Glenn Beck and Andrew Klavan dissect Texas monkey escapes, Kamala Harris's election night gaffe, and the dangers of cancel culture. Beck argues that freedom requires tolerating hateful speech while Klavan critiques the censorship of white male authors in his new novel, After That the Dark. They lament the decline of fiction among men and the erosion of traditional values by "woke" ideologies, ultimately calling for a cultural return to free expression and classic arts. [Automatically generated summary]
I mean, if you had to only pick one, part B. B. You have to listen yourself and you decide.
All on today's podcast.
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Texas Monkey Vote Chaos00:15:52
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now let's get to work you're listening to the best of the glenn beck program Say hello to Jason Butford, Chief Researcher.
Hello, Glenn.
How are you?
Hello.
Good.
Jason, how are you?
I mean, I was fine until I saw this monkey again, and now I'm just starting to get kind of worried.
It's a little frightening, isn't it, Stu?
Stu is here in Chicago.
It's terrifying.
A little terrifying.
This time it's in Dallas, Texas.
Yeah.
Oh, gosh.
Yeah.
It's spreading.
Let me just give you the story.
Plano, Texas.
Shoppers at a Spirit Halloween store in Texas were shocked to see a live monkey wearing a diaper swinging from the rafters.
It happened Monday night at the Spirit Halloween store at 15th Street in Plano.
Plano police officers confirmed its officers were dispatched for a call concerning a pet monkey that had gotten away.
The officer, there have been seven monkeys on the loose this week in America.
Well, actually, it's not even, I mean, well, it's 21 in that initial batch.
Was it?
Now they're saying it was 21, which was not the number we got initially.
No, it was like seven.
And then they said, you know, many of them were captured.
A few got, now there were six.
Now there's six that got away, and then there was now three.
What?
I believe there's now three that got away in Mississippi.
I thought there was one.
Yes, that is what we told.
I was told it was one.
The monkey cover-up just doesn't end.
Anyway, let me get back to Plano because this one is very...
Could this be the same monkey?
Like one of the three just made it up?
That's a good theory.
Well, he had to stop and get a diaper.
He had to stop a diaper if he did.
A scene was captured on video.
It happened while the person with the video was shopping for Halloween costumes.
Store employee said the monkey had gotten spooked by one of the store's animatronic decorations.
Well, of course, monkeys are good.
Monkeys are people too.
Of course, they're going to get spooked.
You know, you bring your kid in, you know, and they're wearing a diaper and you stick them up next to the audio animatronic in a Halloween store.
Of course, I'm going to jump too.
Poor monkey.
Ultimately, the monkey's owner was able to entice it with a cookie to regain control.
So it looks like we're no longer in DEF CON one on monkey patrol.
The cookie did entice the monkey to come back to the owner.
The police didn't have to shoot it, which was very, very good.
Neither the monkey nor anyone else was hurt.
But that's what they'd have you believe.
I was curious about the legality of this, Glenn, because is it seriously legal to own a monkey?
You can just buy one and just have it hanging out in your house.
Yes.
And apparently, well, so okay, so apparently Texas is a little bit of a free-for-all.
So they leave it like a city.
Texas cities.
No, no, no.
Texas has the is the state with the most private zoos in the world.
We have more private zoos, not like taking, you know, tickets, people that just have zoos at their house.
Texas has more private zoos than any other place on earth.
Is there competition on this?
Is there a countdown I can look up somewhere?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think it's like, who has more?
It's Texas.
Who's number two?
Nobody.
It's just Texas.
Where was Tiger King?
Well, that was Oklahoma, right?
Yeah, it was Oklahoma.
Yeah.
Maybe per capita, Oklahoma would be in that competition, but I think there's much more outside of that.
And it's all just because people were like, you know, I want some of those elephants.
Why can't I have an elephant?
Why can't I have an elephant?
That's a great question.
It's a great Texas question.
I want an elephant.
Why can't I have an elephant?
Ross Perot's son, because when I moved to Texas, we live right around Ross Perot, and he had a big ranch out by where we live.
And he had buffalo that was the greatest thing ever.
You'd see the buffalo running on the side of the highway.
I mean, behind a fence, but they were running on the side of the highway, and it was just so beautiful and so Texan.
And then you would come around the corner and there'd be like a camel.
You're like, what the?
All this buffalo and then a camel.
Why a camel?
Ross told me that he bought it for his father, Ross Perot Sr.
He bought it for his father for Christmas.
And he said to his dad, what do you get the man who has literally everything?
Dad, you don't have a camel.
That's a good point.
I didn't have a camel.
Now he has a camel.
Now he has a camel.
He went out with a camel.
He went out with a camel.
I did a little bit of research on this, Glenn.
And so if you're in Plano or most cities in Texas, you can have small monkeys, pretty much any small monkey, and there's nothing that you really have to do.
But it goes even crazier.
So you can actually, if you wanted to, have a gorilla, I guess, sitting in a lazy boy hanging out at your house if you wanted to, but you have to be committed.
I mean, I mean, committed.
Wait a minute.
What do you mean?
Like, like you're insane?
You shouldn't have a gorilla in your lazy boy.
Okay.
So yeah, that's a very important part of it, I think, which should be analyzed.
But you need to have a registration, a special registration, a $100,000 liability insurance policy, a secure enclosure, and you have to have random annual inspections to make sure that your gorilla is properly, I guess, taken care of while he's sitting in this lazy boy chilling in your living room.
Can you believe that the state actually had to be put through that exercise?
Okay, if somebody wants a gorilla, what do we do?
What's the line?
What's the line here?
And that there's somebody who wants a gorilla.
Do you remember the woman who had the chimpanzee up in, or the guy who had the chimpanzee?
And when they get older, they get really mean, really, really mean.
So at a certain age, I don't remember what it is, but a certain age, you really need to turn them over to somebody else who just like lets them go run in the forest or whatever.
So when they get really mean, we let them run free in the forest.
I don't know what they're doing.
It sounds like a terrible moment.
Metaphorically, the forest.
They kill them, I think.
I don't know what they do, but at a certain age, you got to keep them in a cage because they get really mean.
Teenagers.
And there was this woman who was living next door to somebody who had a monkey.
The monkey got out.
She was getting into her car.
The monkey came running across the street to her and literally clawed her face off.
Do you remember that?
And she survived.
And I think, did we do an interview with her at some point?
At some point?
At some point.
Totally ruined the buzz of the story, though.
We had a good vibe going talking about monkeys.
It was fun.
And then all of a sudden.
Faces are getting clawed off.
Well, anyway.
Okay.
So let's stop with the monkey talk.
Let's talk a little bit about how Kamala Harris was in shock on election night.
Cut two.
In a state of shock.
Really?
Did you think the day before that you were going to win?
Get it?
Yeah.
And so when did the proverbial penny drop?
When I got a call from my campaign manager that it looks like we need 200,000 more votes that we can't find.
We can't find it.
Meaning it's just the map, the numbers.
And the thing I kept saying over and over again, I was in a state of shock.
I was going to freeze this frame.
Freeze this frame for me, please.
Look how she's talking behind her hands.
She is hiding behind her hands.
He's talking like this.
She's got her hands up over part of her nose and she's covering half of her face.
I mean, that is bizarre body language.
Anyway, go ahead.
So inarticulate.
Maybe very articulate.
What I kept saying over and over again is, my God, my God, my God.
Really?
Over and I couldn't stop.
Kamala sounded she was already in the middle of the moment.
I haven't felt any emotion, anything similar to the emotion I felt that day and for quite some time, other than the grief I felt when my mother died.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, these people really think they're important.
They really do.
Get some perspective.
Hey, I didn't get a job basically with my mom croaking.
Jeez.
Shut up.
Just say that with such compassion.
It's real disdain, isn't it?
Can you sense it?
I've been careful.
I can.
A little bit.
Just hints of it here and there.
She is.
I mean, first of all, think of the arrogance that it takes to be in that battle and then to be shocked to the point to where you are almost catatonic, just going, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, for the longest time.
Think about how arrogant you have to be.
You know, it's funny.
Her opponent took a bullet during the campaign.
Did she have any that sort of feeling that day?
Was there any feeling about losing her country the day that her donors were firing at her opponent?
Hey, can I ask, Jason?
Yeah.
Can I ask you, Stu is over the age where monkeys get mean.
Should I put Stu in a cage?
I'm noticing.
I'm noticing he might just claw somebody's face off here at any time.
I think we might.
You're the only one in the room with it.
I know.
I know.
I mean, no, it's not good.
It's not good.
We might have to get that $100,000 insurance policy just in case.
Not sure.
You're working with Stu?
Yeah.
You need that insurance.
Hey, Glenn, can we go back to finding 200,000 votes?
Because, I mean, I feel like we kind of blew past that really quick, but just a direct quote really quick and just tell me if you remember where this came from.
Quote, all I want to do is this.
I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is more than we have because we won the state.
That was from the Georgia call that was part of the entire impeachment thing.
Let's impeachment for saying find votes.
Now, is that okay now?
Play that again.
That's such a great, such a great point.
Play that again.
I was in a state of shock.
Really?
Did you think the day before that you were going to win?
Yeah.
Yeah, completely.
And so when did the proverbial penny drop?
When I got a call from my campaign manager that it looks like we need 200,000 more votes that we can't find.
That is so crazy.
It's so crazy.
No, I mean, it's.
Especially because they made that phrase into such a big deal.
The only reason it's crazy.
I mean, obviously you understand what she's saying here.
She's not saying they're going to manufacture exactly the way they should have understood what Donald Trump is.
I generally agree with that.
I mean, I think their argument there would be that that call was made to an election official in a state.
This is a, you know, she's saying it to her campaign people.
Where are we going to find these votes?
He was making a call to the people running the elections in Georgia.
I mean, that's what they would say the difference is.
Yeah, that's what they would say.
But again, like the bigger than that, and what makes it comical, I guess, is just that they made that phrase into such a big deal.
It's the same thing they did with Sarah Palin back in the day when they target the district.
And then they went on every election since they said something similar or maybe exactly.
We're targeting these districts.
And it was as if we weren't supposed to remember.
Like all these things happen and we're just supposed to forget them the next day.
Do you think maybe the entire left has the beginnings of Alzheimer's, but it's only affecting their short-term memory?
Like they can say something one day and the next day it's like they never said that.
You know, it's interesting.
It's on the back of something that I saw the other day.
I think it was on Twitter.
I can't remember who tweeted it, so I apologize.
But it's a great point.
And I think it's really, it really boils down where we are a lot.
And the way it was phrased was so much of left-wing discourse is pretending they don't understand what's happening.
Yes.
Right.
Like it's like, oh, you know, like, oh, you know, they just act as if they don't understand what you said targeting a district.
That means that they're trying to kill the person.
Yes.
That's what that means.
Well, you know, that's not what that means, right?
That's what that means.
They just deny.
It's like normally you fake one that you know more, right?
Like someone asks, hey, do you know about mortgage rates today?
Well, yeah, sure.
I mean, yeah, you know, I know where they are.
And you're, you're trying to act as if you have more knowledge about a situation.
They're constantly acting as if they have less knowledge.
They don't understand what these terms are.
They're just an unfrozen caveman lawyer.
They don't understand what any of these things are in this crazy new modern world.
What?
People use the word target to talk about districts.
I don't even understand it.
And then we get a week of conversation about their intentional misunderstanding.
I've got one for you.
I think it's Cut 20.
Let me play this and see if this isn't exactly what you're talking about, Stu.
Listen to this from Kamala yesterday.
Are you kidding me?
This guy wants to create a ballroom for his rich friends while completely turning a blind eye to the fact that babies are going to starve when the snap benefits end in just hours from now?
Come on.
So what I'm not going to be distracted by, oh, does the guy have a big hammer?
What about those babies?
I can't even make sense of her.
I don't even understand.
So they're pretending they don't understand the ballroom thing.
This is just for his rich friends.
Or how SNAP benefits work.
Yeah.
Or how SNAP benefits work.
You know, and they're like, wait, wait, that's what he meant.
That's what he wants babies to starve to death starting tomorrow while he only cares about this opulent, golden crusted, you know, rich friend zone that he's building.
Which is hilarious, right?
Like the date it's supposed to be done is basically at the end of his presidency, right?
Like he's not really, he is really not going to get much at all out of this room, right?
It's going to be future presidents.
And you know what's crazy is they're actually talking.
They were trying to pass a bill in Congress to have it torn down the minute he leaves office.
Oh, yeah.
Building a Rich Friend Zone00:02:32
Stupid Eric Swalwell said that.
What a stupid, stupid, moronic idea.
I'm going to knock down a $300 million building out of spite.
They do it.
They would do it.
And they would do it.
They would act as if it was some pure gesture, right?
Like this is how you're going to prove that you're really a liberal.
You're really one of those people.
I mean, Swalwell's construction of this was, if you don't say you're going to knock down the ballroom, you shouldn't be running for president in 2028.
I'm so tired of the purity test.
I'm so tired of the purity tests.
Here's an idea.
Just be who you are and let people decide.
You know what I mean?
Just, just, just.
That goes to this entire conversation today.
You know what?
I get that you think we should be talking about something.
I get it.
Whatever the thing is that you think is the most important thing in the world, you think all other people should not only share your view about it, but also be talking about it constantly.
I got news for you.
I have a life too, and I'm going to live it.
And everyone should make their own decisions.
You know what I'm focused on?
Tonight, the Toronto Blue Jays play game six of the World Series.
I'm hyper.
I can't even.
It kills him not to be talking about this.
That's all I want to talk about today is that.
And yet I have to get every time you talk to somebody else, they're like, oh, well, you got to talk about this.
You need to vote this way.
You need to do this.
You need to support this policy.
You need to excommunicate this individual, whatever your thing is today.
Just note that maybe your life and the thoughts going on in your head aren't supposed to be applied to everyone else.
And you know what's crazy is we literally pray every day before this show.
I pray at night.
I pray all the time when I'm preparing the show.
Show me what I need to say that is important.
Show me what I should be talking about that will be useful.
And how many times have you tuned in and went, well, that's not useful.
I get it.
We're some of the idiots.
Yeah, it happens all the time.
I mean, you know, we're doing our best and you are too.
Everybody's doing their best.
Relax.
Go Blue Jays.
Well, Stu's not doing his best.
I mean, he is as a Canadian spy, but that's a different story.
Every month, most people pay a phone bill without thinking about where that money goes, but some of those big mobile companies use your hard-earned dollars to fund causes that undermine everything you believe in while charging you more for the privilege.
Patriot Mobile vs. Anti-Semites00:15:55
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Now, back to the podcast.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.
How many?
Well, mommy and daddy are fighting.
And when mommy and daddy are fighting, as always, it should happen in private.
And it has been happening in private.
These conversations have been going on with people who are, you know, people like me and other leaders, if you will.
We have been having many, multiple conversations on how's the best way to handle this because you don't want mommy and daddy fighting in front of the kids because then the kids have to decide whose side am I on?
Am I a mommy's side or daddy's side?
Mommy and daddy are fighting.
The whole family is going to break up.
And then everything is destroyed.
But since we're having a fight now on social media, the worst place to have a fight, now that we're having a fight on social media, we, for the kids' sake and for the family's sake, mommy and daddy have to figure this out in front of the kids so they know we love each other and we can still stick together.
So let me start here because there's so many sides to this argument, but let me get into it.
This is all revolving around anti-Semitism, what that even means, Zionism, what that means.
Tucker Carlson, is he on our side or not on our side?
Oh, God.
So let me start here.
I really do not like seeing people ripped apart, like Tucker Carlson ripped apart for bringing a guy on who says, I love Stalin.
Through you, you love Stalin.
Okay, let me talk to you for an hour.
I think that's ridiculous, but that's not my show.
That's his show.
He can bring on whoever he wants to bring on.
I do not like people trying to cancel people.
You know, if you don't like it, don't watch it.
That is the solution.
I really despise the idea of people mounting campaigns to, quote, drive someone out of the movement.
No, no, you don't do that.
And the same thing could be said now on the other side with the Heritage Foundation for saying they won't distance themselves from Tucker.
So now their funding all has to stop.
And people are starting to say we should cancel our funding to the Heritage Foundation.
I mean, I got to tell you, if I'm on the left, there is nothing that I would want more than to pour fuel on this fire.
We're destroying ourselves.
I also don't like it when people start ripping other, invite them on the show.
Give you the example.
And I love Tucker, but inviting Ted Cruz on, I thought I felt, and I could be wrong, I haven't talked to Tucker about this one, but I felt that that was setting him up.
I never invite somebody on the show to then rip them apart.
I just, I don't do that.
I didn't like it when he did that.
I wouldn't do it and I wouldn't do it to Tucker and I just don't like it.
I also have a problem with anybody who says, who say they despise Christian Zionists?
And mainly because I don't even know what your definition of a Christian Zionist is.
What is that?
It's got to stop.
We are mixing the stream.
Remember in Ghostbusters, don't cross the streams.
We're crossing the streams all the time.
We're crossing them from political to personal to religious.
Nobody even knows what the hell we're even talking about anymore.
But something dark is happening in our country.
So I want to try to take this apart piece by piece.
Let's start with the rise of anti-Semitism because that's not the only dark thing that is rising in our country.
That alone should be enough to chill everybody's blood.
The other part of it is this loss of a moral compass.
And these stories all tie together.
Debate over Tucker and his guests, the Heritage Foundation, their refusal to cancel him, so now they're the enemy.
And the condemnation of the Heritage Foundation.
Does anybody notice that we find ourselves in exactly the same place, circling the same idea over and over and over again?
Different views, different words, but the same problem circling the drain.
Same problem, same solution.
What do we do with speech we find reprehensible?
It seems, some people think it's really, really easy.
You know, it seems to be very easy on the left.
If it's a conservative that says something that you don't like or is politically, you know, advantageous to you to stand up against, you stand up against and then you get them canceled.
Okay.
You do everything you can to cancel them.
If it's somebody on your side that you like and they say exactly the same thing, you just make excuses or exceptions.
You know, I mean, it's easy on the left to do that.
That's simple.
But now we find ourselves split between these two camps.
And here are the two camps.
Those who believe silencing is the cure for evil ideas and those who fear that silencing is a bigger evil in itself.
Okay.
Both sides are missing something here.
So I just want to talk about freedom of speech here for a second.
There's so many other things that are part of this, but freedom of speech.
I think both sides are missing something.
They're both staring at the same fire, but from opposite sides of the flame.
So let's break it down into two parts.
You should be able, and I learned this from Stu, you should be able to change the topic or the words of any statement and the outcome, your feeling on it, should be exactly the same, okay?
Because it should be the principles that we're arguing here.
Let me give you an example.
The vaccine is dangerous and you can't force me to take it.
Should you be canceled on that?
Trump is a Nazi.
Should you be canceled on that?
Men cannot have babies.
Should you be canceled?
I love Stalin.
Should you be canceled?
No matter what is said on either side, we can condemn, we can speak out and debate, but the best way to make bad ideas grow is to suppress them.
If you're a parent, you might get this.
You raise your kids, and once they hit teenage years, you'll start to understand this.
The more mom and dad are against something, the more mom and dad hate something, oh, the more likely it is that your kids just turn the knife in you, because that's what teenagers do.
They'll embrace it.
But when your children are trying to provoke you for attention, the last thing you do is give them the win they're looking for.
You just don't do that.
You remember in Star Wars, yes, young skywalker.
Take it, strike me down.
Why did he say that?
Because he knew, the emperor knew, you strike me down, I am more powerful than ever.
So, stop with cancel culture.
Two, let me make something else really clear.
Anti-Semitism is evil.
Now, how do you define that?
How do you define Zionism?
I don't know.
Everybody seems to have their own definition here.
Being against Israel's policies, Israel's war, the way Israel or any country handles itself in foreign relations, that's not anti-Semitism.
You know, let me take Great Britain.
Okay.
I disagree with the British government, the way they are silencing people.
You know that 4,000 people last year have been arrested for speech crimes?
I think Russia arrested less than 200 people last year.
4,000 in England.
Oh, that's a problem.
You want to talk about fascism?
But if I'm against this and vehemently against this, and if I say, you know, their politicians are destroying England, that the Islamification of Great Britain is almost complete and the silence, the official silence from the king and from all of the politicians is evil.
Does that make me anti-British?
No.
No.
I'm not anti-British.
I have a problem with their policies.
I find their policies really stupid.
Okay.
Anti-Semitism means I have an unreasonable view that all the Jews are in some global plot.
So let me bring it about just changing a couple of words and you'll see it quickly.
All the Jews, you know all the Jews?
All the Jews, they control the whole world.
Yeah, they do.
They're all in on some evil plot.
Okay.
Let me just change one word.
Let me just change it from Jew to, I don't know, black, whites, blue-eyed, blonde-haired people.
You know, all blue-eyed people, they're all in a plot.
They're all in on it together, and they control the world.
Okay, that's just stupid.
That's just stupid.
Anti-Semitism is the ancient hatred that has burned through every civilization that ever thought it was enlightened.
Every time, and it starts the same way.
And in the last 200 years, it's always started with Marxism.
What a surprise.
Well, that's, you know, Marx was a Jew.
He hated the Jews.
Oh, my God.
Starts the same way.
Whispers, scapegoats, and the lie that one, one group of people, those blacks, all the whites, all the blue-eyed people, all the Jews, they control the world, you know.
How does that end?
It always ends in blood, always.
And not just Jewish blood.
I mean, that's first, but it ends in the blood of any nation that embraces that kind of stuff.
Every time it destroys the nation.
Now, clarity is what we need.
So let's talk about clarity.
You can disagree with a government, the government of Israel, without being an anti-Semitist.
You can question, or an anti-Semite.
You can question foreign aid.
You can question military policy.
You can question the leadership without hatred for the Jews.
The inability to distinguish between hatred of a people and criticism of a government is part of what is poisoning our national discourse.
Okay?
There's no problem.
Question Israel all you want.
I do.
If America stands for anything, it stands for the right to speak freely and to question power, any power, without being condemned a heretic.
That's what we do and do best.
That's what we should do.
Now, on that, seeing I brought the word heretic up, don't tell me that my support, because I'm a Christian and I believe it, and you don't have to be a Christian, and you don't have to believe what I believe.
But don't tell me that my support of the Jewish people to exist in their ancient homeland, which is how I define Zionism, is heresy.
How dare you?
I mean, we don't even agree probably on the definition of Zionism.
Maybe we should do that, but stop calling my faith and my understanding of my faith heretical Christianity.
And that's a quote.
But we could have that conversation.
We should have that conversation between civilized people.
Let's have that discussion.
What does that mean?
Here's what I mean.
Me and everybody else, we must stop dealing in absolutes.
You're either for us or against us.
You know who thinks like that?
Again, let me go back to Star Wars.
Siths.
That's Sith thinking.
That first leads to the silencing of voices and then in extreme cases, the execution of those voices that just won't be silenced.
Look, our founders were really, really clear on this.
This is why the First Amendment.
Our founders understood all of this.
They knew that liberty doesn't die with a bang.
It dies with a hush.
When voices are silenced, even the ugly ones, we begin the dissent.
We circle the drain and then go down.
Jefferson wrote, the error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
What the hell is that?
It means as long as there's a free man that is willing and able to say, that's a dumb idea, leave it alone.
Leave it alone.
An error of opinion, you're thinking.
Let just free people have that debate and it will solve itself.
They also knew that liberty without moral restraint curdles into chaos.
Paul wrote, everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.
Just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean it's morally right to say it.
Have some restraint.
Well, but that comes with responsibility, which we don't have.
That comes with morality, which we're losing day by day.
Comes with religion.
I mean, that's what, I'm sorry, George Washington said, religion and morality are the twin pillars of political prosperity.
You mean he wanted everybody to be religious?
No, he didn't want everybody to be religious.
He meant that a republic cannot survive without shared virtue.
The moral foundation of our society.
The idea that every man is created equal, that rights come from God, not government, that springs directly from, dare I say it, our Judeo-Christian values.
You don't have to be religious to understand that or to cherish it.
But if that pillar falls, so does the Republic.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Andrew, my man, how are you?
I'm good.
It's great to talk to you.
Thank you for that lovely introduction.
I have to tell you that behind your back, I was talking to Steve Deese about you yesterday, and we were saying that you are the only major conservative voice that actually loves fiction.
The Book Behind the Epstein Themes00:04:46
You know, when we come on, when we talk to you, we feel like, oh, at least you're somebody who actually reads and appreciates the art.
So we're giving you this appreciation behind your back.
That's really, that's really nice.
It's really, I was wondering, I wanted to ask you this off the air because I didn't know if anybody would be interested, but I'm going to ask you now because you kind of brought it up.
What are book sales like now?
I haven't written a fiction book in years.
And I mean, it used to be, you know, you could have millions sold.
And then, you know, having a 1 million or a 2 million sales book became harder and harder.
Now, I would imagine a book that sells a million copies is a wild out-of-control bestseller.
Is that true?
Oh, absolutely.
It's really, really hard.
It's crazy.
Businesses has, yeah, the reading has gone down, and the business is so feminized that, you know, writing books, men hardly read novels at all anymore.
I'm one of the last remaining guys.
There are others.
I'm not alone.
But I'm one of the last remaining guys who writes books for men and women.
They have love stories in them, but they're action books and they're full of the questions that men are thinking about.
And it's just really tough to get that out there.
And they also, you know, they blacklist white men.
And my editor, Otto Pensler, who is probably the major figure in the 20th century for mystery publishing, he's been canceled at things because they say he publishes too many white men.
It's just nuts out there.
You know, I got out of my relationship with Simon ⁇ Schuster because it got so crazy just on nonfiction books.
You know, you got to really take this angle.
And I'm like, you don't know my audience.
What are you talking about?
You guys are New York liberals.
Don't tell me what to write.
That's exactly it.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's why they hire you.
That's what they're paying you to do.
They're paying you to give you your vision.
And then they want to make sure that your vision is their vision.
I know.
It doesn't work.
It's so stupid.
So stupid.
So tell me about this book.
This is After That the Dark.
I'm going to tell you, Glenn, absolutely honestly, this is one of the best books I ever wrote.
It is a mystery and a love story.
It's about this guy, Cameron Winter, who's been trying to escape his past as a government assassin.
Can I pick it up with this book, Andrew?
Because I know this is number five.
Can I pick it up here?
Yes.
Or do I have to?
Yes.
This book has all of the things, all of the themes that have been playing out are in this book.
And he meets this girl that he is really falling for, and they go out on a first date, and she tells him she knows he likes kind of odd murders.
And she tells him a true story about a murder in a locked room, a classic locker room mystery.
And he, just to impress her, he tries to solve the murder, and he opens up this absolute hornet's nest of evil that starts to surround him.
So this guy is trying to escape being an assassin, but he finds that he's going to have to kill some people to get out of this alive.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Can I ask?
You know, in the locked room, it's an institution, a padded, a padded.
It does feel a little inspired by Jeffrey Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein is always on a good crime writer's mind.
A little bit.
A little bit.
Is that just a coincidence?
No, there are all kinds of Epsteinian themes in the book, I have to say, because there's a lot of dark stuff going on behind the scenes.
So you also have, you know, the billionaire that is played also has a, again, I'm sure, because I'm sure it says at the very beginning, any, anything that would make you think this billionaire was like George Soros.
That's on you.
You just have an evil mind.
You just have an evil mind.
It's not my fault.
I give you these books and you just turn them into these horrible conspiracies.
I know, I know, I know how horrible of me.
Just horrible.
So, Andrew, how do we turn this?
Because I'm really bothered by, you know, I saw a poll.
What was it, Stu?
It was the stat was, was it 58?
58% of Americans have a sixth grade level reading ability.
Yeah.
And 50% or less.
We don't survive with that.
No, of course not.
And we have no future with that at all.
Orson Welles and Homeschooling00:05:21
And they're shutting down schools for gifted kids.
And I have to tell you, the way they treat poor people, black people, people in underserved neighborhoods in education is a crime.
It's a crime.
I mean, my daughter taught in one of the worst schools in the country for a couple of years.
And she had to close the door in order to teach kids values.
Because if they caught her teaching kids good values, they would tell her she was doing something terribly wrong.
And it was just, it's just amazing.
It's amazing the things that they withhold from underprivileged children and the fact that they shut down these schools as they did during COVID and the teachers union just ruled the party and ruled the country there for a couple of years.
No, Weingarten said that she was for the opening of schools.
I don't know if you saw that recently.
She was for opening it.
That's right.
I missed that in real time, but I'm glad.
Yeah, I know, I know.
We can see it in the playback.
Yeah.
And, you know, you take away reading, it's one of the great joys of life.
Reading one of the great joys of life.
If anything expands your soul, if that is a possible thing, it's reading.
And I think reading fiction, you know, approaching the arts, I think the arts do so much for the human mind and soul.
And like, I mean, just being able to understand the culture that you're in, good and bad, what's happening, it helps you understand human nature.
And to take that away from kids and to take it away from people in general, it's just, it's a sin.
It's a crime.
I remember at lunchtime, my fourth grade teacher read, you could stay in for lunch and she would read Little House on the Prairie.
And she was a great reader.
And it was just, it just lit my imagination.
And, you know, I read, you know, books back then, especially, you know, written, you know, prior to the modern age, they were written to be read out loud, especially people like Edgar Allan Poe.
He was men.
And I think Mark Twain, too.
If you had a great reader, a great storyteller in your family and you had access to these books, you had television, you had movies.
It would come to life when you would read these things.
That is a totally lost art.
Nobody is reading to their children out loud and really taking them for adventures.
You know, when I was in sixth grade, we had to memorize a poem, and I memorized The Raven because I loved Edgar Allan Poe so much.
And I have to say, having that poem in my head and having other poems in my head, I have a bad memory, so I have to really work at memorizing things.
It's like having company.
It's like having somebody in the dark of night.
There's something you can always think, go to that is like connecting with another soul.
And I have memories too.
Like you were talking about teachers who introduced things to you.
I remember this teacher who introduced us the first scene from Macbeth with the witches and all this stuff and witches telling Macbeth that he was going to be king.
So he thought, well, maybe I have to murder the king to be king.
And I just thought, wow, that's so cool.
And I've been a Shakespeare lover all my life.
And that was in third grade.
And this stuff just sticks with you forever.
And it's just a terrible thing to be deprived of.
And I think for some people, I think for people who are past childhood, I think the internet gets in the way.
You know, I think the phones that draw you into these little bursts of information without drawing you into real stories and real life.
Yeah.
You know, I became friends with Orson Welles' daughter.
And, you know, because I collect, I have a lot of his.
I have his original War of the World script.
I have all of his original scripts, you know, with his hand-annotated scripts from everything, from Citizen Kane to, you know, all of it.
And we were talking one time, his daughter and I, and she said, you know, I didn't realize how weird I was until my dad died.
And she said, he was my best friend, and we did everything together.
And she said, my dad homeschooled me.
Now, imagine being homeschooled by Orson Welles.
Homeschooled by Orson Welles.
Orson Welles.
Right?
He was such a stickler on things.
But anyway, she said, you want to know how I learned Shakespeare?
And I said, sure.
And she said, Friday came and my dad said, be ready Monday morning.
When we start school, we're going someplace.
So be ready by seven and be ready to, you know, bring a jacket because Monday we start Shakespeare.
And she said, he came into my room and said, come on, let's go.
On Monday morning, he had packed a picnic basket, brought a blanket.
She said, we drove for a long time.
They lived in Europe at the time.
And she said, we drove a long time.
And my dad pulled up to this old castle.
And he stood with the castle as the backdrop and the moat in front.
And he laid the blanket down.
And I sat down and he stood up with the backdrop of the castle.
And he said, Macbeth, act one.
And he acted out.
She said, that's how I learned Shakespeare.
He acted all of these plays out himself.
Shakespeare, Flags, and Rare Films00:04:38
That's amazing.
That is amazing.
And here's, you know, he made a film.
He made a film of a fellow that has been pieced together.
It's one of the best Shakespeare films ever made.
I mean, he was just brilliant as Shakespeare.
Unbelievable.
That's an unbelievable story.
You know, you ought to take that collection.
You have such a great collection.
You ought to do for the 250th birthday of America.
You ought to just put it on display.
Like they did the last time, I think it was 200, they did a train that went across the country carrying memorabilia.
You're the only person left to go do that.
So I think I think we are, I don't know.
I haven't been involved in this.
I was involved in the beginning, and I don't know where the ending is, but we talked about doing something with trucks with the White House.
And the last I heard, we were going to be taking it on buses or trucks around the country for the 250th.
I don't know if that's happening still or not, but we are going to be, we're going to be doing a lot of stuff with it.
I thought about the train, you know, 1976.
You know, isn't it weird?
You remember this.
Do you remember the bicentennial logo?
You know, the star, the red, white, and blue star.
The logo.
No, I don't remember the logo.
No.
Okay.
It was a red, white, and blue star.
And I thought, I remember this being everywhere.
I remember it being, you know, 1776, 1976 on our coins, everything.
Here we are at 250, and there's nothing.
They're not even talking about anything.
There's nothing coming from our government.
And it's like pulling teeth.
I mean, Trump is doing something, but the government, they're not doing anything.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
And, you know, I mean, it has been one of the things that I love about Trump is the fact that he does care about the culture, about the arts, about fiction and things like that.
He's taking over the Kennedy Center, which I think is great.
People are protesting it and all that stuff.
But it's, no, these are great things because we've lost it to this little group of people who feel like entitled to hound artists out of the, you know, we were talking about the publishing industry.
That's just leftism, leftists hounding artists out of the square because they don't like their vision.
They don't like their opinions.
And people like me are getting very rare.
You know, people who write novels that actually have a vision that other people can agree with and is not imposing this leftist nonsense on them.
It's just becoming a really rare thing.
You know, we were talking a few weeks ago, I think off the air.
I don't think we shared this on the air, but back in 2010, I think, I did something at the, I rented out the Kennedy Center.
And I was doing a night at the Kennedy Center.
And I said I wanted the backdrop to be a giant flag.
And I asked them if they had one.
Assuming it's Washington, D.C. Of course they have a backdrop of the giant flag.
You know what I mean?
Really honestly.
Have you never been to the Kennedy Center?
Yeah.
I know.
And they said the American flag.
When I put the flag on the stage, I was told by the Kennedy Center, this is the first time the American flag has ever been on stage at the Kennedy Center.
That's crazy.
That is absolutely crazy.
So I'm thrilled.
No, it's great.
And he's the only person who ever thought that maybe this could be changed.
The only time it ever occurred to anybody that we don't have to live like this.
We don't have to live with this little small sliver of the population who hate our country, who hate our values, dictating everything that we see and do.
We don't have to do that.
And I think that the Republicans have a lot to answer for for the 50 years in which they just sort of shrugged this off.
They shrugged off the news media that was all on one side.
They kind of just kow-towed to it.
And I think that that's, you know, that's kind of what's brought us here.
I think we're in this really weird moment when the culture has flatlined because of these woke ideas, which basically call evil good and good evil.
And I think it's about to come back.
And I would really like it if conservatives and people of traditional mind would sort of get involved and sort of say, yeah, I want to do this.
I want to make sure that our culture doesn't fall like this again because it's so bad.
It's so bad for children.
It's bad for young people.
It's bad for everybody.
It's bad for everybody's brain.
And here is how you fix it.
Just start reading again.
There's a great book, Andrew Clavin.
After that, the dark.
It is available now.
It's a mystery story.
Really, really good.
After that, the dark.
Andrew Clavin, as always, my friend, it is good to talk to you.