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'Friction' Author: Today’s Consumers Are ‘Walking Billboards’ for the Brands They Love

Companies need to focus on becoming “passion brands” instead of just flooding consumers with advertisements, co-author Jeff Rosenblum told Glenn Thursday on radio. The latest generation of consumers is comfortable with social media and loves to interact, so they are the best advocates for the brands they like.

In his book Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption, Rosenblum explored this phenomenon of “passion brands,” or companies and products that people love enough to share with everyone by tweeting, wearing a T-shirt and telling friends through word of mouth.

“They’re like walking billboards, and they’re actively proselytizing for brands,” Rosenblum said, describing this key type of consumer.

One of his favorite examples is the brand Yeti Coolers, which sells a particularly rugged type of cooler intended for camping, fishing and other outdoor trips. Instead of traditional ads, Yeti focuses on creating short videos about people going on incredible adventures. It’s more about image than anything else. Even if people don’t really need a cooler that can weather the elements, they’ll be drawn to the vision of adventure.

“They tell these stories about people who are going on bigger and bolder adventures than most people ever will,” Rosenblum said.

GLENN: The whole world is changing. And really in an exciting and dynamic way, if you understand that the bull crap of yesterday, which Washington hasn't figured out yet. The bull crap of yesterday, the lies of yesterday, and the systems that create friction and make your life complicated just don't work anymore. Nobody wants them. Don't prop them up. Get out of that and find passion. Passion brands and friction. We're going to talk about that with a guy who knows it quite well. Beginning right now.

Name of the book that I've been telling you about for weeks, and I'm thrilled to have Jeff Rosenbloom. He's one of the co-authors of the book "Friction" passion brands in the age of disruption. It is one of those books that you read, and you're, like, jeez. How could I not know that? How did I not think that? How is this all of a sudden -- it's one of those things that somebody invents something, and you're, like, of course. How come I didn't invent that?

I want you to know that Jeff is not here to sell books. I highly recommend you buy his book, but he's not taking any of the money from it. It's actually going to something called special spectators, which we hope to talk about a little bit later. He will also be with us on The Blaze TV for a special episode tonight at 5:00, so he's not here to make any money. He's here to change some lives, and you have dramatically impacted my thinking since I picked up your book, so it's great to have you here, Jeff.

JEFF: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

GLENN: So tell me. I guess we just need to start at, you know, the brands of the past and the brands now. Passion brands. What is it?

JEFF: , well, passion brands are the brands that absolutely dominate the competition; right? They don't have just customers. They have an army of evangelists. These are the folks that are at the bars, at the restaurants, at the dinner table, they sit around the campfire, grew up on their social media channels, they've got the T-shirts, they've got the hats, they're like walking billboards, and they're actively proselytizing for brands.

GLENN: So you talk about one passion brand that has really boggled my mind until I read your book, but I want to ask you some questions about it. And that is Yeti. Coolers. Great coolers.

JEFF: The best.

GLENN: But -- what is it? Four times the price of a good cooler?

JEFF: yeah.

GLENN: And I've often wondered. People who buy this, they become evangelists, and it's a cooler. And I wonder how much of that is because it truly is absolutely great and how much of that is to soothe the cognitive dissidents in their head of I just paid fours times as much and everybody who doesn't have one says "What the hell is wrong with you."

Does that play a role in that at all?

JEFF: Absolutely. To dial it back, and then we'll talk about Yeti. Passion brands are built by fighting friction. Friction is anything that gets in the way of what you want to accomplish in life. It's anything that gets in the way of your hopes, dreams, aspirations, on even your mundane day to day goals.

So when you think about Yeti, it's a cooler for outdoors. So by definition, if you're using it, you're going on some sort of outdoor adventure. So they fight friction in two ways. The first is this cooler is fundamentally better than any other cooler out there. It's literally certified Grizzly bear proof. Now, the chances of anyone actually needed that type of technology --- fairly negligable.

GLENN: Right. I would like a cooler that I can pick up and throw at the grizzly bear.

JEFF: That's the next product.

But it's nice to know if you're going on that adventure, that product that you're buying can go further and deeper and bigger on an adventure. But to your point, it's not just about the cooler, it's about the totality of the experience. And what they've done that I love is rather than relying on a bunch of interruptive ads, they've created these incredible videos. Each of these videos are about eight minutes long, and there are dozens of them. And they've been watched millions of times over. And what they do is they tell these stories about people who are going on bigger and bolder adventures than most people ever will. The world's greatest fly fisherman, the world's greatest ski guide, the world's greatest barbecue pit master who happens to be an 89-year-old woman named Tutsi. It's not, like, we're Yeti, and we make coolers. Yeti doesn't even appear in these videos. But what happens is they give us a vision. A bigger and bolder vision of ourselves. We all wake up in the morning wanting to be better we were than the day before. It's at the heart of the human experience. It's what drives capital I am. So these great videos help us envision that.

And, by the way, I've watched hours of them. Most people will watch a few of them. The typical interactive ad experience is 1.6 seconds. Compare that to an eight-minute video.

GLENN: I watched the fly fishing one. It's 22 minutes.

JEFF: Yeah.

GLENN: I watched it. Every second of it. And here's what I do. I hear from the guys because I'm not a sports guy. But I hear from the guys on sports every -- every Monday, I hear ugh, and I know they're on ESPN just trying to get the six-second clip, and they have to sit through the commercial. That's not 22 minutes. And it's just in the way of getting to their six seconds.

JEFF: Yeah. Prerolls. You know, the advertising industry, we keep making ads and the audience keeps running away.

Now, to be clear, this is not about the death of advertising. That false eulogy has been written before. We're just asking advertising to do too much. We can still do incredible things with advertising, but increasingly those traditional interruptive ads are being ignored and avoided.

GLENN: In fact, just removing the friction from your product will do more than any ad. If you make a truly great product, and you make it frictionless and not only -- I mean, let's go into the passion brands a little bit. Of finding that group of people -- and let me ask you. Do you need -- to really have an authentic brand, does that need to come from the founders that are, like, what you know? I wanted this. I know this is great, and I don't care if anybody buys it. Or does it come from a group of people who are just scanning the horizon and saying, yeah, these people over there. Let's come up with something for their -- does it matter?

JEFF: Well, I think it comes from both. But most passion brands that we see, and they can be big brands like Under Armour or big brands like Amazon or some of them are smaller startups, they tend to be run by the founders because they have a strong vision, and they don't want to waver from that vision. But it can be from large, established corporations.

One of the interesting things that we found is that really the key is to take all of your efforts and instead of first focusing it outward at messaging, focus it inward at your own behaviors. And a piece of research we found is what's called the power score. And they looked at 9 million different data points. They interviewed 20 self-made billionaires and CEOs and army generals. What they found is only 1 percent. Only 1 percent of leaders are great at what they call the power score, which is establishing your priorities, staffing effectively, and building internal communication cadence. So if you can have great leadership, then you can build a great passion brand. And ironically, you can create great ads. But you have to focus inward before outward.

GLENN: Some amazing things that I just didn't know, for instance, some stats in your book. Let me just run through a few of them. 90 percent of all of the data in the world has been collected in the last two years. That's astounding. 40 minutes in nature every week will lower AD/HD by 50 percent. Don't put your smartphone or your iPad next to your bed. Take that on.

JEFF: That is interesting because so many people loved it, and we weren't sure if that actually fits in the book. But what we tried to do with the book is look at industrial friction, organizational friction, and personal friction. And in that example, we found this great story about Keith Richards. The world's greatest guitar player or one of them. And one night, he's out doing the one thing in this world better than play guitar. He's partying like a Rockstar, and he passes out cold, and he wakes up the next day, and he has a song in his head. And his guitar is literally lying in bed lovingly with him. He grabs his guitar, rolls over, presses record on his tape recorder, lays down a few notes, passes out cold again. Wakes up a couple hours later, presses play, and he finds the guitar riff for satisfaction is waiting for him. Of course, then it's followed by the sound of him snoring. He's not even conscious enough to press stop on the recorder.

Paul McCartney had a similar experience. He woke one day, and he has a song scrambled eggs in his head. Can't stop. He's turning to all of his band mates and friends and be, like, what song have I ripped off here? And they're, like, dude, you didn't. It's your song, it's your original. And he went to John Lennon and turned it from scrambled eggs to yesterday.

Not quite as catchy when talking about breakfast; right? And it knowledge only happens to rock stars. The guy who figured out the periodic table of elements, the guy who figured out the double helix of DNA. All of this happened first thing in the morning when people woke up. And what happens in your brain, you've got something called alpha waves. It's the most powerful form of cognitive creativity that you have. This is where you can think of some big, bold, break through ideas. It's the same thing you get if you're in a hot shower, hot bath, you're in traffic for a while, your alpha waves start kicking in, and you ignore all of that crap in your head.

Now, the issue is 72 percent of us go to bed with their cell phone lying next to us. 50 percent of us, the very first thing that we do is we check it. One third of women before they even go to the bathroom, they check social media. The problem is when you do that, you completely shut off those alpha waves. You lose that opportunity to have that cognitive creativity.

GLENN: And why is that.

JEFF: Because it kicks in your fight or flight system, which is something we learned about in high school; right? It's when the blood flow changes. It used to be something that kept us from getting eaten by woolly mammoths, now it keeps us from getting run over by a car; right? Your subconscious takes over, you have different chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol in there. Your buddy on Facebook who just went on a better vacation than you'll ever go on. That's stressful; right? The server that's on fire, the contract that didn't get signed. Whatever it is on e-mail, that's all stress. So you're turning off that creativity, and you're creating stress.

Now, here's the interesting point. They used to think that your brain was your brain, and that's all you got. It turns out that there's a high degree of plasticity in your brain, which means it can change just like that cheap analogy that says your brain is like a muffle, you have to work it. It turns out it's true. You can actually change the size and shape of certain areas of your brain, and it happens very quickly. So when you go to your mobile device first thing in the morning, you turn off the creativity, you turn on the fight or flight. For the rest of the day, you're not going to be as creative.

So with a 90 million bits of information, 90 percent of the data that's been collected the past two years, everybody has unprecedented access to data and technology. Creativity is the ultimate competitive advantage, and you have to feed your creativity just like you have to work out your body at the gym.

GLENN: When we come back, I want you to talk about --

STU: All about the gym. You're talking to a good crew.

JEFF: That's why I went there.

GLENN: So you're speaking our language. When we come back, I want you to talk about monkeys and how this relates to monkeys and then back to us. In just a second.

GLENN: A game-changing book in your thinking is "Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption." There is so much friction in our lives from chaos, from just -- just from the news trying to understand the political -- it's all friction. And being able to reduce that and navigate through that is really hard. And I think people are getting really frustrated in some ways with life, and they're just tuning out. They're just stopping. And that's really because the media or politicians or party or whatever you're dealing with just are not changing. They're holding onto the old system.

JEFF: Yeah.

GLENN: And it doesn't work. I was blown away -- where did you get the monkey thing, and then explain the monkey thing.

JEFF: Yeah, it was interesting. When I was writing the book, we set up a research team, thousands of pages of research. I'm a numb nut. I barely graduated college; right? But I'm hanging out with my really smart friend, he's a Ph.D. at Stanford, a neuroscientist, and he's telling me about this study that they conduct all the time. And what happens is when you go to get your Ph.D., they often give you this experiment where they take an electric probe, and they put it into a monkey's brain to read what's going on inside that brain. And then what they do is play this loud, blaring, obnoxious sound in the monkey's ear. And what you see on the readout is not surprising. When you play that awful sound, you get a very strong and very negative reaction from the monkey's brain. So then they repeat the experiment. They play that loud, blaring, obnoxious sound. And what you find, again, is not surprising. They have a very strong and very negative reaction.

But what it was absolutely shocking to me is that if you repeat the experiment a few times over, and then you look at the readout, the reaction looks like the side of a cliff. The monkey's brain literally stops reacting to this awful sound because the monkey at a structural level knows that it needs to focus on other things in life. Food, water, shelter, fornication; right? If it continues to respond so strongly to that stimulus, it literally can't survive. It's called repetition suppression.

GLENN: So are we in -- before we go into this on the decisions that we make and every day. But are we seeing this -- is this one of the reasons why we are just tuning so many things out in Washington? We're tuning principles out. We're tuning all kinds of stuff out because we just can't do anything about it, and we keep hearing it shouted over and over and over again, and we focus on other things? Am I reading that right?

JEFF: That's exactly right. The human brain is exposed to 400 billion bits of information every second. We make 35,000 conscious decisions per day. We ran an experiment --

GLENN: That's 35,000 yes or no decisions.

JEFF: It could be more complicated than yes or no. These are outright conscious decisions per day. So brands, politicians, we're all trying to enter this stream. We expose people to 5,000 branded messages per day. The previous generation was only 2,000. Already, that was too much. So what we have to do is focus less on interruptions, and more on empowerment. Another way of looking at it is magnets over megaphones. We have to create content and experiences that are so powerful, people go out of their way to participate in them. And then, share them with others. And that's the secret ingredient to brands like Yeti.

GLENN: Patagonia you think is the pinnacle of a passion brand?

JEFF: Patagonia is one of them.

GLENN: Why?

JEFF: Well, I fell in love with this guys because, first of all, they recognize that there's friction in the category. And what they to is they focus all their efforts on fighting that friction. So the friction is this:

If you want to enjoy their outdoor gear and apparel, you need a healthy outdoors. And ironically when they create their products, it actually damages the outdoors; right? Create manufacturing by-products, your old jackets make garbage; right? So everything they do, they fight friction by empowering people.

GLENN: Okay. So when we come back, listen to the ad campaign that they came up with, and it's brilliant. Brilliant. Patagonia "Friction" is the name of the book. Jeff Rosenbloom joins us again in a few minutes. "Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption". Back in a minute.

[Break 10:31]

GLENN: I will tell you. If you really want to see the world in a different way, especially if you're an entrepreneur or a leader of any sort, you really want to see the future and whether what you're doing will survive or not. You need to read the book "Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption".

Jeff Rosenbloom is with us, and you were giving us the example of Patagonia. Patagonia making outdoor clothing, and they really are dedicated to, you know, save the planet and everything else, and so that's where their people are. And the friction that they had internally was, you know, all of the stuff that we make the chemicals and everything, the garbage, that's actually hurting. So how are we helping, exactly?

So talk about the campaign that they ran with a coat.

JEFF: Yeah, so you hit on a really important point. For their target audience, making the environment healthier is absolutely paramount.

GLENN: Paramount.

JEFF: Right. So the campaign that I love, I came across not when I was doing research, but we actually created this documentary called the naked brand. And we looked at one of their campaigns called the footprint chronicles where you know if you got the surfer board shorts, and you go surfing, and you come back on the beach, and they dry, like, 45 seconds later? Well, guess what? Mother nature didn't make those shorts. We made them. We manufactured them. They're manufacturing by-products, so you can actually follow the manufacturer of their products around the globe, see the supply chain, they're not saying look how great we are. They're literally talking about the damage they do. It's really counterintuitive. I find it fascinating, and I fell in love with the brand. And I wanted to buy this blue Patagonia jacket. I had a perfect vision of it in my mind's eye.

And I'm literally shopping on Black Friday. The number one shopping day of the year. Brands sell more on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving than in months combined. And I went to Patagonia.com and on the home page, like, they read my mind, I can't exaggerate this. There's the blue jacket that I wanted to buy. And then right next to it on the home page in a giant font, don't buy this jacket. What the heck is going on here? And then there's a button, like, direct response principles click on it. Learn more. So I click. And their point is this. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce is number one. So if you want to buy that jacket, we're happy to sell it to you. But we're going to damage the environment from the manufacturing, from the garbage of your old jacket. Maybe, you don't need that jacket. Maybe you should buy less.

So I'm Jewish, I'm from New York, I felt guilty, I didn't buy the jacket. They lost the sale. But here's what they gained. They gained my unwavering loyalty. And they gained my evangelism. So here we are on your show talking about Patagonia. But more influential than me are the people who are truly influential. The guys; right? These are the guides leading hiking and biking and fly fishing and surfing adventures all around the world. And in definition, guides are influential, and they're covered head to tow in Patagonia gear because Patagonia is empathetic and empowers people about the one thing that is most important to those guides. And when you talk about evangelists, they are 12 times or more trusted than paid advertising ever will be.

PAT: Wow. And also, their competition is similar in that way; right? They try to reduce -- north face, they reduce friction for their customers as well.

JEFF: Yeah, it's a great point. Thanks for bringing it up because we can't just all jump on the environmental bandwagon. We can't jump on what other brands are doing.

PAT: That would look really disingenuous.

JEFF: Totally. People don't wake up in the morning and want to hug the trees and save the manatees; right? It works for some brands. North face took a different tact, which is if you want to enjoy outdoor sports and apparel, we're going to help you become a better athlete. So they created what they call the mountain series; right? And it's a bunch of instructional videos and information and articles and events that help people become better athletes. So I fell in love with this video series. It was from some of the best rock climbers and skiers, and they were shown very specific exercises to help me become a better skier. What's interesting is I don't think it worked all that well for them because they made less of those videos and became less prominent. But they stick to this platform. They're always empowering and always educating with different events and different information to help people become better athletes. You don't see the edge or you do see the ads and say, hey, we're north face, these are great products. But more importantly, they create content and experiences. So the ads are only part of that brand-building system. It's not the totality of it.

STU: You go through a lot of this stuff, obviously, in the book "Friction." And I have a friend who goes to Soul Cycle, which is a cycling spin class place.

JEFF: Bordering on a cult.

STU: The number one people say to her is shut up about Soul Sycle.

GLENN: It's like orange theory.

JEFFY: Yes.

GLENN: Orange theory is, like, okay. Stop with the bumper stickers. It's a gym, man. Let go.

STU: So the question I want to ask you is how do I get her to shut up about Soul Cycle? But separately -- because I look at their business model, and I see a huge friction point, which is they're charging people $31 to come in and ride a bike in their establishment for an hour.

JEFF: Yes.

STU: And, to me, that sounds completely insane. Yeti, they have more evangelists percentage-wise probably than any company I've ever seen. How do you cross over a huge friction point like that and bring your point along?

JEFF: Great point. Great brand. I should have included them in my book. I was scared to death to go in there. You guys selling salad? We'll do that.

GLENN: Salad? I like the part on Cadbury, for the love of god.

JEFF: Here's the interesting point that you just amongst is these passion brands, they don't get there by talking about discounts and promotions. And once brands go there, it becomes really addictive. They actually charge a premium price. Patagonia, Yeti, Soul Cycle, sweet green, all of this stuff is quite a bit more expensive than the competition.

GLENN: And it has to be worth it first. It has to be worth -- if you're buying a dozen eggs, you better get 14 and great farm fresh eggs if you're charging --

PAT: Or at least you're better than whatever else.

GLENN: Yeah, you've got to be. You have to be that first. There's none of this, you know, hey, Fred Flynn stone is saying, you know, that doctors say smoking is healthy. It has got to actually be accurate; right?

JEFF: There's a great poster I saw. No amount of advertising can get me to buy your crappy pizza; right? And the truth and the matter is it actually can. It can get you to buy that crappy pizza once. But it's not going to get loyalty and evangelism. So you're hitting on a key point with Yeti is that the product has to be better than the competition. It doesn't have to be two or three times better. But it has to be 10, 20, 30, 40 percent better.

But to your point, that relationship that people have with Soul Cycle is irrational; right?

STU: Yes. Yeah, I can confirm that. Yes.

JEFF: The reason it's irrational is that it's emotional. Most brands have a transactional relationship; right? They make a good product, they charge a fair price, they have some pretty good advertising, people comparison shop, and then they buy.

Soul Cycle and other brands have an emotional relationship where people pay more for the product. They ignore the competition. They buy all of that Soul Cycle and gear, and they turn themselves into walking billboards. And they do that, they create that irrational relationship through irrational behavior.

Think about that Patagonia example. Running a campaign that says don't buy this jacket, that's irrational.

GLENN: So Starbucks, really, was kind of a pioneer in this kind of area, weren't they? Where everybody was going to Dunkin' Donuts and getting your coffee at a normal price. And then all of a sudden here comes Starbucks charging money out the nose. But it became more than a coffee place.

JEFF: Yeah, well, it went from transactional. I like Dunkin' Donuts. I'm from the northeast. But it's transactional. You're in, you're out, you move on. Howard Schultz was, like, wait a second. Let's make this experiential. Let's look at what's going on in Europe. Let's sell them the cup of coffee and then give them a place to hang out. And then all of a sudden almost like Soul Cycle, it's almost coltish in the language that they're using, and they're becoming part of a tribe and tribes are extraordinarily powerful. We don't just want customers. If you want to be a passion brand, you have to build a tribe.

GLENN: So is that do you know where Y they use things like venti? They change the language to make it even more of a badge to be a part of this tribe. Is that what's going on?

JEFF: That's exactly right; right? And I don't know, like, I'm not that gifted creatively to figure those types of things out. But, yeah, Howard or somebody on his team figured out long ago let's create that badge. Let's create those shortcuts.

GLENN: The name of the book is friction. I can't recommend it highly enough. I've never done this with any book before. I insisted everybody on the staff read this book, so we're responsible for about 249 companies being sold.

JEFF: Thank you very much.

GLENN: And everybody has read it. I also for the first time I've never done this. We're asking all of our Dallas employees to come down to the studio floor today. There's about 90 here just in this building. They're coming to listen to you at 5:00 for the show at 5:00 today TheBlaze.com, and I just want you to talk about how to find the customer, how to reduce friction, how to -- I mean, I'm convinced -- everything in your book, I've known instinctively. And if I boil it down, I always thought that capitalism was the greatest charity brand ever, if it's done right. And meaning if I love a group of people, I'll say how can I serve them? How can I make their life better, easier? And by serving them, what they need in a really easy way, I could become rich. It is capitalism. It's not charity. It's capitalism. And that's really kind of the thing. If you know who your target is, you know who you're serving, and you actually love them, listen to them, and help make their life easier, that's it, isn't it?

JEFF: It's interesting you bring it up because I'm leaving this very blue region of New York City, and I'm entering this red region of Texas. And I'm looking out the window of this wonderful, amazing, beautiful country of ours. And I was thinking about the fact that we just can't seem to agree very much lately. And then I realize, wait a second. There is one thing that we can all agree upon. Which is corporations have incredible power. And they should use that power to improve people's lives one small step at a time. And this is not for altruistic reasons, this is not for idealistic reasons because that is not sustainable. It's because when brands improve people's lives, they get rewarded. Not just by shifting customers or, say, prospects to customers, but by shifting customers into evangelists, and that's what fighting friction is all about.

GLENN: Unless you go to the Harvard school of business, and you are assigned both wealth of nations and moral sentiments, which is imperative that you read both Adam Smith books, you're not going to get this. This is a new really kind of Adam Smith look at how capitalism should work, "Friction" passion brands. We will you on The Blaze TV today at 5:00.

JEFF: Thank you.

GLENN: I want to talk really quick before you go. The proceeds as we're telling people to buy your book. The proceeds are not going to you. Where are the proceeds going?

JEFF: From July 15th to August 15th, all of the proceeds, not Amazon, not the publisher. I can't control those guys. Goes to special spectators.

GLENN: Which is what?

JEFF: Takes kids with life-threatening illnesses, and takes them to exclusive college sports experiences. So they'll get on the field at, like, Alabama, and they'll get into the locker room, they'll meet the coaches, and there's all different games going around the country. And what they found with these, because I'm on the board of make a wish, and we saw it there also. It's not just about giving these guys a moment of happiness, but it's also part of a healing process; right? It literally heals kids when they're fighting these diseases to actually have a moment of happiness in their life.

GLENN: Thank you very much, Jeff. We'll talk to you later this afternoon.

JEFF: Thank you.

GLENN: By the way, if you have any questions, go ahead and tweet them, and I'll have the staff look at them this afternoon before we go on the air. You can just tweet them @glennbeck, and we'll try to get your questions in as well.

RADIO

This AI could change EVERYTHING by next year

With Elon Musk’s announcement of Grok 4, humanity is closer than ever before to creating AGI – artificial general intelligence – which would change everything. Glenn Beck breaks down what’s coming in the next year with AI, which even Elon Musk called “terrifying.”

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Let me tell you the biggest story of the day.

And I think it is the biggest story possibly of all mankind, as of today.

It's going to change rapidly.

I don't know if anybody -- did either of you guys watch the Elon Musk thing last night?

STU: No, I did watch a few minutes of it.

GLENN: Okay. Did you, Jason?

JASON: No. I sure didn't.

GLENN: Okay. So the xAI team was there to unveil Grok 4. This is the latest intelligence, and let me be very, very clear.

Last night was not your typical tech launch. This is a moment that demands everyone's full attention.

We are now at the crossroads, where promise and peril are going to collide. Okay?

I have explained to you, for years, AGI.
AI. AGI. And ASI. Narrow intelligence is what we've always had.

General intelligence is the next step. And that is, it's better that man, one -- one, you know, like Grok. Can do everything. That you can do.

Better that you can do.

Okay?

And then there's super intelligence. ASI.

Artificial super intelligence.

That's when things get really, really creepy.

When you hit AGI, the road to ASI could be overnight.

Okay?

We need to understand what's at stake here. Because Grok four brought us closer to that second stage, than ever before.

Grok four is a powerhouse. They demonstrated it last night.

It surpasses the expertise of Ph.D.-level sailors in all fields.

It can get 100 percent on any -- any test for any field, mathematics, physics. Engineering.

You name it.

This is not a search engine.

This is a system that tackles problems, so intricate, they -- they go beyond our existing knowledge base.

Okay?

Let's say there is -- let's say, we have a fusion reactor. And the magnetic containment system goes down. I don't even know what I'm talking about at this point.

But it goes down.

And the top minds all on earth are like, I don't know what to do. Grok 4 can step in, model the physics, design new material, stabilize the system, and avert catastrophe. And it can do it about that fast. Now, this is the capability, that Musk says is just around the corner.

Mark my words. You know, how many -- how many years did I say, between 2027 and 2030, we would start to see this?

STU: Oh, a million times.

That was always --

GLENN: For years. Right? Yeah, always the window.

And everybody, even Ray Kurzweil said, oh, that's way too optimistic. We may be 2050.

And then people started going, 2040, 2030.

Grok shows us 2026 or 2027 is when we're going to hit it. This is the last year, that we have, before things get really weird.

Okay?

Last night, Elon Musk is touting this -- this AI.

And all of the solutions.

And then he says.

Hmm. Probably three times.

Something like this.

And I'm quoting. This is one of them.

It's somewhat unnerving to have created intelligence that's greater than our own.

He then goes on to call it terrifying, twice.

Now, this is a man who has launched rockets, you know, into orbit.

Going to Mars.

And he says, twice!

You know, after he sees the results of it. He says, you know, it's really -- in a way, quite terrifying to see what it's doing.

But we just have to make sure that it remains good!

Oh, okay.

All right. Sure.

Now, the key point in the announcement was the mention of ARC-AGI.

I had never heard of ARC-AGI. I had no idea what it was. But I noticed AGI. And I went, uh-oh. That sounds important. So this is the gold standard. The bench mark testing for artificial general intelligence.

Okay.

As I've said before, AGI. Artificial General Intelligence is a machine that matches all human cognition, across all domains.

Reasoning, creativity.

Problem solving. Not just specialized tasks like playing Go or analyzing x-rays. Everything. For instance, Musk said by mid-next year to the latest end of next year, it will be able to create a full length movie, just from a text prompt.
And do it all at once!

So, in other words, it will say, create a movie, and you just explain the Godfather.

It will do the casting. It will do the writing. It will do the filming, if you will. It will -- score the music, and it will happen that fast.

Almost in realtime. We are nowhere near the computational power now, to do that separately.

But this will do it all at once. It will make a movie with all of it, simultaneously.

So the arc AGI system is the benchmark on how close we are to AGI. Remember, scary things happen at AGI.

Terrifying things happen at ASI. ASI could be a matter of hours, or days after we hit AGI.

Grok 4 scored 16.2 percent on the ARC-AGI scale.

Why is that important? You're like, well, only 16 percent away.

Because last time, it barely broke 8 percent.

And that -- they took that test, last time with Grok three.

And it took us forever to get to 8 percent.

Now, what is it? A year later.

We're at 16 percent. Remember, these things are not linear. The next time, we could be at 32, we might be at 64.

We are on the verge. This is the last year of -- I can't believe I'm saying this. Of normalcy. Okay?

This year is -- we're going to look back at this year, probably two years ago, gosh, remember the good old days, when everything was normal.

And you could understand everything.

This is how close we are!

Everything you and I talked about last night, Stu, about what we're doing in January, make -- put -- does it make it even more critical that that happens like, oh, I don't know.

Right now.

STU: Yeah. For sure.

GLENN: You are going to need to know your values, your ethics, your rights.

You are going to need to know absolutely everything.

Now, Grok 4 is not true AGI yet.

It lacks the full autonomy and the generalized reasoning of a human mind. But it is the closest that we've come.

It's a system that can adapt, innovate, at a level that outpaces specialized AIs by a wide margin.

This is a milestone. This is not a destination, but it's something that should jolt everybody awake. So here's what's coming over the next six months. By December 2025, that's this Christmas!

December 2025, he believes, Musk, that Grok 4, will drive breakthroughs in material sciences.

So, in other words, imagine a new -- brand-new alloy, that is lighter than aluminum. Stronger than steel.

And it revolutionizes aerospace and everything else, or a drug that halts Alzheimer's progression, tailored to a person's DNA.

Grok will drive breakthroughs through material science. So brand-new materials that nobody has ever thought of.

Pharmaceuticals that we never thought could be made.

And chemical engineering, putting together chemicals that no man has ever thought.

That's going for happen by December.

Imagine a chemical compound that makes carbon capture, economically viable. The climate change stuff, that's over.

It will be over.

Because this will solve that! These are not fantasies.

This is Grok 4.

Musk said something that he never thought. He believes that within the next year, by 2027, Grok 4 will uncover new physical laws.

So that will rewrite the understanding -- our understanding of the entire universe.

That there will come -- like there's gravity. Hey, you know what, there's another law here that you never thought of. Wait. What?

That, he says, will come by 2027. This is going to accelerate human discovery, at an unprecedented scale.

I told you, at some point. I said, by 2030. It might be a little earlier than that.

Things will be happening at such a fast rate, you won't be able to keep up with them.

And it will accelerate to the point to where you won't even understand what all of this means.

Or what the ramifications are!

Are you there yet?

In six months, Grok 4 could evolve into a system, that dwarfs human expertise in economics, defense, all of it.

Now, again, it's a bit terrifying to quote Elon Musk. Why?

Because we don't know, what else comes with this.

This is like an alien life form.

We have no idea, what to predict. What it will be capable of.

How it will view us, when we are ants, to its intellect.

Okay?

It is a tool, but it is also Pandora's box.

If Grok 4 is the biggest step towards AGI.

And maybe one of the last steps to AGI.

My feeling is: What I've been saying forever.

2027 to 2030, I'm leaning more toward the 2027 now.

Because of this announcement last night.

We are on the verge of AGI.

And everything in human existence changing overnight.

And as Musk said himself, two times, it's terrifying!

We should act like it is terrifying.

Or risk losing the control of the future, that we're all trying to build. That's the biggest story of the day.

I think! In my opinion.

RADIO

Bill O’Reilly’s SOLUTION to the DOJ’s Epstein Files fallout

Bill O'Reilly joins Glenn Beck with his plan for how the Trump administration can fix the Epstein Files fallout "overnight." Plus, he explains why he believes there's only one way that former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan get indicted by a grand jury.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: All right. Bill O'Reilly.

Welcome to the program, sir! How are you?

BILL: Welcome. (inaudible)

And right off the bat, I have to correct you.

GLENN: Yeah. You're not alive. What know.

BILL: I mean, you know -- you don't know that?

GLENN: Yeah, yeah. No. I -- I thought you were dead. Anyway --

BILL: You were dead to me, oh!
(laughter)
I --

GLENN: I get it.

BILL: That's just another brick in your wall, Beck.
(laughter)

GLENN: It's good to talk to you, Bill.

Tell me -- you had a conversation with -- with President Trump, what, a couple of months ago, and I talked about --

BILL: Yeah. St. Patrick's Day, he invited me to sit on a cabinet meeting, which he does sometimes.

And he said, look, we've got files, Kennedy, King, Epstein -- what do you think? And I said, well, first Kennedy you've got to put out pretty much everything, which he did. King, he didn't. I don't know why. Because that's important too.

And then on Epstein I said, you have to be careful here, because this is now being used in political precincts. Both sides want to destroy anybody that was associated with Epstein. And the problem is that a federal investigation. They don't make a determination whether you had a -- what kind of relationship you had with Epstein. They just said, so-and-so had lunch with him.

Or maybe so-and-so had -- saw him at a party. And I said, any name of a human being associated with Epstein, in any way, that person is going to be destroyed. Because you know, the press is not going to put anything into context.

So I said, but it's very important that the Justice Department tell the folks what they know.

And you don't have to get specific with anything.

But you have to say, this is the information that we've compiled. And that's not hard.

And I don't know why the Trump administration is not doing that.

GLENN: Wow!

So, first of all, it's your fault, that we're not getting any names. We learned a lot here.

BILL: Probably my fault, but the president --

GLENN: You know what, I think you're right. I don't want all the names of the people. I want to know --

BILL: And I don't either.

GLENN: Right! I want to know the Justice Department has sorted through the things, and then have gone through. And said, this is criminal. This is not. These people are being indicted, et cetera, et cetera. But to come out and say, there is nothing there, I mean, it's -- it's at least --

BILL: It's ridiculous.

GLENN: It's mass incompetence, at least from Pam Bondi. How could she come out and say, it's all sitting on my desk?

And then when she doesn't release it, she says, well, that's because the FBI in New York is thwarting this process. There are people up there, that are trying to keep this from me.

And then she makes no arrests on that. We never hear about that again.

And then now all of a sudden, there's nothing to see.

BILL: Well, listen, Pam Bondi does not make decisions on her own.

No cabinet member does.

All the decisions come out of the West Wing.

So what I believed happened was, Trump was so obsessed with the big bill, with Iran, with Putin, with China.

That this -- they didn't even think about this. Okay?

GLENN: I believe that.

BILL: And it slowly began to unravel. And then I caught it by surprise.

But this is the easiest fix. Somewhere so easy.

BILL: So if I'm in charge, and that would be a great thing for everyone, except you, Beck -- but every other American, if I were in charge, tremendous. You would be in Botswana. Right.

GLENN: Right. Oh, I know.

Yeah. Yeah. I would be the ambassador of the white farmers in -- in South Africa if it were up to you. I know. I know.

BILL: No. You would be wandering around going, I am Glenn Beck. And they would go, who? That's what you'd be doing.

GLENN: That's every day.

BILL: So this could happen within the hour. Pam Bondi announces a press conference for tomorrow.

At that press conference, sitting next to her, is Merrick Garland, everyone.

You had this stuff for four years! Now, I understand that Mr. Garland has gone native and is living in a -- well, we can find him. We can pull him out of there, and have him and Pam, sit there and answer questions in a general way about what evidence the Justice Department of the United States has compiled.

GLENN: Not going to happen.

BILL: That's it!

Well, if it's not going to happen, then President Trump is going to take a hit.

But he's calculating that this will say that it's that night important.

But I don't know why you would not do it.

I just don't know. And I'm usually pretty good at predicting what the president does or does not do.

GLENN: So here's the thing, Bill.

I think he keeps focusing on Epstein. It's not that big of a deal.

It's not about Epstein. It's about justice.

It's about, can we trust the people -- correct!

It's all about credibility and justice.

And he's not seeing that. And I don't know how he's missing that. Because I agree with you.

He's been so busy on so many other things.

BILL: That's right. That's right.

GLENN: This is not at the top of his priority list.

But he did campaign on it.

BILL: Right.

And I don't know if there's anybody inside the White House.

He looks to be annoyed, when this subject comes up.

GLENN: Oh, I know.

BILL: And here's the -- what works -- you have to understand.

A guy like Donald Trump runs it all.

If he's annoyed, nobody will want to annoy him more. Okay?

GLENN: Oh, I know.

BILL: That's how it works. The older arch is, because Epstein got favorable treatment.

By the feds, in the first go around in Florida, that there's a deep suspicion about this case.

But if you break it down, if the Biden administration had any dirt on any Republican associated with Epstein. It would have been out.

And vice-versa.

If the Republicans had any dirt on any Democrats. Now, we know that former president Clinton, was involved with Epstein to some extent.

I don't know if that was a factor, okay? I don't know.

But your right for once. You're right. It's about credibility. It's about the American people trusting that we do have equal justice for all!

So what do you -- what do you make of now the Russia gate thing, coming out, today. Or yesterday.

The FISA court.

The fact that they're now saying, hey.

You know, we need to hold Brennan accountable.

We're like five or six days away.

Weeks away from him, you know, slipping past the -- the statute of limitations.

I mean, all these things are out today.

There's that. There is also the -- let's see here.

The Secret Service -- I think this happened a year ago.

But it's being reported as if it's news.

Secret Service suspends six agents assigned to protect Trump during a Butler assassination attempt. I mean, all these things are coming out. Like, look, we're busy on all these things. And I do believe they're busy on these things.

But it's like the Keystone Cops are in charge of the PR on this. It's bad.

BILL: Well, there's a lot of politics involved in both of those cases. Number one, in order to get Comey and Brennan to get indicted by a grand jury. Federal grand jury, and that's the only passage, you would have to have a whistle-blower, saying, yeah, these guys abused their power. I worked for them. And they absolutely wanted to get Trump.

And they knew the Russia dossier was phony.

And they did it anyway.

If I have that Justice Department.

Then you can get those guys.

If you don't have it, they will not be even indicted by a grand jury.

GLENN: So how is it that we do not have that Justice Department?

How do we not have that Justice Department?

BILL: Well, look. I don't know whether they have a whistle-blower or not, okay?

And if they have a whistle-blower, I want the case to go forward.

I want those two men indicted.

You can't do that, at that level.

As far as the Secret Service is concerned, monumental screw up. Everybody knows it. They fired the morons in charge of it. That woman -- I was embarrassed listening to her, trying to explain.

They didn't know what the deuce was going on. But this was across-the-board, in the Biden administration.

You know, it was a year ago Sunday, this upcoming Sunday.

GLENN: Right.

BILL: And it's just another example of how the Biden administration was the second worst administration in the history of this country. People have no idea how bad it was.

Every single agency was chaotic. Nothing worked. And this is just part of that. And we'll have a slew of stuff on Sunday. Nothing really meaningful.

I mean, they suspended the Secret Service agents, as they should have. They fired the director as they should have. The guy was a nut.

I don't know if there was anything more to that. I doubt it.

I'm more interested in the guy in the bushes. Because they don't know anything about him. I would like to know a little bit about him.

But again, the federal government, it doesn't really matter. It's the government. They never want to tell us stuff, Beck, never.

We always have to pull it out of them. It's almost like Russia or something. Come on!

GLENN: Right. Yeah. Let me ask you, let me take you back again to the Epstein thing.

I noticed yesterday, there were these people who were on the left. Who were taking tweets of mine. That say, look. These things don't make sense. On the Epstein thing. And they just have to be answered. And not anti-Trump at all.

And yet, the anti-Trump people were retweeting that, and they're trying to -- they're trying to get the right to fight against itself again and split people away from Donald Trump, where I don't think this Epstein thing is -- is splitting people from Donald Trump, at least at this point.

And I -- you know, I -- my wife stopped me from answering some of those tweets, yesterday.

Because it's never good, when you -- when I tweet in anger. Which I did.

But -- or was going to. What did you think about how this is being used against the right to try to separate us even more?

BILL: Everything is political. Everybody knows that for you.

But the MAGA people, from the mail I get. And I get a voluminous amount of mail. They're not happy.

GLENN: Oh, I agree. I'm not happy.

BILL: Now, are they going to throw President Trump under the cliché-ridden bus? No. Because to them, the greater good is being served by a fair tax bill.

Trying to cut waste.

Dealing with Iran effectively. And hopefully dealing with Putin.

That's another thing, that's on Trump's plate.

He has to deal with Putin now.

Has to. And that will be the next big story.

GLENN: How is he going to deal with it?

BILL: Lavrov and Rubio, are in Indonesia, as we speak.

And I assume that Rubio is delivering a message. That you either stop, or we're going to just absolutely crush you economically. Which the United States can do. By saying. No bank does business with Moscow.

And if you do business, no matter what bank you are, we're going to put you out of business.

Okay?

GLENN: Yeah. I've only got a couple of seconds. But didn't we already do that under Biden?

BILL: No! We didn't do the banks. We did the sanctions. And the sanctions they can always get around, because China is going to buy as much oil from Russia as possible.

You stop the banks, from doing all business with Moscow? Who is going --

GLENN: Isn't that what the SWIFT thing was all about?

When we kicked them off of SWIFT, wasn't that what that was all about?

BILL: No! Because they can still do a huge business with countries buying their oil.

And they got to pay Putin and Russia for the oil, and that has to go through the banking system.

If you stop the banking system, he can't get paid.

GLENN: Hmm, it's amazing. I'm glad I'm not the president right now. I think he's made some very brave decisions, and he is walking a tightrope. I mean, the world is on edge. And I pray for --

BILL: He looks very tired to me. Very tired. I haven't talked to him in a while, which is unusual. But you're right. You're absolutely right. That's the second time you've been right in this conversation. My God!

GLENN: I know. It's crazy.

BILL: What in the world.

GLENN: I was wrong about you being dead.

BILL: What is happening?

GLENN: It's good -- it's good to talk to you, my friend. Is everything okay? Is everything going well?

BILL: Everything is all right, Beck. We are not only successful, but that's old news. We've been that way for 50 years, but I appreciate you having me on your fine program.

GLENN: Okay. I love you.

BILL: Stu is still breathing.

GLENN: Hmm.

BILL: So that's good. Right.

But I've got a big book called Confronting Evil. Of course, we sent it, and of course you denied getting it. That comes out September 9th, so put me on a dance card.

GLENN: Well, we'll have you on. And you can also find Bill and his YouTube page. YouTube.com/BillOReilly. Or is it The Walking Dead?
(laughter)
He's not even laughing. Maybe he hung up. Bill O'Reilly, great to have him on.

TV

FLASHBACK: Kash Patel says FBI Director has Epstein's "Black Book!"

During a 2023 interview with Glenn Beck, now-FBI Director Kash Patel adamantly proclaims that the FBI and specifically the FBI Director is in direct control of Jeffrey Epstein's "Black Book" of clients. So now given the most recent claims by Patel and DOJ Attorney General Pam Bondi, what has changed from his perspective since taking this role? What do YOU think is the explanation for this change in tune by Kash Patel?

Watch Glenn Beck's Extended Interview with Kash Patel from 2023 HERE

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

Are Epstein's "Blackmail Videos" Being Used for Leverage RIGHT NOW?

What was Jeffrey Epstein's operation all about. If he was at the center of a massive blackmail operation to compromise those in positions of power, who is in possession of that information now? Glenn Beck and ATF Whistleblower John Dodson analyze the details of this situation and give their thoughts on what is the most likely reality surrounding Epstein.

Watch Glenn Beck's FULL Interview with ATF Whistleblower John Dodson HERE