Kamal Ravikant shares his journey from an abusive childhood to Silicon Valley success, warning that virtual reality could become a drug escaping reality while advocating for American risk-taking. Brad Meltzer highlights the 9/11 flag's heroism and promotes his "I Am" series featuring historical figures like Jim Henson. Glenn Beck debates Jeffy of Pakistan's authenticity, reflects on aging and caring for his mother-in-law with stage four cancer, and defends VidAngel's legal use of the Family Movie Act to filter content against Hollywood's censorship efforts. Ultimately, the episode contrasts personal resilience with systemic challenges in media freedom and civil liberties. [Automatically generated summary]
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Hello, America, and welcome to the Clayback Program.
Glad that you are here.
We've got a lot on tap today.
We're going to start with a fascinating conversation with a guy who knows what the American dream is all about firsthand and who is also on the cutting edge with changing the world.
What does the future look like?
One of the real players in Silicon Valley, Kamal Ramakot, is here with us right now.
I will make a stand.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we are one.
I will beat my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we are one.
The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
Kamal Roll Comic Conf.
I don't know why I'm having.
You're in Texas.
You need, we're going to call you Pete from here on out.
Kamal is with us.
Kamal is a friend of mine.
We met about three years ago.
I read a poem of yours on the air.
I didn't remember this.
You reminded me of this yesterday.
Read a poem of yours on the air.
And then did you write to me or call?
Someone from your staff reached out.
Really?
And so then you came down, right?
Yes, sir.
And you have a fascinating life.
And you're when you came down, did I know who your brother was or who you were?
I don't think so.
Yeah.
Because you have, if you're in Silicon Valley, you're very well known.
Your brother is very well known.
Like really well known.
And we'll talk about that here in a second.
You've written a new book.
It's called Rebirth, which is kind of your story.
Yes.
I was telling the guys when we first came in that, you know, your story is very much in some ways my story.
You know, you kind of go and you lose it all.
And then, what was it, Pat?
What was the next part of the story?
Oh, yeah, you get fat.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, no, he didn't.
He hasn't had the fat part of the story yet.
So, but anyway.
It's coming, my friend.
It's coming.
But your story is the quintessential American story because you came from India.
Yes, sir.
Nine years old.
Uh-huh.
Tell me about it.
Single mom.
Came here with my brother.
You were a single mom at the time?
Yeah, I started early.
With a single mom, my brother and I, two little kids, left an abusive father.
In India?
No, he was here.
He was here.
And then he was still abusive here.
And she said, you know, I'm not raising my boys with this example.
And she took my brother and I and left.
And we went through everything, homeless, food stamps, bouncing one place to the other, and her just working minimum jobs day in, day out.
And I got to see her go through some very hard stuff.
And she raised my brother and I on nothing in Jamaica, Queens.
We had 10 locks on her doors.
Jamaica, Queens.
Anybody, you guys remember?
Did you guys go to Jamaica, Queens ever?
Yeah.
I mean, that's I think run DMC and a lot of the original rappers came from there.
That kind of place dicey, dicey place.
Yeah, I mean, I got jumped a bunch of times.
You know, I was a skinny little shy kid.
And then when I graduated, I left and went to college for a year and then just said, screw this and join the Army.
And one of the best decisions I made in my life, I was just a grunt, 11 Bravo, infantry soldier, and did that for three years and then went to college after that.
And moved out to Silicon Valley after that and started building companies.
Would you join the Army now?
Yes.
You would?
Yeah, of course.
No, without hesitation.
Of course.
Would you have your son join the Army now?
Yes.
Wow.
Of course.
No hesitation.
Of course.
This is so off the topic, but we've had this conversation internally a lot of times.
I'm not sure what we're doing anymore.
Oh, of course not.
I mean, the mission is a mess, but the art of the way being a soldier is the best thing I ever gave myself as a boy to become a man.
And what part of it made you a man?
Being challenged in boot camp every day.
Most of my friends never thought I would make it.
I didn't need to go to the Army.
I had a scholarship to college, and I went on my own.
And I was a skinny kid from the city.
I never held a rifle, never shot anymore.
You'd never seen the woods before.
I'd never seen the woods.
And all of a sudden I'm in Faux Penning, Georgia with a shaved head, different haircut than this.
Yeah, you would imagine a lot different.
You know, like sharing bunks with guys from like gangbangers and like basically guys who were like from everywhere in the U.S.
And they, you know, and we had to like gel together to come together to serve one purpose.
And there were a lot of like, you know, we didn't get along well, but by the end we were like a well-formed unit and we were on mission.
So you got to see, really get to see what this country is about.
That was like, that was a great gift.
You were, I think you were telling me yesterday that the service that we have, how did you phrase it?
Gentlemen.
Gentlemen soldiers.
Gentlemen soldiers.
What do you mean by that?
Well, I'll give you an example.
I have a friend of mine who's an F-18 Super Hornet pilot.
And he's getting out soon, so I'm kind of guiding him on entrepreneurship.
And he just came back from a tour, and he was, you know, the guy was bombing ISIS.
And he was actually showing me some of the unclassified footage of one of the major bombing runs he did.
And he took out a lot of ISIS soldiers.
Their barracks were in the middle of a city.
And it was very surgical in the middle of the city.
And yet he was telling me he thinks about the civilians around there and what they must go through.
They're stuck with these guys.
They have no choice.
They're under terror rule.
And all of a sudden, the whole place is blowing up.
And so he now went on YouTube.
And so he could look and see the civilians' perspective, the videos they took of his bombing.
Like we have very thoughtful soldiers.
You know, people who, you know, we're not this, you know, people talk about this cowboy you hus.
We don't have that.
We have like people who really care.
You are such an interesting guy.
At nine years old, you come over, you're here coming over to America.
You've lived in some of the worst places in America for poverty and violence.
You grew up in a violent home, yet you were one of the most peaceful, gentle, kind men I know.
I get the nicest emails from you.
And you're so thoughtful.
I think the first time we met, I think one of the first things you said to me, and it was genuine, was something along the lines of, how can I serve you?
How can I be helpful to you?
Where did that come from?
What happened?
Well, first of all, thank you.
I'd say my mom.
I think it comes from who raises you.
You know, she was an example.
You told me that you rarely saw, I mean, there were times that mom was gone because she was working all the time.
Commuted two hours a day.
So how did she give you that example?
I think I saw what she had to go through to take care of my brother and I or nothing and how strong she had to be, but I could see what she was going through and what it took.
And she's the most loving, amazing human being.
I'd love to meet her sometimes.
She volunteers for battered women's shelters.
I bet she does.
She works with seniors.
She just gives.
So she was an example.
I don't think she ever told me to be this way, but I watched her be that way.
And ultimately, that's all we can be.
Were you ever afraid you'd be your dad?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's something I dealt with in my 20s.
Anger or just the fear of it?
The fear of anger.
And you know, honestly, like, when you take anger and you turn it inward, if you don't let it out and you bow in, it turns to depression.
You beat yourself up.
So I dealt with that in my 20s.
And it was ultimately then coming to terms with his death, with him, that I was able to just let it go, realize I am not him.
I will never be him.
He was an example for me in ways of not to be.
I also have other examples.
You know, I've met amazing men in my life who've been mentors to me, had a great mother, so use that and go through that.
You can have other examples, and it's amazing.
My son-in-law grew up with a very dicey situation with father figures.
And to the point to where, you know, I hear some of the stories and I was watching him very closely on, okay, so who are you?
Because figure after figure after figure in his life was not good until recently.
And then I came along and screwed it up.
But he is, he made the choice.
Yes.
I'm not going to be that guy.
Yes.
That's ultimately what it comes down to, who we choose to be.
And then we have to live it.
Okay, so let's cut to the chase here before the break.
And then I, because I want to talk to you about what you think America means, because you have a great perspective on it.
Are we losing it?
Are we getting closer, farther away?
What do we do?
And then I want to talk to you a little bit about technology.
Sure.
But so you had this struggle.
You gained everything, then you lost everything.
You end up in Silicon Valley.
Did you lose it in Silicon Valley?
Built in Silicon Valley, lost it in Silicon Valley.
Okay.
Rebuilt.
Okay.
Tell us who, you know, you and your brother are kind of royalty in Silicon Valley.
Why?
Well, my brother is known as one of the most entrepreneur-friendly investors in Silicon Valley.
So he's been an investor, like first investor in Uber, you know, one of the first investors in Twitter and so forth.
He's known for being a very, very helpful guy, and he knows what he's doing.
Because at one point in his career, he got screwed over by VCs, and I was living with him then.
And he had to go through a lawsuit to actually prove it, and he won.
And I remember him.
Meaning that the venture capitalists are vultures.
There can be.
They used to be more.
Right.
And they can come in and take you.
You know, they were the money guys, and you need money.
People were entrepreneur.
You're not thinking that way.
You just want to build your business.
You want to make your dream.
You're not thinking, we just signed away.
Correct.
Until it's time, and then all of a sudden they come and they take it.
Correct.
So at that time, I remember when he was going through that, the genesis of what happened, he said, I'm going to level the playing field.
I'm going to give entrepreneurs the power.
So first he started by actually creating a blog called Venture Hacks, where he just shared everything.
Deal terms, how to negotiate for entrepreneurs, just how the whole thing works.
And then an email list for angels to sharing the right deals with them.
And then built this platform called Angel List, where any entrepreneur now raises money for startups.
So you don't have to you don't have to spend six months begging VCs.
You can go there if it's a great thing.
Individuals, human, you know, people with money will just jump in and fund you.
So like Uber raised their first round on Angel List.
How much was it the first round?
Uber at that time was worth, I think, maybe less than $8 million and they raised maybe $1.2 or something.
And how much are they worth now?
About $60 billion.
Jeez.
That's it?
Holy cow.
Did you get in on that first round?
You know, that's a whole different story.
But I have friends of mine who did.
And, you know, that one, a $25,000 investment at that point in Uber would probably result by the time they go public in like $30 million, $40 million.
Oh, my God.
That's Silicon Valley math for you.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
That's when you need a flux capacitor.
Okay, and they're working on one okay.
Okay, so we're going to come back and I want to talk to you a little bit about your book and how you view America because we're an idea and we're not talking about the idea of America anymore.
Nothing is an ideal more than an idea.
An ideal is something you uphold.
You know, it's a principle.
You know, that's what America is.
And are we, we'll get into it here in a second.
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You're listening to the Glenn Beck program.
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I will beat my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Hiring with ZipRecruiter00:15:27
Cause we have one.
Mercury.
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The Glen Beck Program.
Kamal Ravakant, a fable of love, forgiveness, and following your heart.
The name of the book is Rebirth.
I can't recommend it highly enough.
Kamal has a way, and I mean, I think I have read either Edgar Allan Poe or what's his name?
The other one, if Rudyard Kipling on air.
I don't read poetry on the air.
I've read his, and his novel is, I believe, and this is probably going to make you uncomfortable, but I believe it is as good as anything Cormac McCarthy has ever written.
It's just, to me at least, it's just, there's an art to it that you have, that you rarely, rarely see.
And the story is really, really great as well.
And it's kind of, it's kind of your story of when your dad died, you promised that you would take his ashes back to the Ganges.
Correct.
And I mean, I don't know if you did this intentionally, but you brought him back, you know, it was given to me.
Really?
I have a red Marlboro lunch bag.
Right.
Which think of the irony on that, right?
That's just my dad's ashes in the Marlborough bag.
I mean, I don't know who thought of that.
So you went and you were supposed to be just gone for a couple of days.
You spent eight months.
I spent eight months away.
And you ended up doing a Christian pilgrimage in Spain.
Correct.
Right.
And changed my life.
How?
First of all, walking from, it was 550 miles long from the French-Spanish border all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
And then back.
No, I took a plane.
You're supposed to go back.
Well, in the old days, yeah.
In the 11th century, there were no planes.
But like now, millions of people walk this.
And so, you know, no matter who you are, you stop following the footsteps of millions of people who come there with like hopes and dreams and they're following their beliefs.
And just many people died along the way originally.
And you walk this, so the kind of people who come and walk it are interesting people.
People who are all resolving things in their lives.
And you start to share with each other stories of your lives.
And when you share stories, it's how you actually learn and grow.
And so that's actually where I learned.
I was in my mid-20s.
I was lost.
I was broke.
My dad had died.
I was trying to come to terms with the anger I had towards him and I couldn't resolve it because he was gone.
And so all these issues I was working through actually got worked out by walking and being out in the middle of nowhere, sleeping in vineyards and wheat fields and castles and churches.
And just talk about personal transformation.
This was like 30.
Were you religious or spiritual at the time?
Because you went up to the Himalayas before this and you did the thing with the Dalai Lamas monks.
Right?
Yes.
Yeah.
Have you ever met him?
I've listened to him, but I haven't shook hands with him.
Yeah, I know.
He is a really funny guy.
person he's hysterical but there's something about him but anyway so were you I'm not religious although when I was in the army when boot camp I was baptized Southern Baptist Okay.
Full-on immersion in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Right, right.
So it's been a foundation of mine, but it's not something I talk much about.
I just go live my own thing.
Right.
So, and originally this was a Catholic pilgrimage, too.
And though these days, pretty much anybody walks it.
Right.
The guy that you met, or the character meets in the book, did that guy, is he a collection of everybody that you met?
You know what I did was I took people I've known that I loved and like created characters based on them.
And some of them are based on people I met, but all serve the story of the lessons he needs to learn.
And so as he grows, he meets the right people.
Biggest lesson from the book.
Forgiveness.
Letting go.
You know, that's where freedom is.
When we're hanging on to the past, we can't move forward.
And in the story, you're moving forward, walk west day after day towards Santiago de Campostella, which is the destination where the tomb of St. James the Apostle is.
And you just get up and you walk west.
And as you walk, you just, there's a, there's growth that happens.
And you're leaving the past behind, literally.
And so you learn to actually not just let it go physically, but also emotionally and spiritually.
And so forgiveness was the biggest lesson.
That is the biggest lesson of this book.
Did you crash before you went on that pilgrimage?
You had not made your money yet?
No.
Okay.
When you crashed, did you have a hard time letting go of all the I had no choice.
I was incredibly sick.
I was depressed.
I was suicidal.
It made you physically ill.
Yeah.
I've been going three and a half years, no vacation, lost everything, and I thought I was a failure.
And I swear, like, if I had the strength, I would have walked and thrown myself off the Bay Bridge.
Those days, I'm actually glad I didn't have a firearm.
It worked in my favor there.
That's funny because I've often said, because I've gone through that, you know, when I was younger in my 20s, and I thought, I'm glad I'm a coward.
Because, you know, I could have pulled myself, you know, off of a bridge, but I know I would have gotten on a bridge and went, okay, all right, okay, this is too, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm, I'm too much of a scaredy cat to do that.
And that, I think, is what saved my life.
I'm glad.
Yeah.
Okay, so you pull yourself back up from the brink.
What is the, I've only got 30 seconds.
So we'll come back.
I want to know what was the lesson you learned there because now you're about to turbo your life and change everybody's life.
And I want to talk about that.
And as somebody who came here with nothing, been homeless, and in one generation, you love America more than most Americans, what is the secret of America that maybe we're missing?
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
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888-727-BEC.
Kamal Ravakant is with us.
Rebirth, a fable of love, forgiveness, and the following of your heart.
A good friend of mine, a brilliant writer, and a brilliant man, and one of the more kind men I know as well, and really thoughtful on how you approach life.
So you bottomed out.
You lost everything.
You come over here, for anybody who's joining us, you come over here from India at nine.
Your father is abusive.
Your mother says, not going to raise you here.
You're homeless for a while.
A tough, tough upbringing, but a loving mom.
You join the military.
Your dad dies.
You go over to India.
You go to the Himalaya.
I mean, you're a movie.
And then you come back.
You go to Silicon Valley, and you and your brother at the same time are hitting it?
My brother got there first.
Okay.
And for anybody who doesn't know, Ravakant is kind of a royal name in Silicon Valley, if I can embarrass you a bit.
And then you lose everything.
You just said, if I had the strength, because you were so sick, I would have thrown myself off the Bay Bridge.
Correct.
What was the turning point?
Turning point was actually, I watched this talk, TED Talk by Rick Warren.
I don't think I've ever told this publicly before.
And it's my favorite TED Talk.
And at the end, he goes, you know, he's sitting there kind of just like giving a very casual talk.
And he's talking about the purpose-driven life.
And it's talking about how he said, you know, in the end, we're all betting on something.
Find what you're betting on and go in.
And I thought at that point, okay, I'm going to bet on something and either go all in or die trying.
So just bet on this.
I was going to get better.
I made a vow to myself that I was just going to figure out a way to get out of it.
So did you bet on an investment or did you?
No, no, no, I bet on myself, on my inner self.
And I just sat around and worked on my inner self to get myself out of it.
Because ultimately it's all inside.
Everything are we stuck in our head.
So I just worked on this and I got better.
But it was like that focus, full-on vow.
I'm a big believer in commitment.
Because once you commit, the ships, they don't burn, they explode behind you.
It's the only way.
Once you can get to a place to where you can see it finished, you've done so much work that you're like, it's not convincing yourself.
It's just, all of a sudden it just rings true.
It's done.
Yes.
And then your life changes.
It transforms.
Transforms.
It really does.
And my life changed.
And I built myself back up.
And I started writing these books to share what I learned.
And they started doing very well.
And me being the real me, not trying to be some hotshot Silicon Valley guy, me just talking about my failures.
Yeah.
And it's not.
Most people would meet you and they'd have no idea that you're a hotshot Silicon Valley guy.
So let's talk a little bit about what is America?
What is it?
You say it's an ideal.
I think ultimately for me, you know, the gift Silicon Valley gave me is the fact that everyone there is doing something, dreaming and building, which is what America is for me.
We always try to create something better and be better.
And, you know, that's, America was an experiment that could have very easily failed when it started.
You know, the founders could have been shot by the British and that would have been it.
You know, it's about taking risks.
It's about falling flat in your face.
You know, and in Silicon Valley, we don't punish failure.
If you did your best, you really tried something, it didn't work, we'll invest in you again.
That, I think, separates it.
That's why Europe will never be able to create a Silicon Valley.
Because every European entrepreneur I know is terrified of failing.
They'll never be able to do anything ever again if they fail.
Silicon Valley.
Failure teaches, if you're smart, failure teaches you really important lessons.
Failure is just as important as success.
In fact, success can be crippling.
Yeah, you know, Hemingway said the worst thing that can happen to a writer is early success.
Yeah.
You know, like I was writing and obsessively writing that book for over a decade.
Holy cow.
Like eight full drafts, sending them to agents and publishers, getting rejection letters.
And those rejection letters are the best gifts I ever got.
Yeah.
Because it made me become a better writer.
Otherwise, I'd be writing very clever dribble, not from the heart.
Yeah, yours is really on it.
I mean, there's something, I don't know.
Have you ever heard people say that about your writing?
There is something completely unique about your writing.
And it's not pretentious, ostentatious.
It's not like, it's not like clever.
Like you're trying to do something.
It's just so authentic.
Your sentence structure is different.
I mean, it's really good.
It's really good.
Thank you.
So where are we on the American life cycle?
Oh, that's a great question.
We're some interesting times, that's for sure.
But, you know, like I get to meet, you know, because I run a fund now that I invest in entrepreneurs, right?
So even Silicon Valley, like people come from all the world to be entrepreneurs there.
So it's the American dream is very much alive.
It's a matter of choosing who you want to be.
You and I were talking yesterday off-air about this concept of that Silicon Valley is in its own bubble and it doesn't relate to the rest of the country in some ways.
You invested in a company.
What is it?
The RV?
The RV Share.
It's my favorite.
Yeah.
And what is it?
It's Airbnb for RVs.
It's amazing.
It's brilliant.
It's a 12-man team.
And they built it from scratch.
12-man, there's a couple of few women and men team in Cleveland, Ohio, in this little office park.
And they're changing people's lives.
You have an RV, and all of a sudden you can make a living off it by just renting it out just to individuals.
It makes it stupid simple.
People come find your RV, they rent it.
Silicon Valley would have never thought of that.
They thought of Airbnb, but they didn't think of RVs, which is outside of Silicon Valley.
Right.
Would you compare this time of history to the War of the Currents, of the Industrial Revolution?
Industrial Revolution.
There's changes coming that are just going to transform society.
What are people, and this is something that we've talked about working together on, because I talk to the people in Silicon Valley, and I'm both energized and in a way horrified because no one is talking about what's coming.
And the change is so, it is the difference between living on a farm with no telephone, no electricity, no plumbing, and 10 years later, you're living in a city.
I mean, it's profound change that is coming.
And nobody is explaining this to the center of the country.
It's exciting and exhilarating, but it's going to change the way we think.
And nobody's really preparing.
Everybody's, like, for instance, education is still preparing us for the 1950s.
Oh my gosh, yeah, it's terrible.
It's absolutely terrible.
Like, I would never hire someone just straight out of a traditional education.
The best people I've ever met have hired, barely graduate high school, but they were doers.
You know, like traditional education these days does not prepare you to start companies.
It doesn't.
And I think the American education.
I think it actually hurts.
It hinders you.
Yeah, it does.
Because you think in that box.
You'd think that everything's taken care of, where if you start something from scratch, as you know, you do everything.
You mop the floors, you make the sales calls, you take all the risks.
But that is the American dream.
Most exciting thing that you have seen that maybe others have missed or isn't out there?
What's the most exciting trend line or idea that you have heard that you think is game-changing?
Well, I think ultimately the nearest term stuff is going to be like augmented reality.
People talk about virtual reality.
Augumented reality is just here.
Like all these things, you know, all these beautiful things you have here, they don't have to be here, but they'll just be all projections that you put on glass and you just see there.
So that's actually coming, that's actually even more interesting virtual reality.
Because it interacts with your common reality.
Where you have to wear glasses, but maybe contacts after a while.
It's really interesting.
Virtual Reality Future00:14:55
And no one really knows where this is going to go.
People can guess, because ultimately, as we talked about, technology is a tool.
It's up to, you know, I think one of the things that you mentioned that people on this side versus that side don't understand, like here's Silicon Valley, somewhere on a farm, there's no one speaking a common language.
We speak a very different language in Silicon Valley and a very different language here, which is, I think, what we need, like a middle ground, a bridge.
People don't know.
Nobody's talking to the people in the center of the country from Silicon Valley.
And so they're just seeing these products roll out.
But it's not.
It's about fully changing the way you think about everything.
And I think the people in the center of the country, A, are going to be thrilled when they see it.
And they will find, you know, the guy who did the original radio tube, I'm trying to remember his name, but he made the radio tube, the amplifying tube.
He didn't even know what it was for.
He didn't have any idea what it was for.
Another guy comes along years later named Armstrong and he says, oh my gosh, I can amplify sound so you don't have to have headphones anymore.
I can use this tube to amplify.
The guy who invented it didn't even see that as the application.
And that's what's going to happen when you include the rest of the country.
Yes.
And you know, like true creative, like the best inventors are the guys at the garage and playing with stuff, you know, so there's so many out there.
I think if there is a closer collaboration of it, just language, you're going to create all these new entrepreneurs and new inventors out there that don't exist yet.
Scariest thing you see on the horizon.
Virtual reality, we talked about this before as well.
It's amazing what it can be, but also it can be an amazing drug that will just pull you away from reality, which is what a drug does, just escape reality.
And then we lose the incentive to go and change to, I think ultimately we're all responsible for our lives.
And we have to step up and take control and as your son-in-law make a choice, right?
But if we're always escaping, that doesn't happen.
And we lose, I think we lose something fundamentally as a human being in that process.
So that I'm concerned about.
It's far away from perfecting that, you know, the virtual reality.
It's here.
I mean, it's a matter of how long before we have the suit where you can feel the pressure of touch and the money.
To make it mass market, years, two years.
Like three years, five years, ten years.
Ten years?
Five years?
There's all these interesting things coming out that, yeah, that you can just lose yourself, which is the scary part.
Really scary.
Yeah.
Because there's a lot of people that want to lose themselves.
And I think that could hold us back as human beings and as a society.
How concerned are you with the gathering of so much information?
Not that anybody is doing it in a nefarious way now, but all you need is an excuse.
And all of a sudden, the government can take this.
Yeah.
You know, it's like civil liberties are very easy to take away, you know, very hard to get.
You know, we've had them and we've lost some of them.
We're going to lose more.
Everyone, Silicon Valley, like most people we were talking about earlier, people I know in Silicon Valley, they don't use SMS.
They use these secure messaging apps that are just, you know, not that we have anything to hide, but if it tells you the people at the forefront are thinking this way.
I use confide.
Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?
I use signal.
Signal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And really, like whenever I go through TSA, I always get put aside, get patted.
I don't care.
I have nothing to hide.
But still, you start thinking, like, if these things are happening, where's it going to go next?
Yeah.
As long as I don't lose due process out of my new frisk.
If I lose due process, then I'm in trouble.
Same thing with collecting information.
It's very innocuous.
But then everyone is being passively being spied on.
And then you can basically, you have control over everyone when you know what they're doing.
I've only got a couple of seconds left with you, but let me ask you this.
We're talking about fake news, and the answer to that is everybody needs to be more responsible.
And we've done it before.
I mean, fake news has been around since the town criers.
Ancient Rome, they had fake news.
You can count on it.
We have to be more responsible as human beings and more engaged and discerning.
I've talked to even Ted Koppel said to me in an interview, he said, don't you think that we need to license people who have these websites and blogs and journalism?
And I said, no.
But that's where a lot of people will start heading as things continue down this path.
Yeah, they already are.
So can people shut the internet and information down?
do you think that's possible at this point when you said people you mean do you think a government could come in and really shut down the freedoms that we have online With the China.
They have an entire full-time job there shutting it down.
They do a pretty decent job.
And you do it, all of it's done step by step.
That's the scary part.
It's like when you put a frog and you boil it slowly.
That's what scares me.
So that's why I'm a big believer in civil liberties and due process is that, you know, at least we have the system of law where you can challenge that.
When you can no longer challenge in secret courts, that's when we have problems.
The name of the book is Rebirth, Kamal Ravakant.
I can't recommend it highly enough.
Grab it, read it.
You'll love it.
Rebirth, Kamal Ravakant.
Thank you, Kamal.
We'll see you again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You bet.
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You're listening to the Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury.
You're listening to the Glenn Beck Program.
You remember when Friday the 13th was like fun to, you know, ooh, it's Friday the 13th?
I was like, really?
Huh.
Every day is Friday the 13th.
It's true.
And more real.
Yeah.
You might not get a harpoon in the head, but yeah, let me just say this.
If you're in college, don't be with somebody who's just in their panties in the woods because you're all.
Not a good idea.
You start making out in the woods and it's over.
You're in a cabin this weekend someplace in the woods.
You're dead.
Good luck.
Good luck with that whole thing.
Kamal was on with us.
Not one of the nicest guys.
You know, when you have somebody who is successful and all of that, to have somebody that decent, nice to have.
Glenn Beck Program.
This is the Blaze Radio On Demand.
Individuals and businesses with tax problems, listen carefully.
If you owe over $10,000 in back taxes or have unfiled tax returns, we can help you take back control.
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That's 800-600-1645.
800-600-1645.
Hello, America, and welcome to the program.
So glad that you are here.
We have an audio flashback today that I think is just really satisfying.
Liberals loving the fact that they're nuking the Senate filibuster in 2013.
Oh, golly, that's not going to be good for them.
That's not going to turn out well for them.
Also, Elizabeth Warren was all over Ben Carson about whether the Trump family are going to profit from the HUD grants.
Maybe if we're really desperate.
But we have a really good show lined up for you.
It'll air next week sometime.
And so we're going to just trudge through this one today.
And we have Brad Meltzer joining us right now.
I will make a stand.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we are one.
I will beat my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we are HUD.
The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
One of my favorite guests on the program is Brad Meltzer.
He is the incredible television superstar, author.
He does, you know, he saves Superman's house.
He does all these great things.
And then he slums it once in a while with us.
And we're glad to have him here.
Brad, how are you, sir?
I was going to thank you for lowering your standards by having me on.
Well, I'll see then.
We think alike.
We think alike.
So, Brad, last time.
You knew me since I had hair.
That's how long you know me.
The last time you were on, you found or you thought you had found and you were about to release all the information the 9-11 flag, the flag that is in that famous picture with the firefighters at the World Trade Center.
Most people don't know this, but it was lost or stolen.
Which was it, Brad?
It was actually, no one knows is the real answer.
It went to the hand, the person who actually took it. says that someone gave it to her, but no one can verify that part of the story.
What we know is she then took it and gave it to someone who was a flag collector.
And that flag collector saw me on television talking about that my, and this is an incredible, this is the part I could never tell you them, is that I went to the history channel, I said to them, I'm going to find artifacts by telling their stories on TV.
And I said, they said, what are you going to find?
I said, I don't know, but America is going to always surprise us.
And I told the story of the flag from 9-11, that the firefighters raised to ground zero.
And four days later on our show Lost History, a man walks into a fire station and Everett Washington in Washington State, he says, I saw the show Lost History.
It was four days later of the first show.
He says, and I want to bring this flag back.
It belongs back here.
So I had told you the story that we had found the flag.
We authenticated the flag.
We got to, on the 15th anniversary of 9-11, unveil that flag in the 9-11 museum where it sits to this day under glass.
And now kids can go see proof that real heroes exist.
But here's the part I couldn't tell you, is when we, when I did the show.
Did you have to kill a man to get the flag?
Let's soup this story up a bit.
I would have killed a man to get that flag.
There's no question I wanted that sucker back.
But when I told the story on TV, I said I wanted it back for my friend Michelle Heidenberger, who was a flight attendant who died in the Pentagon crash.
Wow.
And that was what I said, I know there were thousands of people who died.
I couldn't focus on them all.
It was too much horror, but I could focus on my friend.
And on TV, I said, I want it back for her.
So now the flag comes back.
We unveil it at the 9-11 museum with the head of the museum.
The head of the fire department there says to me, Brad, I can't believe it worked.
I'm like, I know.
I can't believe it either.
And when it's done, I said, can I, the guy actually finally stepped forward who from Everett.
Yeah, the guy from Everett wanted his identity a secret.
He didn't want anyone to know who he was.
He identified himself as a former Marine.
But he said now that we unveiled it and the story was out, he wanted to make sure the record was correct.
So I went to law enforcement, went to the guys at History Channel, said, can I contact him?
I want to say thank you on behalf of the American people.
And before I called him, before we unveiled it, I called my friend Michelle Heidenberger's husband, who lost his wife in 9-11.
I said, I want you to know we brought it back.
We're going to unveil this.
And I brought it back for your wife.
That's who I did this for.
I just want you to know that privately.
So now I contact the Marine and I say, I just want to say thank you on behalf of the American people.
And he said to me this, Glenn.
He said, I've never told the story on the air anywhere.
He said, do you want to know why I returned it?
I didn't even ask him.
I just said, thank you.
He says, I said, yeah, I want to know why you brought it back.
And he said, because when you were talking on television, you mentioned your friend who died in 9-11.
And I just couldn't stop thinking about it when you told that story.
And that's why I brought it back because of her.
And I was like, that's exactly who I was searching for it for.
And it was one of the most amazing endings that if I ever wrote it in one of my thrillers, my editor would say, no one will believe it.
And if you would have said, I want that back for the 3,000 people who lost their lives in 9-11, that would not have been.
It just wouldn't have, because we don't respond to that.
So tell me, Brad, and I don't want to disparage this guy at all.
I mean, what he did was heroic and honorable.
The 9/11 Flag Story00:03:41
Is he a wealthy flag collector or just a guy who collects flags?
Here's where you're going to do.
I did the same thing you just did, which I was like, what did he get that he brought it back, right?
Oh, no, I don't think.
No, I actually don't think that.
I have another question, but go ahead.
No, and here's the thing that's going to make you love the guy.
You're a bad person, Brad, for thinking that.
You really are, right?
You're superior.
I'm a bad person.
We wanted to have you on today because everybody, you know, they're going into a weekend and we want them to know you are still better than Brad Brown Meltzer.
Whatever the bar is, I'm lower than that bar.
But here's what happens is we gave it, we offered a $10,000 reward for bringing it back.
And to this day, he won't take the reward.
He doesn't want it.
He said he just wants to do it because it's the right thing to do.
And however he got it, everyone doubts.
You can say whatever you want.
But the guy had the money.
The check was already written and he wouldn't take it.
And he still hasn't taken it.
Wow.
He wouldn't take the reward money, $10,000, and he won't take it.
That's really nice.
That's really great.
And the reason I love it is that that's what the flag is, right?
Symbols.
And when you go to museums, museums are like giant books.
They tell stories.
An object, Glenn and I, we always talked about for many years, the power of an object.
And an object in a museum is also like a story.
And like the best stories, the best stories don't just entertain you.
They tell you something about us as people.
And they show us what we're capable of.
And that's what that artifact is, right?
It shows us, it's like a mirror and it shows us who we are.
And it shows us that doing the right thing and being a real hero is possible.
And when kids go see in the 9-11 Museum now that flag, they can see that what a real hero can do in a real life situation.
So the Mercury Museum that we have, we have this unbelievable D-Day flag that is just awe-inspiring, landed on the beaches on D-Day.
And that flag was supposed to be sold at auction.
It was expected to sell for $25,000.
It ended up selling for $400 and something.
A flag that is not nearly as impressive as the D-Day flag that we have.
Just sold at auction.
We just saw it for $575,000.
Oh, my gosh.
How much?
What you're saying is we shouldn't have paid $10,000.
How much do you, A, I don't think it could be sold.
It would have to stay in his family to be able to be sold, or it would have to stay privately held.
And I think it would be grotesque until about 50 years from now.
But at some point, I mean, how much do you think that flag would be worth if it was sold on the open market?
Well, I can tell you because to get the flag to the museum, we actually found the flag two years ago.
It took us a year to authenticate it.
The other year was spent trying to extricate it from the insurance claim that was made against it when it went missing.
And all that paperwork, it was an insurance company, and Chubb kindly paid the claim, took the money back, and then they were the ones who actually donated to museum.
At this point, I forget the number.
Let's say it was $50,000 to $100,000.
But obviously, that was because that was what was paid in September of 2001.
Sesame Street Muppets00:05:27
Oh, my gosh.
What it's worth now is, you know, it's the most famous.
That flag is the most famous flag of the 21st century.
And someone said to us, beside the Iwo Jima flag, it's the most recognizable flag that currently exists.
Oh, yeah.
It's the flag from 9-11 and the Iwojima flag are the two that people know more than any other.
Maybe the moon flag, they said, was a third.
So Chubb?
Those were it.
That one's hard to, that one is hard to retrieve, though.
Yeah, no, you're going to, it's going to cost a hell of a lot to get there.
Yeah, yeah.
The one on the moon?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You don't know.
All you have to do is go to a movie studio in Hollywood and pick that thing up.
I was going to say.
And by the way, I'm at a studio in Hollywood.
I'm literally from Los Angeles today, so I probably can find one cheap for you here.
Yeah, I mean, it's still on the sound stage.
They put bungee cords on Armstrong, and that's the way they did that.
I mean, we all know they didn't actually go to the moon.
You've got a new book out.
I mean, you are more prolific than I am.
What do you write, like 19 books a year?
Is that what it is now?
Well, the thing is, I started writing children's books because I realized I can write far faster when I just write books with 30 pages in them.
And then I feel much more accomplished.
You've got this one out, and all of them are, you know, I am George Washington, I'm Abe Lincoln, yada, yada.
This one is, I'm Jim Henson.
Why was Henson important for you to do?
You know, and listen, it's the same reason why we did this series.
It's my kids.
When my son, who loves baseball, I did I Am Jackie Robinson for him because I looked at reality TV show stars and people who are famous for being famous.
And, you know, our kids are being fed garbage through their eyeballs every day with each refresh.
And it's enough.
So I gave him I am Jackie Robinson.
My daughter loves our dog, loves animals.
I did I am Jay and Good All for Her.
But my son is a creator, loves to color.
And I was like, who do I get that's creative for him?
We did I am Jim Henson.
And Jim Henson, you know, for those who don't know, is the creator of the Muppets in Sesame Street.
Do you think that no, I was just going to say, and to me, when I was five years old, Jim Henson on Sesame Street taught me that you could use your creativity to put good into this world.
And that's all we're trying to do with this series: I use my own creativity, hoping to try and put a little more good in this world by giving our kids real heroes they could look up to.
So you're saying I am Kim Cardassian is next.
So never, ever, I will be a dead man before that happens, right?
And we'll kill you if you do it.
I mean, you thought I would kill for the flag.
Right.
We'll kill you if you make that book.
Brad, Jim Henson, is he the genius because he came up with great characters?
He came up with a system.
He changed puppets.
What is it that, what is it that you think is his main gift?
Yeah, so here are my two.
One is I love teaching my kids how he got a start because Jim Henson wanted to be in television and he wanted you know your job and he wanted to be in TV and he went to the TV station and said, you know, kind of a job.
They said no, he was dejected.
He was devastated.
And he saw an ad that they had for puppeteers.
Went to the library, checked out a book on puppetry, came back to the exact same place and says, I'm a puppeteer.
Will you hire me?
And I want my kids to know that if you see an obstacle, you go around it.
My kids need, you know, our kids today, they don't learn that.
We create these paper-thin kids and a wind blows and they get knocked over.
And so that's one is like, you know, Kermit the Frog and Ernie, those are fine, but it's how you get there.
They have to fail, and that's how you rise.
And the bigger thing, though, for me, when it comes to the Muppets, is, you know, listen, the Muppets and Ernie and Burt, they're nostalgia.
And nostalgia is a trap.
Just because it's old doesn't mean it's good.
But when I went back and looked at it, what I love about Jim Henson is his strength is not that he does a funny voice or that he does a cute song.
What I love is that there's an undercurrent that cuts through the Muppets in Sesame Street.
And it's the idea about being good.
That being good and kindness and generosity and creating and dreaming, these are ideas that should never get old.
And I will never apologize for being a do-gooder.
I think we apologize for that today.
We make it like something that you should look down on.
I will never, ever apologize for being a do-gooder.
And I love that Jim Henson stands for that.
And I think, especially where we are in this world right now, we need to remind our kids that you don't need a reality show.
You don't need to be famous for being famous.
Just do good to other people, right?
We go to the biblical, go to the Bible for it, right?
It's as biblical as it gets.
And that's what the undercurrent and the beauty of what he offered is he fed that message to everyone through, of all things, little green puppets and talking frogs.
You can follow Brad Meltz at Brad Meltzer.
And his new book is I Am Jim Henson.
It's a children's book with 30 pages.
It's really good.
The whole series is really good.
And one of the best guests we can ever have because he always brings something really fascinating from history onto the program with.
You know what?
You're like the guy that used to bring the monkey on Johnny Carson.
That's who you are.
I'm just without the monkey.
Or maybe I am.
That's right.
That's right.
I got to tell you this.
This is the craziest thing that happened.
And I know you'll appreciate it.
Okay, hang on, hang on, because I've got to take a network break and then we'll come back and do the test.
Okay.
Today is Friday the 13th.
Yay.
We're supposed to have an unlucky day.
Brad Meltzer Guest00:17:36
When it comes to your stocks, Friday the 13th is actually historically a better day than average for stocks.
Yeah.
But even knowing that, you know, I mean, you know how Friday the 13th ends.
Somebody is hacked to death.
And at some point, you're going to get hacked to death in the stock market.
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The Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury.
Individuals and businesses with tax problems.
Listen carefully.
If you owe over $10,000 in back taxes or have unfiled tax returns, we can help you take back control.
The IRS is the largest and most aggressive collection agency in the world, and they can seize your bank account, garnish your paycheck, close your business, and file criminal charges.
Take control of your tax problems now by calling the experts at Tax Mediation Services.
At 800-600-1645.
That's 800-600-1645.
800-600-1645.
The Glenn Beck Program.
Welcome to the program.
Brad Meltzer back with us.
Brad.
Brad, are you there?
Yep.
I'm here.
Calling all Brads.
Brad Belter, are you there?
Can you hear me?
I love you.
Can you hear me?
Okay, good.
We got it.
Yours now.
So I'm sorry, Brad.
It's Friday and we're all screwing off.
I understand.
Yeah.
So you were talking about something that we weren't really paying attention to.
Yes, no.
Well, why couldn't today be any different than any other day, right?
You know, we call that usually Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday.
So here's this is something that I actually thought you of all people would appreciate.
And that is, you know, we love talking about how history and its impact.
And, you know, history is not just a collection of the best stories, but it's us.
That's what history is.
And one of the things we realized as we were telling these in our I am books.
So here we put them out.
We want to give parents a way to teach their kids and give them real heroes.
As the run-up to the election is happening, all of a sudden there's a spike in our series of kids' books.
And we're like, what's going on?
And I'm not talking about like a little spike of like 10%.
We're up 91% from the year before as the election is coming.
And we're like, what's going on?
We did no more promotion, no more advertising.
And then the week of the election, there's a spike in two books in particular.
I am Martin Luther King Jr. and I am Rosa Parks.
And we know right there in that moment, and I know, you know, we can claim it's a Democrat-Republican thing, but it's basically families on both sides who are looking at TV every night and saying, I don't want my kids looking anymore at politicians.
I need to show my kids, forget politicians.
I need to show my kids leaders.
And they start buying.
And I can tell you this, that since Donald Trump has been elected, I am Martin Luther King Jr. has become our number one male hero that we do.
And in fact, today on Amazon, right before I got on here, it sold out.
And as he's been going up, it's amazing.
All these parents on both sides are buying these stories of compassion and these stories of tolerance to give their kids.
And what I love about it is it's not a Republican-Democrat thing.
It's just that families out there realize that whoever's there, that there's a difference between a politician and a leader.
And it's in our hands that we need to teach our kids the better way to do things.
And I love that that power is out there.
And it's just, it's a mathematical fact.
I love it.
Can I ask you a question about there's a video out there with you and Barbara Bush where you have dressed as Lucy because your book, The I Am Lucy, and she is there and you recreate the chocolate belt episode with you playing Lucy and Barbara Bush.
How did you get that?
Did you threaten to throw her out of the plane?
One minute.
One minute, basically, we recreated the chocolate convey belt scene with former first lady and to for literacy.
We did it for my book, I Am Lucille Ball.
Best part of it was the staff didn't tell her what she was doing.
So she's like, What are we doing, Brad?
And I said, Oh my gosh, I have to tell this lady now that I'm going to eat a thousand chocolates in the president's office.
So she's reading I am Lucille Ball.
I'm eating a thousand chocolates.
And the best part of the whole thing is when it's done, she's like, She's so funny in the video.
So put him Brad Milker and Lucille Ball into YouTube.
But at the end of it, she says, How you doing?
I said, I'm doing so great.
I had the biggest sugar rush I ever had in my life a thousand chocolates.
So I had new respect for Lucille Ball, who must have eaten a thousand chocolates herself.
Brad, always good to talk to you.
Thank you so much.
Have a great weekend.
Thank you, my friend.
All right.
in just a second.
Listening to the Glenn Beck program.
Triple 8727 back.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
Welcome to the program.
I want you to remember this phrase during this next portion of the program.
I am not the man I want to be.
I'm not the man I need to be, but I'm not the man I was.
It's beautiful.
Okay?
I want everybody to remember that.
Remember that.
Because we're going to talk about the Jeffy of Pakistan.
This is a man who is, I mean, he's not quite Jeffy, but he's working on it.
He's working on it.
He's half a ton.
What?
68 stone, which I had to look it up because I have no idea the British stone.
Translates to about 900.
952 pounds.
Right.
Thank you for knowing that.
Right, well.
I know my stone.
That's very good.
I've passed a few.
Yeah.
This guy eats seven pounds of meat every day.
He eats 36 eggs just for breakfast.
Three dozen eggs.
36 eggs.
For breakfast.
He drinks a gallon and a half every day of milk.
Yeah, you don't get to 952 pounds by not eating eggs for breakfast.
Oh, no.
Really?
I mean, now wait a minute.
All right, seven pounds of meat is a lot of meat.
It's a lot of meat.
Every person eggs is a lot of eggs.
That's what I'm saying.
Every normal fat guy has eaten, let's say, a pound of meat at dinner.
At some point sitting right there.
Oh, my gosh.
So, okay.
So that's a normal person.
So you have to do that for every meal, right?
And that gets you to three pounds.
The guy's 900 pounds.
He can do double, right, what a normal person would do.
I don't think so.
He's getting to seven pounds.
It's not even remotely close to get to 36 eggs in one meal.
No, I mean, that's incredible.
That's insane.
Yeah, you never, you never, you will never hear him say, oh, no, I've had enough.
Well, unless he gets to 36 eggs.
Then he's like, yeah, you know what?
I don't know.
I mean, what does this guy do to be?
It's ridiculous.
Seriously, what does this guy do to be able to afford this life?
That's what I was wondering, too, because you hear about these incredibly large people that eat this kind of quantity.
And I don't know, do they?
They can't work.
Well, they don't know that raises food for them.
I don't know.
The rock is able to do it, but I understand how he pays for it.
How does the Jeffy of Pakistan pay for that?
Well, I mean, in the story, he works for it.
He does work for it, right?
Yeah, wait, I want to seriously know.
A 900-pound man can move?
Oh, he's.
Oh, yeah.
If this guy is actually supposed to be really strong, too, and he, like, they said he can stop a trailer, a tractor.
Did you run into him?
No.
No.
They tie a rope around the tractor, and then he holds onto the rope, and then the tractor tries to back off.
That's just a sad tractor.
I don't know.
Maybe.
Maybe it's not John.
That's really, I mean, that shows you where the entertainment level is in Pakistan where they're like, hey, get the local fat guy.
See if he can stop the tractor.
He claims to have lifted 10,000 pounds in some Jeopardy's competition.
Are you sure you just didn't fall for some really bad superhero movie promotion?
Like they're just leaking videos of some of this fat guy.
I'd be surprised if he's 952 pounds and moving.
I mean, I can't do that.
How do you do that?
Well, he's 6'3, so he carries it right.
Oh, he carries it.
Well, I mean, there's not very many of us athletically overweight people around.
Seriously, people don't know this.
Jeffy is five pounds away.
He loses five pounds.
He's totally cut.
That's solid muscle underneath him.
Yeah.
What do you think about an experiment in which we see if?
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
I'm not the man I want to be.
I'm not the man I need to be.
Right.
But I'm not the man I was.
Oh, okay.
I mean, and I understand.
Okay.
My just wanted you to think of that before you make this comment.
Oh, no, this is not bad.
Okay.
So, Jeffy, I was thinking, because the guy's stopping a vehicle, right?
Yeah.
Because he's so big.
What if we attempted to do the same with Jeffy?
Minor twist on it.
We would just drive the car at him and to see if he stopped it when the contact was made.
Or would the car continue to go over?
If the car continued to go, then it would never get over him.
It would be like one of those things where the front of the car, oh my gosh, I'm not the man I want to be.
I'm not the man.
See, it's good that I remember because I started to play.
You did.
I started to play.
And for us, we're still stuck on the science of the whole thing.
So how do you get to 900 pounds without an enabler?
Well, you have to have an enabler because at some point.
You have one.
Your wife.
Well, but.
Not to that level.
No, because she doesn't want you a buck over 800.
Right.
And I mean, she does appreciate me actually being able to move.
Right.
You know, even.
Just not real fast.
Because he has to be.
But I'm just saying that at some point.
You're not the man you used to be.
However, I stopped it.
Right.
So you're.
I'm just saying, if you become, you know, look, by the time you're 900 pounds and you have it, and you're just not moving, you've worked up to that.
You don't just work up to.
Oh, it's like me going for.
It takes a couple days.
At one point, you lay there and you lay there for a couple of days and then you decide, oh, I got to get up.
And you get up and you bathe and you move and you realize, man, I'm going to lay down for a couple more days.
Now, what's that?
That's probably 500 pounds.
You work up.
Yeah, I mean, you work up to it.
And you have to really.
It's like the Iron Man.
You have to reach a point at, I mean, you say, oh, I could do that.
Yeah, no.
But I could do that.
No, you couldn't.
Because at some point, I mean, really, you do reach.
It's about 400 or 500 pounds where you have to make that make that cut.
You can tell he's going to go for it.
He's a serious consideration of it.
I'm going to go for it or I'm going to actually not go for it.
Because at one point, it's like, just bring me chickens and wipe me off.
Oh, my God.
There it is.
There he is.
There he is.
I'm seeing a picture now.
I'm seeing that.
This is incredible.
Is that amazing that he's big?
He can move.
That he can move and dress in apparently Renaissance clothing.
I don't want to lie, but they didn't have skinny jeans for the guy.
No, I mean, it's the Renaissance clothing.
Basically, they're like six blankets thrown over him.
That's how you dress when you dress.
You're at 952.
That's good living at 952.
Yeah.
Can I tell you something?
For 900 pounds, he's actually good.
He's athletically overall.
He's probably not 900 pounds.
Says he's 68.
I don't care what it says.
I'm just saying that the scales are off in Pakistan.
I see DeJeffey here.
He would know this particular thing.
He's looking at that.
That guy isn't taking out of it.
I mean this sincerely.
Muscle is heavier than fat.
So maybe he's, I mean, they were saying he is really strong.
Maybe he's like a bodybuilder under the layers.
Well, he's got, he's over one of the blankets.
He's got like a world wrestling belt or, you know, look at that.
He wants, in fact, that's one of his goals is to be in the WWE.
You would kill a man.
Another of his goals is to be the world weightlifting champion.
So he wants to.
I love this fat man.
I know.
He's got some.
I mean, he's a guy with goals.
He's only 25.
So that's sad.
You sold this segment completely wrong.
He was the Pakistani Jeffy.
I mean, Jeffy's not strong.
He has no athletic.
He has no ambition.
He's old.
Every other thing other than the weight is different.
He's probably like, and he really has high ethical standards.
His story is funny.
That guy's story is sad.
Right.
Yeah.
He's going to die.
Jeffy's story.
It's sad.
I'll say that.
I mean, no, he deserves it, but there is a difference between sad and pathetic.
I see.
I am not the man.
I'm not the man.
I want to be.
At least I will say this, though, for Jeffy.
He can still move.
So that when his wife says, get off me, you had to get it out, didn't you?
You couldn't, really.
He's like my 14-year-old son.
You tell him, stop, don't do that.
He's still going to plow through.
Still got to plow through.
If there's more in there, he was going to explode.
Jeffy.
Jeffy.
He would have exploded.
It was a safety measure.
It was.
There would have been cat meat all over all of us in this studio.
It would have been bad.
Oh, well, then, thank you.
You're welcome.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Seriously, when you're 900 pounds, I mean, like, how big are you when you can't, when you literally, you know, you begin to not be able to walk or get out of bed?
Jeffy?
Well, the first time was that 642.
No, seriously, about 600 pounds?
I would say 500, 600, right?
Yeah.
Depends on how tall you are.
Yeah, and at that point, you know, you're starting to maybe not move a day or two.
And then that just adds on.
Then that's the, I mean, you're eating and you're getting hosed off.
You're getting hosed off.
Hopefully, you know, if he's walking around at 900, he's probably taking showers, right?
Yeah, he's not 900 pounds.
I think he says that.
A truther on this topic?
What are you talking about?
The guy's gigantic.
He's gigantic.
I don't care.
He's not 900 pounds.
I mean, he is a mountain of a man.
He is.
And put it up again.
He's completely round.
Yeah.
If he's moving around like that, he's not.
Now, if there's something behind him holding him up, or there is a crane underneath his arms, underneath those blankets, holding him up, that I believe that he's 900 pounds.
Well, what do you think he is?
I mean, seven?
Put a blanket on me.
Put a blanket on Jeffy.
Let's see if we can.
Let's stress him like that.
Like we did with the guy with the two.
You got to bless us.
Here, stand up, Jeffy.
Somebody get a fire department in here.
Get Jeffy up.
I don't want that nasty black.
Look at this.
Look at what's happening.
It's very warm.
Yeah, okay.
No, that's your butt blanket.
Well, I mean, it's a blanket.
You're the only man I know that uses a butt warmer.
Oh, look at the time.
Time to break, boy I.
I like this blanket.
It's 12 degrees in here.
I'm not the man I want to be.
Well, i'm not.
Why do you say that uh, so sarcastically?
Yeah Jeffy, we're not the men we want to be.
We're not the men I need to be.
We need to be, but not the man I was.
But you guys clearly are the men you were, but this is the men I want to be.
So you know, at what point did you just give up on?
You're just like, i'm as good as i'm gonna get and i'm good with that.
I think it was probably Romney Obama in that general vicinity and since then has been screwing.
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The Glenn Beck program mercury, the Glenn Beck program.
This is this is this is why you have the Blaze tv.
This is why I mean yeah, we have now.
There's Jeffy with blankets on him, all right, just like the guy in Pakistan who weighs 68 stone or 952.
Okay, let me see.
Could you put him there he is now.
Put him side by side with the guy who weighs 900 pounds in blankets, I mean, it's identical.
The main difference is the color of the blankets are different.
That's about the I have to tell you, I don't think the weight is wrong.
Jeffy weighs 900 pounds.
The other guy's about 700.
Yeah.
And I believe he weighs 900 pounds.
Jeffy just weighs 900 pounds, too.
Look at their arms out there.
I think that's.
Yeah, look at that.
I mean.
Oh, my gosh, yes.
Oh, yeah.
There's no way that guy weighs 900 pounds.
No way.
They could be twins, these two people.
Yeah.
It's as if we 3D printed the Pakistani guy and put him in the studio.
Unless that's a very light fabric that he's only wearing like a very light fabric in the brown and a very light gray top.
So it's not like the bulk of the blankets.
Maybe those aren't blankets.
This is much more fun than talking about some hearing in Congress.
And quite honestly, more meaningful.
Yes, probably.
Well, there's no way.
There is no way that that guy wears 900 pounds.
I think he does.
You might be jealous of him, aren't you?
You are jealous.
You're jealous of him.
Because you can't believe he's still walking around at 950 pounds.
How do you eat what he eats and weigh that much money or weigh that much weight and be healthy at all?
Be able to do.
The stress on your heart.
Oh, my gosh.
You're questioning, you think he might be healthy?
No, but I mean, he's moving.
For somebody who's weighing 900 pounds, you know, you're moving and you can, I mean, in his own way, move in an athletic sort of way.
Right.
Well, I guess sumo wrestlers, right?
We haven't seen him move, actually.
I mean, and we're, he doesn't.
I'm telling you, he's given 900-pound people a bad name.
You're saying he's lying about being 900-pounds.
This is how he's getting his notoriety.
How else do you get known in America when you're a Pakistani fat guy, other than saying you weigh 952 pounds?
Jeffy is known all over Europe.
Right, but that's because he's 952 pounds.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, that's how it happens, right?
There was a story in a Pakistani paper about the American this guy.
And they wrote about how Jeffy could still move, too.
No, seriously.
No.
They're like this guy, and he's pissed off.
That guy is not 400 pounds.
He is much heavier.
When his wife says, get off me, he still can.
That was their lead.
That was their lead paragraph.
That's it.
Yeah, they didn't bury the lead.
That's more right at the top.
How does he make money, you ask?
Sell shade at the beach.
Oh, really?
Wow, that's hurtful.
That is hurtful.
What did that guy do to you?
Holy cow.
Just because he's heavy, you don't have to make fun of him.
My gosh, compassion, man.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
Mercury.
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Hello, America, and welcome to the Glenn Beck Program.
It's Friday the 13th.
Weird stuff to get to in the news today.
Pat, what do you have?
Quick.
We have a Vidangel, which is trying to stay alive.
Yes, I am familiar with it.
This is.
Do you have the right, or does anyone have the right to edit something they have purchased if it's a movie?
Is it legal?
And the answer seems to be yes, a definitive yes.
And a lot of people are saying it's definitive.
Definitive.
It's said by every company.
Wait till you hear.
Wait till you hear?
Really?
I think you'll agree.
I believe the Supreme Court is going to disagree on that.
They might.
Also, Stu, your weird Friday the 13th.
Go ahead.
Come on.
Bring it to the table.
Well, I've got a couple of things.
We know they're talking, we got all the Obamacare stuff going on.
Not good enough.
What about the different plans that actually could replace it?
We always hear repealing.
You don't want to hear that.
Yeah, no, I actually do.
We're going to try to touch on the plans that will replace Obamacare.
I always thought the American people would decide what that would be, but the GOP has another idea.
We'll get to that right now.
I will make a stand.
I will raise my voice.
I will hold your hand.
Cause we have won.
I will beat my drum.
I have made my choice.
We will overcome.
Cause we are the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.
This is the Glenn Beck Program.
I feel bad because I didn't go to Jeffy for his weird story, which is actually a very good one.
George Soros losing a billion dollars after the Trump election.
Oh, Jim.
Isn't that good?
That is, it makes me feel.
It's a real good story of the week.
It really is.
What did he, was he betting on Hillary or what?
I didn't read the article yet.
Oh, you just went with the headline.
Oh, congratulations.
America, Jeffy is you.
That's all you need.
You read the headline.
I think that's rare these days.
That, what, you finish reading the whole headline?
That seems really good.
Yeah, if you have a headline and then it has a secondary sub-headline, I'm already past it.
I'm like, oh, you have to.
You want?
I don't have, it's too much information for me.
It is Friday.
My wife and I have been married for 17 years.
Wow.
Is this the day?
No.
Oh.
Well, this week.
Okay.
We got married all through the week.
Thank you.
We're celebrating this weekend.
It's actually in April.
But no, I'm kidding.
We got married 17 years ago, and I cannot believe how time flies.
Yeah, I saw one of the pictures, and wow, it does some damage, I will say.
The years.
The years hurt.
They punish.
They're unrelenting.
One of the partners more than the other, it seems.
Yeah, it just seems like, is she at a fountain of youth?
Is there some sort of protection?
Was she hit by like a, did a meteor crash down in your house and she was safe?
Was she out like at the store?
What are you saying that I haven't aged well?
Is that what you're saying?
Jeffy, would you like to explain to Glenn what we're trying to go out here?
What they're saying, Glenn.
Yes.
Is that you haven't aged?
I haven't aged well.
I did look at myself like an old video or something from Fox, and it was shocking.
It was like, oh, gosh.
I was like, good, what happened to you, man?
You have that reaction when you look at one of your videos from Fox.
When you look at one of them from CNN, you'll just keel off.
Oh, I know.
Thank you.
Did you look at 11?
I did.
And do you remember how cognizant you were at first about being on TV, as were we all, of being on TV.
And then we just kind of got beat with an ugly stick over the years and we're like, ah.
No, it's so true.
Whatever.
I remember when we first started doing the CNN headline news show and Glenn coming off Saleh, probably the thinnest you have been as long as I've known you.
I mean, you were in as good shape as any of us have ever been in.
I was thin.
And you gave me a very important, I think, lesson, which was that TV is the best diet imaginable because every day you look at yourself and you see how disgusting you are or you fear how disgusting you might look on television.
So you don't eat and you actually lose weight.
That lasted, I think, for all of us for about six months.
When each, all of us got on TV for about six months, we were all losing weight with that.
I see myself on television and I'm like, I'm so disgusted by myself, I have to eat.
Yes, it actually is.
It's actually making it worse.
It's actually making it worse.
Sad.
But 17 years we have found ourselves is so fast how we are now becoming the top of the food chain in the family.
How we are now.
I've lost my parents.
She has her parents.
Yeah, both of hers.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, still.
Really fortunate.
We've, I mean, that's been a real serious realization to us.
We're like, we're next in line because just about all of our, well, both our dads, both Jackie's and my dad have died.
And now both of our moms are ailing, especially hers.
Her mom has lived with us for two years now.
And she's developed stage four cancer.
So started with a brain tumor.
She has had it for.
Good golly.
Like we went through this the first time about two years ago and she had it removed, went through the radiation, did all that, and then she was in remission for a while.
And then a year later, she's like, I think I have a lump in my head.
Went back, and sure enough, she had the brain tumor right back.
And so they started doing treatments, and then they did another test on her, and it appeared to be in her lungs and her liver and her kidneys or pancreas.
You know, it's interesting because, you know, she can't, she's gone downhill so fast.
I mean, it's just unbelievable how fast she's declined.
They told us three months ago that she had three months to live.
She's already sort of on borrowed time as far as the doctors were concerned.
And you've gotten word recently that she's...
That it looks like days now.
Yeah.
Does she know?
She knows it soon, and she wants it to be.
And it's interesting.
It's been fascinating to watch this, you know, heart-wrenching, but fascinating because at first she was extremely afraid.
Even though she's a woman of unbelievable faith.
Faith.
Always has.
You know, she knows what she knows, and she really believes it.
And I know she does.
And she's just one of the sweetest humans alive.
But when it comes right down to it at the very end, you're afraid because you don't know the process.
You don't know what it is.
And you know, you know how it works.
You're going somewhere new.
Right.
And you've never done it before.
Right.
And you don't know what's going to happen.
But over time, you know, she's talked to us many times that her mom and dad have been in the room.
They've been talking to her.
They appear to her.
And she's been prepared.
And she continues to be prepared.
So she's being prepared, plus, she's miserable.
And so she wants to go, right?
She wants to.
It's funny because some people would listen to that and say, you know, she has a brain tumor.
Of course, she's seeing things, et cetera, et cetera.
But my father, when he died, and not a spiritual man, his last words, you know, on his deathbed, he looked up to the corner of the room and he said, yes.
Okay.
I understand.
Wow.
Those are his last words.
Wow.
And so he talking to somebody.
Didn't tell you who it was.
No, just opened up, was aware, and was talking to somebody in the room and said, I understand.
I absolutely believe somebody you know and love comes and helps you through the process.
And it's, you know, I think, well, I know a lot of people go through this where they have to take care of a loved one during their last weeks, months, and in some cases, years of life.
And it is hard.
My wife's an absolute saint.
I mean, it's so hard.
She's with her almost.
All the time.
All the time.
I rarely see my wife for the last two months because she's always with her mom.
And her mom.
She lives right in the house.
Yeah, she lives right in the house, but she's always in that room.
Caring for Loved Ones00:05:15
And, you know, it gets to the point where her mom is only comfortable with her now.
She's uncomfortable.
She lost almost all her hair and she doesn't like that.
And she really never really liked you in the first place.
And that's how it's kind of underfunded.
She's still being a little honest.
She's like, oh, I've been faking it the whole time.
Time for pretense to go out the window.
And it has.
I'm so close, and I just have to tell the truth.
I don't want that held against me.
I've never liked your husband.
I think she likes me more than Jackie does.
So I believe that to be true.
It's true.
I believe that to be true.
It's true.
But I have a new appreciation for people who take care of loved ones at the end because it's really hard.
They're becoming the baby.
It's amazing.
Jackie is literally now her mother, and her mother is now the child.
That's the way of, that's the circle of life.
It is.
You return to kind of what you were when you came to the earth in the first place.
Yeah.
Was there a thought of having her go to hospice or anywhere from a living living?
Assisted living.
Not from Jackie.
No.
There was no way she'd even consider it.
And I've asked her many times, because, you know, my concern is for my mother-in-law, but also for Jackie.
And I see how hard this has been.
And I've asked her many times, when does this get too hard?
When is this too much for you?
And she said, never.
Maybe multiple times.
And so, but hospice does come.
If you're in this situation and you don't have hospice, you really should because they're great.
I mean, they take care of, they help.
I mean, they're not there all the time, but they'll come in a few times a week and they help with the really hard, hard, hard things.
I don't want to know about those.
Yeah, you don't want to know about those.
There's some things that you have to do that are just not pleasant.
And I don't know how people do it.
You got to be a special person to deliver healthcare like that today.
Well, what was it we were reading about, I think it was Germany and maybe England?
I was just thinking about this the other day.
Remember, there was the lack of nursing care in, I think, Germany.
And so they were hiring just, they started raising the price, you know, they're raising the wages, and they were hiring just anybody to do it.
And it was not working out well.
I mean, you can't do that for money.
And, you know, you're called to nursing, especially the elderly.
It seems, too, that there's a generational divide on whether it's a good idea to go to one of these places, like assisted living or something where you're having constant medical attention where people would come and visit a home or whatever.
You have a really bad impression of what those places are like.
I don't think most of them, there might still be some like that.
They're really the hell holes that they used to be.
But I think there's a lot of really good assisted living or the full-time care places.
They care about people.
I was home teaching a woman who was in one of those assisted living spaces and she was, you know, she was in bed.
And it was a very, very nice place.
Very nice place.
Clean and people.
Yeah, and the people were nice and it was really nice.
Now, it might be a horror show at night.
I don't know.
But I mean, it appeared really nice.
It's still not your home.
It's still a place where the person who was in your bed died.
You know what I mean?
I mean, it's just not the same.
Yeah, I mean, certainly.
But I mean, you know, I think, I mean, that does not, I don't know, maybe I'll change as I get older.
But I mean, to me, it's like we're caping this and we're going to play it for your children.
We're locking you up in a home.
Isn't that something that you focus on?
I mean, you know, look, you know, you're in a situation where, you know, you're millions and millions in debt.
And I think, no, I mean, but you're probably in a financial position that this, you're not going to have to be a burden on your children unless you really screw it up.
Jeffy, on the other hand, already is a burden on their children.
I would hope that I would have the insurance or the money that we could hire somebody to care for all the things my children, I wouldn't want my children to do.
It would be horrible.
I'd be embarrassed.
Right.
And you know what I mean?
It would be horrible.
You don't want to put yourself in that position.
I want to do that to my children.
I have asked just for a bullet in my head if I get to that.
If I get to that condition, just put me out of my history.
I don't want anybody changing my diapers.
And I've said, okay.
No.
Yeah.
And it's nicely very good.
We're going to auction off the trigger.
The trigger person?
Yeah, the trigger person.
We feel we can.
Wow, you think it'll be that popular?
VidAngel Movie Filtering00:14:16
It's very popular.
Just here in the building, there's the money we'll be able to raise for charity or just to go out and have a good celebration.
In fact, maybe some people have even volunteered to do that before I get it.
Right.
I mean, I'm just saying, ding-dong, the witch is dead.
Maybe we set up an Indiegogo with the audience and they can raise money.
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Glenn Beck.
The fusion of entertainment, entertainment, and enlightenment.
And enlightenment.
The Glenn Beck Program.
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You're listening to the Glenbeck program.
There is a really great service called VidAngel, and what it is, is it's a censoring or a filtering service that if you want to watch a movie, but you don't want the swearing or you don't want the sex or you don't want nudity.
Take it out.
You can just click on the, I know Jeffy.
And it all goes to Jeffy's house.
Anyway, you just click on whatever you want it to do and to what level you want it to do, and it will filter the movie as it's playing.
And it's an amazing service because you might be familiar with something called ClearPlay.
That's been out for a really long time.
But when you filter stuff on ClearPlay, it just skips that part.
So you'll go from, you know, making sense, making sense, and then it skips 15, 20 seconds, and you're like, wait, what?
Oh, okay.
It was nudity or swearing or whatever.
This just takes out the word and you can't hear it.
Or this takes out the nudity and then it just goes right to the next thing and it does it so much more seamless.
So much seamless service.
I have looked at this service for a long time and I'm a big fan of it.
And in fact, I really wanted to work with VidAngel, but knowing the studios the way we know the studios, they're just not going to try to shut it down.
Of course they will.
Of course they will.
Hollywood, I could add profanity to movies.
I could do a filter that made all of the clothes on the actresses blow off and add some anti-family message.
They wouldn't have any problem.
They wouldn't have any problem.
Do whatever you want.
Go ahead.
That's art.
Yeah, it's art.
But they do not like, and I'm torn on this.
I really am torn.
Because if you want to buy it, it's now yours.
It's now yours.
But what Video Angel was doing was you were buying it and then you were selling it back to them for, what, $2 less?
Something like that?
Well, if you wanted an HD, it was $2.
If you wanted standard, it was $1.
Really good deal.
Really good.
Listen to what you just said.
Why?
Because you just said that's basically a rental.
Yes.
However, I have his explanation.
It's too long to play right now.
But the explanation from VidAngel makes a lot of sense.
And the reason they do it that way is because that's the legal way to do it.
There was a standard that was set up with the Family Movie Act or whatever in 2005.
And that's part of what you have to do.
Right.
You have to buy it.
You can't make a permanent copy for the home.
So that's why they had to sell it back.
See what I mean?
According to the Family Act, I think, if I understand this correctly.
No.
Yes.
No.
Well, that's what they say in this.
Well, they're going to be argued in court that you can do whatever you want to your own video.
Okay.
Yes.
And you can edit it all you want.
But you cannot sell or rent an edited video.
If you own the video, you can do it.
You rent it.
Right.
You own the video.
They sold it to you for $18 or whatever it was.
For $20.
For $20.
And then you watch it.
You watch it filtered.
And then you sell it back.
Brilliant.
For $18.
Wait till you hear the explanation.
You might change your mind.
It was a loophole.
You might change your mind.
I might.
I might.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
Mercury.
888727 back.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
From the Mercury Studios and Stage 19 in Irving, Texas.
Welcome to the program.
So Video Angel is really a brilliant service.
And it is a way for you to filter a movie so you can watch it as a family.
And it does all movies.
And it is seamless.
It is really tremendous.
You can take an R-rated movie, make it G or PG or whatever.
It's the best filtering I've ever encountered.
Ever seen.
And it's really good.
Now, they got around it because at first they were doing it online and then they got nailed for rentals.
And so then they said, okay, well, you're going to buy your video.
They buy actual copies of each movie that gets.
And personally, I think as long as like Blockbuster, as long as they have all of the copies for what they're renting, as long as they're not taking.
Yeah.
And I believe that.
As long as they have all of the copies that they are renting.
So they bought all of those copies, again, like Blockbuster.
I could take a Blockbuster video and do whatever I want.
And if Blockbuster had a filtering service, I could just, okay, I'm going to rent that one and I'm going to use that.
I'm going to rent your filtering service and I'm going to watch it this way.
Things don't look good, however, because a judge shut them down while the trial is going on.
And that usually means they're going to lose.
Injunction.
Injunction.
Shut them down.
But here's the, listen to the explanation because I was kind of on the side of, okay, yeah, it's a little bit shady and they're kind of skirting the law and they're kind of circumventing the process.
I don't think it's shady.
It's just this, it's pretty straightforward.
Is VidAngel legal?
VidAngel is being sued by Disney, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasville.
You might be asking, are these studios just trying to get buzzed by piggybacking on the VidAngel brand?
We'll let historians answer that.
But first, the bigger question.
Is VidAngel legal?
We say we're legal.
Disney says we're pirates.
But Disney made pirates two through four, so who's the real criminal here?
Whatever you believe.
Know that if VidAngel gets shut down, it's the end of filtering.
Here's why.
In 2005, Congress passed the Family Movie Act to protect the choice to filter.
Just as a director gets to choose what goes into a movie, a family watching at home gets to decide what to mute and skip.
And filtering is like a fancy remote to make muting and skipping easier.
True.
So everyone has their choice.
Sure, what a director puts in may offend some viewers, and what a viewer takes out may offend some directors.
But being offended doesn't mean you get to make choices for other people, or else college students would rule the world.
Well, Hollywood didn't like that law, so the studios signed secret contracts with the directors guild and distributors to create a force field against filtering.
The contract said no one could filter or partner with filtering companies, basically blocking filtering from the whole streaming market.
We only know all this because Sony got hacked by North Korea and their contracts became public.
Probably because North Korea is a big...
That's incredible.
Isn't it?
That is incredible.
Isn't it?
That is incredible.
So who's doing the shady stuff?
Do you know I was just talking to a companies?
I was just talking to a company in my office yesterday, Hero, and they are a company that helps you put filters on all your phones and your computers.
So, you know, you say, I've got three iPads and two iPhones and a desktop, and I need filters on all of them.
You put the filters on.
And then what kind of filter?
What does it do?
Anything.
You can say we'll not do porn or do porn.
Let's say I want my kids, they get 10 minutes on video games and it shuts off after 10 minutes.
You have 20 minutes and you can put the minutes or the hours on it.
Twitter or Facebook.
You only have a certain amount of time and then it just automatically shuts off.
It has a GPS locator for in case you're wondering what, you know, where what happened to my phone?
What happened to my iPad?
Oh, I don't know, dad.
It's missing.
It tells you if that computer has been used and what's been watched on it.
Wow.
I mean, it's really amazing.
So I'm talking to them and I said, why hasn't, why isn't there more of this?
And he said, the best ones have been purchased by mega companies and then squashed.
Kind of the same thing.
That's interesting.
Fan of filtering, just not the voluntary kind.
And this is where VidAngel comes in, because that force field blocked us four times.
We teamed up with Google to filter their licensed Google Play movies, but Hollywood told Google no.
Later, when we tried to license directly, the studios said no again, even though we had the money.
We tried to buy discs directly and they said no.
We made a product that let you filter movies you already bought on YouTube.
They got it shut down.
Our competitor, ClearPlay, does essentially the same thing.
And if they ever get big enough to be a threat, the studios will probably shut them down too.
Basically, the force field worked.
For 10 years, no one could stream filtered movies, proving that Disney is so magical, they can make congressional laws disappear.
But the Family Movie Act struck back.
Congress knew Hollywood hated filtering, because before 2005, there had been 12 filtering companies.
And Hollywood sued, let me check my math, all of them.
They sued every filtering company.
So the law said filtering companies don't need Hollywood's permission.
They just need to meet three requirements.
The movie is an authorized copy, watched in the privacy of the home.
Okay, movies an authorized copy watched in the privacy of your home.
Okay, so they've fulfilled that requirement.
And no permanent filtered copy is created.
There you go.
So, and no permanent filtered copy.
So you have to, you have to do it like a rental, because that's part of the law.
No permanent filtered copy can be made.
Notice that Hollywood here is like your fiancé's parents.
It'd be nice to get their approval, but if you can't, you're still doing this thing.
Also, they'll never give their approval.
In my experience.
So what happens when Congress wants a company to exist, but Hollywood doesn't?
Well, it's gonna be a weird company.
To filter streamed movies despite the Hollywood force field, VidAngel has to buy authorized DVDs and Blu-rays from retailers, sell them to customers, and stream the filtered movie to customers at home without making a permanent copy, meeting all three of Congress's requirements.
That's pretty weird, but weird is not the same as illegal.
Just ask Shia LaBeouf.
For instance, it's weird for a startup to provide $1 movies without the studio's permission and pay by buying discs instead of licensing.
But it was weird when Redbox did all those things too, and they were legal, though the studios tried and failed to shut them down.
It's also weird that VidAngel decrypts discs, but if you've ever used a DVD player, then so have you, and you're probably legal.
So let's look closer.
First, the discs.
A law called the DMCA forbids unauthorized decryption of discs.
Here's why VidAngel's okay.
The DMCA doesn't apply here.
Congress wanted the Family Movie Act to protect filtering companies from unfair Hollywood lawsuits.
So they made clear that filtering companies who meet those three requirements would be immune to Copyright Act lawsuits.
And since the DMCA is part of the Copyright Act, it shouldn't apply here.
But even if it did, decryption is necessary to fulfill the Family Movie Act.
Without decryption, Hollywood's force field makes it impossible to filter at all.
So either VidAngel can legally decrypt discs, or Congress passed a law that didn't change the law.
Plus, VidAngel is legal under fair use.
The fair use doctrine allows companies like VidAngel to use copyrighted works since our use is transformative and the filtering increases Hollywood's movie sales.
Meaning, the DMCA doesn't apply here.
We didn't break it anyway.
And even if we had, fair use makes that legal.
I mean, to me, that's a pretty compelling case.
Well, here's the problem.
And it's caused by Hollywood.
Hollywood is probably not getting a cut of that.
They'll buy the hundred copies.
Right.
They'll buy a hundred copies and then they don't get a piece of every rent.
Family Movie Act Lawsuit00:04:01
Here's the thing, though.
They tried to cut them in on it.
I know they said no.
I know.
But regardless, they're increasing their sales.
I mean, these discs are available at stores.
And what's truly amazing to me is we are at a time when a la carte is it.
Everything in our society now is about customization.
Everything, the lovers of free speech.
Doesn't matter how I want to watch it.
They have no belief in that whatsoever.
They don't love free speech.
Create your content.
Create it.
That's great.
Let me soak it in any way I want.
Can you imagine if somebody said, I mean, we have talked about making future versions of The Blaze and Blaze Radio.
And by the way, there's a new update coming of this program and some things that we're doing on Glennbeck.com that we're going to be announcing soon along this vein, but it's exciting for us.
We've been talking for a long time.
If you could take this show and cut it up into just not segments, but topics or moods, I want to just hear the guys talking about funny stuff, or I want to, when they're laughing, or when, and when, you know, the warnings, or I want to hear just the talk about politics.
And you could take this show and it would reshuffle everything and put it together in the order that was most important to you or filter out all the stuff that you didn't like.
The Jeffy parts.
Right.
Why wouldn't I want that to happen?
Why wouldn't if you're like, you know what, I can't, I listen to Glenn, but I can't stand when Glenn's on.
Amen.
If that's what was stopping you from listening to this show, literally, I just want to hear Pat Stew and Jeffy.
I hate Glenn.
I would be the first one to promote a filter that filtered me out if it meant you were going to watch or see our content.
Absolutely.
It doesn't make any sense except the hatred of people who have different standards than you.
Well, that shut down the room.
Look, everybody's like, everybody just looked at me.
Yes.
Just shook their head.
Yes.
Yes.
I was just daydreaming about a world in which this show happened and we didn't hear you.
That's not possible.
Wow.
That isn't amazing.
I mean, it does seem like they have a good case.
I would assume that the multi-billion dollars in legal fees that the studios have paid over the years will result in them having a pretty good case, too.
Well, obviously, something convinced the judge, unless he's just a Hollywood hack.
Yeah.
And maybe he or she is.
But they shut the, I mean, it's currently, right?
It's currently shut down.
You can't use the service right now.
So they are in the process of winning.
You know that Hollywood did not file this in a district that wasn't friendly to Hollywood.
Probably Los Angeles, California.
Yeah, you're most likely doing a little bit of judge shopping of where you're going to file this.
And look who's brought the lawsuit.
I mean, Disney, Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox.
So all the big players in Hollywood.
Let me switch this around, though.
If you said, Pat, you were doing a show, and what you really believed in is what you said, and you didn't want somebody.
Police Protection Systems00:02:39
Somebody said, I don't like all the times that he talks about, you know, faith.
I don't like that.
And you thought, that's what I am.
That's the essence of who I am.
And I made the show.
I decided it's the Pat Gray show.
But so you're saying that the F word is the essence of who these guys are?
I think that's what I'm saying.
That's really what you have to argue.
Because you're not taking out their vision.
You're not taking out their point of view.
You're not taking out perspective.
You're taking out the F word.
Regardless, anybody who listens to this show on demand can skip any time they hear you talking about faith and they can skip forward.
They could skip for faith.
They could pick the filter.
I know, but what I'm asking you is to look at it now from their side.
If they say that is the trade.
That is the way I wanted it.
It's hard to see that side, though.
All it is with filtering, don't you think?
Is the naked sex scene that important to these guys, Jeffy?
And now this.
That's how I feel about this.
And now this.
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Paul Anka Surprise00:02:14
This is the Glenn Beck program.
Mercury.
This is the Glenn Beck program.
Phil Stu, this is my favorite time to talk about this.
Okay.
With a minute and 49 seconds left in the broadcast, tell us of the options of Obamacare.
I can't do it anymore.
Oh, darn it.
That's a chin background.
Come on, Stu.
You know what we should talk about then is the big stars that are going to be performing at the inauguration.
Okay, who do you got?
We have time for that.
We have time for that.
Who are the stars?
Because he said these are great, and I can't believe that the Republicans.
Great.
Oh, man.
Listen to this.
Line up here.
Okay.
It's incredible.
Yes.
Gets a drum roll, too, that's that good.
Wow.
Paul Anca.
That's it, Paul Anka.
Paul Anka.
Have a mad baby.
Yeah.
He cannot.
I just keeled over from a heart attack.
75.
75.
He's older than that.
75.
I will say, there is kind of a surprising one.
And I guess I have more of a current star.
I'm not familiar with the guy, but Stu is.
Floorida.
Florida, yeah.
It's a big one.
That's a big one, I would say.
Is a big one?
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
Why wouldn't you leave him?
He's a rapper, right?
Yep.
And you're trying to make it.
I mean, the one I know is Paul Anca.
That's who I know.
I don't know.
He says more about you.
That's possible.
Yeah.
Is there anybody else?
No.
That's just those two.
The only two that they mention are Florida and Paul Anka.
Now, coming out of Obama with Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Tom Hanks, every performer, actor, actress known to mankind, and we get Paul Anka and Florida.
I hear Tom Selleck may be there.
Ooh.
Actually, Tom Selleck, I'll sell it.
I'll take Tom Sellek.
He's still cool.
He's cool star.
He's still cool.
Bruce Willis, you know, might be there.
Would he be there?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Mel Gibson might.
I don't know.
Who knows?
We know that Paul Inc. and Florida will This is the Gladys.