story is that abortion is so politically charged that you can't even have a rational discussion about it. And even when we agree on things, the other side is afraid to agree with you about the slightest little thing because they think they might be helping the pro-life movement. Right. something. They think they might be betraying their own cause if they even conceived through a moment

that Gossinel was a monster. So, so to give some perspective here on how much of a monster he was, we'll get, we'll get into that here at a second. Let me just, let me just do, let me just ask you this. Explain how he had, quote, nurses performing things that they shouldn't ever, even if they were nurses, they should not be doing. And how one woman died because he wasn't even there during the procedure. Somebody he had trained for a few hours did it. The way Gossnell operated was that he did not have actual trained registered nurses working in his clinic. And I think probably because if he had, they would have challenged him.

And so he basically surrounded himself with the, you know, yes men and sort of stooges that he could make do whatever he wanted them to do. And so he basically took, in many cases, high school girls and trained them to give the anesthesia and trained them to do some of the procedures so that he wouldn't have to be there even when some of the abortions were being done and also so that he wouldn't have to answer to anybody. So you have these, in many cases, I thought the nurses were as much a victim as anybody else because they were kind of just doing what they were told to do. And since they'd never been trained medically, they just thought this was normal. They thought this was the way things were gone. Same. So he's victimized them as well. Anybody who, anybody who says, oh, this is going to go back to back room, back alley abortions.

Yeah, that's what this, that's what this guy was running. and anybody, even if you are, even if you're somebody who says, oh, I'm absolutely pro-choice, this, the, the state refusing to do any kind of inspections on abortion clinics is allowing back-alley abortions to happen right now for the, not for the humanity to help these four little girls, but strictly for money. This guy was sick beyond your imagination. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. So, I mean, unless you, you know, just happen on this show for the first time today,

I've got a new book out. Surprise, surprise. The book is called Addicted to Outrage. And, you know, I'm very concerned about the outrage that's happening politically, but I am equally concerned about technology that is coming our way. We are standing at the best of times and the worst of times, and it's going to be up to us on whether technology and our own human instincts and the worst of us bring us this dark future or a good future.

I'm a optimistic catastrophist, but it is up to us. and the only reason why I'm optimistic is because I know who we are when the chips are down. But where is our bottom? Most people will tell you, I don't have a problem with social media. I'm not addicted. Yeah, you really are. And it's been designed to addict us. I mean, what company sets out and says,

you know what, I want to design something that people don't really want to check all the time. It's designed for that. and the way this is happening now in our society and everything is becoming political and we're starting to be we're starting to divide each other and call each other names is this not good and whether you just woke up to this or you've always known this you've got to start changing behavior and speaking to people differently and and checking uh yourself and social media uh judith donneth is uh with us now. Judith, how are you? Good. How are you? Very good. You have, you wrote the book, The Social Machine, Designs for Living Online. You were also part of the MIT Media Lab, social media group. I quote you in my book saying, every ping could be social, sexual, sexual, or professional opportunity, and we get a media reward, a squirt of dopamine for answering the bell. These These rewards serve as jolts of energy that recharge the compulsion engine, much like the

frision of a gambler receives when a new card hits the table. Humidably, the effect is potent and hard to resist. Tell me how, I don't think people really believe that we are, that we're dope addicts. A quick backup. I don't think in the original quote, I had said that we get. jolt of dopamine, but I don't think it's really important what the exact neurology behind it is. Okay. But, you know, I think most of us are aware of that feeling that, for instance, if you post something, a comment,

you're always interested in seeing that people have liked it. A lot of this was actually on the positive side. The addiction is not necessarily about outrage. I think at the time, I was thinking more of the issue around people posting pictures of kittens online and how popular cats had gotten. So, but I'm not, I'm not trying to tie, so you know, I'm not, sorry that if you felt I was presenting it this way, I'm not presenting you to prove my theory at all on outrage at all. I'm talking specifically just about social media and how social media is affecting us. And I think you're right. At first, and I think even some ways now, even if it's in a negative way, we still. do get that hit and that high from people saying, I like this, say more, do more, whatever it is, a kitty cat video or an outrageous remark. People are getting high off of this. People like me.

People are talking about me. I've got something, you know, to say that people want to hear. Right. And it's, in some ways, it's a little bit like the story of junk food. You know, we evolved to want to have particular things and sugar is useful for energy salt is really useful but if you take them and make food that's just about those things and just about those tastes and is designed just to get you to keep eating then it's really unhealthy and the desires both to be liked by others if we did not care what other people think of us that's the mentality of a psychopath you know you want people who care about each other who care, you know, am I doing things that other people think are acceptable? That's how we have community.

But if you start distilling that out into a space where everything you say gives you a little measurement of how many likes you get and you can measure it against the other things you said or what other people have said, it starts getting into the realm of social junk food. Do you think it's, I mean, are you, I mean, I know you're studying the media now. Do you think we're at the point of social junk food or we're social junkies to where, because we're, it's, you know, you say, you know, if you don't care what people think you're, you know, you're a sociopath, agree. However, we have on both right and left decided we don't care what half of the country thinks of us.

So we are, what, a half a sociopath. There's a group of people, no matter what side you're on, no matter what the topic is. There's a group of people that have been deemed the enemy, and so you can tweet whatever you want because you'll get all of the applause from your crowd, whoever your crowd, happens to be. Right. Well, those, I mean, and those are deeper issues that have been exacerbated by social media, but I think you can look in history at, you know, the rise of fascistic governments in the past There's a long history of war in human history.

So the fact that you have a country that's deeply divided by groups who think the other one is the spawn of the devil is not actually new, but we're seeing a particular version of it with social media. Partly we get to see it played out in public all the time. And I think it's also very easy to blame the technology for it without looking at some of the deeper causes. and the issues around the attention are both when it's negative, like being able to rally people to your side by saying political things that are really outrageous, but it's also a problem when it's much more even positive things, like worrying about saying, shaping all of your views in terms of what will people like.

from the political stand, though, I think where there's a little bit of a difference on the right and the left, and perhaps this is where we may disagree, because I think that on the right, you have a, or on the more authoritarian side, and I think there's an authoritarian left also, but where you have people who feel very, very strongly that they are absolutely right, and that all the outsiders are just wrong is where you get the phenomenon you're talking about where they can or they will tweet something or post things that are not only outrageous but not true and it will get a great deal of approval from the others on their side and outrage the outsiders which is what they're seeking and that's a particularly dangerous phenomenon online

So, Judith, I think that's a dangerous thing anywhere myself. It doesn't have to be right or left. And, you know, I write in my book that certitude is probably our biggest threat right now. Everyone on each side is absolutely certain that their side is right, as long as you agree with it, 100 percent. you know, their side is right. The other side is absolutely wrong. And this, this, this certainty. And I think that it does come from the extremes. And I know that, you know, it's, it's, it's the thing that I, I read in the book, the thing that one time made me popular is the, was the thing that everybody wanted, I guess. And I just, I just, I was right.

I was right. Everybody else was wrong. I was right. I was certain of it. Now, the less certain I become of things, the more I hear the pain in people on all sides of the front. And the more I'm noticing that it is, it's the certitude in the extremes on both sides that are killing us. I mean, you can't say, you know, you can't say that, You know, all people that want, you know, a bigger welfare state are communists. That's ridiculous. And you can't say that all people that voted for Donald Trump are deplorables. Both of those are wrong. And it seems as though we are only playing to those certainties at the extreme. And that's stopping us from being human beings and recognizing others as human beings. Mm-hmm.

Yes. And I think that's a lot of the danger of the present moment is that ability to, once you see seeing others as human. And part of the issue is if you look at the history of highly authoritarian movements, a lot of it is about trying to portray those who are outsiders as very, very dangerous and subhuman. and so you can do anything and say anything about them, and it only strengthens your inner group. And this is a phenomenon we're seeing much more now than we did even 10 years ago, and not just here, but throughout the world. There is an arrogance in some way to technology right now,

those who are developing technology with I'm concerned about AI, AGI, A-I, A-I-S-I. I don't claim to know, and I don't think anybody can claim to know with any kind of certainty, you know, when or if that can happen. But it is something to think about the upgrading, the transhumanism, the upgrading of ourselves, the enhancements that are coming. we're messing with things that we don't really even understand because we don't even understand ourselves. We haven't mastered our own self-control. Are you concerned at all? I mean, I'm not a technophobe, and I'm not afraid of technology. I am concerned about the goals of some of the technology and how those programs are written in what we teach.

are you concerned at all about how some of this stuff will change us that we don't we can't then reverse? Well, I think there are a number of things to be concerned about with artificial intelligence. I think the immediate issue is the ability of machines to imitate humans in ways that we can't recognize. You know, that's something that I think a lot of people are starting to be familiar with on Twitter, where it's very hard to tell if something was written by a human or by a bot. And the issue there is that, again, especially as a lot of our conversation occurs online,

if you think you're speaking with another human, one of the important parts in what happens when we communicate with others, hopefully, and when leaving out the screams of, of anger is that there's a level of empathy underneath. Even if you're trying to persuade someone else, it's because you care what they think, and often you care what they think of you. And that's really sort of the fundamental part of our connection with others. But if you're conversing with a bot, there's no connection there.

It's simply something that has been programmed to affect some means, some end. And so they can be made to be a lot more effective and much more persuasive. than people are, while the people don't recognize what they're dealing with, or even if they do, you know, if it's something like an Alexa, it becomes your friend, it's in your house, it chats with you, you know, it asks you how your day was, but you don't know what is actually going on in the program and what its internal motivations are, which is likely to be, you know, something that's beneficial to the maker of it, not to you. Yes. So this is something that is deeply concerning that, you know, Alexa will be everywhere. Google, you know, controls so much information and placement.

Just slight changes to algorithms can change people. And, you know, the most likely scenario is get them to spend more, spend more time, do something that the company wants. Is it concerning to you? I've always been a capitalist. I've always been less worried about the companies. I'm concerned about the government and the companies. I'm concerned about anyone having this kind of power in our lives. Yes.

I mean, I had always been mostly concerned with the companies. I thought the government was less worrisome. I'm now worried about both. But I think that, yes, I think the companies are. are quite dangerous, partly because, I mean, and we may, again, differ here, is that it's both that they want you to continue to consume things, which is not necessarily good for your pocketbook. It's terrible for the environment.

You know, so if you look at, you know, even a simple case where we leave out the government, we leave out worries about, you know, fascist governments controlling people, just companies doing what they need to do to make more money, if you can turn people into even more rabid consumers than they are now, you know, what does that do to our society? It's not a particularly healthy outlook. Well, I think we've seen this already play out with, you know, Bernays in the 1920s of, you know, the first, you know, king of advertising and how he could subtly move people in a different direction. I mean, it's why we have, you know, ham and eggs for breakfast. That wasn't anything except advertising, very, very clever advertising at the time through our doctors.

And I think we're kind of seeing just a modern version of that. Judith, I have to cut you loose. I thank you so much for your time. And thanks for being out there thinking about ethics and what's happening with technology. Judith Donneth, a fellow of Harvard-Burkman-Klein Center. Thanks for being on the program. Thank you.