BLOGMay 18, 2017

End of Medical Dark Ages: Entrepreneur Predicts When We'll Have Cancer Under Control

Serial entrepreneur, historian and dreamer Jay Walker joined Glenn on radio Wednesday for an epic conversation about the future of America.

"If you are a dreamer and a doer, this is going to be a fantastic hour. I have wanted to sit down with this guy for quite some time," Glenn said Wednesday on radio.

Walker --- labeled the Edison of his age by Forbes in 1999 --- is a modern-day Renaissance man. While his day job involves creating cutting-edge companies like Priceline.com and Upside.com that provide a patented, buyer-driven experience, his obsession is finding the connectedness . . . in everything. The breakthroughs he sees coming in the fields of health and medicine are of particular interest.

"For 3 billion years, life on the planet has followed a very simple system," Walker said. "We all share the same DNA --- a tree, a dog, a human. We have so much in common. For the first time in human history, in the history of the world, humans have control of the operating code. We are now manipulating the DNA, which means, for the first time, it's as if we had the software of life."

Walker explained how scientists are at the cusp of operating down to the instructional layer, which creates the proteins that create the tissues, systems and organs of the body.

"It's almost as if we're inventing printing, reading, writing and thinking all at the same time in forms of medicine," Walker said.

In effect, we're living in an extraordinary time in the history of the world.

"We're at the end of the medical Dark Ages," Glenn offered.

So passionate is Walker about the field of medicine he helped launch TEDMED, an independent health and medicine edition of the world-famous TED conference.

"How far do you think we are away from curing the majority of cancer?" Glenn asked.

According to Walker, it's not so much curing cancer that's around the corner, but being able to manage it as a livable disease like AIDS.

"How far do you think we are away from that?" Glenn asked.

"If you're saying leukemias and blood cancers, we're probably five years, maybe 10," Walker said.

"Holy cow," Glenn responded.

Walker's belief in the systematic, connectedness of everything even applies to his remarkable library which holds 25,000 books.

"People come to my library and they say, 'How are the books organized, Jay? How do you organize the books? You have 25,000 books. Is there a card catalog?' I say, 'Absolutely not. They're organized randomly by height,'" Walker laughed.

The library, Walker says, is one of imagination.

"They were all written by humans. They're all connected. You figure out why this is connected to that. The act of imagining is the essential act of creation. Nothing happens if you don't imagine it, whether it's who you're going to marry, the children you want to have, the kind of country you want to live in, the kind of job you want to have. It's all about your imagination. Everything happens here first. It happens in your head."

Enjoy the complimentary clip or listen to this segment for details.

GLENN: I first talked to Jay Walker -- I've known about him for a long, long time. But I first met Jay Walker on the phone -- this is the first time we've actually sat in the same room together.

And immediately, I felt connected to him and the way he thinks. He's an optimist. He sees a massive change on the horizon. But he knows it doesn't have to be bad. It probably is going to be a little rough getting there. But it doesn't have to be bad. And he sees the future unlike most people do. And he sees it through the eyes of history, which is so wickedly important. Just full disclosure, he is the guy who started upside.com which is an advertiser on this program. But I do want to ask him one question on something he told me about Upside when we first spoke. But this is not an advertisement. We're not even going to talk about that. You need to meet this man.

He's just started something called Ted MD, which is TED talks -- no, I'm sorry. Med Ted. Sorry. Med Ted. Yeah, TEDMED.

Jeez, how many times am I going to get this wrong?

STU: You only asked him three times before you came on the air.

GLENN: I know. I know. What am I thinking?

So he started this, and I want to start here. I hate to bring it to a cheesy TV show, but I've been watching a show -- and now I can't even remember the name of it. It is --

JEFFY: Pure Genius, which was just cancelled.

GLENN: Pure Genius. Was it cancelled?

JEFFY: Yes.

GLENN: Oh, crap. That was such an optimistic show.

JEFFY: I know. I know.

GLENN: Have you seen that?

JAY: I have not.

GLENN: Okay. So the premise is a guy who is a billionaire, you know, a guy like you . . . just a serial entrepreneur, tech guy. He's in Silicon Valley. He's like, I'm going to start a hospital. And it shows --

JAY: Oh, boy. You'd be better starting a government.

GLENN: But it shows all the -- it takes all the red tape out and shows all the tech that is coming and how optimistic life really looks when you look at what's on the horizon and the breakthroughs we're about to go through.

As you're doing this, what are you seeing for --

JAY: Well, Glenn, the way to think about it for health and medicine, is that for 3 billion years, life on the planet has followed a very simple system. It's very simple. There's one -- you know, there's DNA. We have a common ancestor. And it's been evolving for 3 billion years, give or take depending on your beliefs. And I'm not picking on anybody's beliefs.

But the fact is, we all share the same DNA --- a tree, a dog, a human. We have so much in common. For the first time in human history, in the history of the world, humans have control of the operating code. We are now manipulating the DNA. Which means, for the first time, it's as if we had the software of life. That's never happened in history before.

It means for the first time, we're going to be able to operate down at the instruction layer, which creates the proteins, which then creates the tissues and the systems and the organs of the body. So we're right at the cusp.

It's almost as if we're inventing printing, reading, writing, and thinking all at the same time in forms of medicine. And so we are living at the beginning of an extraordinary time in the history of the world.

GLENN: We're at the end of the medical Dark Ages.

JAY: Exactly. It's as if we had just gotten the microscope for the first time, and we saw there was a tiny world that nobody knew existed. In 1665, Hook looks through his microscope, and he sees that the fly is composed of thousands of little eyes. And he says, "What is this micro world? What are these little things swimming around?"

And he can't even see bacteria. He can't even see the smallest things. And yet, an entirely new world opens up. Galileo looks into the heavens and sees that there are planets, but also sees that there are moons around Saturn and Jupiter. And suddenly, the notion that the earth is in the center of the universe drops away. The telescope and the microscope were the great changes of the 17th century. And now we're in the 21st century, and we're now seeing for the first time the actual code that brings things to life.

GLENN: We're seeing things -- Ray Kurzweil, I've talked to several times. I am --

JAY: The singularity, right? Ray talks about, we're about to hit this point at which everything breaks free and goes on an extraordinary compounding effect, and whether or not you agree or disagree with Ray, there is no question if you back up and you look at where we are in history, in medicine and health, we are about to exit the Dark Ages.

GLENN: So he said it's as if -- he said, the human body should last a lot longer than it does. It shouldn't wear out. He said, it's as if there's a switch somewhere that's just been turned off. And he said, we just have to find that switch. Are you -- when you look at the DNA --

JAY: Yeah, I wouldn't agree with Ray on that, but I understand where he's coming from.

The human body isn't a thing. The human body is a system. Think of the Amazon rain forest. It's composed of enormous different things. It's got trees and insects. It's got birds. It's got animals. It's got leaves. It's got photosynthesis. It's got fungi.

It's got all these things, and we call it the Amazon. It's constantly changing. You are an Amazon rain forest. You have trillions of --

GLENN: I think that's a fat joke --

JEFFY: It certainly was a fat joke to me.

JAY: So we don't switch on or off the Amazon rain forest. No, the Amazon rain forest isn't going away, despite, you know, our efforts to cut it down for lumber or to grow grass. But that being said, it's about a system.

What we're learning is how all the different systems of the body, including many that are not even human, we're learning about the microbiome. These are bacteria that we need to survive in our guts and all throughout us, for which without them, we can't make it.

GLENN: How far do you think we are away from curing the majority of cancer?

JAY: I think we're far from curing the majority. But we're not far from turning a significant number of cancers into a manageable, livable disease, like we did with AIDS.

We figured out not how to cure AIDs, but how to slow it down so you could live with the rest of your life with it, much like all men have prostate cancer. We just don't die of it.

But literally, 100 percent of men, if you do an autopsy at age 75, are going to have prostate cancer. They simply are not going to die from it.

Cancer is essentially a natural byproduct of having multicellular organisms. Because in the process of duplicating at the cellular level, you're going to have some mistakes randomly, and some of those mistakes are going to be so damned good at not being killed, that they're going to reproduce in a way that's bad for the organism as a whole, but good for the cell. So we don't eliminate cancer. We eventually figure out how to manage with it.

GLENN: How far do you think we are away from that?

JAY: If you say 50 percent of -- if you're saying leukemias and blood cancers, we're probably five years, maybe ten.

GLENN: Holy cow.

JAY: If you're saying soft tissue cancers, more like ten to 20. But a lot of it depends on whether or not we get better at finding them sooner. Today, we cannot detect cancer until it's about seven years old. So when somebody comes from a doctor and they say, "I've been diagnosed with cancer," you've had it for seven years. We can't see less than 100 million cells, which is less than the tiny point of a pin, 100 million cancer cells.

So cancer is a system disease of which we have many in our bodies, most of which will never come to the point where they hurt us. Cancer isn't like an infection where it's binary, you have it or you don't. Cancer is a symptom of the system. And the system learns to cope with it for most of your life.

GLENN: What's the most amazing thing you seen on the horizon in medical tech?

JAY: The most amazing thing is probably the mapping of the human protyle. So we call all the -- the proteins are the workhouses of the body --

PAT: That's what I was going to say.

JAY: They're the things that do all the work in your body. Your DNA codes for proteins. Proteins are the worker bees of the body at the simplest level. We really have never mapped them all. And it turns out most of the diseases, if not nearly all of them are dysfunctions of protein operations. Proteins are very complicated organisms. They're very, very small, but they're very complicated. We are now at the cusp of mapping them all.

And forget about mapping the human genome, which is great. It's the protium where all the action is at, and we're right about to map it.

GLENN: What will that change?

JAY: Well, it will allow us, for the first time, to understand what's really going on with disease. Up to now, we've actually not understood what's really going on.

GLENN: What does that mean?

JAY: Well, it means that the proteins are malfunctioning. When you have a disease --

GLENN: Hang on just a second. I just want to -- you know you're in the room with someone who is smart when you're -- I'm now in three levels deep of asking what the hell does that mean, and really --

JAY: I'm trying -- I'm trying to keep it broad for the audience. I'm not an MD or a PhD. I'm really not a doctor. I just talk to them all day.

GLENN: No, it's amazing. Right.

JAY: And, by the way, that's my spare time job because my main job is building a great company in Upside. So ironically, we're off on the side here.

But the -- basically, what it means is when we learn how proteins behave badly, we will recognize that your arthritis may be very similar to the fact that you have a sleep apnea, that they are the same proteins, just misbehaving.

There is a map of all the proteins.

GLENN: Wow.

JAY: And once we start to look at where the proteins are behaving badly, we now have the tools to finally figure out what the hell is going on with these diseases. We don't know anything about Alzheimer's. So much of that is a protein --

GLENN: So that's why sometimes you'll go in and things are absolutely not connected. Doctors will tell you, that's not connected. Well, but they're all happening at the same time.

JAY: Right.

GLENN: And, yeah, I know they're not connected. But I've never had these before, and now they're all happening.

JAY: Everything is connected. Okay? So anybody who tells you something isn't connected -- you don't go into the Amazon rain forest and say, well, the fact that the toads are dying is unconnected to the blight on the trees. No, everything is connected. The question is, at what level?

GLENN: Right.

JAY: Does it have a common cause? Or is it the result of common external factors? We're learning all that.

GLENN: You know what I'm amazed, talking to people like you, A, I feel really average. That's being very kind.

JAY: This isn't your area of expertise, in all fairness.

GLENN: I know. But, still, this is -- this is not your job.

JAY: It's not my day job.

GLENN: And the people I meet like you, have they always been around? Because I look through history -- and you'll see the people like Tesla and Edison. You'll see these people who are really quite bright in a million different things. We used to call them renaissance men.

JAY: Yeah.

GLENN: But there is something about this new group of entrepreneurs that they are -- Jon Huntsman Sr. is a friend of mine and started the Huntsman Cancer Center.

JAY: Yeah.

GLENN: And he said to me -- I asked him, teach me how to be charitable. I've been poor my whole life. I don't know how to be charitable.

JAY: It's an art. You have to learn how to do it.

GLENN: Yes. And he said, first lesson, you have to care about everything. Not just -- you have to care about everything.

And that kind of goes to --

JAY: It's very American. So this is a nation of insatiable curiosity. It's always been that way. It's because we've had the West. We were founded by a group of people who were fleeing somewhere else, with the handful of exceptions of the people who were here, right?

We've all come from somewhere else. We've all left a world behind, in order to come and build a new world in America. Nobody even knew it existed until 1500.

So the beauty of the American spirit is it's a spirit of insatiable curiosity. That's why we're a nation of tinkerers, a nation of inventors, a nation that's always trying to change. We don't look back as a nation. It's a weakness and a strength both at the same time.

But the fact is, this is -- the country -- America looks forward. People like that are insatiably curious about everything. And you find whether it's John Muir or Thomas Edison, these people recognized that at the deepest level, it's all connected.

So I have a great library in the history of human imagination. About 25,000 books.

GLENN: Love this.

JAY: Right? Now, it's a library about imagination. People come to my library. And they say, "How are the books organized, Jay? How do you organize the books? You have 25,000 books. Is there a card catalog?"

I say absolutely not. They're organized randomly by height. And he goes, "You have a library of 25,000 books organized randomly?" I said, "Yes. It's about imagination. You connect them. They were all written by humans. They're all connected. You figure out why this is connected to that."

The act of imagining is the essential act of creation. Nothing happens if you don't imagine it, whether it's who you're going to marry, the children you want to have, the kind of country you want to live in, the kind of job you want to have. It's all about your imagination -- everything happens here first. It happens in your head.

GLENN: We're having a great debate now between the legal and business side and the creative side of this company, of what -- who is the creative? And I keep saying, everyone is.

JAY: We all work for the customer. We all work for the customer.

GLENN: It's not even that, I am, fill in the blank. I am happy or I am sad. What are you going to create at the basic level? And everyone has the same power in a different way. Just, what are you creating?

JAY: Yeah. And we've taught, unfortunately, in so many ways, we live in a society of specialists. We've taught, specialize. Focus on one field. Do the best. Your economic result will be highest if you specialize.

And that's true. But it's generalists who integrate completely, unexpectedly. When you look at Steve Jobs and his life, you see a generalist. Not a specialist. You see a guy who was happy to go to India, happy to learn about type fonts, happy to understand the aesthetics of design. And yet, he was a technologist. Why? Because, really, great leaps forward are made by people who integrate from multiple fields. And that's why we call them polymaths, when they happen to be geniuses. Leonardo was a polymath. He was a genius in five fields. That allowed him to be a bigger genius in any one of them. And we see this throughout history.

GLENN: We're going to run out of time so fast. Jay Walker, a serial entrepreneur. A founder -- cofounder of Priceline. And many other things -- 900 patents. We'll continue our conversation with him in just a second.

[break]

GLENN: Let's talk a little bit about the -- the future and what you're seeing in things like Priceline and Upside.

JAY: So one of the great futures is we're living in this digital world, right? And everybody is saying, look at all this data. Okay. What does that mean to me? What does that mean to a person sitting out in the audience, and just listening and saying, okay. That's nice. The world is filled with data.

Here's one of the things it means. It means your flexibility, which right now you don't get paid for, you're going to start getting paid for.

Look, when you're walking down the supermarket aisle and you see an item on sale, next to one that isn't on sale, you can be flexible and say, I'm going to buy the brand that's on sale today because I normally buy that brand.

But that's just a small case. What happens every time you're shopping online and somebody says, "Hey, are you willing to be a little flexible? I'll give you $50, if you do this instead of that." I'll give you $90 if you do this instead of that."

Imagine a smart piece of software that offers you options that gives you personally more money for being flexible. And, by the way, gives your boss something too.

So the key idea behind one of the things I'm working on is, how do you turn flexibility into an asset? How do you turn it into something where I have my phone -- hey, look, I want to go to New York on a trip. But if I leave 15 minutes earlier, you'll give me $50. If I leave -- if I go into a different airport, you'll give me $100. If I stay at a hotel across the street, that's worth $200 to me.

I can't find all those choices. There's too many choices. But software can.

The beauty of the world we're living in, with this new big data software, is it can evaluate tens of thousands of choices for you. Show you just a few that makes sense.

GLENN: So when we come back -- can you talk a little bit about that? Because you've demonstrated that in Upside. And that's -- I got to that with you because I said, okay. What's the catch? And you explained it to me. And I'm like, holy cow, that's brilliant.

And you said to me, now, imagine that with everything.

So let's talk about that. And also, I want to talk about the -- the world that is going out and examining all these things, but then putting us into little teeny boxes, where we don't see the big picture anymore.

RADIO

The ONE “forever war” Glenn Beck supports

This Fourth of July, Glenn Beck reveals the only “forever war” he supports. It’s the war Americans have been fighting since our nation’s founding, and we must continue the fight…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Two hundred forty-nine years ago, I think it is tomorrow. Right? Is tomorrow the second, or is it the first?

What day is it today?

So it was 200 -- 249 years ago, tomorrow, that somebody sat alone, in a -- in a one-room hotel room.

And scratched out the words, when in the course of human events. Those are the first six words of a document that is so dangerous!

Still today, so revolutionary.

It was whispered in those candle lit rooms by men who knew. Knew. That if I signed this document, that's a death warrant.

I'm dead!

I'm dead.

But in the course of human events, shh.

Jefferson wrote them!

33 years old. Adams would later say, you do well to revere Jefferson. But he didn't write alone. Basically, I was there too.

And so was Ben Franklin. The ideas were forged in the minds of men like Franklin, who is old enough to know better. And Adams, who was stubborn enough, not to care. And they weren't perfect men. But I love this about the left. They try to make you think.

That you think are perfect. I don't think they were perfect! I mean, Ben Franklin used to walk around naked in his house a lot. That shows, I mean, for as smart as that guy was. It shows, maybe he had a lack of mirrors. But they weren't perfect!

They owned slaves. They argued. They compromised.

How does that make them different than us?
I mean, we should be able to relate to them!

What is it that we tolerate right now?
What is it that we compromise on?

What is it -- what are our failures that future generations are going to go, these people just didn't get it? Perhaps what we should notice is that they, unlike most of us. They were willing to gamble their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

For something that had never, ever been done before. Something entirely new!

The idea that rights don't come from a government, or from a king, or from a parliament.

They don't come from the majority voting. Everyone has certain rights.

You know, for all these people who are, you know -- going in Macy's, and burning down towns. And then stealing clothing. And they're like, because I've been oppressed!

And you can't -- I've got rights, you know.
Yeah. Yeah.

You know who the first people were, to articulate those rights?

You know the only country that actually has stood for those rights?

And we're imperfect!

That idea came from the Founders, that you say you hate.

But the actual rights come from God, which you dismiss!

Think of this. Just ponder this for a second.

That all men are created equal! That their rights are given to them, by a creator.

It's not a political assertion. It's a genius. That's eternal truth!

That's theological dynamite, lobbed straight in to the thrones of Europe.

All over the world, it's still dynamite.

They knew what they were doing.

And I don't mean like, they knew what they were doing.

They had it. No. They knew that the British crown had the largest military force in the world. And these guys, they were farmers. They were printers. They were lawyers. They were a ragtag collection of intellectual and idealists, facing down an empire, where they said, the sun never set on the British empire. Meaning, the colonialism was everywhere!

You could not escape England. And yet, they declared it. We're leaving, without apology!

And they said that when a government becomes destructive of the ends of liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness, it's not only the right of the people, it's their duty to throw it off!

Wow. And you know what is amazing? That's not rebellion.

That's -- that's not revolution. That's -- that's responsibility.

That -- that kind of language today, that would have you flagged, shadow banned. Labeled an extremist. In most countries, disappeared!

But that is the foundation of what we call America. The American experiment. And it's that. The American experiment.

And it's just that, an experiment. We didn't know if we could get it right. And we haven't gotten it right. But isn't it worth experimenting?

Isn't it worth trying to get that concept right?

When you fail on that concept, you're like, eh. That's a stupid idea.

That's not a stupid idea. That's the greatest idea of all time.

Why are so many people willing to just quit?

The experiment is self-rule. It's not perfect.

Never has been. Slavery. Jim Crow. Internment camps. Assassinations.

My God! Forgive us, for what we have done.

But at the same time, what nation has done more to correct its own errors?

What people have shed more blood, not for conquest, but for freedom.

Twice in the last century, we crossed oceans. Not to claim territory. But to liberate that territory!

Our sons and daughters fought and bled on foreign soil to push the darkness back, to fight against Naziism and fascism and Communism. And here we are. Here we are today.

After 249 years tomorrow of that experiment, standing at the lip of the very abyss, those men feared.

A godless chaos, rising in the east and a cold atheistic utopia, clawing at the foundations of the Western world. Islamism and Communism, two ideologies that have killed tens of millions of people. Now dressed all in new robes, selling old lies.

And we can't even teach a child where their rights come from. We have replaced Jefferson and Adams with TikTok influencers and bureaucratic groupthink.

We're raising generations to not even know the truth about their own identity.

But to question their identity. And they could be, oh, you're a funny, funny colored unicorn today. What do you want to be tomorrow?

We don't teach them anything about truth, or their inheritance, most importantly. Their inheritance. What good are hot dogs and fireworks, if the soul of the nation is up for auction? What is the meaning in Fourth of July, if we have forgotten the why? If we don't even call it Independence Day anymore. Most people don't even know who we fought against for independence.

They think we fought for its independence! Most people think we fought the South!

And yet, we'll light the sparklers, or blow our fingers off, because we're just that stupid.

This Independence Day weekend, would you do me and yourself and your country a favor, and read the words out loud. Speak the words out loud.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with one another.

And to assume among the powers of earth, the separate, but equal station, to which the laws of nature.

And nature's God entitle them.

A decent respect to the opinions of mankind, requires that they should declare the causes, which impair them to the separation.

What are they saying?

Look, we want to be decent people.

We want to be decent people.

And we have to separate them.

But we believe it's only right that we tell you why we have to separate. And it's not because of all the bad things you've done. We'll get to those later. It's because we're different. And you don't understand. You have been telling us all of these things, we no longer believe in. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, and they're endowed by their creator with certain inalienable. Unchangeable rights.

And just among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, government are his instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

My gosh. Read those words. And let your children hear what thinking and courage sounds like.

That to secure these rights, I'm telling you, the king, who thinks that your government was given to you, by God.

And you are the ruler.

And you will tell everybody what to think, what to do. What to buy. What to sell. What to tax. What not to tax. Who gets land. Who doesn't get land.

No, no, no. Government are his instituted among men, deriving their powers, their just powers, from the people. And that government is only there, established by those men to protect the rights that God has given each of those men.

Let them feel the chill, that runs down the spine, when Jefferson writes, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government, or from the governed. Let them hear the words, of -- of responsibility. What responsibility sounds like, with courage and freedom. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

And to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their a lot of and happiness.

In other words, you have the right, you have the responsibility to stop tyrants. And if the government has gone bad, to throw that government off.

But reconstitute a government, that will do a better job at protecting those rights. Not to form a communist government.

Not to do anything else. But you want a new government?

Fine! Let's find the way to make men more free. This is not a metaphor. This is a declaration of war on tyranny in all of its forms.

I mean, I said, yesterday, freedom isn't free.

It was paid for by somebody's blood. But you have to remember, they paid for their freedom, not for our freedom, necessarily.

We -- there comes a time, we have to pay for our freedom. And God forbid, that it comes down to blood.

But at least shake off the apathy. We -- we must renew this promise of this experiment of America.

We need to fight for it as well. An out-of-control government that seeks to rope us into forever wars, over and over again. We're all against forever wars. I'm against it.

I hate them.

But there is one forever war, that is required in a free society. A different kind of forever war.

A war against ourselves, a war against human nature in each of us. Because of human nature, we get fat. We get lazy.

We get tolerant of abuses. Let your children hear you speak these words. And when you speak them, ponder them yourself.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes.

And accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind is more disposed to suffer while the evils are sufferable than to right themselves, by abolishing the forms in which they're accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a sign to reduce them under absolute despotism.

It's their right. It's their duty. To throw off such government. And provide new guards for such future security.

In one paragraph, we make the point twice. And they tell us, look, we've studied people.

We know you're going to get fat and lazy and apathetic. And you won't want to do stuff for transient causes. Because this is really not good.

But when push comes to shove. And everything is moving towards absolute despotism. Absolute tyranny. Then you must stand up.

I ask you to ponder this. This particular part, when a long train of abuses and usurpations. Prudence will indeed dictate that governments long established should not be exchanged for light and transient causes.

And accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind is more disposed to suffer while the evils suffer, than to right themselves.

Aren't we exactly the same people, that their experience was talking about?

Aren't we the people that are more disposed to suffer, than to right ourselves? Because we're too comfortable. Or we're too afraid, just to stand up and simply say no to lies.

No!

There is a difference between men and women.

No! Communism is to be feared. It's killed over 100 million people, in the last 100 years.

No!

Muslims aren't bad. Islamism is!

It's evil. No!

You can peacefully protest, any time, any place. And I will fight to the death for your right to do that.

But when you start burn cities down to the ground, no!

We're just a few days away. And we have marked our 249th birthday. Maybe. Just maybe, this year, can we stop asking what America was, and start deciding what America will be?

Where it just slips quietly into history. In the dark of apathy and ignorance.

Because the only thing more dangerous than tyranny is the people who have forgotten what it took to break its chains.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

We need REAL jobs in America — Trump should do THIS now!

It is clear we need to create more productive, high-paying jobs for American citizens. But that doesn't mean bringing back the same exact jobs of the past in massive numbers. It means creating and supporting jobs of the present and future that will better the lives of Americans. Glenn Beck and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts break down exactly what this entails and how President Trump can make it a reality.

Watch Glenn Beck's FULL Interview with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts HERE

RADIO

The most INCREDIBLE World War II story you’ve NEVER HEARD

One of the biggest American World War II cemeteries in Europe is in a small town in the Netherlands, where thousands of Dutch people continue the tradition to this day of “adopting” a fallen US soldier and checking in on his family. “The Monuments Man” author Robert Edsel joins Glenn Beck to tell this incredible story, which he documents in his new book, “Remember Us.”

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Robert, welcome back to the program. How are you, sir?

ROBERT: Great to talk to you!

GLENN: It's great to talk to you.

Can you remind me? You were on with us, after Monuments Men. And you talked about this great service that is still going on, where people that -- they were still looking for paintings and pieces of art, that had been taken by the Nazis.

And if I remember right, didn't somebody in our -- our own audience reach out to you, and say, I think we found one of those paintings?

ROBERT: Yes, sir. Absolutely.

The Glenn Beck audience. And Glenn Beck, you yourself deserve a lot of credit.

Because I hadn't walked out of your studio last time. You know, in Dallas at Las Colinas.

Headed back to our office at Monuments Men and Women Foundation office, before someone in my office contacted me and said, we've already had a lead, as a result of your interview with Glenn. And it turned out someone whose aunt had been given two paintings during World War II.

She had worked for the government overseeing Germany, and these two paintings were missing.

We were able to identify who the rightful owner was, and get them back.

So it's a great thing that you performed. And, you know, it's a magnificent conclusion, though obviously a very difficult part of history.

GLENN: What was it like to give that back to the family?

ROBERT: It was a deeply moving experience. We -- the foundation found and returned more than 30 works of art, from paintings to documents, ancient books. Tapestries, to museums. Individual collectors, and so on.

And, you know, when we see, oftentimes, the people just stand there, and they cry.

They don't even know what to say. Because they may have worked 50 or 60 years, trying to find some work of art that's been missing. And they haven't had leads. And to -- to see us standing there, with something that belongs to them.

Not asking for anything in return. Don't charge anybody for doing it. Because we feel like everybody who went through World War II already paid enough.

Words -- words just fail. It's just pure gratitude.

GLENN: I can't wait for you to tell this new story.

Tell me the story of the care takers. The care takers of --

ROBERT: Well, it's a story that found me, just as Monuments did.

I have written about -- in the Monuments Men, I told the story of two Monuments Officers who were killed in combat, one British soldier and one American, Walter Huchthausen. And Huchthausen was killed. He once did a last casualty at war. He was killed in the last month of World War II, and is buried in the American benevolence, American cemetery, in Margraten in the Netherlands. I knew that story, and I had made mention of a young girl who was harbored in September '45, asking for the address of his mother, wanting to write her and tell her, that she walked 5 miles, several times a week, from her house to the American military cemetery. It was called then. To put flowers on his grave. Because her family knew them. And they were grief-stricken to know that they were killed.

And I knew that story too. I mentioned that. And then in 2015, the nephew of Huchthausen wrote me and included a photograph of this elderly lady with this crown of white hair. And he said, here's a photo with Frida, and I couldn't place who this was.

I had no idea who it was. And I realized, my God, this is that 19-year-old girl that is still alive. So I flew to England. She married a British soldier after the war. And I went to meet with her. She started showing me photographs of when the American -- Americans liberated her area of the Netherlands.

And all these American soldiers that they knew.

And she said, you know about the American military cemetery.

She said, have you been there?

And I said yes. And she said, so you know about the great adoption program?

And I said, what? She said, the great adoption program.

I said, I have no idea what you're talking about. So I started doing some research on this. And learned, at the end of World War II, our largest World War II cemetery in Europe, was not Normandy. It was the Netherlands American cemetery, where 17,800 boys and a few women buried at this cemetery by May 1946.

And by that time, every single grave had a Dutch person, a local person, who volunteered to be an adaptor of that brave.

Go out there on the first death date of the soldier, Veterans Day, Memorial Day.

And if they had the contact information for the next of kin, send them a photograph of the grave.
And a letter.

Because they realized, it was okay to adopt the bodies of dead boys.

But where the real need was, was to reach across the ocean, into the American homes and try to assuage the grief of the families.

And they knew some of these boys. And I found it the most heartwarming, uplifting, and certainly unique conclusion to a World War II story that I think has been written.

GLENN: So are they still some of them still doing this?

ROBERT: Not some. In fact, there were about -- in 1940, 748.

American families were given the choice to have their loved ones sent home, or to be left overseas in a military cemetery.

The Army had no idea, how many -- how many families would want their boys sent home, and as a consequence, they couldn't tell how many cemeteries they would need.

We thought almost everybody would want to have the families sent home. But it turned out not to be the case. So about 61 percent came home. About 39 percent stayed in Europe, which was about the numbers from World War I.

Although, the numbers in this area, in the Netherlands were higher.

The -- the graves that are there now.

There are 10,000 boys there. And four women.

8300 graves. 1700 names on the walls of the missing.

Every one of them has an adaptor for 80 years.

All those graves have been adopted, without interruption.

There's a waiting list of almost a thousand people in the Netherlands, to become a doctor. This is a -- not just a --

GLENN: This is --

JASON: A privilege. Because they take their kids out to the cemetery. They turn the cemetery into a classroom. And you go out there. And, yes, there's a somber element. They're instilling in their kids, you're able to think, and say what you want to. Because of the freedom that was given to you, by this American girl or boy. And we don't do that in our country anymore.

GLENN: So this is one of the most incredible stories that I've -- I've ever heard.

And I'm shocked that the world doesn't know this!

Is -- have you -- is there anything like this, anywhere else in the world?

JASON: No. We couldn't even find a comp of any nature.

There are -- that is not to say, the people in Normandy area, don't care about Normandy and other cemeteries. They do, of course. As do the Belgians in other cemeteries.

But there's no place that created an organic great adoption program, during the war, in January 1945!

These people in this area of the Netherlands were so grateful, having been neutral in World War I.

And having not lost their freedom for 100 years!

And they didn't like it!

And when the Americans liberated them in September 44. I'll never forget this woman Freda. This elderly woman I met, looked at me, the first time I interviewed her. I knew her for eight years. The last eight years of her life.

I delivered a eulogy two summers ago. She looked at me, there were the eyes of the 19-year-old. And she said, when I saw that first tank over the hill and I realized, we were saved.

I looked at my dad, and I said, Papi, these American boys come all the way across the ocean to say this. And there were tears in her eyes.

Because they didn't -- they couldn't imagine how we could have moved that equipment across -- across the ocean.

And why we would have cared so much.

So there isn't anything like it.

But January 45, these people in this little town of Margraten.

A mile from the cemetery, organized a meeting of the town leaders. The town who got 1200 people.

And they were trying to find an answer to the question: How do you thank your liberators, when they're no longer alive to thank? And they came up with this idea of this great adoption program, and it's a story that I tell, following the lives of about 12 different American combat soldiers.

Bomber recipients.

Tankers.

Because we don't know that story.

We don't what knows to an American story, when they're killed on the field of battle.

Because it's depressing.

We move on to the next scene in a movie.

Well, I want people to know, you started your program with freedom is not free.

It's ugly.

Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what the cost is.

Let's talk about the stripping line that the body goes through, and the removal of dog tags, one being put in the mouth, if there's still a head. And the other being nailed to the cross, because they don't have time to stencil the names on yet.

Let's talk about that, and let people know, it's not just a Marvel movie. Or a gang war.

This is real. This is painful. And, of course, at the end of the war, when we Americans declare victory, and move on with our lives, there's millions of family members in the United States, whose lives will never be the same.

So it is -- it's still happening today. It's still happening today.

GLENN: The name -- the name of the book is Remember Us.

And take us -- I mean, because that's really kind of the -- the -- the beauty of it.

Take us through the rest of the book, just briefly.

It starts with what?

ROBERT: Well, I follow -- I began what a nice life was in the Netherlands. Until May 10, 1940.

And the Netherlands does not get much attention from World War II, and yet everybody has heard of Battle of the Bulge. And Battle -- those are all within 50 miles of what we're talking about.

They happened around there. Of course, World War II, in western Europe, begins right here in this area. Because the German tanks roll across the border.

So I cover the life of these 12 different Americans. I interviewed all their family members. Some make it through the war. Some don't.

You read the book, you realize who makes it, who doesn't. But their lives converge around this area of the Netherlands. And when post-world War II stories end, with the war being over, remember us kicks into a transcendent moment when the Dutch come up with this idea of this great adoption program. The Americans refuse to provide the names and addresses of the next of kin.

So they're foiled with trying to achieve their ultimate objective. Which is to try to contact all the American families.

And frustrated, there was -- one of the key figures of the book.

A woman who is the mother of 12 children.

Who takes it upon herself. She's a woman of action.

She writes president Truman. And pleads for him to get involved.

When that doesn't work. She gets on the first airplane, she's ever flown on. She leaves her kids behind.

She flies to New York. Lands in LaGuardia Field.

She goes to Washington, and meets the members of Congress. Including a young guy from Texas, named Lyndon Johnson.

Who says, young lady, you need to go to Texas. Because there are so many military bases there.

She flies to our hometown. And lands in Lovefield.

In June of 1946. And is met by two family members. And for five weeks, she lives with American families, that lost somebody during a war.

And to each of them she says, leave your boys with us. When the election comes.

We will watch over them, like our own forever.

And they have done that. Now, today, these 10,000 Dutch doctors only have contact information for 20 percent of the American families.

They couldn't ever get the others.

GLENN: You're kidding me. Where is the list? Do you have a list?

ROBERT: Yeah. The Monuments Men and Women Foundation entered into a joint venture with the Dutch Foundation for Adopting Graves.

Not charging anybody for this. And we have created a website called foreverpromise.org.

And on that website is a list of all 10,000 men and women, more women that are buried at the cemetery, or whose names are on the walls missing.

And it's a searchable database. We're asking people to go and see. Do you have someone you know, or a relative, who is buried there.

And if so, we have a short questionnaire. What's your relationship? Are you aware of this great adoption program? Are you in contact with your adopter? Would you like to be? Would you allow us to share your contact information?

I connected a lady from Richmond, Texas. Saturday night. To her -- to this young Tammy, that's the adopter of her brother.

She's 93 years old.

She was in tears. At the thought when she leaves this world, there will be someone there to watch over her brother.

And that's what we're all about is this connecting.

GLENN: Rob, I have to tell you.

You've really done something with your life. I mean, I know you don't need me to say it.
But what a great job you have. And what a great service you have done for so many years.

Thank you so much.

Please, look this up.

The forever promise project.

You can find it at foreverpromise.org. Foreverpromise.org. Robert Edsel is the author's name. The book is Remember Us. It's a perfect read for this week.

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