What does the future hold? Glenn talks to entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis

February 13, 2015

Writer

Does college matter? What happens when 50% of current jobs disappear? What does the future look like? These are the kinds of questions that people across the country need to be asking, but many don't even know where to start looking for the answers. To help fix that problem, Glenn has started to seek out strange bedfellows, many of whom are on the cutting edge of shaping the future. Jason Calacanis is an angel investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He knows better than most what the future holds, and more importantly how to prepare.

Start listening to the interview at 1 hour 36min into today's podcast:

Below is a rush transcript of this interview

GLENN: This is crazy. I don't want to make this about politics. I want to make this about the future. Does college matter really? Or is it what -- how you learn to think and can you remain nimble enough in your thinking. I don't want someone who's gone to college and just learned how to think in a box. If you can go to college and learn to think outside of the box, great, but too many times college is making you just draw this straight line that everybody is going down. The world is not like that anymore. We have Jason Calacanis on. He is really the father of the blog. He started one of his web logs back in -- I don't know when. Sold it to AOL for $30 million in 2005, and he's an angel investor, has been investing in some of the greatest new technology around. And he also runs something call This week in start-ups. He's also one of the biggest entrepreneurial festivals that go on called Launch Festival, and Launch Festival happens in march. I am actually going to speak there in San Francisco. 10,000 entrepreneurs come to this, and think out of the box.

So I wanted to start with Jason there. Does college matter in the future to the extent of you would be concerned about someone who didn't finish college?

CALACANIS: Great question. Thanks for having me, Glenn. One of the major issues is the value proposition. $10,000 for four years or $20,000 or whatever you paid and I am a little younger than you, maybe $30,000 for four years for me, as a product of Fordham University.

One year salary. Maybe it seems like an okay thing it would for a couple of years, as you mature, but do go into debt, the equivalent of five year's salary, no, makes so sense. Then if you look at what truly matters in the world, to make it today, a combination of skills that are in demand, that go out of demand probably every five, ten, 15 years for some of these very specific skills, programming a specific computer language, using a specific peat of design software. What you need to have is grit, ethics, morality, leadership and resolve. When I look at entrepreneurs, people always ask me hey, how did you pick Thumbtack or Uber or some of these? I said I picked the individuals, not the ideas. If you look in someone's eyes and you can feel the passion and you can hear the logic and the decision-making and problem-solving they approach a space with, whatever the space happens to be -- for you, it would be media. For me, it would be angel investing -- their approach and resolve and problem-solving leadership ability, these are the things that matter. We have to re-optimize the school systems for those things and even if we do, the fact is, we are going to live in a world with much less employment and that's going to be a scary thing for everybody, independent of party mines, so I know this show gets a little political at times, but when you look at just the world and the flattening of the world, which means hey, everybody is going to trend towards the same arrow we wage at some point, and that is happening, and there's too many workers in the world, we are going to live in a negative job economy.

GLENN: What does that mean? I was just talking to my son last night. He's 10. We were talking about great cars. I said when you are my age, you will tell your kid, when they are your age now that you remember when your dad drove cars, and you drove a car, but you probably won't -- you may live in a world where you are not allowed to drive a car anymore. And as I was having this conversation, what I really wanted to say to him -- and by the way, it will be a scary world, because by the time you get out of college, if you go, 50% of all the jobs that are currently available, are going to be gone. I can say that, but I don't know what that really looks like. What does that mean, that we are going to be in a much more jobless world?

CALACANIS: You can see what it looks like. If you go to the Middle East, if you go to some of the underperforming European countries, referred to as the pigs, perch gal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and you see what happens when 20-something-year-old males hit 20, 30, 40% unemployment, it means riots in the street. And it could mean people hanging out, drinking coffee all day, getting a stipend from the government, looking for somebody to hate for their lot in life. And having a lack of purpose in life is dangerous. Those are the people who can get picked up presently easily by people who are using religion Todd bad things in the world and drugs and just whatever?

GLENN: So who is doing anything on that?

CALACANIS: Very interesting question. Now you are getting to the heart of it, which is hey, we have a lot of rich people in the world, right? Polarization of wealth is happening. What do the billionaires think? What do the people in true power think, the people running these huge companies? They are staying up late about it. I have had many after night thinking about this issue, and there are some creative solutions. I think we will work it out and we'll be in a beautiful world in the future. What's going to happen, we'll have to-start thinking of creative solutions. I am kind of against this as a workaholic, group up with an Irish-Catholic for work ethic, we will move to a four-day work week. If you give everybody three days offer, we have created 20% more employment on a mass basis. Another one, double the number of teachers, double the number of health care workers. And you do that, then the number -- amount of time they each have to have with each of the people that are working with would double or triple. Those would be good things for society. Of course, if you say anything creative like that in the environment that we live in -- and you are part of that environment as someone who talks about this at stuff -- you have to be careful. If I said that, oh, you are a socialist. I would say I don't know what you mean by that word in this context N 2015, but the world is moving awfully quick. When a lot of people are under employed and you see Operation Wall Street, that was like our little preview of what happens when a group of people gets disenfranchised. That was a completely ad hoc poorly run organization. That's why none of us are thinking about it all that much today, but they had a great moment in New York -- I mean effective. I'm not endorsing it necessarily -- but they went to Bloomberg's house, put 30, 40 people out of his town house and started protesting. When that happens, someone like Mike Bloomberg will be like if you are taking it to my front porch and I have to deal with this, okay, that four day work week thing works well. Or let's think about -- the really scary one, which I was dead set guest, now I am kind of starting to think about, is minimum income. This is a super-interesting --

GLENN: Whoa.

CALACANIS: I know you are thinking -- what minimum income means is cancel all the social programs and just give everybody innocent country $1,000 a month. If all the social programs -- we have 300 million people, equals this amount of dollars, just give everyone $1,000 a month. Then, rich people get it too. Everybody gets it. You could probably waive it or something, but at least your rent and your health care, whatever would be paid for. Not necessarily endorsing its, but if we got to 40% unemployment and had to figure out what to do with everybody, oh, my God -- this is probably at the end of our lifetimes.

GLENN: This is -- I will tell you, this is something we do -- this is the kind of thinking that I think middle America needs to start hearing. Instead of just hearing the stat, there's going to be a loss of 50% of jobs buy the year 2025, someone has to start talking about what does that really mean. What does that look like. And what do people do? Because that's the -- what's happening right now, I think we are being led by the elites, and it's because nobody is talking about this with regular people. So they just -- we are just fed this technology and just like oh, we have this technology, but no one is thinking about the ethics of it, no one is thinking about the consequences of it, no one is thinking about what it means when it starts to punch in and what it means for our children, my child, who is 10, when they are 25. What does the world look like? Not the way it looks now.

CALACANIS: It will be completely different. If we put ourselves back in time when we were kid, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, whatever it might be, the idea that you didn't work for one company for your entire life and pick that company and get a gold watch an get a pension would be terrorizing, but we don't have pensions today and we don't stay with the same company. There's upside as well. You could go out on your own and be like I don't want to work for a big network or big radio conglomerate. That's the freedom you have got front this unbundling of society and moving away from the control state, where you have this limited number of options. The unbundling -- and you having all this freedom to do whatever you want, the Internet and technology treeing you also means that yeah, the old structures are gone. The unions are gone. We have to have this many people build a car, because a union person said that's how many people its takes to build a car, as opposed to an expert telling us. That's changed.

GLENN: The real challenge here is, if you really do have freedom and the state is not in control of everybody's health, insurance, information, and they have clamped down as a totalitarian state to keep control, then I think we have a chance. But I'm afraid of the growth of the state at the same time, because while people don't like to lose power, governments certainly don't like to lose power.

CALACANIS: One of the things -- I think that interesting is the technology industry -- not endorsing, where observing -- kind of taking over the government and having a big say, just like some of the big industrial companies did for the last 100 years. So Megan Smith previously worked at Google. I'm friendly with her. You will see Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, I think you will see her take a cabinet position in Hillary wins, which looks like she's got a pretty good shot. And so I think you are going to see the technology industry be very involved in government more.

GLENN: Which I have to tell you, scares --

CALACANIS: We're coming.

GLENN: I know.

CALACANIS: We have the money to pay the politicians.

GLENN: I know.

CALACANIS: You know how this thing works.

GLENN: I do. And the idea that it becomes cozy bed fellows with everybody having a back door is really disturbing. The NSA is very disturbing.

STU: Can I ask a more important question here? How the hell did you get the Twitter name @jason?

CALACANIS: Good story. I'm at brunch with my friend Evan and Biz Stone. He created a blogging company. And I was in blogging. And he said look. Biz will tell you he's -- I will tell you I'm having the oatmeal, and you tell everybody you are having the pancakes. The SMS -- it was all SMS-based at that point -- shows what you had.

I looked at him and said Evan, you are going backwards in your career. Look, you took this post and got rid of the blog. Do you realize every idiot in America is going to start telling us what they think in a -- can I curse on this show? I was about to say the F word. It's not even a full sentence. It's a fragment. This is going to be a cacophony of idiotcy. I would never invest in something with a name such as Twitter. That's when you learn nobody knows. And if you think you know, you don't. Therefore --

GLENN: I would love to have you on again. I would love to -- in San Francisco, it should be quite interesting with two of us in San Francisco, taught about what future holds. Thank you so how much. Jason Calacanis. Launchfestival.com is the web site and thisweekinstartups.com.

Breaking point: Will America stand up to the mob?

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

URGENT: Supreme Court case could redefine religious liberty

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

One‑sided freedom

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

Censored belief

I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

Faith on trial

In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The real test

No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck joins Megyn Kelly LIVE — One night ONLY in Fort Worth!

Get ready for sparks to fly. For the first time in years, Glenn will come face-to-face with Megyn Kelly — and this time, he’s the one in the hot seat. On October 25, 2025, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, Glenn joins Megyn on her “Megyn Kelly Live Tour” for a no-holds-barred conversation that promises laughs, surprises, and maybe even a few uncomfortable questions.

What will happen when two of America’s sharpest voices collide under the spotlight? Will Glenn finally reveal the major announcement he’s been teasing on the radio for weeks? You’ll have to be there to find out.

This promises to be more than just an interview — it’s a live showdown packed with wit, honesty, and the kind of energy you can only feel if you are in the room. Tickets are selling fast, so don’t miss your chance to see Glenn like you’ve never seen him before.

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What our response to Israel reveals about us

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

I have been honored to receive the Defender of Israel Award from Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Jerusalem Post recently named me one of the strongest Christian voices in support of Israel.

And yet, my support is not blind loyalty. It’s not a rubber stamp for any government or policy. I support Israel because I believe it is my duty — first as a Christian, but even if I weren’t a believer, I would still support her as a man of reason, morality, and common sense.

Because faith isn’t required to understand this: Israel’s existence is not just about one nation’s survival — it is about the survival of Western civilization itself.

It is a lone beacon of shared values in the Middle East. It is a bulwark standing against radical Islam — the same evil that seeks to dismantle our own nation from within.

And my support is not rooted in politics. It is rooted in something simpler and older than politics: a people’s moral and historical right to their homeland, and their right to live in peace.

Israel has that right — and the right to defend herself against those who openly, repeatedly vow her destruction.

Let’s make it personal: if someone told me again and again that they wanted to kill me and my entire family — and then acted on that threat — would I not defend myself? Wouldn’t you? If Hamas were Canada, and we were Israel, and they did to us what Hamas has done to them, there wouldn’t be a single building left standing north of our border. That’s not a question of morality.

That’s just the truth. All people — every people — have a God-given right to protect themselves. And Israel is doing exactly that.

My support for Israel’s right to finish the fight against Hamas comes after eighty years of rejected peace offers and failed two-state solutions. Hamas has never hidden its mission — the eradication of Israel. That’s not a political disagreement.

That’s not a land dispute. That is an annihilationist ideology. And while I do not believe this is America’s war to fight, I do believe — with every fiber of my being — that it is Israel’s right, and moral duty, to defend her people.

Criticism of military tactics is fair. That’s not antisemitism. But denying Israel’s right to exist, or excusing — even celebrating — the barbarity of Hamas? That’s something far darker.

We saw it on October 7th — the face of evil itself. Women and children slaughtered. Babies burned alive. Innocent people raped and dragged through the streets. And now, to see our own fellow citizens march in defense of that evil… that is nothing short of a moral collapse.

If the chants in our streets were, “Hamas, return the hostages — Israel, stop the bombing,” we could have a conversation.

But that’s not what we hear.

What we hear is open sympathy for genocidal hatred. And that is a chasm — not just from decency, but from humanity itself. And here lies the danger: that same hatred is taking root here — in Dearborn, in London, in Paris — not as horror, but as heroism. If we are not vigilant, the enemy Israel faces today will be the enemy the free world faces tomorrow.

This isn’t about politics. It’s about truth. It’s about the courage to call evil by its name and to say “Never again” — and mean it.

And you don’t have to open a Bible to understand this. But if you do — if you are a believer — then this issue cuts even deeper. Because the question becomes: what did God promise, and does He keep His word?

He told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.” He promised to make Abraham the father of many nations and to give him “the whole land of Canaan.” And though Abraham had other sons, God reaffirmed that promise through Isaac. And then again through Isaac’s son, Jacob — Israel — saying: “The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I give to you and to your descendants after you.”

That’s an everlasting promise.

And from those descendants came a child — born in Bethlehem — who claimed to be the Savior of the world. Jesus never rejected His title as “son of David,” the great King of Israel.

He said plainly that He came “for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And when He returns, Scripture says He will return as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah.” And where do you think He will go? Back to His homeland — Israel.

Tamir Kalifa / Stringer | Getty Images

And what will He find when He gets there? His brothers — or his brothers’ enemies? Will the roads where He once walked be preserved? Or will they lie in rubble, as Gaza does today? If what He finds looks like the aftermath of October 7th, then tell me — what will be my defense as a Christian?

Some Christians argue that God’s promises to Israel have been transferred exclusively to the Church. I don’t believe that. But even if you do, then ask yourself this: if we’ve inherited the promises, do we not also inherit the land? Can we claim the birthright and then, like Esau, treat it as worthless when the world tries to steal it?

So, when terrorists come to slaughter Israelis simply for living in the land promised to Abraham, will we stand by? Or will we step forward — into the line of fire — and say,

“Take me instead”?

Because this is not just about Israel’s right to exist.

It’s about whether we still know the difference between good and evil.

It’s about whether we still have the courage to stand where God stands.

And if we cannot — if we will not — then maybe the question isn’t whether Israel will survive. Maybe the question is whether we will.

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