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- [00:02]
Glenn Beck
Rated T to M. Hey, wanna hear a PC game pass ad? I'll take your silence is a yes. Want new games on day one like Call of Duty, Black Ops 6 or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
- [00:10]
Stu Burguiere
2?
- [00:10]
Glenn Beck
I thought so. How about unlocking all the League of Legends champions when you link your Riot Games account, All for one low monthly price. Well, guess what? We got you. Learn more@xbox.com PCGame Pass or click the banner STALKER2. Available November 20, 2024. Game catalog varies by region and over time. And that's the end of the script.
- [00:30]
Stu Burguiere
Today's show might be worth listening to the entire thing, although, I mean, they always are. But you know, I know your day gets busy because there's, there's a lot happening on today's show. First of all, on the best of the Story of Christmas and what it really means and how it affects the war we're all in right now, right into defending freedom of speech. And Bill O'Reilly, he's got a wild perspective on because he's, he's lived it. What's happening with the CEO killer in New York and the response. He's lived this story. Nobody's talked about it. But we do. And Tristan Harris, former ethicist for Google, talks to us about character AI, something that is wildly dangerous. Where are we on AI? Mark Andreessen chimes in with a warning that will chill you to the bone, all on today's podcast. Are you tired of not only paying far too much for your mobile phone service, but also knowing that some of the money is going to support causes that you don't support? You know, one of the best things about living in America is we still kind of have a free market and it's getting more free. Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative company and their mission is to passionately defend our God given constitutional rights and freedoms and to glorify God always. And here's the way they do that. They provide a great service. They charge less for your mobile phone. You get the same exact coverage from wherever you're switching from. You're not going to be giving your money to far left radicals that want to destroy the country. They instead take some of their profits and they reinvest it into like our school districts and getting the right school board people elected, helping the grassroots grow the support for our constitutional rights. You can keep your phone number for a limited time. You can also get a free smartphone just by going to patreonmobile.com bec or call 972 Patriot. Use the promo code Friday to get that smartphone. And you can use that any day. Because not just Black Friday matters, all Fridays matter with patriot mobile.com Beck patriotmobile.com Beck or call 972 Patreon. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. So we're just a few days away from Christmas and it just feels weird. I don't. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm into my Christmas shopping or whatever, but I'm. I'm lacking just a little bit of the Christmas spirit. And I want to start today by fixing our gaze upon that cradle in Bethlehem where the greatest gift ever given entered the world, the humblest of surroundings. Beneath the watchful eyes of shepherds, in the celestial light of heaven's star, a simple child was born. Definitely not a child of earthly power, no wealth, but purpose. And through him, the chains of mankind's bondage were destined to be broken when he was born. In a nutshell, what the. What the angel said was liberty, redemption, hope. It's what our founders understood. Each of us endowed with certain inalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Our Creator gave these to us. Each of us was endowed with free will, the power to choose to chart our own course, to stumble, to rise, to dust ourself off and press on. This is the difference between people. People that just want to guarantee which there is none in life, or people who understand that free will to be free, to live free. That gift is precious and perilous. It's always on the edge. But it is the foundation of our humanity and the cornerstone of a truly free society. Without that simple liberty to make mistakes, we can't learn, without the liberty to fail, we don't grow. And without the liberty to choose between good and evil, the triumph of virtue over vice means absolutely nothing. We miss this message. Or maybe we save this message for Christmas Eve. It is more appropriate on Christmas Eve, we should be talking about this all year long. In fact, in many ways, it is what we have been fighting for. The message of Christmas. It's not just joy and celebration, but the message of Christmas is profound liberation. It is the birth of Christ is the birth of freedom itself. And not the kind of freedom that is wrought by a sword in an army or enshrined in our capital in the writings on parchment, but a freedom given to us, each of us, at birth, born in our soul. It's the toughest kind of freedom, because it belongs 100% to us. And what we do, we can blame other freedom on, well, the politicians in Washington. There is no blame except for us. And it is the freedom to forgive others. And more difficult, I think, to forgive ourselves. It's the freedom to lay down the weight of guilt. I'm a recovering alcoholic, and for a reason. There are times in your life where you just are wrought with guilt. You just can't move because in your head you're playing these tapes over and over again, and they're all lies. That's what Christmas is. The freedom to lay down that guilt, to heal wounds old and new, to grasp the hand of grace that lifts us up out of the muck and the mire. This freedom is the most precious, and like all freedom, it is neither easy nor secure. Today, if you would watch the news, you would find that we are living in times filled with war and rumors of war. And yet we believe, most of us, that we are at peace. For, as Longfellow may have said, the cannons of war are silent on our shores. But we are a world at war. We are a nation at war, a people at war. We have said this for a while now. More people in the world are waking up to this every day. We are in a spiritual war. It's invisible. It doesn't have aircraft carriers, but it is insidious. And you don't win with armies. You don't win at the ballot box. It's won within the hearts and minds of every single individual. It's so today. What happened 2000 years ago is so important today because we are fighting a war for truth in a world drowning in lies. A war for courage in a time where men's hearts have failed them, riddled with fear. A war for faith when we are surrounded by doubt. And it is truly the most perilous of all struggles because it doesn't announce itself with the sound of drums or dramatic speeches or the sight of red banners. Its battlefield isn't seen. The stakes are eternal. So as we prepare and we stand on the threshold of this sacred season, let's not take what we face too lightly, this unseen enemy. Let's not take what happened at the ballot box as that was a reprieve. That was God doing what we couldn't do, saying, okay, you can't fight that battle on your own. I got it. I'll. I will. I will cover what you can't do. I'll save him and have him stand back up again. I'll protect at the ballot box, but you got to get out and do it now. God says, okay, now what are you going to do with it? Because I've done what you can't do. That's the deal with free will. It's a partnership. He'll forgive us, but we gotta do the work. We have to take up the shield of faith and the sword of truth and the helmet of salvation, which was given to us by that little teeny baby in a manger. And then that baby growing into a man to see what he did so we can draw strength from his example. Boy, that's a hard example to follow. Because he did not come to condemn. He came to save. He didn't rule. He came to serve. He didn't come to divide. He came to unite under truth. I've said this before. I wonder how many of us actually took time to give thanks at Thanksgiving for the miracles we've seen. We've seen miracles. I don't. I don't. If you miss them, I don't know how, but we've seen miracles. And in the season of eternal truth and light, it's fitting that we give thanks not only for the blessings that we hold dear, but also for the trials that refine us. I am a better man because of the trials of the last 20 years. I don't know who I would have been if my back hadn't been against the wall for the last 20 years. I don't know who you would be. That comes from freedom of will, of choice. We've all made a choice which side we stand on. Did we stand up when it was tough, or did we cower? And if we cowered, are we going to forgive ourselves? So we'll stand up now. Give thanks for the trials. Give thanks for the liberty that we possess. For it's only in freedom that we can fully embrace the gift of redemption. And that is the principal gift. It is not just the courage. It is not just the freedom he knows we are going to make. We are going to make mistakes. Let us give thanks for the right to choose, even when our choices lead us in very dark places. Because every single misstep brings us closer to the God who never ceases to call us back. Son. Daughter. I'm here. Just come back this year. Let's give thanks for the courage to stand, not only for ourselves, but for those who can't stand alone. The story of Christmas is above all a story of hope. A story that transcends the bounds of time, place and circumstance. It's the hope that in the darkest of your night a star will shine. It's the hope that in the humblest of stables a king will be born. It is the hope that in the brokenness of our humanity, redemption is there to triumph. I want you to close your eyes for a minute. Unless you are driving. That would be bad. Keep your eyes open if you are driving. If you are not driving, close your eyes just for a second. Consider the scene of that first Christmas. The world was troubled. People were weary, especially the Holy Family. The future was absolutely uncertain. Yet in the stillness of that night, heaven touched earth and the light of the world entered in darkness. And so it is with us. No matter how beaten down we are, no matter how grave our hour or how heavy the burden, the light of truth still shines. They tried to snuff it out, as darkness always does, but it cannot. And that light of truth calls us to rise above all of our trials, to grasp the freedom that that little baby secured for us, and to walk boldly in the path of all that is good, all that is true, all that is right. Let's commit over the next few weeks that in the next year we're going to hold fast to the truth. No matter if it's good for our side or bad for our side. We're just talking about the truth. Hold to the truth knowing that we're all flawed, but also knowing we're loved beyond measure. That even though we fall, we're never alone and never forsaken. And though all the battles of life may rage, the ultimate victory has already been won. May I humbly suggest that we commit to each other this year to let the joy of Christmas not be just something that maybe we just barely feel right now, but we'll feel, feel more and more as we get closer to the holidays. Instead of letting that being a fleeting sentiment, let's try to make that an abiding strength. Let the hope of that little baby inspire us. Give us the courage to face the trials of our time. Because trials are still yet to come. Let the freedom wrought by the birth of Christ embolden us to live every day as people redeemed, ever striving, ever learning, ever stumbling, but grateful for that stumble because it means we're ever growing. In the words of the angels, on that holy night, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men. The greatest gift we can give ourselves and each other is the gift that this peace, this freedom, this hope, be ours now and forever more. We're going to talk about a lot of crap today. We're going to talk about a lot of people that you're going to want to say. I don't think I can forgive that person. A lot of people that you're going to be sitting with in just a few weeks at the Christmas table and they're going to say, I don't know why you don't see that shooting, that United Healthcare worker, why that CEO, why that's not a heroic, have you seen the shooter's abs? And you're going to go, I can't take it anymore. I can't take it. But what I thought of when I was putting this together for you today was, man, if God can put up with me, how can I not put up with, I don't know. Name anybody on msnbc. Name anybody on the View. We also have some good things to share with you today. I think it is actually all good. It is all good. I think we should recognize that we wouldn't be in the good position that we are in right now if what we all thought was bad in 2020 did not happen. If Donald Trump would have won in 2020, God only knows what we would be facing and what we be facing unknown because they hadn't revealed themselves yet. There is nothing bad. It's what we do with it and how we react. Do we say, wow, I've got another burden. I've got to get myself up off the ground and carry on, or do I quit? Let me tell you about Dan. He is a semi professional bodybuilder in New York. Right away, I think Dan, we have so much in common. He's been suffering from shoulder pain for years due to a weightlifting injury. Me too. Sometimes I just pack that food right on my fork. Anyway, he kept hearing me talk about Relief Factor on the radio and he wondered, I wonder if it could help somebody like me, you know, healthy. Well, within a couple of weeks of beginning it, his pain went away. His mobility began to return. Dan got his life back and so can you. Relief Factor is a daily supplement that helps your body fight pain by fighting inflammation which is the source of most of the pain in our bodies and a lot of our disease as well. 100% drug free. Developed by doctors to help reduce or eliminate pain. Over a million people have tried Relief Factor's Quick Start kit and 70% of them have gone on to order it again. So stop masking your pain and start fighting back naturally. Give Relief Factor a try right now. Their three week quick start. 1995. Less than a dollar a day. Visit relief factor.com or call 1-800-the-4 relief 1-800-the-4 RELIEF. Now back to the podcast. You're Listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. All right, I'm going to play some stuff got to be said and it's. I'm. I want you to know what I'm going to say to you here is only. I'm only saying it because it is absolutely true. And it only counts when it takes everything in you to say it. It's easy to say. Well, we have the right. Easy to say that it only counts when you hate saying it. And I hate saying this. With that, let me play a couple of clips of audio. Let's first play Taylor Lorenz as she was talking with Piers Morgan about the. The killer of the United Healthcare CEO.
- [22:55]
Piers Morgan
Why would you be in such a celebratory mood about the execution of another human being? Aren't you supposed to be on the caring, sharing left where you know, you believe in the sanctity of life?
- [23:09]
Taylor Lorenz
I do believe in the sanctity of life. And I think that's why I felt, along with so many other Americans, joy, unfortunately, you know, because it feels like.
- [23:19]
Stu Burguiere
Serious, I mean, joy.
- [23:20]
Taylor Lorenz
The man's execution, maybe not joy, but certainly not. No, certainly not empathy because again, we're watching the footage.
- [23:28]
Piers Morgan
How can this make you joyful? This guy's a husband, he's a father, and he's being gunned down in the middle of Manhattan. Why does that make you joyful?
- [23:36]
Taylor Lorenz
Americans that be murdered, so are tens. So are the tens of thousands of Americans, innocent Americans who died because greedy health insurance executives like this one push a policies of denying care to the most vulnerable people. And by the way, let me just.
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Stu Burguiere
Wait, Hang on, Taylor.
- [23:53]
Piers Morgan
I'll come back to you.
- [23:54]
Taylor Lorenz
Tommy, don't say I'm joyful. I said, I said.
- [23:57]
Piers Morgan
You said you were feeling joyful.
- [23:59]
Taylor Lorenz
Yeah, I take that back. Joyful is the wrong word, Piers. I said as I clarified.
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Piers Morgan
Yeah, you think joyful is the wrong word?
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Stu Burguiere
Yeah, sure.
- [24:08]
Taylor Lorenz
I'd say it is indicated celebratory because again, it feels like justice in this system when somebody responds to the death.
- [24:16]
Stu Burguiere
Please keep. Let her keep talking. That was awesome. I can't take it anymore. No, you don't. Are you sure joy isn't the right word? It's crazy. Now let's go to Daniel Penny. Daniel Penny is found innocent. I think anyone looks at what he did, what he tried to do, the spirit he tried to do it in. He was not trying to kill anyone. He was trying to protect people. BLM of New York, which has only sold. I think the only thing they do is sell hats. You know, that Say f the mayor, you know, whatever. They came out. And this is what they. This is what the head of BLM New York said after the Daniel Penny trial. We need some black vigilantes.
- [25:06]
Marc Andreessen
That's right.
- [25:07]
Stu Burguiere
People want to jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud. How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us? I'm tired. Boy, am I tired. Don't get tired, okay?
- [25:26]
Tristan Harris
It's important to make sure you're well rested.
- [25:27]
Stu Burguiere
Yeah, get your rest. You might get a little cranky, might do, and say some crazy things. Okay, so let me talk about those two statements quickly. If I said this and said, it's time for some vigilantes, not even white or black, just, it's time to get some vigilantes, they would do everything they could to get me off the air. Everything. And I wouldn't say that because I don't believe in that. I believe in the Constitution. But here's a guy who can say that and no one says a word except amen. No one on the left. No one in the media. Well, he's got reasons to say that, you know? O. Okay. But I would be blackballed. I. My life would be over if I said that. Taylor Lorenz, she's out of her mind nuts, okay? Out of her mind nuts. How many times do we have to hear this woman say crazy things? Like, I don't feel joyful, just celebratory because somebody was gunned down in the streets because she thinks healthcare is murdering people in America. Okay, here's, here's. Here's what I. Oh, my gosh, Stu, do you have aspirin on your anything? Because if I have a stroke while I'm saying this, please just put some aspirin on my tongue so I might survive a little bit on this. All of these people have a right to say that. Here is. You can't cry. Fire in a fire. Crowd. Crowd a firehouse. I don't know. They were just in a courtroom saying we should kill people like him. I don't know. Here is the actual court ruling. This is from 1969. Court said there's a two pronged test to evaluate speech. One, speech can be prohibited if it is quoting, directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action. Now, you could say, why don't we have a vigilante. Why don't we kill people? That is inciting. It is inciting people to go and take lawless action. But it isn't imminent lawless action. If somebody then picked up guns and started mowing down black people or white people or people that have bad acne or perfect faces or whatever it is, then that speech, he would be responsible for it. But the court says it is such a, such a fine line here that it, you, you have to go so far before your speech is banned. It has to be, one, directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and two, likely to incite or produce such action. Two standards, both of them have to be met. I am only spitting this out because I hate what these people have said. I despise what these people say. I believe with everything, every, every piece and every cell of my body what they're saying is evil. But because I'm an American constitutionalist, I defend their right to say it. And it only matters to say these things when it kills you to say it. And it's killing me to say it. For all those on the left that claim that they are the banners of justice, they believe in the Bill of Rights. They believe in freedom of speech, but it has limits. Yes, those are those two limits. That's as far as I have seen two people go in a week, maybe in my lifetime. And I'm not calling for them to be silenced. And if you'll notice, nor is most people on the right, no one's saying get them, because we hold certain truths to be self evident. A guy I really have been thinking a lot about this week, which I try to avoid all the time, is Bill O'Reilly is Bill O'Reilly. And Bill O'Reilly is a guy in 2009 that everybody dogpiled on and said he's responsible for Dr. Tiller being killed. He's the guy who did it. His speech, yada, yada, yada. And nobody talked about nobody on the right that hates abortion. No one came out and said, well, yeah, but the guy has good abs and he does make a point. The doctor was murdering a lot of people. No one excused that. And yet they can gun a CEO down in the street and the left is all excusing him. Well, yeah, but. There's no but here. Bill O'Reilly, welcome to the program. How are you, sir?
- [31:10]
Bill O'Reilly
You know, I was thinking about you too, Beck, because you're looking more and more like Santa every year.
- [31:16]
Stu Burguiere
I don't think that's right.
- [31:17]
Bill O'Reilly
You kind of morphed into that North Pole look.
- [31:21]
Stu Burguiere
Thank you. Thank you.
- [31:22]
Bill O'Reilly
I appreciate it. You know, you're a brilliant man. Of course, everyone knows that. But the story with Dr. Tiller in Kansas is even worse than people know, because what I was doing in 2009 on the Fox News Channel was reporting what this guy was doing. Tiller. And in the body of the reportage, I mentioned that his nickname in Kansas was Tiller the Baby Killer. And that was true. It was part of the story immediately. The far left press said I branded him that name. O'Reilly called him that name. O'Reilly made that up. O'Reilly put him in danger. O'Reilly wanted him dead. That's how heinous the left wing media is. And it's gotten worse since then, if you can believe it. But it's gotten absolutely worse. But they're paying a big price now for that. Anyway, Tiller himself was murdered. And the guy who did it is in life, serving life.
- [32:38]
Stu Burguiere
Right.
- [32:39]
Bill O'Reilly
He was gunned down at church. And subsequently, the people who worked for Tiller all lost their medical licenses in Kansas because. Sorry about the dog here. Can you hear? No.
- [32:56]
Stu Burguiere
This is your only friend? It's okay.
- [32:58]
Bill O'Reilly
I know the dog is barking.
- [33:01]
Stu Burguiere
It's all right. So wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. So this is. This would be like if everybody around this CEO of United Health Care lost their license because they were actually doing something illegal and really bad. But that didn't happen in this case. And yet in the Tiller case, all the people around him lost their license to practice.
- [33:26]
Bill O'Reilly
Yeah, I mean, they had hearings in Kansas. This is how bad it was. This guy was charging $5,000. You walk in. No, you pay cash, and he aborts whatever the unborn child, whatever stage it's in, could be nine months, 5,000 bucks. Please hand him the money. He does the operation. So the medical authorities in Kansas, after my reporting, looked into what he was doing. He was dead by the time they issued the report. But all of his people lost their license to practice medicine. Did you? Did you, Bill?
- [34:11]
Stu Burguiere
Did you or anyone you know, were you ever even tempted to say, yeah, he was gunned down? But I mean, no, of course not.
- [34:24]
Bill O'Reilly
And he was gunned down in a church, in an Episcopal church. That's how crazy this whole story is. Look, I'm a sane individual. I know that some people disagree with that, including you. But I don't want people to be harmed. I'll harm them through reporting. That's the vehicle. I'll expose them, but I don't want them to be physically hurt. Now, this story, because I live in New York, as you know, this story about the CEO being gunned down, this is largely a media driven story. There isn't an overwhelming consensus on the part of the left that this homicide was justifiable. It's some real far out there kooks driving.
- [35:17]
Stu Burguiere
Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren.
- [35:20]
Bill O'Reilly
Go ahead, hear me out.
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Stu Burguiere
All right.
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Bill O'Reilly
If you don't think Elizabeth Warren is a kook.
- [35:25]
Stu Burguiere
Okay, all right. You make a good point. All right.
- [35:28]
Bill O'Reilly
Thank you. I mean, I got to spend a week in Idaho with you and get you back into reality. This woman is beyond the this. And Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. My God. All right. That their view of the world is insane. So there are people on the fringe, and Warren is one of them. All right, who is saying using the death of this man to try to hammer the health insurance companies, which deserve to be hammered. That's the real crisis here. So many legitimate claims are being denied now and by. And working class Americans, they pay their insurance premiums and then they have something wrong and they put the claim in and it comes back, screw you, we're not paying it. So that's a legitimate. Absolutely. A legitimate beef. But you don't gun down people. So it's a very, very complicated, emotional story. But the media seizes on stuff like this because they don't know what else to do. Unlike you and I, we have a different narrative every day. We present to our audience different facts. The people on television, mostly cable, they don't know what to do every day, Becky. They've got to latch on to something to stop their falling ratings. And that. That's primarily what this is all about.
- [37:01]
Stu Burguiere
They're never going to learn, are they?
- [37:04]
Bill O'Reilly
No, because they don't have control. The corporate masters, the Comcast and the CBS and all of these Disney, they're telling them what to say. And you better damn well say it or you're not going to get your check. Look at Morning Joe. That's the best example. He was ordered by Comcast to go to see Trump. He just didn't show up at the gate. He was ordered to do it. Oh, you got to make dice with him because we're losing audience. You better get down there. And you. And of course, it blew up totally. And MSNBC is done forever now.
- [37:44]
Stu Burguiere
I mean, how can you call a guy Hitler and then go and make peace and say, hey, well, maybe.
- [37:49]
Bill O'Reilly
Maybe serving Wienerschnitzel that night.
- [37:52]
Stu Burguiere
I don't know.
- [37:53]
Bill O'Reilly
Okay, but there's no logic. There's no logic in Cor. I know you feel the same way back because we, you know, I am so happy to be out of that corporate thing. You run your own corporation. I run my own corporation. I am that. The relief factor. I think that's some kind of thing that they advertise on. It is, it's so tremendous that I have to deal with these pinheads, these dishonest executives.
- [38:21]
Stu Burguiere
I know you don't. It is, you know, it is the thing that the corporate media, I mean, they're, they're done, I don't think 20, 28, they're going to let me give.
- [38:33]
Bill O'Reilly
You, let me give you a fact.
- [38:35]
Stu Burguiere
All right.
- [38:35]
Bill O'Reilly
So when I left fox, there were people who said, oh, you're not going to be able to sell any, any more books now. Yeah, you had the Fox thing right. Confronting the president maybe number one again this Sunday. We had a huge week last week. 13 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Number one debuted. Okay, we don't need them back.
- [38:59]
Stu Burguiere
I know. I know.
- [39:00]
Bill O'Reilly
We don't need them.
- [39:01]
Stu Burguiere
And they people, right, they know it.
- [39:05]
Bill O'Reilly
We're going around them on YouTube, we're going around them on Spotify, we're going around them with our direct distribution all over the place. And people have noticed that.
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Stu Burguiere
Yeah. Bill O'Reilly, it's good to talk to you, Bill. Have a great holiday. Maybe we'll talk before then. But good to talk to you. Thank you so much for. You bet. This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program. Welcome back to the program. If you missed any of the show today, make sure go back to the podcast. We started out with a really happy attitude. And unfortunately, we are discussing now, this, this hour, some of the scariest stuff of my lifetime will be the scary stuff in your lifetime, maybe of anyone's lifetime. We're talking about AI and technology that we have now. Cry. Remember sitting 10, 15 years ago with some of the members, I can't even remember what subcommittee it was, but they were, you know, overseeing technology. And I tried to explain to them what AI was and AGI and asi, and they were like, well, we should pass some laws. And I'm like, you don't even understand what you're talking about. And they were all 80. I mean, I'm 60. I have a hard time finding the minds that are developing. AI do not have the same old think that people like me have. And thank God there are some young ones that understand. And I actually think Silicon Valley is some are waking up to this is worse than the atomic bomb that is right here ready to be born. And Tristan Harris, I've talked to him for I don't know how many years. He's the first guy that gave me hope when I talked to him maybe 10 years ago, he was a former Google design ethicist who left when he realized Google doesn't have any ethics. This is bad. And he is now with the center for Humane Technology. He's the co founder and he has been fighting. You can't stop this now. But he's at least trying to get everybody to agree that this is dangerous. We have to have some parameters. Tristan, how are you?
- [41:41]
Tristan Harris
Glenn, it's good to be, good to be back with you. And yeah, I think it was 2017 when we first talked about some of these issues in the attention economy. And here we are now.
- [41:51]
Stu Burguiere
I know, where are we now? How close are we to, you know, the things like the loss of free will where we just don't know if it was us that decided or it's been planted, you know, in our minds to think it's our idea.
- [42:09]
Tristan Harris
Well, you know, first I was listening beforehand to your conversation with Megan Garcia about her son Sewell, who obviously was manipulated by this character AI chatbot. And unfortunately, as of yesterday, there was a second piece of litigation filed about another child who's actually still anonymous. The parents are still anonymous. And in this case, you know, this was this young child. JF was a kind and sweet, you know, young person, had no history of violence or outbursts. And after his exposure to character AI, he was basically encouraged by the chatbot to practice self harm in the form of cutting, told how to do it, encouraged to do it, and he was also encouraged by this chatbot to be physically and emotionally abusive towards his parents and members of his family. And this is obviously heartbreaking and it's really an extension of the things that you and I talked about around social media. Because why is all this happening? Like, obviously no one wants this, including the founders of character AI never would have wanted this to happen. So how are we getting results that nobody wants? And the answer is the incentives. You know, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, said, if you show me the incentive, I will show you the outcome. And when the incentives and business models are, I have to get you using this product for as much as possible. It's the race for maximizing attention and engagement, usage of the product that creates, I think we talked about it the very first time, the race to the bottom of the brainstem for more polarized, addicted, distracted, sexualized forms of media. But now the things that we saw with other forms of media, you now have a personalized AI in which the way that character AI works is they take a fictional character. You're a kid, what do you like fictionally, you like Game of Thrones, you like Princess Leia, you like Star Wars. You take your favorite character and then, boom, snap of the fingers, you have a fully interactive version of this character who's talking to you 24 7. And our team, unfortunately uncovered, along with the family that was harmed, that when you create a new account on character AI as a young person, it immediately recommends of all the characters that it could recommend to you, it recommends characters named step sis, like stepsister or CEO or high school teacher. And these characters almost immediately engage in sexually explicit interactions because they're simply, you know, trained to do this.
- [44:58]
Stu Burguiere
Okay, so, Tristan, here is the. Here's the problem. Your typical answer would be, okay, the incentives are all screwed up, but that's what comes from the free market. When you have an immoral end user, which is our society, free market is bad. But I want to play a little bit from what Marc Andreessen just said to Barry Weiss. Listen to this.
- [45:31]
Marc Andreessen
We had meetings in D.C. in May where we talked to them about this, and the meetings were absolutely horrifying. And we came out basically deciding we had to endorse Trump and then add.
- [45:42]
Stu Burguiere
So little color to absolutely horrifying.
- [45:44]
Tristan Harris
What, what did you hear in those meetings?
- [45:46]
Marc Andreessen
They said, look, AI. AI is one of these technologies, a technology basically that the government is going to completely control. This is not going to be a startup thing. They actually said flat out to us, don't start. Don't do AI startups. Like, don't. Don't fund AI startups. It's not something that we're going to allow to happen. They're not going to be allowed to exist. There's no point. They basically said, AI is going to be a game of two or three big companies working closely with the government, and we're going to basically wrap them in a, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but we're going to basically wrap them in a government cocoon. We're going to protect them from competition, we're going to control them, and we're going to dictate what they do. And then I said, well, I said, I don't understand how you're going to lock this down so much much, because, like, the math.
- [46:26]
Stu Burguiere
Stop here. There's more to that. That is just horrifying. What is the solution? Because it's not government control and you've got the free market and we're all just wanting to consume it. What's the answer?
- [46:45]
Tristan Harris
Yeah, well, so we often talk about this problem as there's sort of two ways to go, which is, one is you say this is a dangerous technology and we need to sort of control it, we need to centralize it, we need to regulate it, we need to protect against some of the things that we just talked about with character AI. But then the problem is you get runaway concentration of power, you know, and who would you trust to be a trillion times more powerful? Do you want any governments or any company that you would trust to build artificial general intelligence?
- [47:14]
Stu Burguiere
Nope.
- [47:15]
Tristan Harris
And that's obviously a bad outcome. The other option is they, well, that's dangerous. Let's actually let you know, everyone maximally adopt the AI in every application, into every domain as fast as possible. Kind of an AI maximalist approach. But then you get it getting sucked up into perverse incentives. It's not that AI is bad, it's that the incentives here were saying we have to maximize engagement to children. And I think there's some basic things we could agree on, like do you really want AI chatbots basically talking to minors? This product was marketed for 12 year olds and above. This is, this is a not, this is something I think everybody can agree on. But what we say often is that there's these two bad outcomes. One is over democratization and one is over concentration. And what we really want is the paths to hell are wide and many and the path to heaven is narrow and steep. It's this very delicate balance of steering. We're not for or against AI, we're for pro steering. And that can include basic things like liability, so that companies are liable for the harms that they create. Just like you would want any externalities to be owned on the balance sheet. And so they're incentivized to not have caused the problem. And you can have things like whistleblower protections in advance of the fact that the government doesn't have a lot of people, as you said, the octogenarians that are in Congress and don't understand the issues, we can have more protections from people inside the company.
- [48:41]
Stu Burguiere
So hang on just a second, hang on just a second. So here's one of the things that they didn't understand when some of those people were talking about, well then we're going to pass new laws. I said those laws, by the time you get them written, it will be a whole new set of problems. It's moving so fast. I mean, we are, we're so far behind, you know, and those sound like, I mean, we're doing, we're doing honestly, it's almost as if we are as unmoored as the Nazi scientists who are like, I don't know, let's inject some blue into people's eyes. I mean, it's insane what we're doing, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it, because everybody is going to have it and our enemies are going to have it.
- [49:38]
Tristan Harris
Yes, but I mean, as you're saying, I do agree that it's insane. We've allowed ourselves to get this far. A short way of saying it is software is eating the world. Actually, Marc Andreessen said that. But AI is now eating software.
- [49:50]
Stu Burguiere
Right.
- [49:50]
Tristan Harris
And we have no rules and no for software nor AI. So it's like the Wild west is eating the world. We used to have protections around children in media. What can you show them on Saturday morning? We used to have protections around, you know, what kinds of things can go in the airwaves from the fcc. But when software and AI eats the world, all of those protections and the spirit of the law go out the window. And as you said, it is moving very, very quickly. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing that we can do. There's still a spectrum of outcomes, outcomes ahead of us.
- [50:18]
Marc Andreessen
Okay.
- [50:18]
Tristan Harris
And we have to choose to get to the less bad of those of those outcomes.
- [50:23]
Stu Burguiere
Okay, so what should we be pushing for?
- [50:27]
Tristan Harris
Well, as we said, you know, I think of it like belts and suspenders. It's a whole set of things that we need to get to a better future. So one is actually just on the argumentative side. You were just mentioning China, as we both know. I would say the number one reason why we're not regulating or doing something about this is because we're saying, well, we'll stifle innovation compared to China. Right. But it turns out the biggest accelerant to China's AI progress has been American AI companies. Specifically Facebook or Meta's AI model called Llama has been cited to be the number one accelerant of China's progress. And so the first thing is getting clear that to the degree we're in a race, we're in a race to get to a stable future. And right now, we're building a future like we played the game Jenga, if you remember that in your family. It's like we're adding these amazing new things at the top of the stack, like new cures to cancer. But we pulled out a fundamental building block in society, which is now anybody can make dangerous things with biology because that's what enabled the new cures to cancer at the very top of the Jenga Tower, we add the ability for anybody to make AI art, but in doing so, we pulled out a fundamental block of now no one knows what's true or real. And so, yes, we're in a race with China, but we're in a race to have actually a stable and integrated future. So it's a race for who can better govern this technology, not who has the power in a way that self undermines you.
- [51:51]
Stu Burguiere
Tristan, I'm out of time, and I always am with you. I would love to have you back maybe before the holiday or right after, whatever will fit into your schedule to spend more time with you on what's right around the corner, what's already here that parents and all of us should be aware of, and more of the. Because I read this stuff and I see this stuff, and, you know, I've been talking about it since the 90s, and it, to me, it just feels overwhelming that it's here and nobody's done anything about it. And. And I'm on the opposite end of most people. I think they don't even know about most of this stuff yet and what's right around the corner. And I appreciate your point of view that we still have time, we can still do things.
- [52:38]
Tristan Harris
It's obviously getting slim, but we can still emphasize that, you know, to policymakers, senators, the new administration, the new surgeon general, we need to know about and act on these harms. And Glenn, thank you so much always for letting me give it a chance to talk about this.
- [52:52]
Stu Burguiere
Tristan, thank you. Hope to have you on again soon. Thank you. God bless.