The Glenn Beck Program - 'The Best of Glenn Beck' - 5/28/18

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

Hour One   Special guest Robert Harris, author of "Munich" and "The Fear Index"... uncovering the truth in history... what did it take to drive Hitler mad?... there are huge 'forces' in play today... which is more likely, N. Korea launches or Putin re-establishes the Soviet Union?... special guest, the 'Polka King'- Jan "Lewin" Lewandowski... a 12% return?... what I love about living in this time period... trickle down economics?... what would you do if you had 'extra' money?   Hour Two   People are going to continue debating gun control... special guest Eric Kurlander, author of "Hitler's Monsters"... churches were nothing more than a 'political organ'?... people need faith in something... coming out of Atlantis... Scientology, Astronomy or Thor's hammer?... are there multiple paths to the Lord?... border science, what is it?... who can you trust?... we have a constitutional crisis   Hour Three   Women's decisions to have children are now based on climate change?... weren't we supposed to run out of food in the 1990's?... global warming is nothing in comparison to A.I.?... we need to find balance... let's talk about humility and self-worth... what is a heart full of grace?... have we become self-hating egomaniacs?... Stu shares a 'love story' from 25 years ago... special guest Eric Liu, founder and CEO of Citizen University... nobody 'feels' heard anymore... do we have an 'Imperial Presidency'?... what are we willing to 'put at risk' in order to change where we are?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Blaze Radio Network. On Demand. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Courage. Truth. Glenn Beck. If I can geek out just a little bit, today's kind of an exciting day for me.

I've wanted to talk to this guy since I read his first novel, Fatherland, which is one of my favorite books of all time. I just love it. And, you know, I've never been. enough to be able to get him on. He also did, I can't remember the name of the book, the code. I'll have to ask him about it.

Another great book. Lots of great stories and great novels from Robert Harris. He is the author of a new novel, Munich, and it is all about the Munich Treaty and Neville Chamberlain and what happened with Hitler. but he takes it the way he always does and works a new storyline into it. Welcome to the program. Robert Harris. How are you, sir?

I'm very well, Glenn. Thank you for having me on. You bet. Are you over in London? No, I live just outside, not far from Oxford, in the country. It's a thrill to have you on. I want to talk to you a little bit about the book, but I don't want to spoil it for anybody, and don't spoil it for me because I'm halfway through.

But, you know, it revolves around Neville Chamberlain. And I'm not a real fan of Neville Chamberlain. And he gets kind of a bad rap. Why are you? What is your attraction there? And I seem to think that you are a fan of his. Quite opposite. 30 years ago, I saw television about the 50th anniversary of the media.

So regarded it as a terrible defeat. back of my mind, the desire to write a novel, writing it from the point of September 1938. Mavels on Adolf Hitler follow these two counts of both Hitler and of Chamberlain. So how much Robert of the novel is really close to true? For instance, the plot to kill Hitler at that point. Was that going on? Everything in the book really pretty well is invented characters. Paul Hartman and Hugh Leggett decided, at the beginning of the summer of 1938,

made another country, German army, to prepare Slovakia off the face of the map. The army came back and said they could record six weeks, and he threw the plans back at them and said, I want to be bright at this. I was surprised when Chamberlain arrives in Munich that there were, you know, the Oompa bands that were playing, you know, popular tunes from England, that the crowds cheered him, I always thought of the Germans not for peace, and that's not what it was.

Well, no, absolutely. There's no doubt in the historical record about that, that Hitler, according to all the reporters about this, one of the reasons I wrote the novel is called Jirkeemfest, it's around the memoirs of Albert Speer on day back in the 60s. What did Hitler feel about Munich? And for two weeks after Munich, he wouldn't even speak to his, and then it all came, and by Neville Chainsbury, of all people. And what he was referring to was that Chamberlain's agreement, the German people state's infuriated Hitler was one of the reasons why I think he drew back. So as I was reading this, and you really kind of spell it out, very colorful, the appearance of everything with Hitler was strong and militaristic and streamlined. And, you know, Mussolini is there, the same thing.

And here comes a guy who kind of looks like a walrus and another guy who looks old and frail coming to the meeting. Those two guys must have seen the English as complete things of the past and just weak. They're smart uniforms. I also said that about him too, Prime Minister. and he was quite vain determined on peace as Hitler was on war and Hitler

he drove Hitler mad because Hitler was not really interested to sign to this new state of Czechoslovakia in 1990 after the first I cover in Fatherland on this issue the French would have been legally obliged

to sensational be Chamberlain because Chamberlain naturally asked him he removed Hitler's pretext for war. He said, well, if the concern is the French for them, we're to Germany. Apple said, you can't fight a war on detail. At the beginning of the novel, I put this quote from Hitler in the bunker in February 1945. To war in 1938, September 1938 would have been the perfect time. And throughout the war, Hitler felt he was fighting France in 1939. He'd wanted

to invade the Soviet Union in 1940. And instead, his timetable was 12 months behind. And in that time, the British, the Russians, rearmed massively. Yeah, have you seen the movie Darkest Hour yet? Yes, I have. What'd you think of that? Yeah. Because likely more than most people are, I know, that were fighting the battle of Britain, of the Tory party. His was the decisive voice, and most people think that Chamberlain wanted to do a deal with Hitler, very strongly, and was the decisive voice on the 27th of May, 1940 at the cabinet meeting where it was decided to not even hear what... Is there...

When you're looking at today's world and you're seeing everything that's going on, your job, and you've been so good at this, you look at history and you see missed opportunities or chances for things to have been different, what do you think we're going to look back? over the last 20 years and say, if this event was understood at the time, it would have changed things. It was you to go back and see where people went wrong. And another of the quotes at the front of my book is from a great British historian called F.W. Maitland in the future.

Nobody could foresee exactly how the Nazi regime is very hard to even understand, let alone respond. And the way that that is society in 45. this leads to now reminds me rather that. I don't know. I mean, my Munich novel is that these two men, these two young, reach one of those points. Do you know what I mean?

Yes. Yeah. And nobody can quite grasp it. Yeah. You can feel it coming. Robert, do you have a second? Can you hang on while we take a quick break? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, hold on. Robert Harris, the author of the book Munich.

It is out now. It's a novel. he's a tremendous writer. If you've never read a Robert Harris book, you should. And you can start with Munich, the novel. Noted author Robert Harris, the author of the new book, Munich, the novel. It is about the Munich Accords and Neville Chamberlain and Hitler duking it out. And what we kind of misunderstand,

I'm finding out as I'm reading this. Neville Chamberlain's, you know, we'll, we have peace in our day. That was the Munich Treaty. And Hitler saw that as a loss. It's a great thrilling novel that I think you really enjoy. Robert is one of my, one of my favorite authors. I fell in love with his stuff with Fatherland, which came out in the 90s, and I'm a little upset that you can't buy on Kindle anymore.

But Fatherland, I've also read five or six of your books, Robert, and one of them I want to talk to you about is the Fear Index. A minute ago, you said, you know, you were concerned about technology and how that's going to change us. And the Fear Index is AI gone crazy, and it makes you look at AI in a completely different way. Large Hadron Collider, intelligent, which like Frankenstein's monster also in Geneva, goes out of controlling it. But be frightening this financial trading. Most of us don't understand it from the financial world. What is, as a writer, if I said to you, which one's the more believable scenario?

North Korea launches. Putin, through, you know, nefarious ways, kind of cobbles together the old Soviet Union and is deeply embedded in all of our systems and turns us against each other. Or financial doomsday that just kind of traps all of us into something ugly. Shades into the gets out of hand. I was reading your book. I think of the West do anything, no, not really. They put on sanctions, but that was it. Yeah, as I'm reading Munich, and he's talking about that,

and that's all I could think of is this is exactly the same argument that Putin was making. It's part of Russia. Most people would have thought there's no appetite, really, to fight. I don't think there wasn't over that issue. And that's one of the things you've got to think about. It's time. Yeah. But I think in the end, he did do a country a year.

The name of the book is Munich, a novel. The author is Robert Harris. Robert, thank you so much. God bless. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Bye. This is the best of Glenn Beck.

So Netflix has a new movie out with Jack Black. It's called The Poka King. And the Polka King is an actual guy. And I started looking into him and I thought, we have to talk to this guy. His name is Jan Luan. and he is from Poland. He was born in Nazi controlled Poland and grew up under the Soviet Union, came over here, wanted to make it big, fell into a Ponzi scheme.

I should say he started a Ponzi scheme and others fell into it. He lived the high life, met the Pope, Pope John Paul II, had real notoriety in the polka world, his music was nominated for a Grammy, and then he went to jail where he was stabbed in prison. He is out now and has a whole lifetime of interesting stories. Welcome Juan Luan. How are you, sir? Hi, how are you? Very good. So let's start with when did you come over here in the United States, and what was life like back in Poland for you?

Well, when you live in the communist regime, the life is terrified every day. You couldn't trust nobody, and you're living always with the fear that you're going to be punished for anything. So life in the communists is definitely a very negative, very depressing life. So you came under at the height of the Cold War with Ronald Reagan, which must have been. Yep. It's exactly yes. So you come over here. You moved to Pennsylvania and you become the Polka King.

Tell me. Well, okay, the Polka King, you know, that it came alone because I guess your question is how I went to that. I learned that nostalgia to Poland for the people who came here after the Second War and many of them cannot go back to Poland during the communist regime

many cases they will find out in jail since they didn't come back in Poland after second war. So there was the fear on this and there were all just there for me because I would start learning English a little bit, but I was speaking Polish.

And then I, due to my education in Poland, in the theatrical school and this, I, I wasn't ready for that kind of entertainment with the polkas and this. And I found that when I turned the Polish folk music to podcasts, I can, I gain lots of, uh, I can, I gain lots of, uh, viewers. I mean, my concerts hall and then festival, they were full to their last seat because they they love that

broken English, Polish, you know, right. That's the way goes. So you in the, in the movie with Jack Black, you appear to be a wide-eyed

I love America and I'm going to make it big. And it seems as though you don't really know what you're doing is wrong until later. But you started a Ponzi scheme. Yes. Tell me about it, and did you know that it was wrong at first? No, not at all.

I went with my accountant for the legal advice, and I was advised that everything gets fine. A couple days later, we went again. Everything is fine. Go ahead. I wasn't told I have to register. That was the wrong thing on the beginning. So I feel free to advertise. This is perfect.

That's again, how are I going to build the empire? Right. And how are you selling people? Well, he created the promissory note, which I offered them 12%. And that was very interesting. for me on the beginning to pay that because in Poland that time everything was penny and in America you sold for tens of dollars so I create the gift shop when you create the gift shop you have to you have to have to have money to buy these gifts which I

didn't have nothing so people who travel with me to Poland they saw on their own eyes oh my gosh that door cost 25 cents here and in America I pay $20. Jan, you should buy Poland. You should get everything to America and you're going to get rich and we're going to get rich. Sure, I go for it. And that's called start. Of course, later on I learn I'm doing illegal thing.

That is illegal. Well, I already have huge merchandise in the silver, amber dolls and everything. just to sell that. I wasn't able to sell when the accident came over, when the 9-11 came over and all things fall in parts. My two musicians get killed. My son was suffering with terrible. We all were suffering.

So even though I was told, don't do it, I was keep doing because when you drown, you will catch anything. So I did wrong, knowing that I doing wrong, and I paid a high price for that. Yeah, you went to prison for how long? Almost six years. And you were stabbed in prison? Yes, because I should never finalize in such a terrible prison in Smirma.

That's just for people who commit violent, terrible violence. Most of them, there were killers. and somebody like me with the accent, with lots of to be designed with the conversation, they thought, well, he is such a soft, you know, this guy, this guy is here for something, what we call child's, which I have nothing to do with that. And they get angry.

But that's what they say in media. My opinion on that is different. Something went wrong. Somehow somebody did the job. And the guy who really cut my neck left and right, he got 25 years on the top of his life sentence. So make no different for him. And why he did that, I still don't know.

I was very nice to him. I bought him coffee in commissory and everything and keep conversation and and somehow, you know, he got me when I was sleeping. When you can't trust a killer, who can you trust? Thank you. So, Jan, now you're out. Jack Black is playing you in a movie. What does the future hold for you?

And what is your, what's your attitude about being here? Yeah, well, before I go further, let me just say that I believe me. I'm very sorry for people who get cut in my situation, who lost the money. I will do everything possible to supply my restitution as much I can't since I am faithful for that. But I never thought that movie going to change my life. Jack Black told me that. We were talking for six months every night for two hours on the FaceTime. and he learned from the day I born,

how they got everything so perfect in the movie, I still don't know. I did send them some of my writing what I was doing through this years in prison. They learned from that, but I think Jack Black was a great influence to the script to the script writers, Maya and Wally, that they did so perfect

because I don't see, maybe it's 10% Hollywood, you know, that's, that is. But now, the movie gives me opportunity. I have right now in thousands of very nice comments.

Of course, the negatives as well, but next to, I should say, well, if they're writing to me, they're probably just riding positive way. But the point is that they're asking me right now to do the concerts.

and I'm willing to do that. My music director, Steve Kaminsky, who actually saved the music in the movie, in the movie, we have top-natch arrangements for big band polka. It's not like regular dancing small thing, okay? I don't know. Did you saw the movie? I have not yet. I've seen several clips of it, but I have not seen them. I wish you will see the movie. I will. I will. I will watch it.

So that is my cameraman, John Kotterba from writing video. He supplied them with all of the footage which he traveled with me all the time. You're going to see that in the movie. They did everything. I mean, my gosh, fantastic. I hope I'm going to generate because I don't need money anymore. I want to give to people who suffer over that. And I'm so sorry.

Believe me, I am sick over that. Jan Luan, Jan Luan, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I'm sorry I didn't watch the movie. I had plans to watch it with my family this weekend and something came up so we didn't watch it. But I'm anxious to see it. You have led a very interesting life,

and I wish you all the best, sir. God bless. You know what I love about living in this time period, especially if you saw The Post. Have you seen the movie The Post yet? I have not seen that yet. It's really good, worth seeing. But you'll see in that when they release the Pentagon Papers and the New York Times is shut down and they say you can't release anymore.

There's no place to go. If the Washington Post doesn't release them, there's no place to go. Government wins. You can't release the papers. It seems so odd that that news couldn't come out. But that's the way it was. The Monica Lewinsky stuff, it wasn't for Matt Drudge. We may not have known that.

The internet changed everything. Back in the 80s, I remember trickle-down economics, and it was always lampooned, and you could never, you could make a case, but you could never make a media case because you didn't have control of it. Going around the internet now, Washington Free Beacon. Here's what people said about trickle-downy economics and the president's tax plan, and what actually happened once it was passed. It feels like you're relying on this tax cut of the corporations of the wealthy to trickle down.

Southwest American Airlines both announcing they're going to give $1,000 bonuses to employees following the tax overhaul. Wage increases don't follow tax cuts like this. So the world's largest retail are giving its U.S. employees a bonus, a wage increase, and expanded maternity and parental leave. So you're creating a huge tax cut and you might not get wage growth. Right. Capital One financial, which just confirmed the CNBC, that they will raise the minimum wage for all U.S.-based employees at Capital One to $15 per hour. And anybody who thinks that this corporate tax cut is going to trickle down to lift wages has a staggering ignorance of how public companies function. Wells Fargo said it would raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour.

I mean, it's amazing. I love it. It's just so sure of himself on that last one. Well, because, you know what, they could be sure of themselves because there wasn't anybody that would have given that information back in the 80s. If CBS, NBC, didn't make those stories about what the companies were actually, it didn't happen. I mean, it was like it didn't happen. Now you have enough outlets and you have control of the media yourself to where you can grab those snippets. You can edit those things. And you can show, no, this is exactly what happens.

They have no fear. The liberals with trickle-down economics had no fear of this turning around on them because it never has. But now we have the internet. It's interesting, too, to see these companies take these stands. Normally, companies, even companies that lean right, don't want to take stands that associate themselves with Republicans publicly. But this is such a clear win for companies. and, you know, companies really do this. Yeah, companies really do this.

I mean, I think people, they want their employees happy. There might be selfish reasons for it, right? They want their employees happy. They like the PR of saying, hey, we got a bunch of extra money. And, you know, we're going to distribute that to the people who work for us. There are some selfish reasons for it, but who cares? I mean, it's great. It's great that people, you know, are able to make plans, long-term plans now.

These are all permanent changes. until, I mean, permanent as permanent as permanent as they get, you know, with lawmaking, but permanent changes for corporations. And they are able to really plan for their long-term, you know, companies' well-being and their employees' well-being. And this is a big change. I mean, it's not the most bold tax plan we've ever seen. It's not...

Imagine. Imagine what would have happened had they done a flat tax rate. Oh, my gosh. If they would have done a flat tax rate, can you imagine? Imagine the money that would have poured into the average family's home? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, because this is really, it was really more of a corporate plan, right?

I mean, it was not particularly life-changing when it comes to the individual side. I'll take anything, right? I'll take any dollar amount you want to give me of my own money. I'll willingly accept it and act like you're doing me a favor. You know, for the corporation side, it actually is a really big difference. They no longer have to, I mean, they don't have to make these big changes. There are so many people who said it wasn't going to be a big deal because their effective rate was this low anyway. It's shown to be a big deal. A big deal.

We should listen and respect those who have lived through a mass shooting, especially after they have gained perspective. Patrick was a sophomore at Columbine High School when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris massacred their classmates. He was one of the lucky ones. he walked away with his life that day. And he vowed that he would live a life of service because God had granted him that blessing of living. So Patrick went on to join the army. He served to tour in Iraq. When he came home, he was elected to the Colorado State House of Representatives,

where he served his constituents since 2014. Every year since he was elected, Patrick has introduced legislation to remove the restrictions on concealed carry in school. In the wake of the Stoneman Douglas shooting and the renewed call for gun control, Patrick is pushing his legislation just as hard. Under the current Colorado law, anyone who has a concealed carry permit may bring firearms onto school property, but you have to keep them locked inside their vehicles. That's a quote from the law. Patrick says that doesn't go far enough. His act would allow every law-abiding citizen who holds a concealed carry permit the right to defend themselves and others at all times. Patrick says, time and time again, we point to one common theme with the mass shootings.

They all occur in gun-free zones. As a former Columbine student, who was a sophomore during the shooting on April 20th, 1999, I will do everything in my power to prevent Colorado families from enduring the hardships that my classmates and I face that day. People are arguing, and we're going to continue to argue. More guns equals more violence. but they forget that the vast majority of guns are in the hands of responsible and good people. There was a coach that stood in the way,

used his body to block if he had a gun. How many could he have saved? He died a hero, but many died after him. The reality is, we are bringing nothing to a gunfight with evil every single day. Perhaps we should have this conversation, but we should listen to all sides so we can give ourselves and our children a chance with an equal contender. If you listen at all to the program, you know that I read an awful lot, and I can go through two or three books a week pretty easily. and I thought I would devour this book by Eric Kirtlander, Hitler's Monsters, but this has taken me about a month to get through, mainly because I get sidetracked

and start looking up the things that he is pointing up because you've never heard any of this before. And it will give you a couple of things. A new look on what allowed the Nazi movement to really grow and grow deep roots for a while. And also the fact that, no, this was not a Christian movement, which a lot of people like to say, National Socialist, Hitler was a Christian.

No, no, that was not a Christian movement. The only guy that has done serious work on the supernatural history of the Third Reich is Eric Kirtlander. And he joins us now. And I want to make sure that you understand that this isn't some guy who's just like, I just did some research.

He has his Ph.D. of modern European history at Harvard from Harvard, MA, M.A. Modern European History. Harvard. BA History. Is it Badoin College? I'm not familiar with that. Bowden. Bowden. It's Belgian. Bauden. Yeah. Belgium. Okay. Well, welcome. I'm a huge fan of this book. And thank you for how many years did it take you to compile all this?

Well, thank you, Glenn, for having me on. I really appreciate it. I watched the show many years ago, and Robert Galatelightly, one of my colleagues at Florida State University was on, I think in a book comparing Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. And I appreciated the way you brought in academic historians into your conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for having me on. And like many academic monographs, it took me a good eight to ten years from conception to going to archives and doing the due diligence, reading other people. people's work and then finally starting writing, presenting it, and eventually deciding I had a critical mass of information to make my arguments. And it doesn't mean that there isn't going to be a reviewer somewhere. It's like, well, you know, you could have looked at that or this, but as you point, it's pretty dense already. I mean, at some point, you've got to say, you're ready. Yeah. And get it out there. There's a couple of things. And I want you to kind of lead this a bit, but I want to ask you a couple of questions up front that I think show the depth of

of your research. One, you went, and this fascinated me, you went to the detail of looking at books that Hitler had collected and had read, and you looked for things he underlined. And there were a couple of things that you talked about. And I can only find one of them now, as I was looking this morning, but one that he underlined was horror always lurks at the bottom of the magical world and everything holy is always mixed with horror. This comes from a book called Magic in 1923. He underlined this. And there was also another quote about something about a truly great man has to have the seeds of a

demon inside of him. That he did underline. The other quotes from a page that he had underlined, but he had an underline that particular quote. And I want to be very clear about this, because this is an important methodological point. A fellow historian, a journalist who writes history, found the book in the Library of Congress, where we have Hitler's library. And it seems to be underlined and annotated in the way that Hitler had annotated other books. We're not 100% certain he read and annotated it, but he's the most likely suspect. So I use this book to represent, you know, a kind of the cultural milieu in which he may have been thinking,

because it seems that he read it. And then I tie in other sources that talk about Hitler, seeming to, you know, be interested in parapsychology, magic. Even if he just thinks it's a way to manipulate people and not an actual force in the universe, he clearly was involved in that kind of milieu. That's the point I'm making. And it does appear that he underlieb, lined 66 passages in that book. But as someone who is not, I'm not a specialist in handwriting, I don't know for certain that he did. I just want to put that out there. So, Eric, the other thing

that I thought would be important to start with to show the depth of your research was the, I mean, you go back into the 1800s and you're really trying to lay out the mindset of Germans at that time. and I was not aware and you talk a lot about the films that were made, the silent films in the teens and the 20s. And I went back and I remember which one I watched, but I watched one

of these silent films that you pointed out in your book and it is terrifying. And it is, it, the, the distortion of the Jew into a monster or later Nosviratu,

the vampire. is terrifying that that went on so long without the Nazis. Right. So a number of film scholars and literary scholars have argued that Weimar, because of all the trauma it went through, the way that people in Weimar processed it was by, through horror, through expressionism, through very kinds of avant-garde artistic media that were, you know, channeling a kind of return of the repressed, right? And I try to show the ways in which certain images, monstrous images of the other, right?

Jews, Slavs, communists were portrayed in not an empirical way. Here's what's going to happen to the economy if finance capital does that or the communists do this. But in a metaphysical or supernatural way, right? And I'm trying to show how that culture precedes the Nazis. It doesn't mean everyone who watched horror movies was a Nazi, but their way, processing trauma and crisis, I argue, was influenced by a kind of supernatural thinking. How much of this came from the churches? I know the churches in the West in England, etc., etc. Many of them were really damaged because of World War I. And the people were kind of

shook from that. And they kind of started to see, wait a minute, the church is just really kind of a political organ here. How much of this return to magic in Germany came from the churches kind of selling out or not being what churches should be? That's an excellent question, and you're not going to want me to get into too much detail here. But what I will say, as I point out in chapter one, that Max Weber, the famous sociologist, who was alive at the time, said, clearly the traditional churches in the wake of hyper-industrialization, even before World World War I, and science are no longer providing the kind of answers for a lot of people, a lot of younger people, living certainly in cities that they used to provide. And yet,

with this disenchantment of the world, right, people still need something higher than themselves. They need faith in something. And science isn't going to do it. And traditional religion doesn't do it. What's in between? Well, New Age religion, a cultism, these so-called border sciences that claim to explain everything like world ice theory, but really can't be proven empirically. That's a vehicle for faith. Pulp fiction, science fiction. And we see that across the West after the 1890s, and especially after World War I, with the decline in traditional religion. We even see some of the Catholic and Protestant leaders trying to tap into that more grassroots, supernatural way of thinking. But what we're

What I argued, I guess this is something that, as you point out in the intro, it would be reassuring for you as someone who believes in the Judeo-Christian ethos in the West. It's usually to the degree that they move away from that, that they're open to these new ways of thinking. I don't find a lot of devout Catholics and Protestants who like, who believe in world ice theory, for example. But they're compatible because they're both faith-based ways of thinking, but I do think you've got to take a step away from. traditional religion towards what I would call border science or occultism in order to find that as your kind of new religion, right? So you're right that while the churches may have made certain concessions to it or, like you say, become too political, I don't think that Christianity per se was a bridge to this kind of

thinking. And I don't mean it exactly that way. I mean the absence of that thinking led people to go find something that was different and worked. I want to have you explain border science and things like that when we come back and kind of get in and set the groundwork of what they actually believed and what they used. I mean, the idea that they were using astrologers and divining rods to find submarines is amazing. And eventually the miracle weapons that they were going after and the reason why possibly they, They did not get the bomb is an amazing revelation.

And we'll get to that here in just a second. The book is Hitler's Monsters, a supernatural history of the Third Reich. Eric Curlander is the artist. If you're author, if you're a fan of like those incredible, crazy, you know, documentaries they've made on this topic. This goes much, much further.

Oh, much. And it explains it with real credibility. Yeah. This is Indiana Jones and, you know, Holy Grail and the Last Crusade. It is, it's, you know, the Ark of the Covenant and Captain America. But it's the real stuff. It's amazing.

We have Eric Kurtlander on. He is the author of a book, Hitler's Monsters. This is a serious scholarly book about the supernatural history of the Third Reich and what they believed and what they used. Eric, help me out. Let's get a couple of definitions. What define the occult? What does that mean? Is that devil stuff?

Right. So I started out thinking, oh, you know, I'm going to look at occultism, whatever that means. And then I realized the occult is a pretty specific meaning for scholars. It's things related to demonology, witchcraft, certain what I later call border sciences, but really that are linked to things like astrology and dowsing and doctrines like ariosophy or anthroposophy, these are also things that usually come under the umbrella of occultism, something that's between religion and science and will help you uncover a secret world or a hidden world, right? That's where the term comes from.

Pretend I read the book, but still could not get my arms around the ossophies. can you define those? Excellent question. And again, these ossophies are larger doctrines, which supposedly explain the world in ways that traditional religion and science can't because they integrate both. So theosophy, which Montemblevatsky, a Russian thinker in the mid to late 19th century, came up with, is this idea that if you study the religions of the East and the kind of practices of the East, and unite it with Darwinism and evolution, you can come up with a syncretic doctrine that explains all of world history. So she came up with this idea of root races, the most superior of which lived in Atlantis,

millennia earlier, maybe mated with extraterrestrials, and then these other races, which had various qualities. You know, the early theosophists were not as explicitly racist as the later anthroposophist or areiosophists, obviously with Aryan in the title, but they all believe this idea of root races that modern biology and Darwinism makes sense, but it's got to be leavened with Eastern philosophy and religion, and that you can understand the stages of world history through that,

and if you reverse engineer everything, you can get back in touch both spiritually and racially with the great root races of the earlier period. And so much of what they were doing was having seances and following certain doctrines to try to get back in touch with humanity when it was at its highest point. You can see why that was attractive to some Central Europeans in the Fokish movement, the more racialist political movements and anti-Semitic movements, because it in a way justified their view of the world.

So, Eric, I just want to go back. I was interested to read how much they were into Eastern religion, and I can't remember, was it, was it Himmler that carried around the sayings of Buddha in his pocket? Yeah, the Bhagavad Gita. It's not exactly the same thing. But yeah, Himmler, Hess, Rudolph Hess, the deputy furor, Walter Daray. This would not be something that people would expect. No, but it makes perfect sense when you think about what is their larger view of the world. Why do they use the swastika, which is an Indo-Aryan fertility symbol, right? Because in their mind, coming out of this 19th century supernatural imaginary, the first chapter, they recognize

that the great races and civilizations, and of course we don't have scientific evidence for this, that this is their view of the world, all came from these Indo-Aryan races, which may have developed in Atlantis or the Hyperborea, some ancient Aryan or racially pure Atlantean civilization, but at some point, because of a flood or giant blocks of ice, did migrate east, thereby populating India, East Asia, Japan. And the reason all these superior civilizations occurred is because of the leadership of the Indo-Aryans, for whom the symbol of the swastika is the, you know, and the religion of Tibet. Why Tibet?

Well, it's a high point where in a flood, a lot of the high priests of Aryan religion could have fled. And then they're trying to re-inscribe those ideas back into their view of Nordic race and religion. in the 20s and 30s. So that's kind of their view of the world. So it's not that odd. They just skip over the Slavs and Jews, right? Because those are subhuman races or Africa. All right.

But Asia makes sense to them. We're talking to Eric Kirtlander. He is the author of Hitler's Monsters. It is a scholarly book on the supernatural leanings of the Third Reich. And what was in the society that made them, embrace Nazism and what did the Nazis use to strengthen that embrace? More in a second. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

There's a book that is a must read. But I warn you, it's going to take you a while just because it's so fascinating. You will jump out of the page and go, wait a minute, I've got to look that up. It's called Hitler's Monsters, Eric Kirtlander, a supernatural history of the Third Reich. This is a scholarly book. This is not a, you know, this is, this is not Pulp Fiction. It is a deep dive and well documented on what the Nazis believed and what they did. And Eric, I want to clarify one thing with you that I didn't, I didn't walk away knowing for sure.

And maybe you don't know the answer. How much of this did they believe or make a pact with? and how much was just being used? That became a central question for me as I was going through different sources. So one thing I can say, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolph Hess, believed, truly believed in a lot of these different doctrines, border sciences like parapsychology, dowsing, astrology. They truly believe that if you did it in a scientific way,

you could glean answers that mainstream science and religious. and would not give you. So he was looking into the, Himmler was looking into the Holy Grail. He was, at the end, he was, I guess you could credit this to Tesla, but I'm not sure if he credited it more to Tesla or to Thor's hammer. I mean, exactly. Which was it?

Was it Tesla or was it, he believed the Thor hammer electricity in the air? We have the, I mean, Peter Longerish, one of the greatest historians of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. and other sources both corroborate him asking his acolytes to look into whether the energies that we associate with Thor's hammer can be somehow harnessed, that maybe they're not traditional scientific energies, but something more occult or hidden. And that's why certain of the gods had certain powers. He thought he was the reincarnation of Otto the Great, or Henry the Fowler, I'm sorry, one of the great, medieval German princes.

Many people have noted Himmler's actual investment in these ideas, as well as Hess. What I find, though, and that's where the real debate comes is that many other Nazis, Otto Olendorf, who led the Einzatz group into kill thousands of Jews, he was seen as a kind of one of these technocrats, highly educated. Turns out he was pushing biodynamic agriculture and anthroposophic, which is an occult doctrine, approaches to the world as a kind of not a substitute religion, but as something that could unite religion and science in the Third Reich. He's not normally associated with those ideas.

Hitler had a douser in the Reich Chancellor to look for cancer-causing death rays and gave an honorary degree to one of the progenitors of world ice theory. Some people, some in the Third Reich said that they found Mussolini through divining rods or dousing over a map. and you document that really well. Did Hitler believe that stuff? So I would say Hitler is, he's perfectly representative of the Nazi movement and maybe Austro-German society. He's right in the middle. He clearly believed in some of these doctrines because he'd grown up with them and he

didn't find traditional Catholicism compelling and he didn't embrace modern science because he considered it a Jewish science and was too empirical. but he wasn't as invested as some other Nazis were, like Himmler Hess. On the other hand, there were a few Nazis like Heidrich. He's one of the only leaders I can find who almost never shows authentic investment in any of these ideas and wants to combat them as another form of sectarianism. So he doesn't care what religion, occult, or philosophical doctrine you have, whether you're a liberal, communist, or even a conservative.

If you're not a Nazi, that's potentially a problem. So Hydric goes after a cultist, but many of the others leaders who claim they don't like the occult, like Rosenberg or Himmler, actually just don't like people who practice it in a way that challenges their beliefs. The minute, by the way, this is the problem with a lot of religion, right? People argue that they have the true faith and the true method or path to the Lord, right? So what you see in the Third Reich, much like occultism more generally, is claims that they're doing it scientifically. they understand it. These other people are charlatans. And many historians, when they saw that superficially,

who weren't particularly interested in research, you say, oh, they're hostile to occultism. And I point out they're not hostile to it epistemologically. They're hostile to anyone who practice it in a way that isn't compatible with their racial ideas, their politics, their propaganda. It actually worked to the West's advantage to some degree, the SS Oberguben-Fürer Kamler, who was really only known for making the crematoriums in Auschwitz more effective,

was the replacement for von Braun in the rocket science department? Because, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't it because of a horoscopes or astrology? We can't confirm it's because of astrology. What we can't confirm is that Himmler, to have SS men who shared some of his approaches to science and politics and race theory around him more than than tried and true professionals like von Braun. And that's why Schauer, as you see in my chapter, the primary sources I have from the archives are Speer reminding all the other Nazi leaders, we aren't going to come up with miracle

weapons that are going to decide the war. This is propaganda. And then you have Gerbils and Himmler and Kamler say, oh, no, we can do this. with enough will, with enough faith, if we harness the right energies. And clearly that tips over into the realm of border science very often. And it's not empirical. It's not something that's actually feasible. Towards the end, it seemed to really work to the West's advantage again.

Their race theory and their belief in these what you call border sciences, I was really interested in what you said that one of the reasons why we think that they weren't farther along with the nuke is because they saw that as a Jewish science and so it was a little underplayed and the border sciences, the miracle weapons, were looked at with possible equal shot of it working. Do I have that right?

Exactly. you have two parallel things going on. Obviously, they lose a lot of the best scientists who may have been, quote, unquote, liberal or Jewish, right? Many who stay are still top scientists, Heisenberg, Max Planck, right, von Braun. But they're carrying out traditional science, mainstream science. And then you've got a lot of Nazis led by Himmler, who's got this whole institute, the Anirba, the Institute for Incestal Research, who's frustrated they don't want to work with his scientists, who are operating based on folklore and Indo-Aryan race theory, and want to experiment with hidden electrical energies.

And the one thing I'm certain of is that the incompatibility of those two cultures certainly undermined some of their strategic thinking. We know that Hitler and Himmler, because they read science fiction, liked the idea of rockets and ships and jets and didn't think in terms of these more. abstruse ideas like nuclear physics, which not only is something you can't concretely hold or build, but is something they associate with abstract thinking of Jews and liberals and communists. Thank God. Thank God.

But in a way, now I can't quantify. A lot of the things I bring up in the book, it's scholarly as it is, are things that someone else who's a specialist in these areas, armaments, military history, should really pursue and see to what degree this really did undermine their war effort. I suggest it did. Speer suggests it does, but that's a whole other line of research. Yeah. Eric, I could spend hours with you. I'd love to have you back, because we haven't gotten into some of the miracle weapons and the bell, which, you know, the flying saucer and anti-gravity stuff that they supposedly were working on, but we're really not sure if they were.

I'd love to continue our conversation on that. I do want to switch gears because you wrote another book, which I have not read. It is your first book, and let's see if I have it. The Price of Exclusion, Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism. Just based on the title, I have a feeling we would have a lot to learn from that in today's world. We would, and the second book, Living with He said, liberal in the Third Reich, which I think you'd appreciate most of all. We have slightly different political views, but I think you'll find the arguments in that book about the way that

progressives kind of sold out to fascism, not because they were fascists, but because they saw certain continuities that made accommodation possible. I think you'd find that interesting. Eric, I don't want to turn you political, but if you had any historic milestones that would be important. There's CPAC announced that they are having the National Front speak from France, which is a national socialist party. It is. And I think they're doing it because they'll say there's lots of things that we do have in common

and we don't have to take that. And this is a big movement that is happening all around. And any lessons from history? Well, this is, and if anything unites the three books I've written, which have been written in a time when I would argue our liberal, so-called liberal parties have moved to the right on socioeconomic issues and then in other ways embrace values issues, value fights over values. And our right has done the same thing. What you see happening is an unwillingness for very, we would might, we could maybe both agree that it's the role of Wall Street and government elites who don't want to. fight it out over the actual empirical realities of how do you get the best health care or the best tax policy, they fight it out over ideology and values. And those values have moved more and more

towards what I would argue the populist right. So how do you win elections in America and France and the Netherlands now? You claim you're going to protect people in ways that can never quite be explained from global forces, other ethnicities, religions, terrorism, economic forces that that both parties used to embrace, right, trade. Those are dangerous. And this, of course, moves both parties, but obviously our right wing more than our, what I now call our center,

towards what we now call the alt-right, but we used to call fascism. And that's very dangerous. That's, especially in America, you could always trust conservatives to defend the Constitution, to be at least classical liberals, right? And as you're pointing out,

you can't always trust that anymore. and if our so-called liberals have to be the constitutional conservatives, we're in trouble, right? They're the interventionists, right? They're the ones. Progressives, always want to tear down the Constitution or change it, and now they're the ones defending the FBI and the Constitution. We have a constitutional crisis.

We have a political, cultural crisis. I think both traditional conservatives and so-called liberals or progressives could agree on this. And the lessons of history from the 20s and 30s are scary ones. Yes. the way this happens. Eric, I'd love to talk to you again. Thank you so much. And thank you for the really hard work.

I mean, I've read a lot of books, and I don't think I've read one that I think took more hard work than this. This was turning over every stone. And thank you for your hard work. One more last question. Would you definitely, or would you definitively say the National Socialist Movement of Germany was not a Christian movement? When you're talking about a country of 80s,

million people and 20 or 30 million who supported the Nazis, obviously lots of Christians saw something in Nazism, whether it's extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, Lutheran kind of patriotism. Sure. But when it comes to the leaders, and here's where I feel I'm on solid ground, those leaders were frustrated by traditional Christianity, which they linked to Judaism and to universalism and to a world beyond the here and now, which they're. they saw is not helpful in creating a racial ancestor worshipping blood and soil movement.

That's why they liked Shinto and Hinduism and Buddhism, whether they interpreted those religions properly or not. They saw them as more compatible with creating a religion of the here and now. Eric, thank you. And so in that, I would say they weren't, the leaders at least, were not Christians by any conventional sense of the word. No. Thank you very much, Eric. Hold on if you would. I'd like to talk to a bit. Hitler's Monsters is the book, A Supernatural History to the Third Reich, Eric Curlander is the artist. I'm back on again. There's so much to go through in this.

I mean, I want to talk to him about all the miracle stuff. The bell. Did you even know what the bell is? It is, just look it up. Let's just look up Nazi bell. Never heard of it. Never heard of it. And it's fascinating.

Whether it happened or not, I don't know. So what'd you think, Stu? I mean, it's fascinating. I'm, as you are, and as several people around here are, just real nerds when it comes to learning about that era because it's just fascinating that any of that happened. I mean, obviously, first and foremost, horrifying. Horrifying. But then beyond that, it's just the fact that these people somehow got power and did all this crazy crap with it is just

fascinating to me. We should bring him in and then invite people to come and just, you know, come and just listen to him. Maybe spend a weekend with him. I guess I've done some research off of this book, not research, research, but just looking up some of the stuff. All these books. Oh my gosh. And it's, it's fascinating. You watch some of the movies from the early 1920s in Germany and all of a sudden,

so much just starts to make sense to you and you're like, oh my gosh. They never saw it coming. They never saw it coming. So the name of the book again is Hitler's Monsters. available in bookstores everywhere. Glenn, back.

Mercury. Climate change isn't just bad for the environment. It is bad now for the womb. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story highlighting women who claim their decision to have children is directly influenced by climate change. They had an example of a woman named Sarah. She considered having another child, but that would mean moving into a bigger house. And that's further from her job.

She's not sure she can justify the environmental impact for a larger home and a longer commute. Allison, she was in the time. She's concerned about the apocalyptic future of extreme weather. She said, I don't want to give birth to a kid and wonder if he's going to live in some sort of mad max dystopia. Miriam shared her concern. My instinct now is to shield my children from the horrors of the future by not bringing them into the world. Amanda actually decided to have more children because of climate change. Her reason, someday my husband and I will be gone.

If my daughter has to face the end of the world as we know it, I want her to have a brother there. Oh my gosh. You want to talk about fear-mongering. So many women are bringing climate change into their reproduction decisions that the organization, conceivable future was founded to help women make environmentally friendly, reproductive decisions and navigate our doomed world. Not to bring a child into the world because you're scared they are going to increase your carbon footprint or that they'll live like moody drifters in a desert like terrain is the very definition

of insanity. These women are deciding not to have children based on their fictional perception of their children's quality of life. and we're the fearmongers? The disgusting lie of an impending environmental wasteland and an overpopulated planet wasn't true in the 1970s. It wasn't true in the 1960s when it really started to take root and everybody was freaking out in the mid-70s. It wasn't true. It wasn't true that we were going into an ice age and that we would all freeze to death and there would be no food.

by 1990. That wasn't true in the 70s and the 80s, and it's not true today. This is nonsense. Stop it. We have to be better stewards of our planet. Yes. We should recycle. We should use less.

We should make sure that the things that we do use, we can reuse. But to not have children, the birth rate in the United States, its lowest point in 2016 and the decline continues all around the world. It is almost criminal that these women are, or have been scared so deeply that they are allowing a 50 year old unsustantiated fear dictate whether or not they bring human life into the world. You know, let me give you a few things to be afraid of of.

How about this? Women, if you were afraid of this, let me give you something to be scared of. AI. We right now have scientists. Credible science. Stephen Hawking. Some of the scientists that you believe global warming is true because of it, they say that global warming is nothing compared to AI. They say AI will wipe out the entire human race in the next 30 to 50 years long before carbon is killing the planet.

long before. Oh, yeah, y'all. Why don't you listen to them, but you listen to these? And here's an idea. Balance. Balance in your life. There are some days when I read stuff like this, I hope I'm one of the first that a robot replaces.

I'm going to talk a little bit about balance again today. Yesterday, I talked about balance. The balance between self-worth and human. humility. It's a balance we never can we can never get. If we're on top of the world, if we are doing great, I did it. I did it. Man, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Our actions scream. Look at me. I did it. And if we're having a bad go of it, I'm just stupid. I'm just, I'm the worst. I can't believe it. I mean, I never catch a break. I'm just always make the wrong decisions. Humility and self-worth. Where do we get that? Yesterday, Sarah, I don't know if we still have the Martin Luther King commercial that Dodge ran, but there was, there was a commercial that is, they, they, people are actually calling for the firing of the person who came up with this commercial. This, this commercial was brilliant. Was it, did it, did it sell a truck? I don't know.

did it go too far by by comparing Martin Luther King and his mission to a truck? Yes, definitely, definitely. Was this commercial good? Yeah, I think it was. It was based on a sermon that Martin Luther King did 50 years ago to the day on Super Bowl Sunday. And here's what he had to say. You don't have to know about pleasure to an Aristotlandish said. You don't have to know the theory already generated by love.

Oh my gosh, they should be fired. Or maybe perhaps this is exactly the message America needs. What is a heart full of grace? What is that? That is a heart, I believe, that is balanced between self-worth and humility. I'm not going to change the world. change anybody's life. I'm just trying to do the right thing. I'm just trying to change my life. I'm trying to be a better person. And I know I can do it because I know who I am. And because I know

who I am, I know who you are. And I know how we're connected. And so I'm going to serve you. I'm going to help you because that helps me. That helps all of us. That's what we're here for. That's a heart full of grace. Yesterday I brought you this message. And right before I went off the air, I received this phone call. Let's go to Minnesota and Brian. Hello, Brian. Hello, Mr. Beck. How are you?

I'm very good. How are you? Thanks for holding. You vet. Hey, I just wanted to say, I wanted to preface this with, I'm at work, and I don't listen to you very often, and I think it's a bit of serendipity that I happened to listen to you a while ago. The first thing I heard was MLK saying something about having a lot of.

a heart full of grace. Yeah. And then you talked about being honest with yourself. And you went on on that line for quite some time. I served our country in the second of the 705th Ranger Regiment. And I've been honest with myself. Ever since I got out, I've hated myself. I've despised myself.

And I'm a husband and I'm a father. and what you said, you know, it's hard for people to reach me at a certain level because I don't want people to because I like to keep people away from me except for my wife and my daughter. I'm not a huge people person. I don't like people and I think it's because I don't like myself. I've never really had an epiphany moment in my life. I certainly never expected one from Glenn Beck.

But that's what happened. I had to pull my truck over and it moved me to tears to realize how much I can't stand myself and how much of an issue I have being the kind of person that I need to be to guide my family all because of the fact that I don't serve anymore. And I feel useless. I feel emasculated. and I have no idea how I got to this point today. I have no idea why I'm at this point right now because I certainly didn't expect it and I certainly didn't expect it

at the time that it happened, but I'm glad that it did. Brian, I just wanted to let you know that. I just have to tell you, you're not alone, brother, and I have been in exactly your place. I've been there. And it gets better. It really does.

you just now that you've recognized it now you can start taking baby steps and a year from now you won't recognize how great your life is so that was for calling that was yesterday's program at the very end of the program and I was struck by I hate myself

I despise myself because I used to feel that way too I don't know if Brian is a drinker but the way that's the way I dealt with it and I used to hate people. I used to say that all the time. I hate people. I don't. I hated me. I hated me. I was a self-hating ego maniac. That's who we've become. We are filled with certitude. We know exactly

what's happening. We know exactly what the problem is. We do this in our, it's so strange. We do this in politics, we know our side is right, their side is wrong, we know it, and there's no room for gray. But I'm sorry to say, principles are principles.

They are black and white. But how we're getting to those principles, how we're understanding those principles, there's a lot of gray. Their side is not always wrong, and we're not always right. In fact, we seem to switch, place is an awful lot. Brian says he feels useless and emasculated. I fear there's going to be more

of that before there's less. But the good news is, if you recognize it now, you can take the steps to change that course. And it's really hard, but it's so well worth it. My father taught me the most important thing anybody's ever taught me in my life the most powerful words in any language is i am you change what follows those two words and you will change your life i can guarantee you that he spends a lot of time as i did i am useless i am worthless i am so weak i am so pathetic Well, if you had somebody around you saying that all day long for months and months and months, perhaps years, it would affect you and we would call it mental abuse. We say those things to ourselves much more than anybody else could possibly say that. We're inflicting mental abuse on ourselves and we believe it.

After a while, you believe it. Do yourself a favor. get out a notebook and a pencil and just put positive and negative one side positive one side negative don't judge anything don't ponder it just when you have a thought oh i'm so tired i'm so worthless oh my gosh i'm so whatever it is i am just notice is a positive or a negative then just mark it down when i did this years ago i don't think i had any positives on in the worst of my life, I have fewer positives, the negatives. Your job is to stop using, in my opinion, the name of God is I am. Who shall I say sent me, said Moses. I am that I am. Don't take the Lord's

name in vain. What he means by that is my creative power is in my name. And I am. We'll create whatever it is. Don't take it in vain. Don't take it in vain. Don't take it. that lightly. I am strong. I am stronger today than I was yesterday. I am better today than I was yesterday. I am discovering my worth every second. You can't just convince yourself that you are worthy. I'm discovering my worth every day. I am finding new things to be excited about every day. Believe me, you change your thinking and you will change your life. Oh, and by the way, for anybody who thought that the guy should be fired for that Dodge Ram commercial, maybe Dodge could say that because I don't think Brian is going to be out buying a Dodge because of the commercial,

but because of that commercial and because we weren't bitching about it on the air, but actually talking about it, it changed one man's life. Good job, Dodge. I have a love story I wanted to tell you about. Oh, a love story. It's very nice. This is good. All right, all right.

It was a long time ago. About 25 years ago. Two, uh, two crayfish. Two, pardon me? Two crayfish. Yes, okay. They met. And they, uh, it went fast.

Uh-huh. You know, things moved pretty fast. Yes. It was not one of those. They meet. They, like, it was right to. Love at first sight. Love it.

Not even that. It was just sex. They went, they went at it. Yes, right. Okay. There was an issue, however. Uh-oh. Um, one of them had a mutation in a sex cell.

Boy. Okay. the sex cell. Yes. Whether it was the egg or the sperm, the scientists don't know yet. Don't know. As they analyze this love story. Oh, boy.

Now, normal sex cells contain a single copy of each chromosome. But the mutant crayfish cell had two. Somehow the two sex cells fused and produced a female crayfish embryo with three copies of each chromosome instead of the normal two. Somehow, too, the crayfish didn't suffer any deformities because of this, which was normally what would happen. I want to know, is there extra meat? Yes, it's actually these crayfish are very large. Really? And they produce a lot of eggs.

And what's interesting about these new crayfish that happened on this day, this love story that paid off 25 years ago. Yeah. Just 25 years ago is they can now clone themselves. And they, I guess they became popular like by people, aquarium hobbyists in the 1990s. And because they were bigger than the normal ones and they produced lots of eggs, so you'd get lots of extras.

And they kept producing so many extras, people started freaking out and just, bringing them to local lakes and just dumping them in the lakes, the extras. And then, of course, obviously, free to roam. They're very resilient, free to roam. They're able to produce more and more and more and more. And now they're all over the world. No one knows how to get rid of them or what to do about them.

It's honestly like the rabbit population in Australia. Do you know that? I think it's rabbits, isn't it? Well, I mean, I know one phrase about rabbits that works into the story. But I mean, there was a, there was, I can't remember how this worked, but somebody brought over, I think it was rabbits to Australia. And there was, uh, the natural predators were not strong enough. And the rabbit population went crazy and overrun. I think it's Australia with rabbits.

Uh, and it was a real problem, uh, over in Australia. Because people, you know, there's bring all the cute little bunny and they bring it over the, you know, I don't know, but the cute little crawfish. But, you know, you're taking it out of its natural habitat and you're, you're, you're just, you're, starting to dump it and it doesn't have necessarily any predators and in this case it's genetically cloning itself is that the one where there's like a whole island where it's just like covered and I don't know it might be a book that I read my kids at night I don't know it's interesting though that they say that the about one out of every 10,000 species this occurs with there's some mutation and then the woman the lovely woman she the crop person she's the crop person the crop person

is very much says me too and doesn't want to be with the men anymore. Right. And then she starts having her own clone babies. They're taking over Europe. There's millions and they can't stop it because they just keep cloning themselves with a hundreds. Was it man created or was this natural? Natural. It happens.

It's evolution. It's evolution people. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. So much to the, I would think, chagrin of my friends and chagrin of his. friends. We are friends. Eric Lou, he is the founder and CEO of Citizen University, also the executive director of the Aspen Institute, Citizenship and American Identity Program. He's from Seattle. I don't think I need to say anything else. He's from Seattle. So, so, we don't necessarily agree on everything. But we, we have become friends because we both are trying to

find sane ways to have conversations with each other and other people, or we're doomed. We're doomed. Welcome. How are you? Glenn, it's great to be back. So would you agree with me that both sides to one degree or another have become unhinged on the extreme edges? Yeah, I think our politics today, and especially if you spend more than 10 minutes on social media, it is about voices on the unhinged extremes. Yeah. And it's about this pattern that plays out over and over where each extreme has to gin it up in order to, yeah, to feed the rage and the anger about the other side's extreme.

Yeah. You know, I think that that is our politics as it's mediated, you know, especially through social media. Yeah. But I think there is a broad swath of, you know, sane people, call them, you know, interested bystanders, people who aren't super active in politics, super active in commenting on politics, who just want to understand each other

and who just want to fix stuff. Yeah. And some of them are as progressive as I am, and some of them are as libertarian as you are, and many of them are in all points between, but they're not interested in the game playing and the posturing that so much of national politics is about today. Yeah, I mean, we're making,

everything about politics now. Absolutely everything is about politics. And we're not going to survive that. That's just, that's nuts. The story today came out on Sports Illustrated. They just did a swimsuit issue that doesn't have any swimsuits. All of the women are completely naked and they're beautiful women. One is lying down naked face up with the word truth painted on her rib cage.

Another one is naked with feminine. feminists emblazoned on her arm. The other is the daughter of Christy Brinkley that is staring at the camera, laying on her side with a word progress written across her back. And they've put this, this is, I don't understand this. This is Sports Illustrated, a magazine for men trying to say, see, we shouldn't objectify women. I don't understand that.

There's a lot that is great fundamentally about the Me Too movement and the fact that our society is waking up to shifting norms on what's okay when it comes to actually treating women with respect, right? But I do not look to Sports Illustrated as my moral guide on the objectification of women.

How do we find a way and tell me what your feelings are on the people that you know? On the dangers, even Margaret Atwood brought this up, the dangers of these kangaroo courts or just not even a kangaroo, court. Just you're guilty and you're done if anybody accuses you. The danger is there. But I think actually

as a society, we're navigating it right now. I mean, this is this is somewhat uncharted. It's not like the society has tried before to have deep equity between men and women on what, who gets to harass whom. We've never done that before. We're having a society-wide reckoning. Are there going to be cases where people abuse that, the power that comes with that? Sure. But are our institutions, and are the leaders in our institutions fundamentally trying to reckon with that in good faith? I actually think we are, right? And even this kind of absurd Sports Illustrated cover is a sign that, you know, one thing you can say about Sports Illustrated is they're trying to tune into the zeitgeist.

They are aware of the marketplace, right? And they know the zeitgeist is you've got to be on the right side of this issue, right? Right. And that's something. But if I did photos of naked women and put, you know, hashtag me too, I don't think I'd get the past that from either side in my case. The question is one of, you know, in the law they talk about standing, do you have standing to make a case, right?

During the Super Bowl, we all watched the ads and stuff. I didn't think Dodge Ram trucks had the moral standing to use an MLK speech about the dangers of commercialism to sell trucks. To me, that was, and to lots of Americans, that was, you know what? Message and messenger not aligned here. You mean the, you mean the, you mean the, Okay, so the MLK message, may I present an opposite point of view. That's a sermon that most Americans have never heard was really good.

I agree with you that, you know, the images of the truck coming in halfway and you're like, okay, that's really, you don't need that. Just a simple dodge at the end would have been perfect. Would have been great. So who have you found, Eric, you know, I have been looking for. for a while, looking for people like you that we don't necessarily agree, but we can have really good conversations and we can move things forward together. Who have you found on the left or in the media that is really willing to do that?

You know, and I'm not sure if she's been a guest on your show, but my friend Nira Tandon, who runs the Center for American Progress. So a big, big, progressive think tank that I know you cross swords with. but Nira is both able and willing to have conversations with anybody and to have them in ways that aren't just about the made-for-TV food fight that are really trying to say

what's your deal, right? What are you getting at here? I really feel one of the biggest problems is nobody's listening at all. Nobody feels heard right now. Somehow or another, the left, which still controls most of the media, doesn't feel heard and the right now that they control the house and the senate and that they don't

feel heard and it's because nobody is nobody is actually um um i guess i guess emoting what the average person is feeling right now you know we're all scared it's amazing i saw i saw youtube video of a of a liberal um talking about how uh afraid she was that Donald Trump was going to build concentration camps. And it was in a room, probably had a thousand people in it. And they all were like, yeah, yeah. And I remember, I debunked the lie about Obama making concentration camps because that was a big deal. Big conspiracy theory at the time.

I was called a conspiracy theorist for debunking that conspiracy theory. And now the other side is feeling the same kind of fear. that so many Americans did when they didn't trust the president. And I think this is a moment where we can wake up and say, see, this is why the president should never have this much power. The president should not be able to affect our lives to the point to where we're afraid of him. Yeah. I actually agree with that.

I think there's one lesson that people on the left are learning today, and that is the dangers of this imperial presidency, right, which is not a Trump phenomenon or even an Obama phenomenon. It's going back half a century at least. at least since World War II. Concentration power in the executive, right? But I think I want to go back to something you were saying about listening and being heard, right? We live in this time right now where there is, and we've talked about this, there's so much pain.

There's so much pain. The segment you were doing right before the break in which you were just speaking to a human, an individual about the pain they are feeling in their journey, and you were tying it to the pain that you have felt at various points on your journey. Right. That kind of conversation, which is both about listening, but it's about, I'm not just listening to the words you're saying and to the points you're making. I'm trying to listen underneath to the emotional currents there. That's a set of habits that nobody's modeling for us in national politics and that we as citizens, frankly, it's gotten easier for us basically to shed those habits because nothing in our daily lives rewards that, right?

Social media doesn't reward that. The media doesn't reward. reward that, right? And so we've got to actually build experiences where we see each other face to face again. You know, if we were having this conversation by phone, this would be different. But I'm looking you in the eye right now, Glenn. And I'm looking at you as you have spoken about these questions. And there's a human connection here that I can't now just call you a nut job and call you this and call you that. Like we've connected on some level, right? Doesn't mean we're going to agree on the issues, but it means that I'm not going to demonize. And I think the deepest ill in

our politics is how we've forgotten how to rehumanize each other. That's so funny. I just wrote a member of the press this morning, a private conversation that dealt with that. I said, we are calling each other subhumans exactly the way the early, you know, 1920s Nazis were starting to train people that you're subhuman. If you don't agree with me, you're subhuman. And we're training each other that way.

But it doesn't, social media is not the only one that doesn't reward it. Media doesn't reward it either. I mean, if you're not going to call somebody a nutjob or a Nazi, you don't win and they don't put you on. And you, was you yesterday that said that you had seen somebody say, no, well, on the surface, this means X and X. And the guy was like, no, but that's. It was an interview about some controversial comment that had gone on in the media. and they had brought someone on to kind of answer for it and the typical kind of cable news back and forth. And that was essentially the way they went when the person was pushing back against it, they said,

yeah, but you got to admit on the surface, it's an insult. It's like, well, isn't the point here as human beings that we go beyond the surface, that we think a little bit deeper about these things? Because we can all get frustrated at the surface of it. We can all find the worst possible intent of a comment and turn it into something that's going to enrage our side, but that shouldn't be our goal. So, Eric, how do we do that? Well, it starts with something I actually want to give you guys credit for,

which is you got to put something at risk, right? When you started a couple of years ago saying, I own my piece of how our politics and our political culture have gotten toxic, and I've decided I want to be part of the solution. I want to start reaching out and having conversations across different divides, right? You put a bunch of stuff at risk. You feel it acutely, right? You feel it every day.

You put, I don't have to name it, right? It's not just about the business side of things and the listeners and the sponsors or whatever. I'm talking about just reputational power and so forth, right? You put stuff at risk. And I often ask myself and I ask my friends who are left of center, what are we willing to put at risk in order to change this politics? In order to go a little deeper beyond the surface and beyond just this throwing of flames at each other. Right? So number one, it's being willing.

And I want to name the fact that you all have started. something and set in motion a different cycle of responsibility taking rather than responsibility shirking, right? Thank you. There is only one way to break the cycle of dehumanization and responsibility shirking, and that is to break it. That is to be, you know, say, you know what? I didn't start it.

I'm not the one to blame, but darn it, I'm actually just going to say, I'm stopping right now and I'm trying to change direction here, go a little deeper, rehumanize. And yeah, I may pay some price for that, but this is a, this is a question of purpose. One of the famous poets said, we didn't start the fire. It was Billy Joland, stop it. It was always a poet.

Yes, indeed. So what do your friends say to you when you say, what are we willing to lose? What are we willing to, what chip are we willing to put up? Let me tell you about something we've been doing at Citizen University. For the last year plus now,

year and a quarter, we've been doing these regular gatherings that we call civic Saturday. And these are basically a civic analog to church. It's not. church, it's not synagogue or mosque, but it's about American civic religion, right? The stuff that you and I as civic nerds are steeped in, right? I mean, understanding the language and the texts and what you might think of as civic scripture, whether that's from the declaration of the

preamble or King's speeches or Susan B. Anthony or whatever it might be. And understanding that we have all inherited this body of values and text and idea. And we do these gatherings with the arc of a faith gathering. We sing together. You turn to the stranger next deed. You talk about a common question. There are readings of these texts. There's a sermon that I've been giving. And then afterwards, there's more song. And then there's an hour afterwards where people kind of form up in circles and talk about what are we going to do together, right? And I go at length to tell you about this because, number one, it's been amazing how people have responded to this. There is this need across the left and the right, whether you are traditionally religious or not.

There is this need in our political life for a space where we can come together and rehumanize, right? Number one. But number two, when in that space I've said to folks in these sermons what I said here, which is we've got to be willing to take risks. We've got to be willing to ask ourselves, what are we willing to put on the line? and people people are people sit there for a minute because they haven't been asked slash challenge to do that in a long time right all of our political leadership is about let me indulge you let me indulge your your worst instincts let me indulge you not

what can you do and maybe even give up a little bit yeah in order to start solving the problem right and that leads to different kinds of conversations and frankly not all of them are about trump or national politics a lot of these conversations then come to life in our city, which is changing dramatically right now. That's what it should come down from the first place. He has written a book, You're More Powerful than You Think. His name is Eric Liu, and we'll have more tonight at 5 o'clock. Make sure you join us on the blaze.com slash TV.

Hey, just so you know, things could be worse. Imagine if I got on the air today and said, by the way, the government has decided to change the alphabet again today. Yeah, this is what happened in Kazakhstan. They had a new alphabet introduced last year, had 32 letters, but it had tons of apostrophes in it. And the apostrophes were supposed to denote distinct sounds. What happened was people got really pissed off largely because it's really hard to get to the apostrophe on your handheld device. So you're typing a message on your phone.

You're constantly bringing up shift and going to the apostrophe. They've now reworked with less apostrophes, a new alphabet, and that will be going in. Even though people have bought signs for the old one. But big government is the solution. What is this? Glenn, back. Mercury.