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- [00:00]
Narrator
Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.
- [00:11]
Glenn Beck
Oh, come on.
- [00:12]
Narrator
They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.
- [00:22]
Glenn Beck
Whatever.
- [00:23]
Narrator
You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.
- [00:30]
Glenn Beck
Hey, back from vacation with a lot to talk to you about. The police patch in Dearborn, Michigan proves they are trying to unmake America and it might be damn near treason for doing it. Also, we have some new poll numbers out with Justin Haskins that you have to hear. What is the actual state of socialism in America with those under 39, 18 to 39 years old? Also, just back from vacation and I took a temperature of our culture. Where are we as a nation? I searched on vacation for something real. Did I find it? Hear about it in today's podcast. September is National Preparedness Month, which means it is the perfect time to stop assuming you're ready for an emergency, and start knowing you are. If the power went out tonight, not for an hour, but let's say for several days, what would you do? If the grocery store shelves went suddenly empty? If the ATM stopped working, if the tap went dry, how long could you take care of your family? Most people don't know. And honestly, most people don't want to even think about it. And that's why they're underprepared. The people at my Patriot Supply are making it easier than ever to get ready. And this month, they're going big to celebrate National Preparedness Month. They've just launched their Preparedness Month Mega kit. It includes a full year's worth of emergency food, a water filtration system that can purify nearly any source, solar backup power unit, survival tools, and a lot more. September isn't going to last forever, and neither will this offer. Here's the best part. If you go to my patriotsupply.com Glenn, you can get 90 preparedness essentials totaling over $1,500 absolutely free. You just head to mypatriotsupply.com Glenn for full details. That's mypatriotsupply.com glenn. Hello America. You know we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered Truth, because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you right now. Would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast in? Give us five stars and leave a comment. Because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth. This isn't a podcast. This is a movement. And you're part of it, a big part of it. So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this podcast to the top rate, review, share together, we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us. Now, let's get to work.
- [03:23]
Justin Haskins
You're listening to the Best of the Glenn Beck Program.
- [03:28]
Glenn Beck
What Tim Kaine was talking about last week with our Declaration of Independence is so crucial. It's why I started the program with it. If we don't have this, we don't have anything. And you have to understand that our founders came from a place to where they hated government, but they knew they needed some government, and they were trying to put together a system that made men free. This is a lens that we can't even relate to anymore, because now governments and politicians all over the world, their idea of creating laws is how do they gain more power? How can they keep you in a box more? It was the opposite of what our founders believed. And our founders believed, look, if everybody just understands that everybody has a right to say and do anything, you know, do the things they do, and they understand civics, that with those rights come responsibilities, then we're going to be fine. But if they don't understand that, if they're not a moral society that understands moral sentiments, if they don't, if they, if they're just out for greed, they're just out for themselves and the whole system breaks down. And, and that's what we. That's what we have. If I have time, I want to tell you some of the things that I noticed on vacation. You know, I went by. It was in New York and I went by the. What was it? The center for Ethical Society or something like that. And it's. It was in a building that had to have been built around the turn of the century. So it had to be in a progressive thing and it had a school next to it and everything else. And I thought, I wonder what the ethics are now coming out of the ethical society. I wonder what those ethics are. Because ethics, ethics are just changing. Everything is just changing under our feet because we no longer respect the ethics and the constitutional norms. That created this country. Um, and let me take you to Dearborn, Michigan. So last week, we find out that an institution, the police department, an institution sworn to uphold the Constitution, has introduced a uniform patch with Arabic script for the very first time. And it just says in Arabic, police Department, Dearborn Police Department. That's all it says. And it's just to better connect with the population of Muslim population there in Dearborn, Michigan. And it sounds harmless. I mean, you could make that into no big deal. It's just, you know, it's. Dearborn Police. What is your problem? Well, it's not just a small gesture of outreach. It is a signal. And signals matter. For more than two centuries, America has been an experiment. And we used to describe it as a melting pot. You could come here from any land, speak any language, any faith, and we could come here. And if you believed in the laws and the Constitution of America, if you believed in that and you upheld those things, we could melt together and we could create something even greater than you could even imagine. We didn't erase cultures. We elevate what unites us instead of elevating what divides us. And we don't bend our civic institutions to mirror any kind of tribal or religious identities. We don't create parallel systems of justice or identity. Now, I want you to think about history. No immigrant group, none ever. No religion ever had law enforcement tailor itself to them. Never. Catholics came to this country by the millions. What did they face? They were mocked. They were ridiculed. They were accused of being agents of the Pope. Churches were burned, signs that read no Irish allowed. Yet. The Catholic Church didn't demand, you know, a crucifix on the police badge. They didn't demand government offices, display papal seals that would have been completely rejected by everybody. What they did is they fought, they endured. And over generations, they proved that they could be both Catholic, fully Catholic and fully American. And the same is true with the Mormons. Look what the Mormons have faced. They. They have faced the harshest pro prosecution or persecution of all. In Missouri, Governor Lilburn Boggs signed an actual extermination order ordering Mormons to be driven from the state or killed. It was legal for you to kill a Mormon because they were Mormon. That's the only government order like it in our history. They were beaten. They were tarred and feathered. Their homes were torched. Their leadership was murdered. They fled west, outside of America proper to carve out a home in the wilderness and just be left alone in the mountains. And what happened after they got there? The US army marched into Utah convinced the Mormons were plotting a rebellion against the United States. But they weren't. In fact, they revered the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence more than their persecutors even did. For years, the Mormon Church used to teach the founding documents alongside the Scripture. It's what tethered that religion to, I believe, to sanity and not being pulled in every different direction. They've stopped teaching the founding documents, and I think it's a problem myself. But who am I to say but Mormons are the most patriotic of any religion in America. Check it. Why? They didn't bend America to their faith. They bound their faith to America. Now compare that and the Catholics and everything else, every other religious group that has ever come in. Now compare that to what's happening in Dearborn, Michigan, week after week. And we have them on tape. Week after week. From the pulpits of the local mosque, the imams openly declare their goal. Not to join the American project, but to replace it. Not to preserve the Constitution, but to subvert it. They preach the supremacy of Sharia law over American law. And now the police department, a symbol of our secular Constitution order, decides they want to appeal to that group to wear that identity on its uniform. That's not inclusion. That's not assimilation. That's not the melting pot. It's the opposite. It's Balkanization at its kindest. It is the state bending towards the demand of a religious political ideology that seeks to replace our American civilization. Let me be really super clear on this. This cannot stand. Our history shows us the way. Every faith, every culture, every group that has come to America has been tested and put through the wringer. Quite honestly, I don't like it. But it is worked out for the best of all of us because we have been forced to prove, will we embrace the Constitution or will we try to replace it? Are we coming over here and we're just going to live like Irishmen and live by the Irish laws, or are we going to bend to the Constitution of our new country? Catholics embraced it. Jews embraced it. Mormons embraced it. Baptists have embraced it. Millions of immigrants from every corner on the globe have embraced it. And that's why we are who we are. If Dearborn or any other American city decides that, they're going to start carving out exceptions to make government institutions bear the mark of the religion that seeks to dominate rather than integrate. We are not just forgetting our history. We are part of the unmaking of America. Because in the end, the melting pot isn't about a Cheese fondue. It's not about food. It's not about festivals. It's about allegiance. Allegiance to one nation under God, Not Sharia, not under Rome, not under Salt Lake City, under the Constitution. That's what the flag represents. And if we lose this, we lose America. Dearborn must not allow. They're saying this is the. The mayor came out on Friday and said, well, this is only voluntary. I mean, you could. You could have the patch or not. We're not gonna make it. We're not gonna make it. Required. You should not make it available. You should not make it available. I'm a collector of history. I have yet to see from, you know, the Pennsylvania Dutch region, the police badges that were in German. I grew up in the Seattle in the Pacific Northwest where there's a lot of Asians. I have yet to see the police badge that is in Chinese. It doesn't happen. We don't do. Some may say that this is the unmaking of America. That's where I'd like to fall, but it's dangerously close to treason. Let me talk to you about Relief factor. You know, your body is a storybook. And for some of us, too many pages contain memories of pain. Page 31, slipped off the ladder. Page 54, that old football injury. Page 74, wrench back lifting the couch for Thanksgiving. The longer you live, the more chapters you accumulate. And if you're not careful, pain becomes the plot instead of the side story. Relief factor is there, and it'll help you rewrite the whole book. It is a daily supplement developed by doctors, and it's designed to tackle the root causes of pain, not just the symptoms. The that means you can actually start feeling better, not just masking the hurting. And it's not some wacky Internet cure. Millions of people have tried relief factor, including me, and the results speak for themselves. It is a real solution backed by science and built for real life with the kinds of, you know, with the kind of bills and grandkid deadlines and dogs who still need to be walked. Stop living in a story written by pain. Pick up the pen. Write a new chapter in your life with relieffactor.com relieffactor.com call 800 for relief 800, the number four relief. Now back to the podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Justin Haskins. He is the president of Our Republic, stoppingsocialism.com He's the editor in chief and also a co author of several books with me. Welcome to the program, Justin. How are you?
- [15:42]
Justin Haskins
I'm doing well, Glenn. How are you?
- [15:45]
Glenn Beck
Well, I was better until you contacted me on vacation and sent me this disturbing poll. I'm in bed at night and I'm reading this and I'm like, oh, what? My wife's like, I told you not to check your email. And I'm like, I didn't know Jason Justin was going to write to me. Justin, tell me first of all, before we get into it, how secure is the sample size on this poll?
- [16:14]
Justin Haskins
It's a very good sample size. 1200 people nationally, only 18 to 39 year olds. And we did that deliberately so that we could get a sample size large enough so we could pull out valid responses just from younger people. So the whole purpose of this poll is to find out what younger people 18 to 39, think voters only and people who say that they're likely to vote. So we're not talking about just people out in the public. We're not talking about registered voters. We're talking about people who are registered to vote and say they're likely to vote.
- [16:48]
Glenn Beck
So let's go over some of the things that you have already released to the press and that is in this survey, 18, 39 year old likely voters, the Trump approval rating is a lot higher than you thought it would be, right?
- [17:02]
Justin Haskins
Yeah, yeah. 48% had a positive approval rating of Donald Trump, which for young people is very high. So that's, that's the good news. That's the only good news we're going to talk about.
- [17:16]
Glenn Beck
We might have to come back to that first question several times. Do you believe the United States is a fundamentally good, evil or morally mixed country?
- [17:28]
Justin Haskins
Yep. This one is not too bad. It's not great. But fundamentally good was 28%, which is, which is low, but mixed with 50% and fundamentally evil was 17%. And I think mixed at 50% is not an unreasonable crazy response. I can see why all sorts of people might choose that. So I don't think there's anything terrible here. It depends on what you mean by mixed. Fundamentally good at 28% it's a little low. Fundamentally evil at 17%, a little disturbing, but it's not, it's not insane. The insane stuff comes a little bit later.
- [18:05]
Glenn Beck
Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Major industries. Talk about the crazy stuff coming later. Here it is. Major industries like healthcare, energy and big tech should be nationalized and give more control and equity to the people.
- [18:25]
Justin Haskins
Yeah, this was, this was the, really, I mean, this one floored me. If you look at strongly agree, somewhat agree for that statement you just read, it's over 75% of young people, including, including the vast majority of Republicans, young Republicans and people who identify as conservatives. It was pretty similar, in fact, how young Republicans responded compared to liberals and independents and Democrats. They all pretty much agreed that, yes, the government, the federal government should be nationalizing whole industries to make things more equitable for people.
- [19:05]
Glenn Beck
As the guy who is the chief editor in chief of Stopping Socialism, what's the problem with nationalizing energy and health care? What happens typically?
- [19:19]
Justin Haskins
Well, usually there's blood in the streets when you do enough, when you do too much of that, you know, socialism, communism, have been spectacularly horrible throughout the course of human history, across every society, culture, religion, it doesn't matter when or what kind of technological advancements you have when you, the more you collectivize a society, the more authoritarian that society gets, the less you have individual freedom and the worse the economy usually is for regular people. So it's been a catastrophe across the board. Everyone listening to this audience probably knows that. And so the idea that you would have three quarters of young voters, so remember, these people are going to be the primary voters in 10 to 20 years saying, yeah, you know what, we should be nationalizing whole industries. Whole industries is so disturbing. And I don't think that conservatives understand how deeply rooted some of these ideas are with younger people.
- [20:24]
Glenn Beck
And I will tell you, I think some conservatives are walking a very dangerous line and, you know, coming up with a little mix of, of everything and, and I think we have to be very careful on, on what is being said and who our friends and allies are. By the way, that number again is 39% strongly agree, 37% somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, 12% strongly disagree, 5% that is disastrous. Now try this one on. These are the ones that have been, we got new ones. These are just a few of the ones that were released late last week. The next presidential election is in 2028. Would you like to see a Democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election?
- [21:18]
Justin Haskins
Yep. 53% said yes, 53% of, of all voters said yes. And the most shocking thing was that 35% of those who we polled who said they voted for Donald Trump in 2024 said that they want to see a socialist win in 2028. And so about a third of Republicans, 35% of Trump voters, 43% of people who call themselves conservatives. So even on the right, among younger people, there is a large group that want a socialist president in 2028.
- [21:58]
Glenn Beck
And the reason, the reason is, is tied into the next few questions. Okay, so here's question of five. Among the following options, which best describes your biggest reason you would like to see a Democratic socialist candidate? 31% said housing costs are too high. 12% taxes are too low for corporations. 11% taxes are too low for wealthy individuals. 8% one single payer health care system. 17 say the economy unfairly benefits older, wealthier Americans. 15% says the economy unfairly benefits large corporations. 5% some other reason and 2% unsure. Now let's get into the new polls that we're breaking today. Question six. How would you describe your current financial situation?
- [22:50]
Justin Haskins
Yeah, only 24% said that they're doing well. 34, 38% said getting by, struggling. 29%. 7% said in crisis. So if you add up just getting by, struggling and in crisis, that's 74% said that they're, you know, just barely getting by at best. And I think that explains a lot of the other negative responses we've seen so far in this poll and the ones that are going to come pretty soon. Here.
- [23:21]
Glenn Beck
7 which best describes your personal life situation? You are thriving, you're doing well with a few ups and downs. You feel stuck and uncertain. You feel lonely, disconnected, or emotionally drained. You're in a crisis and feel most negative about your personal life.
- [23:39]
Justin Haskins
Yeah, about a third said that they feel stuck or uncertain, lonely or that they're in a crisis. That's a third of young people say that. I mean that's, that's not great. Only 19% said thriving. 46% said they have ups and downs, which I think is, you know, not too, too shocking. But the idea that there's a third of American voters out there who feel like they can't buy a home and they feel like they are lonely and that they're in crisis and that life is just not going well at all for them. Again, I think that's, that's driving a lot of the support for socialism where you have 53% of these people saying, yeah, I want a socialist president in 2028.
- [24:25]
Glenn Beck
So socialism is not the answer. It is the symptom. It's the symptom of what people are feeling right now. And they, they don't know any other. They don't, nobody's presenting them with anything other than, you know, Republican, Democrat, bullcrap. And socialists are coming at it from a completely new angle or so. The yo, the youth think it's the oldest and most failed system of all time. But they're seeing this as a solution that is different than what the party, you know, the Republican Democrats are offering, even though the Democrats are offering the socialism thing. Number eight, do you think the American economy is unfair to young people? 62% say yes.
- [25:15]
Justin Haskins
Yeah. And 27% said no. And I think that this really gets at the heart of what the issue is here. When you look at the reasons, when you, when you look at the detailed data of the poll, what to try to find out if there's an association between some kind of demographic or response question about people's lives and their support for socialism to see if there's a correlation there between something that's happening and whether someone's a socialist or not. One of the top correlations connections is if people think the economy is unfair and if they're having trouble buying a home or they don't think they can buy a home or that's one of their reasons for supporting socialism. So in other words, words, there's this fairness issue and if it's not even about inequality, it's not about, it's not about, well, they have too much. Well, if they feel like the system is, to use a Trump term, rigged. And throughout the data, that's what we see over and over and over again is lots of young people say the economy is rigged for older people, for wealthier people, for corporations, it's rigged. And if they say, yeah, I think it's rigged, you know, then they're more likely to say, yeah, I want a socialist. And I also think this is why the same group has a relatively high approval rating of Donald Trump. It's, it's because the reason that a lot of young people like Trump in the poll is that he's not part of the establishment. And I think, I don't think that they, I think a lot of young people who voted for Trump and who like Trump, they didn't do it because they like free market pro liberty policies. And that's not a good thing. But I, but I don't think that's why they did it. I think a lot of them voted for Trump and support him because he's not the establishment. And that's what they don't like. They want to blow the establishment up.
- [27:09]
Caller or Guest
So, Justin, my sample size is my two young adults, my two children, and they're like talking to me and saying, dad, I will never be able to own a home. Looking at the prices, looking at interest rates, they're like, I can't even afford to pay rent at an apartment. And they, they don't know what to do. And so they're looking at, on, like, TikTok. And they're like, who's this Mom Donmy guy? This sounds interesting. They bring this to me. They grew up listening to me indoctrinating them their entire lives. They're looking at other voices, like, on TikTok. Are we just not being loud enough?
- [27:43]
Glenn Beck
No, we're not. We're not connecting with them. We're not. I. I feel like they don't feel they're being heard. And we are speaking to them in red, white, and blue, and that means nothing. The Statue of Liberty means nothing to them. Ellis island means nothing to them. The flag means nothing to them. It's all partisan politics. They're all symbols of, really, the two parties, and in America, they don't relate to at all. I think that's our biggest problem in not being able to break through to your point. Question nine, how confident are you that you will own a home at some point in the next 10 years? 29% say they already own a home, which I found interesting. That's, I think, a pretty high number for somebody who is, you know, 18 to 34 years old.
- [28:44]
Justin Haskins
39.
- [28:45]
Glenn Beck
39. There's a lot of 18 to 30 that I didn't own a home when I was 30, just had gotten a home when I was 30. But go ahead with the rest of that poll.
- [29:00]
Justin Haskins
Yeah. So then 21% said discouraged but somewhat hopeful. 12% said not confident. 10% said you were convinced you were never on a home. 3% not sure. So if you add up the negative responses, it's around 43% that gave that response.
- [29:19]
Glenn Beck
But I think that again, 29% you already own a home, and 25% you're confident you will own a home is still good. It just these, these other numbers have, you know, discouraged but hopeful you'll own a home. Who's discouraging that and how is that being discouraged? You know, only 12. Let's see, 12, 22, 25% are not sure they're ever going to own a home. That's too high of a number. But I don't think that's completely dismal. You're streaming the Best of Glenn Beck. To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts. So I went on vacation last week, and I had some work that I had to do, and I kind of tied vacation into some of the work. My wife always loves that. But first it took us to Las Vegas, and then we went to New York City, where I had to Give a speech. And it was my wife's birthday. And silently, you know, as all smiles and happy birthday and everything else. I'm cataloging what I'm seeing, and I'm not sure I've digested all of it yet. But I watched our culture and what I took away from this is our. Our culture is beyond sick. It's almost zombie. A zombie culture. It's moving without thinking or without heart. It's just moving from day to day, paycheck to paycheck, or worse, circus to circus. And let me start at the circus. Vegas. Look, Vegas is. I don't like gambling, so. And I love drinking too much. So it's really not a city that it's, you know, all cut out for me. And it's always been about cheap thrills. It's always been gaudy and bright and flashy and everything else. Cheap thrills is not right, the right word, because nothing in Vegas is cheap. You know, long gone are the $5 dinners and the, hey, free show for the gamblers. And that's all gone. This is a city where everything now is about the money. And just looking at the scale of the hotels as I was walking down the street and I'm looking at the scale of things, I'm thinking, if you don't understand that the house always wins just by looking at the scale of this city, you're the one that's just going to be broke on the floor of the casino because they'll rob you of everything. The house always wins. And it has become more and more about the money. And to me, at least, I think more and more about the flash of everything. The food seemed to be the only thing that was really real in Vegas. The food was amazing. You know, thanks for the £4 that I. I had, I gained, I took with me that didn't stay in. In Las Vegas, but after we would eat, we would wash it down with a show. And that was not a good palate cleanser, if you will. I've watched the shows and they were soulless, absolutely soulless. I mean, there's only so many tricks that a Chinese contortionist can do or, you know, so many yo yo, like discs that they can throw in the air and catch before. You're like, I've seen this, done this. We went to a show called MJ the Michael Jackson Story. My wife is a big Michael Jackson fan, so we went to see mj. Woof. Was that bad? It was like they took a bad idea and then just said, let's just Turn the volume up to 10 and put bright lights on, and we could put everybody in spangles. And you're like, wow, that was really, really bad. The people on stage, they might as well have been droids, honestly. And because what I. What I took from that, again, was this city is only about the money that the. The house doesn't want to spend any money on any star because they'll have to pay stars more. So they just. You can. You dance good. You dance and don't stand out. I mean, nothing was. Nothing was authentic. Nothing was real. Nothing was one on one. You know, there was no connection on anything. And I wondered, has this changed from when Frank and Sammy and Dean. Is that the way it was then? Because I've seen the old footage. You know, you watch YouTube and you see the old footage and you're like, I mean, they were having fun. They. They. They related to people. You know, My parents only took one vacation by themselves, left us behind, and it was to Reno, so not Vegas, but still. And I wondered, how did my parents. Because they saw Glen Campbell. How did my parents afford this? Well, they could afford it because it wasn't like it is now. Everything, everything, it seems, is like Disney World. Everything is, how much money can I squeeze out of this person? You know, the house isn't just trying to take money at the tables. They are making sure that every square inch is trying to squeeze money out of you all the time. Then I had to go to New York City. I had to give a speech for the radio industry. And, you know, going from Vegas to New York doesn't improve your mood much. But it was my wife's birthday that week, and so I wanted to make it special for her and do things that she wanted to do and invited my kids to join us. And we were uptown and downtown. We were on 5th Avenue in times Square and Chelsea in the Village and all of that stuff. And I was just looking for what is real. Is there anything real? Not really. More cultural rot. However, this rot kind of makes sense in a way because New York City is the home of the progressive movement. You know, its fingerprints are on all of the buildings and the architecture of the 1900s, and, you know, the small theaters that are on the side streets that nobody even really notices anymore. The little plaque that, you know, we hosted Margaret Sanger here, and, you know, all of that nonsense starts here and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Up on, I don't know, Central park west, there is this. This collection of buildings marked the Society or the center for Ethical Society. And it was clearly a progressive building and, you know, from the 1900s. And I thought, what, what are the ethics in this place? It looked like a temple, you know, and then the crime and the, the sheer number of people out on the streets and, and just the garbage in the streets and it's just gone downhill. And no one sees each other. Nobody looks, nobody makes eye contact because that, you know, invites trouble or perhaps even worse, a conversation with somebody. And I saw the same kind of consumerism in New York that I saw in Vegas. I saw it uptown. And you go downtown and you see the same kind of consumerism as you see uptown, except it's packaged differently. It's the separation between the new youth and the old, you know, people. Because the old people, they all go to fifth Avenue and the young people, they all go to the Village because that's where it's real, you know, what a bunch of garbage it is just packaged differently. For those under 35 who don't like consumerism, but they still want their Prada bag. You know, you go uptown and you'll find that $10,000 purse in a huge glitzy building where you're just above the door door is a, you know, a golden logo and $100,000 storefront windows and fancy shopping bags announcing to everybody, you shopped here. But you go downtown and they don't have those big fancy shopping bags. They just have plain shopping bags made of recycled paper from stores in old restored buildings that scream uniqueness and non conformity. And the logo is very small. It's not over the, the door. It's down on the corner of one of the simple windows that just look into the store with no fancy mannequins. Because the shoppers there, sure, they want the same ten thousand dollar purse, but they want to feel better than those people uptown. It's all garbage. It's. It's all the same garbage. It's just packaged differently. And everybody thinks they're so unique and they're being sold the same garbage. I saw people, it was so distorted, the reality in their vain attempt at beauty. My gosh, I saw these women who were just so lost and they were surrounded by men who were acting and dressing like women that, I mean, I began to see the images from, you know, the capital city in the Hunger Games. That is us. Now look, go watch that movie. That's us. So did I find anything real? Yeah, strangely I did. And it's so strange because what I found real was actually fake. What I found real I found on the Stage. I mean, I know that's laughable, but it's true. We saw a show called the Outsiders. You might have seen the movie a long time ago. They made it into a stage show. It's an amazing movie. And the emotions were real. Even though I knew they were all fake, they were at least real. It reflected real life. The struggles that everybody has, you know, those mistakes that we all make. And the truth we finally find, just when we think it's just about too late, we find it. You know, I thought about my life and what I went through as an outsider, as a, you know, 20 something. I thought about my kids who are outsiders and they're 20 somethings. I realized the show is so successful because that tragic adolescence in 20 something years, they're not unique. That's who we are. That is our common story. The Outsiders is just today's west side Story. And west side Story was, you know, the same story of Romeo and Juliet. It's the same story over and over and over and over again. But it's authentic and it is true. The struggle is true. The things we're all trying to avoid is the only true thing. The next night we saw Operation Mincemeat. And I really had to convince my wife on this. I said, I know it's your birthday week, but Operation Mincemeat is one of my favorite stories. It is a story about World War II and how Ian Fleming and the British convinced Hitler how to move his troops from Sicily to where? Greece or someplace because we needed to invade through Sicily. And it's a great story, but this was a comedy musical. And I'm like, I don't know. Well, the producers made, you know, the Hitler look pretty ridiculous. I wonder how it's going to happen this time. It was a play of probably 20 characters and they were all played by six people. And I could tell you that the laughs were genuine. I could tell you that if the show was great. But what stood out to me was what was real. What was real was the relentless work. The script was shockingly detailed and extraordinarily accurate. True to the story. I was blown away by that. But the raw risk of the talent that stood out on stage, real artists, top of their field, working harder than most people work, trying to bring these people from the past to life. And they did it. And they did it in a shockingly great way. I mean, it was. It again was the struggle of an artist just trying to be the best they can. That's what I found inspiring. That's what I found. And you know what? I found that in a cab driver who was amazing. He was just trying to be the best he could be. It wasn't about the ticket price. It wasn't about the house winning. It wasn't about trying to fool you into something. It was about the huge human magic that can only happen when humans get together and pour everything into their passion. We walked by a bar I had never seen before. I generally don't go into bars for good reason. But we walked by a bar I hadn't seen it before. It was the Ralph Lauren Polo bar. And if you know me, I'm a big fan of Ralph Lauren for what he has done. I think he is the, I think he's the only, the only company, the only person that is not afraid of saying America is great. I mean, he does the best advertising for America of anyone else. Ralph Lauren. When you see his product, he is America. He was the US Open over the weekend. He's the Olympics. He is America all the time. So I walk into this bar and I just want to take a look because I'm a fan of what he has done. And I looked at this and I said to my wife, look at the lamps he designed, the lighting, the chairs, the fabrics. Everything in this building is his. He designed this. It's amazing to me, you know, people now, they just expect they're going to design clothing and open a store and they're going to celebrate how great and unique they really are. Ralph Lauren started out by selling ties that he designed and made out of the trunk of his car because no one would buy them, no store would have him in. So he just decided, I'll just go out on fifth Avenue and I'll just start selling ties. And he sold them out of the trunk of his car and now he's America. Real life. I saw it at the Greek diner we had breakfast at. Not great food, but still owned by the same Greek family staffed with his sons and daughters. I wondered how many generations of the family has worked, worked there. The father, perhaps the grandfather now still had his accent. I spent the week looking over America's medical charts, if you will. And I found mixed messages. I found things that were real in places I didn't expect. I found the truth and I found them in people just being themselves. That's where the magic happens. And that's when America is at her best. Great sound is a labor of love. Don't let your room get in the way. Check out site wide savings on all of our total sound control products. Use code LD20 at checkout@auralex.com.