← The Glenn Beck Program
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- [00:00]
A
Last night, the President gave an incredible speech and the press has it all wrong, as usual. John Solomon, who is the guy who helped find all of these documents, will tell you what it really means. Plus makers versus takers and Spencer Clavin and a story of empowerment. All of that and so much more on today's podcast. Turning 65 feels like you've been dropped into a constant stream of mailers and calls and ads telling you something different about Medicare. And most of it just makes things more confusing. But because this is not a small decision, it's your health care. You need to know you can see the right doctors, you need to get the care that you have to have and not pay for a plan that doesn't fit your life. This is where Chapter comes in. They don't just hand you options. They look at your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs, and they help you find a plan that actually works for you. Over the last year, they have helped people in this audience save $1.5 million just by finding better fitting plans. And it's really sometimes not even about the money. I heard about a gu named Mark Chapter stepped in, helped him get the care he needed. He said they were absolutely spectacular. So give him a call. The call is free. They've helped thousands in my audience, and they can help you, too. Dial £250. Say the keyword chapter. It's £250, keyword chapter. 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? Give us five stars and lead 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. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Program, John Solomon, who I think is one of the best journalists in the country. He is the CEO of Just the News and editor in chief of Just the News. He is also an unpaid advisor to President Trump on this issue because he has been at the forefront of exposing and getting these things declassified. And so he knows the story better than anybody else. Welcome to the program. John, how are you?
- [02:45]
B
I'm great, Glenn. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
- [02:48]
A
Can you quickly explain your new role at the White House? What is it that you do? How do you separate that from news and journalism?
- [02:55]
B
That's a great question. So really, I'm just a journalist who got the chance to go to the White House and tell the White House which documents I've heard about that I've never been able to get through FOIA lawsuits or through my relationship with Tulsi Gabbard. I had heard these things about China getting 220 million voter records, and I couldn't get them out of Tulsi Gabbit before I left. And so at some point, the White House said, well, listen, why don't you just come here, work with a team of intelligence officers, tell them what you want when they find it, and we'll declassify it and you can go out and explain to the American public. So I have the sort of the same exact role that I do every day, other than I just have a shortcut to getting the documents that I think will benefit the entire country.
- [03:35]
A
Has that ever happened in history in America? I've never heard of that. I mean, that is.
- [03:39]
B
I don't think so. I have to thank the President.
- [03:41]
A
I hate the deal.
- [03:42]
B
Yeah, Susie. Susie Wiles and the president decided this would be a good idea. By the way, it's built on a model. They didn't use a journalist at the time, but Barack Obama had a transparency office in the White House in 2015 and 16. And that's what I modeled up as my suggestion. And they have come back. So there's seven or eight career intelligence officers. I tell them what I've learned as a reporter, they go out and try to find it. If they find it, they say, we got something can't show you yet. We'll get it declassified. They take it over the White House, they get it declassified, they send it to the intelligence. Is this accurate? Yep. Anything that you want redacted that you know, sources and methods. And then as a mere mortal, I finally get to look at it, and then I go out and try to tell the public what we found.
- [04:22]
A
Okay, April, this year, you guys reported on the 2020 election meddling.
- [04:27]
B
We did.
- [04:28]
A
So what did we hear last night that was new? Anything?
- [04:32]
B
So, yeah, a lot. So in April, I had the benefit of something very small. I had a single document from Avril Haines team with two sentences saying, hey, we think China got access to photo files. What did that mean? That sounds serious, because I know we indicted Iranian hackers for getting access to just 100,000 voter files in 2020. So what's China been doing? Why don't we know about it? When those documents came back, I was floored. I was literally floored, Glenn, because what we learned was that China didn't have just some files, not 100,000, like Iran, 220 million. They had the Holy Grail of the voterless in America. And this shocked me because for one, we indicted Iran for just 100,000. Two, the CIA had these documents saying, if anyone ever got these voter files, here are the nefarious things they can do. They three, in 2024, Joe Biden got up and railed on China because China had hacked Great Britain's voter file database. By the way, only 40 million files there, about a fifth of what was taken from America. And no one told the American public through this whole time. We were much larger victims, by the way, this is larger than the Equifax leak of 2017, which was about 148 million Americans impacted, 220 million. We were kept in the dark about something that in any other time would have been immediate, alerted to the public.
- [05:57]
A
So, John, I just said at the same time, the media and half the states are saying we can't give the federal, the US Federal government access to voter data files because it's too dangerous for the US to have. The media today is on television saying, it's no big deal. You could buy this stuff anywhere. So which is it, John? Which is it?
- [06:21]
B
It's a little bit of both. There are some states, though, not all 50 states, but there are some states that you can buy the commercial versions of those databases. That commercial version doesn't have the Holy Grail stuff. It doesn't have some of the things that you need to be fully read. So you'll know John Solomon votes in Virginia, by the way. I don't vote, but if I did, I'd be voting in Virginia. But you won't know some specific things and like identifiers and driver's license. What China does is it takes the commercial data first and then it sends a hacking unit and it's called the cne. And then they go in and they get. They hack into the databases and get the stuff that really you can register with. The stuff you buy commercially is just surface level you know, sort of that John Solomon registered in Virginia. That's all you know. When you get the voter file its entirety by hacking either commercial government or state voter databases, you're now in a position to make a ballot request for someone from China. So there are six things that the US Government said once China got access, if they would be able to do one, they would vote in your name and you'd show up and they say, sorry, sir, you can't vote because you already voted. And you're like, wait, I didn't vote. Remember how some people said that happened in 2020? I remember that coming out. The second thing that would happen is they could change a little bit of your voter file without you knowing. You'd go in with your license and I'm at this street and say, no, sir, you can't vote because you're registered on this one. So you're going to have to do a provisional. We may or may not count it. The third thing they could do is go and take your identity, move you to another state. You'll never know you're living in Virginia, but you just got registered in Michigan, in China will vote there for you. You'll never know. You may never know you voted in another state. And then they can do things by taking their other data hacks that they have on Americans and start targeting you for malign influence. Like, there are very clear things in these documents we released yesterday that no one's ever seen before. The Chinese were telling their consulates target people with this messaging. Then they told their social media folks, make it look like Donald Trump is a bad person. Make it try to foment racial strife on the streets. Now, I want to compare this, what these documents say, to what Mark Warner was saying. Nothing happened from China. If you hack 220 million voter files from us, if you're trying to foment racism and division on our streets, if you're trying to use your social media, if you're using blackmail, by the way they talk, China was gaining blackmail on US Officials so that they can embarrass them just before the election. If you're doing those things, you have intervened in our election. I don't care what any Democrat or some knucklehead on CNN is saying. Those four things are thresholds that amount to interference in any common American's mind.
- [08:56]
A
Okay, So I thought that there were two things that came out. One, that this is really important, this voter data. And it could. They could just use it for algorithms to shape you on how you're Going to vote all the things you just said and shape you as well. And two, and this might have been a bigger thing, the, the COVID up from our own intelligence agencies. I mean, John, this is, this is what happened in Vietnam to some degree. It's what that, what happened with Iran Contra in a way where everybody said, well, no, the President knew. Here we know, the President didn't know. And it was a problem every time something like this has happened. And I can't, I think this is the most important violation of this, them keeping information vital from the President of the United States. I think. Is there anything here that is going to be so indisputable that you'll see an actual per block?
- [10:01]
B
Yes, I do. I think it's possible. I think you'll see terminations first. Right. And so the CIA is now reviewing everyone that was involved with a presidential daily briefing for which this information was withheld. And you're seeing things here that you're showing up on screen so important. They basically are talking about deliberately massaging President Trump's database so he won't see the Chinese election interference stuff. There are people watching this that are pros in the intelligence community. They're not trying to cover it up. And they're writing back to this like, it boggles the mind that we're going to keep this from the President. Another FBI person who kept pulling back China intelligence interference reports and not letting the community see them so they can be investigated, wrote in her own text messages to her colleague, I'm running a shadow government. I'm running a shadow government to keep the President and others from learning about this. It is remarkable when you hear that, those sort of text messages, what was going on, other people writing this is clearly politics. We should be telling the President. An NSA guy said, I'm alarmed that we're not telling the President. But I was too weak to stand up and object in the meeting. This was one of the widest secrets in the intelligence community that some intelligence analysts used their power to keep the President in the dark. About a 220 million voter data breach, about the vulnerability of machines in elections, about Venezuela's successful hack of a voter machine in a controlled environment, not in an election, but in a laboratory setting. All of those things are things that are actionable that a President and a Congress needs to know in real time. And we had analysts in the intelligence community who thought their political purposes were more important than our national security. They, they didn't want Donald Trump to have this. They didn't want Donald Trump to Make a China argument. So they shut off the spigot of information for what they're paid to provide the President. It's fraud, it is deceit. It is harmful to our national security.
- [11:54]
A
Talking to John Solomon, there seems to be some dots to connect between the investigation into the CCP billionaire Neville Singham, then Cuba's efforts to agitate in the US Marco Rubio, and the State Department's mission to crack down on violent far left extremism. An amazing.
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B
Did you see that conference yesterday?
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A
Yeah, amazing it was. And to disrupt their financial networks. Is there more to come on this? Am I, am I seeing dots that are connected?
- [12:29]
B
I think you're seeing boulders coming down a hill, picking up momentum. I think the FBI and the IRS are going to begin taking some really big actions against people that might have been conspiring with foreign powers to harm American national security. There is evidence that I'm working on right now, by the way, as a reporter, not in my government job right now, that there was contact going on between US Groups and foreign enemies specifically related to the anti ICE and ice out protests. Imagine that if anyone involved in that was conspiring with a foreign power to harm our United States. That's something we're looking at right now. Scott Bessing came on my show a couple of weeks ago, said we are going to start pulling IRS tax exemptions and making people pay taxes for what they did and they may be charged with fraud if they claim they were doing public good and instead they were doing public harm under a tax exemption. So the irs, the FBI, the Homeland Security Investigations Unit, created a task force and they are cracking down. And I think the first fruits of that are likely to be in the next month. We'll start to see actual activity. Burp blocks, actions in court, IRS actions. And that is the beginning of a long haul because our country has been embedded with nonprofits that are aligned with foreign enemies. And that is something that is not a good security posture.
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A
When the President said in a tweet, one of the most terrifying and yet so satisfying tweets, I don't know, within the last month, he said something along the lines of, you know, the communists are starting to come out everywhere. And I've been waiting for this moment, wait to see what's coming. It's going to be fun to watch.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Is this the beginning of this?
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B
I think that is what he's referring to, that we now are moving towards a body of evidence that Americans were working with our enemies to harm our country. I don't know. What charge that will be? You can throw terms like treason, sedition, I don't know yet. But I do believe that that's what everybody's working on. That is a very, very important development in our country. And it's important for another reason. Rasmussen. Scott Rasmussen has a poll out today. 31% of Americans now think socialism is good, and not even a majority think it's bad any longer. That is the most alarming statistic I've ever seen. What it means is the mainstream media have normalized what is the radical in America, and they're now convincing people that socialism is good. It has never been good in world history. It has been repressive. It is bad at this moment. The joy that Venezuelans have today versus six months ago shows you what happens when people get a little freedom from the repression of socialism. Every economy that ever was socialist has failed. And yet Americans, a third of Americans, nearly. I think this is a good thing. We have to nip that in the bud. Stop that. And the way you stop it is by stopping the propagandists who pump that into our information system every day to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
- [15:21]
A
I have about 40 seconds left. Let me just ask you this last question. In one of the documents released last night, the Chinese government sought to identify US Journalists who had reported negatively on the US Presidents and pay them to write more negative articles about him.
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B
Yep.
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A
Are we ever going to get to a place where we will see names?
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B
I've asked for that. Now. The committee, the commission just asked for that task force. So if there are any journalist names that they've confirmed, I hope we'll be able to make them public sometime soon.
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A
Wow. John, Godspeed. Thank you so much for all your hard work.
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B
Good to be with you, John. Thank you.
- [15:54]
A
You bet. John Solomon from Just the News. If you don't start your day with just the news, you're, you're, you're, you're missing out a lot. John is really buttoned up. Just the News. Calm. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. And don't forget, forget. Rate us on itunes. So let me start with this speech that the Pres. That. I'm sorry, Marco Rubio was that Freudian that Marco Rubio gave on radical leftism yesterday. Listen to this.
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C
This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best. A revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong. And the good it is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can. This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves anti capitalists or anti imperialists or communists or anarchists or Marxists, but the fundamental character is always the same. It's always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice, liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world. Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us.
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A
Here's what people think, you know, when they think that, and I'm going to use the actual technical term, communists, those who are actual, you know, DSA from their own report proudly state that 51% of their board are self acknowledged communists. Communism is a really terrifying thing because it is, it's legalized theft and legalized destruction. They steal the. The. There are makers and there are takers in the world. That's all there is, those two things. Makers and takers. Which one are you? Now when I say makers, most people will say, oh well, that's like Elon Musk. No, you're a maker. You're a maker. You may not be the person that says, I want to run my own business. I got a plan, I'm going to build this empire. That may not be you, but you are making something every day. You're making something of yourself. You're making something of your family. If you're trying to build a family, you're a maker. Whether you're the dad who's working two jobs or a mom that's working two jobs or a stay at home mom or stay at home dad, you are a maker. You believe in your family and you are building something big for the future. And then there are those who want to take things from you. You're working two jobs, so you're paying taxes. And these takers want to increase your taxes because they don't have, they don't know how to make. They don't care about the family, they don't care about a making, they care about tearing down. This is what he's talking about. When there's deep resentment for the people who do. And the problem with all of this is, you know, people think it's all compassion. Well, Jesus, no, Jesus would not have been a communist. Jesus would not have been a socialist. He wouldn't have. He. He was, he would be for you know what, Give all of your riches away, but you give it away. Not at the barrel of a gun, not because you have to. Nothing changes as this is. This is the part that people miss about Christianity. Even Christians miss this. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if your heart doesn't change. I'm sorry, I know you can say with your mouth, I accept Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. But if your heart doesn't change, I'm sorry, you could say whatever you want, but. And I don't know, and I could be wrong, but when you get up, I'd be really shocked if somebody was like, oh yeah, before I die, I'm with a prostitute right now. I'm actually raping that prostitute while I'm pillaging some other people. And I accept Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. I'm sorry, I don't think he's going to accept that. I really don't.
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B
I don't.
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A
But maybe it is me. Your heart has to change because that is the secret to all of it. When you have a government set up to take from those that make your heart is hard. I want it. They do not deserve it. I deserve it. I am going to take it. Instead of changing the heart of the people who have all of that money. And they go, you know what? I just want to help. I want to help. And then the socialists or the communists always miss that. We are the most charitable nation on earth. They always miss that. Carnegie. Oh, this bad guy. Carnegie built libraries all over the country. And why did he do it? He didn't do it as a tax write off. He, he believed that everyone could be a king of their own kingdom, that you can build something, but not without a king's library. And so he took whatever was in the king's library at the time, the most important books. He said, like, I will, I'll build the library. I'll pay for it all. Put all the books in it. You just build the library. You just build the building. I'll put everything in it. And so he partnered with towns, farm towns, big towns all over the country to build all these libraries. Well, where would we be if somebody had not done that? And does that make him a good guy? No. Does the fact that he made money make him a bad guy?
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D
No.
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A
But the thing is, if you don't change people's hearts, then the whole thing depends on somebody else being absolutely right all the time. And that can never go wrong. So once the system starts to fail, as it always does, then you have to have secret police, because this way it always ends. KGB, East Germany called their Zastasi. The Stasi had one informant for every 63 East Germans. More surveillance per capita than any regime in human history. And here's what the deal stop people from saying the plan doesn't work. That's the thing. People notice when bread doesn't come. And so they start saying something, and so I gotta stop them from saying it. That's why the left does not. That's why they want to. That's why they want to control the algorithm. That's why they want you to stop saying things. They want you to learn. No, there's consequences when you say things that we don't want you to say, because that's essential. And you've got to become militant about it because eventually the plan doesn't work. And so you have to have people that come in, like the Stasi, and silence those people. You know, when the Wall came down in 1988, 1989, we found out what East Germany actually looked like. We didn't know for sure. Per person, about a third as wealthy as the West Germans they had been separated from for 40 years. Same language, same culture, same starting point in 1945. Only difference. One said it was right to take from the makers. And when the Wall opened, people flowed one direction. They didn't go to East Germany, they all went to West Germany. This is what we're fighting. And this administration and Marco Rubio and last night, Donald Trump, they're getting serious about it. I mean, I told you yesterday, I did not think that Donald Trump would come out and be as harsh on China as he was. I mean, he named it, he said, there it is. And who did it? The Chinese. Now, I don't know what that means. I wonder if they've had conversations yet, him and President Z. But I gotta tell you, it was stronger than I expected. But I don't want you to listen to the media. I want you. No, I shouldn't say that. I want you to listen to the media understanding what they're doing. They are trying to silence actual documents. They're trying to say those documents don't make any difference. And, and the people who are in with the media and the left will tell you you're a conspiracy theorist for believing them. I want you to listen to what they're saying, I want you to compare and contrast. I want you to read the documents yourself that the president put out last night@whitehouse.gov read the documents because they make it very clear, very clear. And then go ahead and listen to the media and see what they say about those documents. You'll be able to decide you're smart enough to figure this out on your own. You don't need me or anybody else to tell you. Just read what it actually says. But they want you to shut up. And let me give you a really good example of having to shut up, what that leads to. In Maine, there is Ashley Webb. She's an activist. She's a guy. Now, I'm not supposed to say that because there's a penalty attached to that. If I say she's actually a dude, there's a penalty because they need me to shut up. And that is just. It doesn't care about Ashley. It is about control over me and people who won't toe the line. It has nothing to do with Ashley Webb. But during the debate for candidates to replace Graham Platner, Ashley Webb is on. And this is what she said. This is why she's qualified to serve in. He is qualified to serve for the U.S. senate. Listen, Ashley, what qualifications do you have to serve in the US Senate?
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B
Oh, I ran for office several times.
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A
Didn't win, but I did run.
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B
And then I'm a songwriter, and then
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A
I write my own books.
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B
And then suppose my transparency. I wouldn't lie to the people and I wouldn't deceive the people like we're being deceived right now.
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A
You have to see this video. It's sad. It really is truly sad. It's truly sad. It looks like an sl, you know, an SNL sketch. But they would. SNL would never do this sketch. You know, they can't see the. They can't see the. The absurdity in real life anymore. But this would. 20 years ago, that would have been a sketch. And the audience would have been roaring, laughing, because it's so absurd. He's wearing a dress, by the way, and standing on the st. On the stage. And you know what? I applaud his courage. I applaud his willingness to serve. I applaud his courage. His courage. But that's how insane things have gotten. Things are so insane that they have gone from a Nazi racist, a rapist, alleged
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D
to.
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A
I mean, this guy might win. I don't know who's going to win. I don't know who's going to win. It's so insane. If I. If there were any kind of data out that said Ashley Webb is the most electable anybody. And the Democrats who would say this is ridiculous today would be saying, that's the one I'm going to vote for. Because they can win, they can beat. It's this horrible, twisted game. And I think what you and I have in common is we don't look at this as a game. This is our country. This is our children. This is our children's future. It is the future of freedom all around the world. If we blow this, there's no other place to run. And it's not a game. And I think that's why you and I get so roped in, why we are so. We get sometimes so angry about it because we actually care. And it seems like so many people. This is my biggest problem with the left and not the left, people who vote Democrat, who are just getting their news from one source. If I could talk to them and they could say, oh, no, I read the documents. Did you really read the documents? What did the documents say? And they said, oh, I read them. And here's what it said. But here's why I disagree with you, Glenn. I could live with that person forever. I just can't handle people who only get their news from one source, like cnn. And then they say, that's it. And then they. They defend it to the. And you can show them the proof that that's not what it is, and their eyes glaze over and they just keep arguing.
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C
That's.
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A
That's where it becomes a game for so many people and a sad game because it's hypnosis. Either that or it's a mental illness.
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D
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
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A
Spencer. How are you, sir? Glad I'm doing great.
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D
It's great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
- [30:19]
A
Yeah, it's good to be you. Good to be with you. I have to tell you, I remember reading the Odyssey when I think I was in high school and I just thought it was just a bore fest and Couldn't get through is one of the greatest stories of all. I mean, you know, this is. I love this. I remember I read Wuthering Heights at one point as an adult, and I read it and I'm like, that is
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D
actually a boring book. I have to tell you.
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A
Oh, really?
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D
That one is actually boring. I don't know. Did you like it?
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A
Oh, no, I did. Sorry. I did. I liked it. And I thought, all right, fish. And reread it yeah, there's something about these classics, you know, discovery, you know, here I am, a 30 year old guy going, you know, people should read more classics. There's something to this classic. Yeah, they're classics for a reason.
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D
You don't say.
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A
Anyway, yeah, the Odyssey is, is like that, where it is such a great story. Can you start with what the story is?
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D
Yeah, I'm really happy to do that. And it's easy on one level. It's a story about a guy going home. Odysseus is a warrior and a king. He's the king of Ithaca. He's been fighting in Troy for 10 years. That's the prequel, the Iliad, if you like. And this is the sequel to the Iliad, where he tries to make his way home, but for a whole bunch of reasons, including the wrath of the gods and all sorts of other mythological mishaps along the way, he can't get back. And when he arrives back, finally he discovers that a pack of weasels and snakes, a bunch of suitors, have taken over his palace. And he has to wreak vengeance upon them to gain his queen back. Penelope, who's been waiting for him all that time, all those 20 years that he's been gone.
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A
And he, one of the reasons he doesn't come back is because. Because everybody died that was under his command. And so he's kind of feeling bad about that. Or do I have that right or wrong?
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D
Well, close. So people, all of his men die along the way as part of this tormented journey. But you're getting at another layer of the story, which is once you tell the kind of beginning, middle, end, plot of it, you get to dig deeper into these incredible layers, including, yeah, why is it that this guy can't make it home? And what does it mean to come home after 10 years of war? What does it take to rediscover yourself and reflect on the experience of being a soldier, having to do savage, brutal deeds and then go back and become a husband and a family guy and a dad out back in the yard with a beer. So there's definitely that going on as well. And these big questions of leadership that you raise.
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A
I don't remember the hammock with the beer in the story, but maybe I missed the beer.
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D
Sorry, Wine. Wine. They're Greek, so it's wine, but yeah, close enough.
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A
Okay, so the other thing, and please correct me if I'm wrong, because I most likely am. But his son is angry with him, right? And his wife, well, everyone's got a
- [33:33]
D
lot of feelings, right? I would say, Clint, everyone's got a lot of feelings. His son Telemachus is. He's one of the first ever coming of age stories that we have in Western literature. And this is how the poem starts, which may be why you were bored by it. It's possible that you got to this poem and you were like, ah, there's dragons and monsters and witches and gods. And then the first thing that happens is we sit around in Ithaca with this kid who's kind of not sure about what he wants to do with his life. And he's fatherless, so he's trying to gain a certain amount of manhood and maturity. Penelope, meanwhile, yeah, is waiting for Odysseus. She's a famous model of devotion, but. But she's also human. And everyone in this poem is beautifully human. So she is trying to stave off the suitors with this famous trick of weaving and unweaving a burial shroud. And then she's also, yeah, this very beautiful symbol of how she's a match for him because he's famous for his metis, his cunning and his intelligence. Basically, she has that same amount of kind of deceitfulness, but also wiles and smarts. And when the they finally meet, he's in disguise. She's not sure what to believe. She's not ready even to let go of her defensiveness, and neither is he. And they have this gorgeous reconciliation scene where she practically melts into his arms when he finally proves that he knows the secret of their marriage, which is that their bed is carved out of a tree that she asked him to move and he says, no, I can't. So there are all of these moments that are really cinematic and offer a great kind of palette for a director like Nolan to work with. There's also a lot of wordplay and kind of the plot on purpose twists around. The word that Homer uses at the beginning for Odysseus is he's Polutropos. He's many weighed, he has many ways and wanderings. And the plot itself loops back over onto itself. So there's also stuff that maybe, if you're coming to it for the first time, you're like, I thought this was about a king and a queen. And now I'm kind of wandering about in Pylos and Sparta with all these random characters. But what I would say, if you're getting into reading it for the first time, is like, bear with him. For the first four books, there are 24 books or chapters of the poem. And just keep an eye On Homer's great theme, which is the man, he begins the poem, andramoi enepe musa sing to me of a man muse. And the whole thing is about, who is this guy? And if you think about it as a kind of identity tale and a homecoming tale, and you keep an eye on the character of Odysseus, you find just like endless stuff that reveals itself with more and more rereading. It has high replay value, as they say, of video games.
- [36:31]
A
Okay, so Christopher Nol. Forget everything he just said, because I think we just made this sound really boring. Christopher Nolan. Christopher Nolan. If you're going to go see a movie, Christopher Nolan, and I don't know if you feel this way. I think he's one of the better storytellers of our age.
- [36:47]
D
Oh, he's so good.
- [36:48]
A
No question, he's so good. And there is. You've seen the movie. So please tell me he didn't wreck it by putting a bunch of crap and woke crap in it. He just told a great story.
- [37:00]
D
He did not wreck it. I'm totally ready to just say, this is a good movie. Now, there's a lot of footnotes and stuff that we can get into talking about, but just the bottom line is the thing we were afraid of, which is completely reasonable and understandable. I was listening to you talking about how dumb actors are when they open their mouths. And, boy, I want to co. Like, just. I'm so in for this writer. The shut up and sing, the shut up and act writer, right, that you want to put contracts completely. They've done so much damage to people who are already fed up. And understandably, right, because, like, I always think about Rachel Zegler in Snow White, this disastrous Disney remake. And you know, Zegler, Snow White is famously very, very white. Zegler is not all that white. So people were kind of raising their eyebrows at that. But more than that, and much more importantly, she doesn't like the source material. She was given these interviews saying, oh, it's misogynist, and it's doesn't like women in power, and it's all about keeping women down. So that combined with the fact that these racial recastings only ever go in one direction. And you're kind of ashamed for. For noticing this. Right. I think that's driven people a little bit crazy. And I understand that, like now whenever somebody does this, they think, oh, no, here we go again. And with the Odyssey, which is such an incredible work of art and such a foundational work of Western literature, it's a very tender sore Spot, right? Like you're going to take this thing and you're just going to drag it through the muck and you're going to tell me that it's evil and you're going to give me your stupid modern take on it. So I think that's what people are worried about. And I think that that got blown a little bit out of proportion because Nolan is not doing that at all in this movie. He makes some changes to the source material you can like or not like, but none of them is designed to undermine the poem or to tell you you're wrong and racist for liking it. It's the actors who kind of mouthed off and it's the controversy that got kicked up around the poem, that stuff. You know, Lupita Nyong', o, who is one of the people that talked about, oh, Homer doesn't like women or whatever, you know, she. She's a great actress and she gives a really interesting performance in this. And she's really. Her part is really like a vanishingly small part of the movie, as are a lot of the other things that people got upset and mad about. And Nolan really does, which not a lot of directors have done. He really does put the story on screen. He gives you Matt Damon as the smartest soldier around, tormented guy making his way back home. And he gives you Anne Hathaway in the best performance I've ever seen her give.
- [39:43]
A
Who? She's good.
- [39:44]
D
Unlike a lot of other Penelopes that have been on screen, she really does want Odysseus back. She loves him. She's, of course, conflicted, she's confused and in pain. But she passionately loves him and is waiting for him. And it's just a very moving story. So I don't know. I think Nolan does a really great job. The book is better because the book's always better than the movie. But that's something that you can kind of talk about when you see the movie. The woke takeover stuff is what everyone was really afraid of and that just. Just doesn't happen. It's just not in this movie, which is great.
- [40:17]
A
You know, one of my favorite poets, you're going to lose a lot of respect for me is Dr. Seuss. No, one of my favorite. One of my favorite favorite poets is Edgar Allan Poe and his. You like him Because I just read something that said most people, you know, especially in that era, all of the critics, all of the other poets, except for a few over in England, they all thought he was trash. Oh, pooh.
- [40:45]
D
This is snobbery. This is just sheer. People like Edgar Allan Poe. And that's why critics look down on him, I think. I mean, they think of him as trash or entertainment. And because it's fun, you know, because it's exciting and people like it. Then they'd say, oh, he's not really a great poet. He's not a sophisticated literary artist. There are sophisticated, great poets who are difficult to understand. Understand. But Poe is incredible, and he's a beautiful wordsmith. So is Dr. Seuss, by the way, a genius?
- [41:11]
A
Yeah, no, I know.
- [41:12]
D
It's impossible to do it with. Anyway. Yes. Okay, so.
- [41:16]
A
Okay, can you tell me. There is. While we're here on ancient culture, except for the PO thing, AI Is now helping us unroll ancient scrolls that we haven't had access to. Can. Do you know anything about this? Can you talk to me about this and what's happening and what we're finding?
- [41:35]
D
I love this story. So this is like, I'm not used to people being interested in things that I'm passionate about because I'm a classicist. So the fact that there's this big movie about the Odyssey and this major AI Story about classics.
- [41:50]
A
Oh, no, you're nerding out. This is your weekend.
- [41:52]
D
I'm just. This is my. Like, this is my moment. I am just, like, put me in coach. Right?
- [41:58]
A
So.
- [41:58]
D
But this is a genuinely awesome story, and it's awesome for about a zillion different reasons. These scrolls that you're talking about were buried under the ash of Vesuvius. You remember Mount Vesuvius had exploded, erupted, and buried Pompeii. And there was another city, Herculaneum. And so obviously, there's, like, incredible stuff preserved there. A lot of dead bodies, for one thing. But in addition, in the 18th century, they found this villa with a library. And it's not like today where you can just be a schmuck like me and have a big shelf of books behind you. It's like very few people had. Were wealthy enough to have large collections of books. And so there's a lot of stuff in there that might be lost, that is lost from the ancient world that we could recover. And it's tantalizing because they're baked into these carbonized chunks, basically. They're like. They're like charcoal, basically. And so for centuries, people have been trying to figure out how to read them, how to read what's inside them, how to. Without destroying them or just making them crumble to a million pieces. It's like an Indiana Jones type thing, you know, if you Touch it, it falls apart. And there have been all sorts of different mechanical efforts to do this, including most recently, and this was when I was in grad school, people were shooting them with X rays, very highly powerful X rays that can see inside the layers without touching the scrolls or doing damage to them. But it's really, really hard to figure out once you have the X ray images, how you're supposed to basically arrange them, virtually unroll them, they say, to make them lie flat so you can read them and see what's on them. And that's what AI has now helped people to do. There's this project called Vesuvius Project, which is funded by a tech investor, where you get a prize if you can do this with one of the scrolls. And they just recently figured out how to do it with a complete scroll. So you can just look inside into the past, into these priceless treasures using the help of AI but not. And this is really important. I know we've talked about this before. The AI Is not reading the scrolls, so it's not guessing what letters are there. It doesn't even know any Greek, if that makes sense. There's no language built into the AI
- [44:09]
A
it's just showing us what it is.
- [44:11]
D
Exactly. Yeah. And then the people come along and they read the stuff that's in there. So right now, sorry to say, bunch of philosophy, the hope there's all these scrolls left to unroll. We could find stuff by Aristotle. We could find poems that were missing, like Ennius, the great Roman, the great Latin poet. We have a tiny sliver from this period. We've got, you know, seven plays by Aeschylus, which is just a miniature portion of what he wrote. There could be anything in there. And I just love that, you know, the tech is actually working to help the humans rather than the other way around.
- [44:53]
A
Thank you so much, Spencer. I'm glad to hear this review that. My pleasure. The Odyssey is. Is good. And, you know, because that's what I would expect from Christopher.
- [45:02]
D
It rocks.
- [45:03]
A
So thank you. Appreciate it. God bless you, man. Thank you.
- [45:07]
D
Great to be here.
- [45:07]
A
Spencer Clavin. Yeah, that's. Wouldn't it be interesting if. If we open all the scrolls and we found, like, the words to Beyonce and we realize. No, no, that's why those words are so good. They're ancient,
- [45:24]
D
right?
- [45:26]
A
Yeah, maybe. Maybe words from Lizzo's songs, but certainly not Bey.