The Most Powerful News Story Glenn Ever Heard Was Six Words

June 12, 2017

WRITER

"Chicago O'Hare, Eastern Airlines, 111 dead."

That was the news from Paul Harvey on July 19, 1989. The master storyteller and radio host had a way with words that resonated among Americans --- including a younger Glenn Beck.

"He was way ahead of his time. Most powerful news story I ever heard, and one of the reasons why I wanted to get into radio: Orson Wells and Paul Harvey," Glenn said Monday on radio.

This followed a conversation about social media and its impact on the new way Americans consume news. Sharing a story from FiveThirtyEight, co-host Stu Burgiere recounted the author's recent three-month break from social media.

"They had a writer who had a book situation, so [she] had to go off social media for three months. And [she] wrote about, 'Hey, how did this affect my opinion of the news cycle?'" Stu explained.

Christie Aschwanden, the author, came to a realization:

It dawned on me that I’d mostly stopped visiting websites directly and instead had been following the recommendations in my feeds to wherever they might lead me. My reading was no longer deliberate but curated by external forces that may or may not have aligned with my interests. I’d ceded control of my most valuable currency: my attention.

That trend --- having news pushed to us by an outside algorithm rather than seeking out sources independently --- has dramatically changed the way we consume news.

"Unbelievable, that's the way most people do it," Glenn said.

"Totally, you just get led down these roads, and you're not necessarily even reading what's most interesting to you or what's most important to you," Stu agreed.

Regarding the Paul Harvey story, Glenn had this to say:

"I knew everything that I needed to know. That's really kind of what America wants right now. They just want that, plus they want a confirmation of their opinion. Tell me my opinion is right," he said.

Aschwanden found exactly that to be true:

What became acutely obvious when I stopped taking their recommendations was how tribal online discussions can be. So many posts in my feeds were people broadcasting their political or professional identities by expressing outrage or praise for a particular news event or article. It seems to me that these kinds of posts aren’t so much about instigating thoughtful discourse as they are about broadcasting your own tastes or positioning yourself on a team. By opting out, I wasn’t missing thoughtful discussions, I was skipping pep rallies for various factions.

"It's because we've lost the American tribe. We've broken into political party tribes because we don't have a common story that threads us together anymore," Glenn said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for listening to the Glenn Beck Program. We are back off from vacation. What did we bring back?

STU: One interesting little I saw from FiveThirtyEight.com. They had a writer who had a book situation. So they had to go off social media for three months. And they wrote about, hey, how did this affect my opinion of the news cycle? Like, they went through all these big events not being connected to social media. And here's part of it: It dawned on me that I mostly stopped visiting websites directly and instead had been following the recommendations in my feeds to wherever they might lead me. My reading was no longer deliberated, but curated by external forces that may or may not have aligned with my interests. I ceded control of my most valuable currency: My attention.

GLENN: Unbelievable. That's the way most people do it.

STU: Totally. You just get led down these things -- these roads, and you're not necessarily even reading what's most interesting to you or what's most important to you.

JEFFY: I mean, we all do that.

STU: Yeah, that's true.

GLENN: I think it's 80 percent of traffic now from most sites comes from what's called the side doors. So people aren't going to TheBlaze.com. Or the NewYorkTimes.com. They're getting it from their Facebook feed, and that leads them in from the side door. So they're only getting one story. And on that story, the average time is like 46 seconds or --

STU: Jeez. If it's that high, I would be stunned.

GLENN: Yeah. I keep wanting to say it's six seconds. But it can't be that. It's some extraordinarily low number. And it gives you time enough just to read the headlines and glance and move on. That's how people are getting their news now. And it's -- it's -- it's really kind of frightening.

STU: Yeah, I was listening to an interview about someone who was a writer -- like long form pieces. Like the magazine profile. Right? Those old school things that we don't really seem to have anymore, except for a few sources. And they were talking about how they would spend so much time writing that last paragraph. If you watch House of Cards, which I will not give anything away here, I promise. But the last few moments, as you would expect of the season, were amazing. And that's how articles used to be. That last paragraph was crafted -- it was perfectly worded. It lead you to that exact point.

GLENN: And it was referenced three times before in the article.

STU: Oh, yeah. It set you up.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: And what they found is, now with the digital world is they realized, first of all, the first program is the only one that anyone reads. And it goes down to, the last paragraph is read by 6 percent of readers or 5 percent of readers. Something so low, that there's no rational reason to spend any time on the last paragraph. It should only be the first few paragraphs that you spend any time on, and the rest of it, just throw all the junk at the end. And that's not the way journalism used to be. It's not the way it was --

GLENN: Trying to write something smart in -- I mean, the only guy that I know that did it was Paul Harvey. Trying to write something smart in -- in one paragraph and really convey a message. The most powerful news story I've ever heard -- he was away ahead of his time. Most powerful news story ever heard and the reasonable why I wanted to -- one of the reasons why I wanted to get into radio: Orson Wells and Harvey. And I used to listen to them, eight years old, I would be washing the pots and pans in the bakery. And Paul Harvey would come on. And he would do his -- in the summer, his noon report. And the rest of the year, I would hear his 5 o'clock report. And he would give the news. And the most -- the most effective story I ever heard was Chicago O'Hare, Eastern Airlines, 232 dead. And that was it.

And the way he said it, I could -- I could almost smell the smoke. I mean, I knew everything that I needed to know. That's really kind of what America wants right now. They just want that, plus they want a confirmation of their opinion. Tell me my opinion is right.

STU: Yeah. And that's exactly what the author found. You know, what became acutely obvious was when he stopped taking the recommendations was how tribal online discussions can be. So many posts in my feeds were people broadcasting their political or professional identities by expressing outrage or praise for a particular news event or article.

You know, that is what it is. It winds up being --

GLENN: It's because we've lost the American tribe.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: We've broken into political party tribes. Because we don't have a common story that threads us together anymore.

Trump branded a tyrant, but did Obama outdo him on deportations?

Genaro Molina / Contributor | Getty Images

MSNBC and CNN want you to think the president is a new Hitler launching another Holocaust. But the actual deportation numbers are nowhere near what they claim.

Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews, in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, compared Trump’s immigration policies to Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust. He claimed that Hitler didn’t bother with German law — he just hauled people off to death camps in Poland and Hungary. Apparently, that’s what Trump is doing now by deporting MS-13 gang members to El Salvador.

Symone Sanders took it a step further. The MSNBC host suggested that deporting gang-affiliated noncitizens is simply the first step toward deporting black Americans. I’ll wait while you try to do that math.

The debate is about control — weaponizing the courts, twisting language, and using moral panic to silence dissent.

Media mouthpieces like Sanders and Matthews are just the latest examples of the left’s Pavlovian tribalism when it comes to Trump and immigration. Just say the word “Trump,” and people froth at the mouth before they even hear the sentence. While the media cries “Hitler,” the numbers say otherwise. And numbers don’t lie — the narrative does.

Numbers don’t lie

The real “deporter in chief” isn’t Trump. It was President Bill Clinton, who sent back 12.3 million people during his presidency — 11.4 million returns and nearly 900,000 formal removals. President George W. Bush, likewise, presided over 10.3 million deportations — 8.3 million returns and two million removals. Even President Barack Obama, the progressive darling, oversaw 5.5 million deportations, including more than three million formal removals.

So how does Donald Trump stack up? Between 2017 and 2021, Trump deported somewhere between 1.5 million and two million people — dramatically fewer than Obama, Bush, or Clinton. In his current term so far, Trump has deported between 100,000 and 138,000 people. Yes, that’s assertive for a first term — but it's still fewer than Biden was deporting toward the end of his presidency.

The numbers simply don’t support the hysteria.

Who's the “dictator” here? Trump is deporting fewer people, with more legal oversight, and still being compared to history’s most reviled tyrant. Apparently, sending MS-13 gang members — violent criminals — back to their country of origin is now equivalent to genocide.

It’s not about immigration

This debate stopped being about immigration a long time ago. It’s now about control — about weaponizing the courts, twisting language, and using moral panic to silence dissent. It’s about turning Donald Trump into the villain of every story, facts be damned.

If the numbers mattered, we’d be having a very different national conversation. We’d be asking why Bill Clinton deported six times as many people as Trump and never got labeled a fascist. We’d be questioning why Barack Obama’s record-setting removals didn’t spark cries of ethnic cleansing. And we’d be wondering why Trump, whose enforcement was relatively modest by comparison, triggered lawsuits, media hysteria, and endless Nazi analogies.

But facts don’t drive this narrative. The villain does. And in this script, Trump plays the villain — even when he does far less than the so-called heroes who came before him.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Exposed: America’s ancient power grid is a national security disaster

Allan Tannenbaum / Contributor | Getty Images

If America wants to remain a global leader in the coming decades, we need more energy fast.

It's no secret that Glenn is an advocate for the safe and ethical use of AI, not because he wants it, but because he knows it’s coming whether we like it or not. Our only option is to shape AI on our terms, not those of our adversaries. America has to win the AI Race if we want to maintain our stability and security, and to do that, we need more energy.

AI demands dozens—if not hundreds—of new server farms, each requiring vast amounts of electricity. The problem is, America lacks the power plants to generate the required electricity, nor do we have a power grid capable of handling the added load. We must overcome these hurdles quickly to outpace China and other foreign competitors.

Outdated Power Grid

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Our power grid is ancient, slowly buckling under the stress of our modern machines. AAI’s energy demands could collapse it without a major upgrade. The last significant overhaul occurred under FDR nearly a century ago, when he connected rural America to electricity. Since then, we’ve patched the system piecemeal, but it’s still the same grid from the 1930s. Over 70 percent of the powerlines are 30 years old or older, and circuit breakers and other vital components are in similar condition. Most people wouldn't trust a dishwasher that was 30 years old, and yet much of our grid relies on technology from the era of VHS tapes.

Upgrading the grid would prevent cascading failures, rolling blackouts, and even EMP attacks. It would also enable new AI server farms while ensuring reliable power for all.

A Need for Energy

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Earlier this month, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt appeared before Congress as part of an AI panel and claimed that by 2030, the U.S. will need to add 96 gigawatts to our national power production to meet AI-driven demand. While some experts question this figure, the message is clear: We must rapidly expand power production. But where will this energy come from?

As much as eco nuts would love to power the world with sunshine and rainbows, we need a much more reliable and significantly more efficient power source if we want to meet our electricity goals. Nuclear power—efficient, powerful, and clean—is the answer. It’s time to shed outdated fears of atomic energy and embrace the superior electricity source. Building and maintaining new nuclear plants, along with upgraded infrastructure, would create thousands of high-paying American jobs. Nuclear energy will fuel AI, boost the economy, and modernize America’s decaying infrastructure.

A Bold Step into the Future

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This is President Trump’s chance to leave a historic mark on America, restoring our role as global leaders and innovators. Just as FDR’s power grid and plants made America the dominant force of the 20th century, Trump could upgrade our infrastructure to secure dominance in the 21st century. Visionary leadership must cut red tape and spark excitement in the industry. This is how Trump can make America great again.

POLL: Is K2-18b proof of alien LIFE in the cosmos?

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Are we alone in the universe?

It's no secret that Glenn keeps one eye on the cosmos, searching for any signs of ET. Late last week, a team of astronomers at the University of Cambridge made an exciting discovery that could change how we view the universe. The astronomers were monitoring a distant planet, K2-18b, when the James Webb Space Telescope detected dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide, two atmospheric gases believed only to be generated by living organisms. The planet, which is just over two and a half times larger than Earth, orbits within the "habitable zone" of its star, meaning the presence of liquid water on its surface is possible, further supporting the possibility that life exists on this distant world.

Unfortunately, humans won't be able to visit K2-18b to see for ourselves anytime soon, as the planet is about 124 light-years from Earth. This means that even if we had rockets that could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 124 years to reach the potentially verdant planet. Even if humans made the long trek to K2-18b, they would be faced with an even more intense challenge upon arrival: Gravity. Assuming K2-18b has a similar density to Earth, its increased size would also mean it would have increased gravity, two and a half times as much gravity, to be exact. This would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for humans to live or explore the surface without serious technological support. But who knows, give Elon Musk and SpaceX a few years, and we might be ready to seek out new life (and maybe even new civilizations).

But Glenn wants to know what you think. Could K2-18b harbor life on its distant surface? Could alien astronomers be peering back at us from across the cosmos? Would you be willing to boldly go where no man has gone before? Let us know in the poll below:

Could there be life on K2-18b?

Could there be an alien civilization thriving on K2-18b?

Will humans develop the technology to one day explore distant worlds?

Would you sign up for a trip to an alien world?

Is K2-18b just another cold rock in space?

Big Pharma’s role in rising neurological disorders: Will RFK Jr. uncover the truth?

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

Our children are sick, and Big Pharma claims to be the cure, but is RFK Jr. closer to proving they are the disease?

For years, neurological disorders in our children have been on the rise. One in nine children in the U.S. has been diagnosed with ADHD, and between 2016 and 2022, more than one million kids were told they suffer from the disorder. Similarly, autism diagnoses have increased by 175 percent over the past decade. RFK Jr. pledged to investigate the rising rates of neurological disorders as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and this week, he announced a major initiative.

Earlier this week, RFK Jr. announced that the HHS has embarked on a massive testing and research effort to uncover the root causes of autism and the sharp spike in recent diagnoses. The HHS Secretary vowed that the results will be available by September of this year, leaving many skeptical about the study's rigor. Conversely, some speculate that the HHS may have unpublished studies revealing critical insights into these disorders, just waiting to see the light of day.

Glenn brought up a recent article by the Daily Wire referencing a New York Times piece in which experts questioned the legitimacy of ADHD diagnoses. Glenn agreed and suggested that people are just wired differently; they learn, work, and study differently, and the cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all school system simply fails to accommodate everyone.

New York Times' ADHD Admission

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Earlier this week, the New York Times published an article that made a shocking admission: there are no concrete biological markers for ADHD. The clinical definition of ADHD is no longer supported by the evidence, and there are no physical, genetic, or chemical identifiers for the disorder, nor is there any real way to test for it. The paper also admitted that people diagnosed with ADHD would suddenly find that they no longer had any symptoms after a change of environment, profession, or field of study. This suggests that "ADHD" might simply be a matter of interests and skills, not a chronic brain sickness.

The most horrifying implication of this admission is that millions of people, including children, have been prescribed heavy mind-altering drugs for years for a disorder that lacks real evidence of its very existence. These drugs are serious business and include products such as Adderall, Ritalin, and Desoxyn. All of these drugs are considered "Schedule II," which is a drug classification that puts them on the same level as cocaine, PCP, and fentanyl. Notably, Desoxyn is chemically identical to methamphetamine, differing only in its production in regulated laboratories rather than illegal settings.

Worse yet, studies show that these medications, like Desoxyn, often provide no long-term benefits. Testing demonstrated that in the short term, there were some positive effects, but after 36 months, there was no discernible difference in symptoms between people who were medicated and those who were not. For decades, we have been giving our children hardcore drugs with no evidence of them working or even that the disorder exists.

RFK Jr's Autism Study

Alex Wong / Staff | Getty Images

Autism rates are on the rise, and RFK Jr. is going to get to the bottom of it. In the year 2000, approximately one in 150 children was diagnosed with autism, but only 20 years later, the rate had increased to one in 36. While some claim that this is simply due to more accurate testing, RFK Jr. doesn't buy it and is determined to discover what is the underlying cause. He is an outspoken critic of vaccines, asserting that the true scope of their side effects has been buried by greed and corruption to sell more vaccines.

RFK Jr. doesn't plan on stopping at vaccines. Similar to ADHD, RFK Jr. suspects other environmental factors could increase of autism or exacerbate symptoms. Factors like diet, water quality, air pollution, and parenting approaches are all under investigation. It's time to bring clarity to the neurological disorders that plague our nation, cut through the corruption, and reveal the healing truth.

Neurological Intervention

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Big Pharma has been all too happy to sit back and watch as the rate of neurological disorders climbs, adding to the ever-growing list of permanent patients who are led to believe that their only choice is to shell out endless money for treatments, prescriptions, and doctor visits. Rather than encouraging lifestyle changes to improve our well-being, they push ongoing medication and costly treatments.

All RFK Jr. is doing is asking questions, and yet the backlash from the "experts" is so immense that one can't help but wonder what they could be hiding. Both Glenn and RFK Jr. have their suspicions of Big Pharma, and the upcoming HHS study might be one of the most important steps to making America healthy again.

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