Andrew and Blake field questions from Charlie Kirk Exclusive subscribers, including: -Should Trump pick his running mate as soon as possible? -Does Charlie really use all the products he advertises? -How did Blake and Andrew meet Charlie? -Will the Chiefs release Harrison Butker?Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Join Our Growing Community
00:03:07
|
|
| Hey everybody, the AMA asked me anything where if you are a member at members.charlikirk.com, members.charliekirk.com. | |
| You get to submit your questions. | |
| Blake Neff and I take them for you. | |
| You guys submitted some great ones. | |
| Really embracing the fact that I'm hosting right now along with Blake. | |
| While Charlie's away, he's going to be back on Monday. | |
| But there's some great questions here. | |
| We get into the behind the scenes of the Charlie Kirk show. | |
| What it's really like, how we come up with topics, how we do research, how we retain information. | |
| This is a really hands-on episode. | |
| I love doing it. | |
| If you want to be a part of this show next week, if you want to ask Charlie questions, join members.charlikirk.com. | |
| That's members.charliekirk.com. | |
| Hopefully you take us up on that and join our growing community of Charlie Kirk exclusive members. | |
| So buckle up. | |
| Here we go. | |
| Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. | |
| Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. | |
| I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. | |
| Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. | |
| I want to thank Charlie. | |
| He's an incredible guy. | |
| His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created. | |
| Turning point USA. | |
| We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. | |
| That's why we are here. | |
| Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. | |
| Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. | |
| That is noblegoldinvestments.com. | |
| It's where I buy all of my gold. | |
| Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. | |
| They are counting on your surrender. | |
| If you give up, they win. | |
| But what if we look back and we realize we were just inches away from victory and that's when we decided to give up. | |
| Join us and thousands of American patriots for the summer convention that all are invited to. | |
| You're going to hear how we're going to win in 2024. | |
| The biggest speakers in the movement, featuring President Donald J. Trump. | |
| We're going to fight and we're going to win Charlie Kirk, the late Ramaswamy, Governor Christy Nolan, Dr. Ben Carson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, Lara Trump, Senator Rick Scott, Congressman Matt Gates, Benny Johnson, Jack Pisovic, and more. | |
| June 14th through 16th, 2024 is our final battle in Detroit, Michigan. | |
| The great silent majority is rising like never before. | |
| Join us for the People's Convention. | |
| This is a new ballgame, everybody. | |
| You send a message. | |
| We play to win. | |
| Register now at tpaction.com/slash peoples. | |
|
A New Ballgame Begins
00:10:29
|
|
| I'm joined by the esteemed, the one and only Blake Neff, one of our other producers on the show. | |
| Welcome. | |
| Welcome, Blake. | |
| I'm esteemed now. | |
| Oh, dear. | |
| Yes, you are. | |
| Of course you are. | |
| Oh, man. | |
| You're also one of the hosts of Thought Crime, Thought Crime Thursdays, sort of one of our anchors of that show. | |
| So, Blake, I'm going to, you know, kick it to you. | |
| You get the first one here. | |
| So, this is, I guess, from Bill. | |
| I have a question not relating to being producers, but still curious. | |
| Do you think the Chiefs will release Harrison Butger? | |
| I am not sure what the rules are regarding firing football players. | |
| Is that something you can fire someone for? | |
| Bill. | |
| I like the wording. | |
| I like the wording you fire. | |
| It'd be more fun in the NFL if they said that, if they just said, you know, the Packers have fired their defensive tackle. | |
| So the term they use, it would be released so you can release an NFL player. | |
| NFL contracts are not guaranteed, like they aren't required to keep you on the roster if they don't want you around. | |
| They sometimes have guaranteed money and there are penalties for getting rid of you. | |
| What I will say is I think it's pretty unlikely the Chiefs will do that. | |
| This will go away eventually. | |
| The Chiefs have just not commented on it directly. | |
| The NFL put out a short statement, but it's definitely not on the level where they would just get rid of him. | |
| And on the plus side, he is a good kicker. | |
| He is good at his job. | |
| He has one of the highest career accuracy levels of any kicker in NFL history. | |
| Interestingly, I'm spacing on his name. | |
| I want to check this. | |
| I think it's Justin. | |
| Is it Justin Tucker? | |
| Justin Tucker is the kicker of the Baltimore Ravens. | |
| And he's also, I believe, a super Catholic kicker. | |
| There just seemed to be this cabal of highly accurate super Catholic kickers in the NFL. | |
| But no, I think he'll be able to keep his job. | |
| I think this will go away. | |
| He'll be fine. | |
| His jersey is selling really well right now. | |
| I've seen it's both men and women's varieties. | |
| So I think a lot of women are perfectly fine with what he had to say. | |
| So I'm glad we saw a lot of people stick up for him. | |
| But I would not, unless something abruptly changes, I don't see this turning into him getting booted out of the NFL or anything stupid like that. | |
| No, I agree with you. | |
| And I think the tide has sort of turned. | |
| I think he's getting a lot of support now. | |
| And I'm telling you, organizations watch jersey sales like a hawk. | |
| So for example, when the Dodgers signed Shohei Otani to a $700 million contract, not only did they defer a lot of that until after the contract was over to help save cap space, but that's a ton of money for one team to put out for one player. | |
| Why did they do it? | |
| Well, guess what? | |
| They made about a third of that up on year one jersey sales. | |
| That's how insane it can be. | |
| Well, especially with somebody like Shohei. | |
| I mean, he's an international talent, so he's selling jerseys in Japan and Korea. | |
| So the fact that his jersey is selling as popularly as it is, and to Blake's point, he's the number one, I think, female fit jersey in the NFL right now. | |
| That's going to make a ton of money for the Chiefs. | |
| And listen, he didn't say anything that was truly wrong. | |
| Even if you're a put your mind set on as a left winger for a minute, you can't actually say he did anything that wrong, right? | |
| And, you know, what I really appreciated is people, obviously it's true he said nothing wrong, but I've appreciated that people relatively quickly realized, wait a minute, the NFL has multiple criminals who have no problem being on teams. | |
| We have players like Tyreek Hill who are in trouble with the law all the time. | |
| And if you can get 1,600 yards and catch 10 touchdowns, a team will hire you as long as you aren't literally incarcerated for murder. | |
| Then they'll usually get rid of you if you commit murder, usually. | |
| Ray Lewis, he pulled it off. | |
| And so, like, I'm just appreciating the public's ability to push back on just rank BS when they try to push narratives like this on us. | |
| Well, and Charlie actually wrote an op-ed for the Blaze about this. | |
| The Blaze asked Charlie to do it because Charlie put up a tweet about it. | |
| And I just texted with the team over at the Blaze. | |
| I said, how well did this do? | |
| They said, it was one of our top performers. | |
| Like, people are really into this story. | |
| And by the way, here's one other clue that they're not going to get rid of Harrison Butker. | |
| This is the daughter of the Chiefs' owner, apparently. | |
| I think her name's Gracie Hunt. | |
| And she just went on Fox and defended him. | |
| Play Cut 207. | |
| We're going to start with you because the couch would like to know, as America would, the reaction from the Hunt family regarding the kicker, Harrison Butker. | |
| Well, I can only speak from my own experience, which is I've had the most incredible mom who had the ability to stay home and be with us kids during that. | |
| And I understand that there are many women out there who can't make that decision. | |
| But for me in my life, I know it was really formative in shaping me and my siblings to be who we are. | |
| So you understood what he was talking about. | |
| For sure. | |
| And I really respect Harrison and his Christian faith and what he's accomplished on and off the field. | |
| Well, that's a pretty incredible clip. | |
| I mean, that is the daughter of the owner defending his Christian faith and defending a woman like her mother who stayed home to be with, you know, the kids and raise the family. | |
| I mean, it's, it's, I would say that Harrison Butker is in no danger of getting released from the Chiefs. | |
| Would you agree, Blake? | |
| Yeah. | |
| It would be really dumb if they released him over something like this. | |
| I think people are, I think it's good that they're worried, but I don't think there's any chance that it'll happen. | |
| He'll be in, he'll be fine. | |
| So my question is, how did Blake and Andrew meet Charlie and how did they start working for TP? | |
| Thanks for all you do, Trish. | |
| I don't work for TP. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I should clarify that just before, make sure we don't get in trouble with anyone. | |
| But I work for Tarling Players. | |
| Yeah, so that's true. | |
| Which is not Turning Point. | |
| Right. | |
| So we actually, yeah, the show exists. | |
| There's a media company that exists outside of Turning Point. | |
| And that's a really simple reason why Turning Point USA is a 501c3. | |
| It's nonpartisan. | |
| Yak. | |
| It's conservative. | |
| Conservative ideas, conservative values, principles, philosophies. | |
| But it does not endorse candidates. | |
| A lot of people don't understand this. | |
| TP USA, Turning Point USA, does not endorse candidates. | |
| It doesn't endorse political parties. | |
| It's completely unaffiliated with all that. | |
| Now, there is something called Turning Point Action, which is the 501c4, which has a scorecard, which judges the way people vote in Congress and in the Senate. | |
| It endorses political candidates. | |
| It endorses presidential candidates. | |
| It's actively involved in chasing ballots. | |
| So it's a whole different thing. | |
| I met Charlie. | |
| My career took me from Hollywood. | |
| I was working with Mark Burnett and Roma Downey launching TV shows. | |
| And Mark Burnett does Survivor and he does The Voice and he does Shark Tank. | |
| And then he did the Bible series, 80 the Bible Continues. | |
| And they sort of said, hey, who here is Christian can help us launch these Christian things? | |
| And it was Hollywood. | |
| So I was like the only one. | |
| So next thing I know, I'm going around Hollywood in the country with Mark Burnett and launching the Bible series and 80 the Bible continues and Ben Hurr. | |
| And then launched a PR company after that. | |
| And then somehow we got connected with Charlie and I ended up working with Prager U and the Blaze and Turning Point USA. | |
| And then from there I went on to Charlie and I got closer into business and we launched this podcast and we launched the radio show and now we simulcast on Real America's Voice for the first two hours and it's been a massive, massive success. | |
| And so that's how I met Charlie is through my work in Hollywood. | |
| I was connected with a lot of press. | |
| I wanted to help Charlie with his press and then it kind of became a whole thing. | |
| So Blake, how do you know Charlie? | |
| Do any of us really know Charlie? | |
| So I was obviously I was at Fox until 2020 and then events unfolded, which you can read about on the internet. | |
| And so I was working in a variety of independent roles. | |
| And then in what have been about October 22, about a month before the midterms, so there's a woman who works at Turning Point named Marina. | |
| And I knew her from when I worked at Fox. | |
| And so they needed a new producer role on the Charlie Kirk show. | |
| So she, this is my understanding anyway, she recommended me to Andrew. | |
| So Andrew just called me out of the blue. | |
| He's like, hi, Lei. | |
| I'm Andrew at the Charlie Kirk show. | |
| And I'm like, hi. | |
| And he goes, hey, do you want to work for us? | |
| And I was like, sure, I guess. | |
| And that was pretty much it. | |
| That was about the length of my job interview. | |
| And then I suppose I met Charlie for the first time. | |
| Oh, yeah, it was at America. | |
| I met him at AmericaFest about two months later. | |
| So I did come down for that. | |
| Yeah, but there was other people trying to get Blake to work for him, and I had to elbow him off. | |
| So we don't have to get into that, but it's fine. | |
| Hey, guys, prepare to witness a journey of resilience, courage, and redemption in Angel Studios' upcoming new film site, hitting theaters May 24th. | |
| I had a chance to watch it, and it's such an extraordinary true story that captures your heart and leaves your spirit inspired. | |
| It's everything awe-inspiring that you'd expect from Angel Studios, and you can buy your tickets now at angel.com slash Charlie. | |
| This film stars Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear and Terry Chen and follows Dr. Ming Wang's epic quest from poverty-stricken beginnings in communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. | |
| You'll watch him face the challenge of restoring the sight of a blind orphan that forces him to confront his dark past of violence and communism that he experienced in China. | |
| This Memorial Day weekend, find out if the ghosts of Dr. Wang's past shatter his sanity or propel him to accomplish the impossible for a child in need. | |
| Mark your calendars for March 24th and get your tickets today at angel.com slash Charlie. | |
| That's angel.com slash Charlie. | |
|
The Importance of Boy Scouts
00:12:20
|
|
| Question from Bruce. | |
| Who picks the podcast bumper music and where can I get the playlist? | |
| I don't know if we have Michael, if he's if he's visible or not, but I think he's just in the studio. | |
| He's just in the studio, but he says you can go to artlist.io and it's just royalty-free music. | |
| We used to play real songs more often, and then I think we got one of those slaps on the wrist where you have to pay $10,000 because you use someone's song too much or something. | |
| And so off it was to the royalty-free music land. | |
| But I agree, a lot of it's quite crazy. | |
| This is maybe two in the weeds, but for radio, you can play, if it's just radio only, you can play certain types of music, more of the popular stuff that you would hear on the radio songs you would know. | |
| Once we started simulcasting on Real America's Voice and Salem News Channel, then that became a licensing issue. | |
| So yeah, Michael does a great job with that. | |
| So hat tip to Michael. | |
| If you're watching, I believe you are. | |
| Next question from Bruce. | |
| We don't have to stay too long on this because we've actually covered it before, but Scouting America sent a couple emails this last week. | |
| I'm an active adult volunteer, and I believe it's not totally ruined and can and should be saved. | |
| That was the second question from Bruce. | |
| Blake, what do you think? | |
| Can Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts of America, can it be saved? | |
| Is it worth sticking in there? | |
| Well, I'm not involved with it at the time. | |
| So I think it would be arrogant of me to just say, oh, it can't be saved. | |
| What I would say is the trajectory, everything I have seen in terms of its trajectory for the past 10 years has been bad. | |
| And I feel what they've disproportionately done is driven out the people who were some of the biggest value additions to scouting. | |
| They got a lot of the churches to leave. | |
| A lot of the people affiliated with those churches stepped away. | |
| I certainly know that a lot of people who were heavily involved in scouting when I was growing up and becoming an Eagle Scout stepped away because they were very upset about these changes. | |
| And so I can, could it be saved? | |
| I don't want to say it's impossible. | |
| Everything's possible. | |
| What I would wonder is what's the mechanism that would cause that to happen? | |
| And a lot of the things that have made it, that have damaged it strike me as basically irreversible. | |
| Like, I can't imagine Boy Scouts going back to me and all boys. | |
| Like, they've let in girls. | |
| They're heavily girls now. | |
| You're not just going to kick, you know, 200,000 girls out of scouting. | |
| So if you want scouting as it was in the way Charlie and I praised it as a positive all-male environment for young men, I think you're going to have to look to alternative organizations that people are creating. | |
| I don't know which ones are the best. | |
| I know there's several options. | |
| But I do think if you want to restore the best parts of scouting as it was, you're probably going to have to look to something that's not the literal Boy Scouts of America. | |
| But I don't want to say that it's worthless. | |
| I'm sure there are many troops that are good. | |
| I'm sure there are many programs that are good. | |
| I'm sure they still teach a lot of good values. | |
| It's just that I don't think it's a, I think it's a stretch to say that it will go back to what it was in anything short of basically a miracle. | |
| Yeah, I have two thoughts on this real quick. | |
| I was not a Boy Scout like Charlie and Blake. | |
| However, organizationally, you can see this happen in lots of different organizations. | |
| Organizations that are not expressly conservative tend to drift liberal over time. | |
| It's just like a law of nature. | |
| But I will say, Bruce, if you're involved at a local level, you absolutely have the ability to ensure that your local troop is conservative, that it holds these traditional values and it upholds the way scouting has been done for a long time. | |
| And the second thought is the only way that you get Boy Scouts back and Scouting America saved organizationally at a macro level is to get new leadership in and somebody that has the courage to radically about face and say, listen, it wasn't broke. | |
| We didn't need to fix it. | |
| We actually broke it by trying to do this thing. | |
| So we're going back to the way it was. | |
| If you get bold leadership in there, I mean, I think it's worth praying for because I think the Boy Scouts of America are truly that important to some of these formative years for young men like Charlie and Blake and turning them into the men that they become. | |
| So I hope, you know, I'm going to hope for it. | |
| I'm going to pray for it. | |
| And so you should absolutely keep trying. | |
| But yeah, there are alternatives that are popping up. | |
| Whether any of those could match the level and scope that Boy Scouts reached is a big question. | |
| Another question from Beth. | |
| Do either of you enjoy hosting? | |
| How do you decide who gets to host when Charlie is away? | |
| Do I like hosting? | |
| I do like hosting. | |
| I can tell you that I have about five other jobs that I also have to do during the day. | |
| So adding show prep, there is a level of show prep that you have to do when you host as opposed to produce. | |
| It's deeper. | |
| You have to know the details more intimately. | |
| You have to kind of understand where you're going to go. | |
| You have to map it out. | |
| I think this morning I got up at 5.30 and I started working on show prep and what I wanted to do with the show today. | |
| So it's a lot more work, actually. | |
| And for those of you watching, to understand what Charlie does on a daily basis, I'm maybe one of the few people that has eyes on just how intense that preparation is. | |
| Charlie runs two organizations, about $150 million a year. | |
| He's in charge of 500 staff, not to mention the team that we have here. | |
| So there's a lot of responsibilities on Charlie's shoulders on a daily basis. | |
| And to also host a radio show, deal with donors, deal with politicians, leaders, organizations that are all sort of clamoring for his time is a truly Herculean feat that he pulls off every day. | |
| And I just get a small glimpse of that when I host. | |
| So I will say, yes, I enjoy it, but it is a lot. | |
| It's a ton of work and we take it really seriously. | |
| And, you know, thankfully, Blake is also on the team and does a great job helping us prep for each show. | |
| Blake, do you like being on behind the microphone? | |
| Yeah, I don't know. | |
| I think it's pretty easy to just run your mouth on whatever. | |
| Like, whatever. | |
| Just express your opinion on things. | |
| So nice. | |
| Well, and Blake, you do thought crime. | |
| Yeah, of course. | |
| Yeah, we do thought crime podcasts. | |
| That's a lot of fun. | |
| And like I said, you're kind of the anchor of Thought Crime. | |
| You help determine a lot of the directions in which that show goes. | |
| And for those of you who don't know, we stream it live on Rumble on Thursday nights, and then we release it on the podcast on Saturdays. | |
| And so it's, you know, that's a show that's more conversational. | |
| Having Blake on, you know, even on these AMAs, makes it somehow sometimes more fun because we can just kind of banter back and forth and I can key off something he says and vice versa. | |
| So I think that's really fun. | |
| As far as how we choose who guests host when Charlie's away, I mean, I'm kind of the guest host. | |
| Charlie just says, hey, you're hosting. | |
| And I, you know, and then I do it. | |
| So there's that. | |
| And I was actually, it's funny enough, backstory. | |
| I was before we launched into radio, I was actually, I don't know if auditioning is the right word, but I was auditioning, I guess, for a job to guest host a radio show in Los Angeles with Salem, part of their morning show. | |
| They ended up going with Grant Stinchfield. | |
| So he's, so I don't like him. | |
| I'm kidding. | |
| It's fine. | |
| I like him just fine. | |
| He's great. | |
| So I don't know. | |
| It's something that's, I was a rush baby. | |
| I grew up with radio. | |
| I love radio. | |
| I love the microphone. | |
| I love the medium. | |
| And I know Charlie does too. | |
| That's why we went into it. | |
| So, anyways, I hope that answers your question. | |
| Blake, do you want to take the next one? | |
| All right. | |
| What's a pretty fast one? | |
| Let's see. | |
| How about this one? | |
| How do you, this is from Josiah. | |
| How do you go about choosing partners for the show? | |
| How much of a say does Charlie have in the sponsors and does he use them? | |
| I can definitely say he uses them. | |
| We actually have all of the sponsor products lying around the office in sometimes amusing spots. | |
| I've definitely seen like strong, I've definitely seen strong sell pop up. | |
| Like occasionally, Charlie's assistant will just be like, Blake, want a strong sell? | |
| And I'll sometimes sometimes I'll take it. | |
| Although I like to joke that the only strong sell I want is the one that Hillary Clinton should be in. | |
| But it's no, Charlie is a big strong. | |
| He definitely endorses that product. | |
| He endorses a lot of the supplements and stuff that he does. | |
| He markets. | |
| He definitely is a real believer in all of those. | |
| He does drink the coffee that we advertise. | |
| Black outfits, that's what it means. | |
| Let me say this too, because I'm often involved in those conversations. | |
| We say no to a bunch, like a bunch, a bunch, a bunch of sponsors that come up. | |
| I would say the majority we say no to. | |
| So yes, Charlie believes in the products. | |
| And we have a, there's a whole meet and greet, get to know you process before we bring a sponsor on. | |
| So rest assured they've been vetted and we do endorse them. | |
| Andrew and Blake, are there certain topics some people on the team are more well versed in than others? | |
| How do you decide who takes the lead on what? | |
| Brad, Blake is our resident expert on European history and the various, what do you, I don't even know what you call them, regions, states, districts of Germany and Mexico? | |
| Oh, yeah, all of that. | |
| I like to think I'm also the one who always has to like go and like read the bill whenever there's like some 500 page thing that's up or I always enjoy when I get to bring up the strange aspects of the election process or the primary process. | |
| It, of course, it seems to get more convoluted every single election cycle. | |
| So I get to do a lot of that stuff. | |
| Definitely, I feel like if we're going to assign anyone to become an expert on something, it's usually me. | |
| Obviously, Andrew, you're really knowledgeable about media, production, the actual industry. | |
| What Charlie himself is the most knowledgeable on, frankly, is politics. | |
| He knows all of the lawmakers. | |
| He knows the donors. | |
| He talks to them a lot. | |
| He texts with them a lot. | |
| He has... | |
| all of those communications going on all of the time and he's just been in the thick of it since he was 18 basically, and so he has that level of experience that is just otherwise unheard of for someone who's his age and he's only growing in that constantly. | |
| So he's definitely just the biggest personal level expert on that on this staff for that sort of thing. | |
| Yeah, and I i'd say Blake uh, you have a brain of a kind of a almost like a lawyer uh, yet you spent a lot of time, almost went to law school bullet tonight. | |
| No, but you do. | |
| Blake is the guy that's on the all the chats with all the like lawyers and the legal nerds and the kind of you have. | |
| You're, you're on those group chats. | |
| I'm on a lot of group chats with, like influencers and reporters and uh, a decent number of lawmakers as well, and we try and stay and stay in, stay in touch with a lot of, a lot of those things and I and i'm constantly getting pitched stories from a lot of people. | |
| So I have to kind of do preliminary investigation if something's interesting or if it's catchy um, and then I, I I really tend to be very uh, i'm very hardlined when it comes to immigration. | |
| So that's one of my, my pet issues uh immigration, and then election integrity uh, a lot of the Covet stuff i'll, i'll play point on. | |
| So I think that's kind of a good rundown of of of our skill set. | |
| And again, if you want obscure, random European history, you know Blake, Blake uh, is your guy Blake, say something random about like the Vikings or something, or like the like, what's something random that you've learned recently? | |
| That's actually interesting. | |
| Oh man um, one I picked up yesterday while I was actually I was in the uh, I was in our, our gym and I was playing the Revolutions podcast, and so it was talking about the English Revolution, Oliver Cromwell and all of that. | |
|
Mastering Deep Reading Habits
00:06:32
|
|
| Oliver Cromwell wanted to dissolve parliament and but the law said that parliament had to sit for five months and it hadn't been five months yet. | |
| But Oliver Cromwell was a genius so he said, the law doesn't say whether it's, you know, a calendar month or a lunar month, and so you know, a lunar month is, you know, about four weeks, so it's a bit shorter than a full month. | |
| So he came out and he said, five lunar months have passed and I am firing parliament, and so that's what he did and he got away with it. | |
| They also tried to ban Christmas, and the War On Christmas in 1650 was just as unpopular as the War On Christmas is today. | |
| See what I mean, Blake Uh and his random, his random uh, his random histories. | |
| Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here, did you know that 80 of adults take supplements to feel our best, right? | |
| Well, one thing your dog can't do without you is improve their diet or health to feel their best. | |
| That is why I believe Rough Greens could dramatically help your best friend by adding what is missing to their diet, like you do. | |
| Rough Greens is helping thousands and thousands of dogs feel better and live longer, including my dog, Mr. Briggs, who loves it. | |
| Naturopathic Dr. Dennis Black, who created Rough Greens, is also an Airborne Ranger and Green Beret. | |
| An amazing background. | |
| He loves dogs and is on a mission to help as many as he can. | |
| Dog food is dead, and Rough Greens supplements your dog's food with existing vitamins and minerals, omega oils, digestive enzymes, probiotics, and antioxidants. | |
| Dr. Black is offering you a free Jumpstart trial bag. | |
| So fetch your free Jumpstart trial bag. | |
| Just cover shipping. | |
| Don't change your dog's food. | |
| Just go to roughgreens.com/slash kirk, r-u-f-f-greens.com/slash kirk. | |
| Okay, this is Kim. | |
| Oh, wait, you had one, Blake, that you wanted to get to. | |
| Hold on, let me bring this up. | |
| You can go ahead and take it if you want, Blake. | |
| Yeah, we'll do that. | |
| So, Josiah, he asked about our sponsors, but he also asked, How have you learned to retain so much information? | |
| And do you have tips and tricks for the process? | |
| As an entrepreneur, I find it hard to see the return on investment for study or learning. | |
| I'd rather be doing hands-on work because of the direct results. | |
| Well, hands-on work is a type of study and learning. | |
| I'm definitely not going to denigrate that at all. | |
| I often wish I did more of that. | |
| The trick for learning more information: there's two levels of this. | |
| One, you just passively pick up a lot if you just read a lot. | |
| It's hard for me to say that that's a process because I just organically do it a lot. | |
| I know Charlie organically does that a lot. | |
| There's a lot of merit to reading, to rereading things. | |
| Once you see something four or five times, it's going to be a lot more ingrained than if you just try to remember it once. | |
| A habit I've picked up in the last few years, I like to underline and write in my books. | |
| I usually do read physical books, so I just underline anything that stands out to me. | |
| And then, if I want to revisit or remember something that was important to me in a book, I just pick it up and I scan through it and I read what I bothered to highlight. | |
| And that's a good way to quickly get it back. | |
| I have a friend who is the best memorizer, he's the best learner I know. | |
| He's able to accumulate huge amounts of information. | |
| He swears by there's a smartphone program called Anki A-N-K-I. | |
| I don't know if it's Anki, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it the right way, but it's basically a phone flashcard app, and you can just build hundreds, thousands of flashcards. | |
| And he argues that it's essentially a solved scientific question: how to learn things. | |
| You can build these decks, and you just, it knows the right amount of time to remind you of things, so it'll quiz you about it five times the first week, and then once a week for a while after that, and then it's down to once every six months to keep it fresh in your brain. | |
| So, if you really are serious about trying to learn as much as possible, figure out how to use that app. | |
| I know medical students do it, lawyers studying for the bar do it. | |
| If you really need to internalize a huge amount of information, there are tricks you can use. | |
| But if you're just more casual, it's you know, don't waste your time. | |
| Like, I read a lot of books. | |
| I, you know, I enjoy reading junk food books occasionally that are just pulpy sci-fi. | |
| But most of the time, what I'm reading is has some sort of knowledge or takeaway that I would find useful. | |
| And when you're doing that a lot all of the time, you just pick up a lot of knowledge along the way. | |
| Blake, where do you get your inspiration for the books you read? | |
| Like, how do you, I mean, it's just group chats. | |
| Is it yeah, I get a lot of recommendations from my friends, uh, and it's often what I read next is just I could be more structured about this. | |
| I know some people who are extremely structured about what they choose to read. | |
| Most of this is just what strikes me at the time. | |
| I have a perpetually large backlog of books. | |
| So I end up getting books and then, you know, I've moved on by the time, you know, maybe I get five books that appeal to me on a topic. | |
| I read two of them and then I decide I've moved on to a new thing. | |
| And then I might go back to those other ones later. | |
| I try to read as much as I can, but I'd still like to read more. | |
| I read more in about 2018. | |
| It helps if you are going to try to read something, take your phone and put it in a different room. | |
| Not even put it aside. | |
| Put it in a different room. | |
| You can even buy boxes that you can lock it in and set it so like you literally can't open it. | |
| Don't do this if you're a doctor or something where they're going to need you. | |
| But studies show that if you are, if you even have a phone in the same room as you and you know it's there, it distracts your focus. | |
| You always want to look at it. | |
| So you literally want to train your brain to be able to resist the phone, to ignore the phone. | |
| And if you do that very consistently, you'll find it a lot easier to read books without getting distracted over and over again. | |
| And so your pages per hour productivity will be a lot better. | |
| I learned through doing. | |
| I'm more of a kinetic learner. | |
| So I resonate with Josiah. | |
| Because of my job, oftentimes I have to write things down. | |
| So I'll research something. | |
| I'll write something. | |
| And by the way, having to summarize your learnings is a great way to kind of get to the point of figuring out what you believe about them. | |
| So I would recommend that. | |
| I know it's kind of like doing a book report, but I happen to have a job where that happens a lot. | |
| So I'm benefited in that way. | |
| Let's go to another question here. | |
|
Reaching Conservative Audiences
00:11:23
|
|
| This is from Kim. | |
| Hi there. | |
| I'm a member and I love watching the episodes without ads. | |
| My question is, from being producers, do you see messages or data on the back end that points to things looking up for the next generation or the next election? | |
| Do you see more people gravitating toward conservative media? | |
| I'll take the point on this if you want to follow up, Blake. | |
| I would say conservative media is absolutely growing. | |
| A lot of the incumbent powers in the media sphere have had massive layoffs. | |
| They've seen a decline in viewership. | |
| And by the way, the old way of consuming media, whether that be through Fox or anything on TV, and there's nothing against Fox, that way is slowly dying. | |
| There was one mega influencer I was talking to yesterday who called it a zombie. | |
| And make no mistake, when Trump is off the scene, which is going to be inevitable, you are going to see broadcast media take a huge step back. | |
| And what's happening now is that people are consuming a lot more content over YouTube, Rumble, podcasting. | |
| So people tend to be multi-platform. | |
| So sometimes they'll watch this show and then they'll check out the podcast. | |
| And then they'll check out the podcast and they'll watch the live show and they'll listen to it on radio. | |
| So that is happening more and more and more. | |
| And the way that even some of these platforms like YouTube and Rumble are working, they're acting more and more like TV platforms. | |
| So you can watch it on your big screen at home and just watch Rumble that way. | |
| So everything's kind of moving that way. | |
| And what that's done is it's created an opening for alternative media to essentially get almost to par in a lot of different ways with traditional forms of media. | |
| And the traditional forms of media had gatekeepers. | |
| They were not very positive. | |
| They didn't want to work with conservatives as much. | |
| And there was implications when it came to advertisers and brands. | |
| So it tended to have a gatekeeper effect. | |
| That's all changed. | |
| Everything's different now. | |
| And if you look at the podcast list, guess what? | |
| The top podcast, which we're honored to be on that list all the time, is mostly conservatives. | |
| And then you got like the New York Times and NPR. | |
| That's about it. | |
| And Pod Save America, which is garbage. | |
| But that is the top is conservative personalities. | |
| And so that's just the way that things are happening. | |
| And it's having an impact now with Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into X. | |
| That our ideas now have free reign to get most places. | |
| Now, there are some corners of the media ecosystem where we're not allowed still. | |
| And I think that, you know, but you're seeing a big change. | |
| It is growing, and there are massive opportunities in the future. | |
| So I would say, you know, all systems go. | |
| And one last point I'll say: TikTok. | |
| We weren't even on TikTok about six weeks ago. | |
| Charlie is now doing 10 million views a day or more. | |
| We had a day with 14 million views on TikTok. | |
| Those are conservative ideas, conservative debates, confronting ideas. | |
| And guess who's consuming it? | |
| 18 to 24-year-olds. | |
| And now they come up to him on campus and say, I love your TikTok. | |
| I love what you're doing. | |
| So hat tip to Ryan on our team, who really pushed for that to happen. | |
| And hat tip to Congress for the terrible FISA vote because that's when Charlie had had enough of the censorship regime and just said, screw it. | |
| We're going to get on TikTok. | |
| I don't want anything else censored or banned or whatever. | |
| So data behind the next generation getting more conservative. | |
| Look at TikTok. | |
| Look at the alternative media landscape where we're making big strides. | |
| Salem, Real America's Voice, this show, a few others. | |
| We can point to real success in that way. | |
| Blake, do you want to comment on the behind-the-scenes metrics or data points about the next generation that you've seen? | |
| I mean, I don't know any specific metrics, but what's clearly true overall, the word to go to is fragmentation. | |
| That all of media is just fragmented. | |
| It used to be you'd have your radio stations and you would have nightly news on the networks and you had Fox News. | |
| And like podcasts didn't exist. | |
| Web media was in its infancy until the mid-2000s. | |
| And so now there's just an explosion. | |
| So what really stands out now is now you can do things like I guess the simplest way to put it is if you want to create a show, you can create a show. | |
| Yeah, you can create a show, whether you can get an audience or not is the question. | |
| And I think that's really the benefit of the new fragmentation. | |
| You know, you look at somebody like Don Laman, right? | |
| Don Lemon existed within a CNN box, and that was his reason for being a known person, a known commodity. | |
| And then he gets removed from CNN, fired from CNN, and then starts an ex-show. | |
| I have seen a few people making fun of the metrics there. | |
| So I don't think it would be a huge leap for me to say it's not been a huge success. | |
| He's struggling to find traction in that way. | |
| And that's really what this new marketplace of media, this fragmentation is creating: people that are worth watching and worth listening to. | |
| Their ideas are resonating. | |
| They find success and they find it pretty quickly. | |
| And they grow pretty quickly. | |
| If you're an untalented hack that needs a built-in audience and hide behind a network, it's not going to go so well for you. | |
| I think one of the more interesting points is like you look at like Chris Cuomo on News Nation. | |
| He's, you know, all of a sudden you're hearing a lot about him because he's gone after COVID. | |
| I think it's fascinating to see what happens to a lot of these people that you assume are absolute hacks. | |
| And I'm not saying Chris Cuomo isn't an absolute hack, but he's finding kind of a middle ground, Blake, that's, you know, he wouldn't have done if he was stuck behind a news desk at CNN. | |
| Yeah, but because it is fragmented, the ability for any one person to influence things is reduced. | |
| And there's pluses and minuses to that. | |
| I'll sometimes get asked, like, what do I think of this or that conservative media influencer? | |
| And I'll often have to be honest and say, I've never watched them. | |
| I already work on one show. | |
| How many other shows do you want me to watch? | |
| Because there are a lot of them. | |
| And there's good things and bad things. | |
| The good thing is basically anyone can get out there and there is an audience. | |
| You can really fine-tune who you want to listen to. | |
| Find the one person who speaks the most to you. | |
| But it's much harder for anyone to set an agenda. | |
| That was one of the reasons that. | |
| Like when Tucker was still on Fox, why that show was so valuable. | |
| Tucker is a super charismatic individual. | |
| He's a great host. | |
| He has a lot of fun stuff to say. | |
| But it was that he could also do that on Fox. | |
| And therefore, it was on the one medium that really did just have five, 10 million people every single night who would bother to watch it. | |
| And that's why it was, you know, it was too bad. | |
| There's merits to him being on his own now with his own show. | |
| He has a lot more freedom in who he talks to. | |
| He can go way longer. | |
| All of that's great. | |
| But there is that downside that you don't have that person who's at 8 p.m. every night setting an agenda that just millions of people will see by default. | |
| And that's probably the biggest downside with the current generation of conservative media is if you do have a truly transcendent talent, they won't necessarily reach the same high that they would otherwise. | |
| But it's much harder to suppress a message. | |
| And especially with social media, that message can reach really widely, even if their show otherwise maybe doesn't have the highest number of viewers. | |
| Okay. | |
| I think we're going to get to two more questions before we have to go here. | |
| I'll start with this one. | |
| I love when Charlie hosts the show and I listen to all three hours daily plus thought crimes. | |
| Well, thank you so much. | |
| Freedom Night in America, et cetera. | |
| So Charlie and your team are part of my daily routine. | |
| That's wonderful to hear. | |
| However, I just wanted to say I also love when Andrew hosts. | |
| Well, that is very nice to hear. | |
| He is always so grateful and is constantly saying how thankful he is for the audience and to get to spend time with us on the show. | |
| I am extremely thankful for this audience. | |
| This audience has made the life I get to live possible. | |
| And I think we have the best audience in the movement. | |
| And there's literally millions of you. | |
| And that blows my mind almost every day. | |
| I appreciate his positive attitude and wanted to say thank you to him. | |
| Well, thank you. | |
| And to Blake when he hosts. | |
| While I love watching Charlie, Charlie, please don't take this the wrong way. | |
| I do enjoy getting different perspectives when he is away. | |
| Well, that's great. | |
| Blake, isn't that nice to hear? | |
| I think that's nice to hear. | |
| I just like that it's when they get to me, they're like, I like to hear a different perspective. | |
| Yeah, Blake is our resident contrarian. | |
| But honestly, I love that too, because Blake challenges some of our ideas and makes them better. | |
| And sometimes we come out hot with a take and he's like, eh, what about this? | |
| And then we end up finding a more creative way through a problem that the country's facing or it's in the news. | |
| And it's elevated, I think, even more by that. | |
| Okay, next question from Mikkel. | |
| Wouldn't it be beneficial for Trump to name his vice president now so at least someone can be out campaigning while he is stuck in these frivolous trials? | |
| Mikkel, what do you think, Blake? | |
| Or is it Michael? | |
| Whatever it is. | |
| Michael Mikhail. | |
| Mike. | |
| I think that is definitely an advantage. | |
| I often thought it would have been great if he'd picked it, picked his V really early, like if he'd just gone all the way back in September or not September, like February, when it was clear these trials were going to be a big thing. | |
| Just get your surrogate out there, get him trained. | |
| There's another reason it's worth thinking about is now they've apparently agreed to a vice presidential debate in July, and that would be very shortly after the GOP convention. | |
| You'd just be taking your vice president and just throwing them right out there. | |
| So having them get a little more formal prep just because they've been on the campaign for a while would probably be a decent idea. | |
| I think those would all be good reasons to pick it. | |
| That said, you do get a free news cycle boost when you announce who they are. | |
| There's a reason Trump picked Pence just before the RNC last time. | |
| He'll probably go for a similar pattern this time. | |
| You go in with that positive energy, you debut them at the RNC, more or less to a national audience. | |
| Everyone gets all excited. | |
| Conventionally, there's a reason they do that, but I personally do. | |
| I think on balance, it'd be better to have your Veep out there sooner rather than later. | |
| I don't know that there's a ton of benefit to waiting right now, other than I guess you could say he has like 15 people acting as his surrogate right now because they all want the job. | |
| So maybe he sees it as a chance. | |
| You stole my line. | |
| Yeah, that was going to be my one counterpoint: you basically have Doug Bergham and Christy Noam and Lee Stefanik and JD Vance and Vivek, all these guys vying for that spot, Dr. Ben Carson. | |
| And they're all out working really hard. | |
| And if you pick a Veep, they won't have that incentive. | |
| And right now, they're all just sort of this chorus of voices that are supporting you. | |
| So that's my angle. | |
| Thanks so much for listening, everybody. | |
| Talk to you soon. | |
| For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com. | |