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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.

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Israel and Hamas have signed phase 1 of President Trump’s peace deal, paving the path for the release of all remaining hostages, hopefully in a few days. Glenn and Stu explain the significance of this historic deal and what it could mean moving forward.

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Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Oh. Your initial thoughts here on the peace deal?

STU: It's an incredible opportunity. I think it is important to remind ourselves, that this -- these things typically do fall apart. That is essentially your expectation, any time anything like this happens. Part of this is going to be Hamas coming through on promises.

I have very little belief that they are typically able to do such things.

That being said. They probably also -- you know, one of the things -- a friend of mine pointed this out to me. We were going through all of this.

And he said, you know, one thing to think about it: This is, like, not the B team of Hamas. But the R team of Hamas. They've killed so many of the leadership.

GLENN: Yeah, yeah.

STU: These are people making decisions that were not at the top of this organization and had those ridiculous ideological beliefs that would lead you to October 7th. That's not to mean that Hamas, these people that are left are like, "Hey, you want to invite them over for Thanksgiving."

But I do think there's a possibility here that they're like, you know, maybe this life is not here for us.

GLENN: That would be nice if that were true. I don't know if that were true. But it would be really thyself.

STU: I don't know if that's true. I do think there may be a little bit lower ideological commitment, potentially. And also, the idea that some of these people might be able to make this deal and escape to another third country.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: And live life there, in a different way.

GLENN: So the breaking news that just was announced, Israel, their parliament or their cabinet just met or approved phase one of the deal.

And Hamas has just come out and said, they accept phase one of the deal.

That means the hostages will be released either this weekend or Monday.

Any remaining hostage will be released.

STU: I mean, just that.

GLENN: Just that.

STU: If that occurs, it is a massive achievement.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: So far, it is already the greatest opportunity we've had.

And only possible because of his detection to this idea!

GLENN: And his deal-making.

Not just his vision.

But his ability to work all of the parties and find out what all the parties need.

And make it happen.

You know, we're not talking about peace between Gaza, you know, Hamas, and Israel.

We're talking about peace in the Middle East.

STU: Yeah. It's bigger. It's bigger than just Israel.

GLENN: I mean, it's Egypt and Saudi Arabia and -- and Jordan to some extent. And -- and Turkey. All of them getting together and saying, you know what! We'll rebuild Gaza. We want to make it into a very prosperous kind of area. I mean, think of places in Saudi Arabia that are so prosperous. That's the way Gaza could be. So they're all getting together and they're saying, "We will rebuild. We'll oversee. We will try to make everything -- you know, keep everything held."

They will put their money into it, which means they have a lot to lose if it goes awry. And they're all saying, "We can co-exist with Israel."

Three years ago, did you even think that was possible?

STU: Yeah. And, you know, look, there are a lot of places you can go and find non-stop criticism of Donald Trump. They will say terrible things he does, and everything he does is the worst thing ever.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: Also, there are plenty of places you can go where you find that everything that he does is the greatest thing of all time.

I hope you realize that's not what we do here. And I -- on a -- I said this -- and you said this as well when we -- when this was unveiled.

Sometimes, you can get -- people are critical of the way Trump handles these situations.
Sometimes. And sometimes there's arguments on that.
Sometimes it's not the best approach.

You know, we were critical of him, for example, how he handled Canada. You know, probably cost Poilievre that election. And I think that's a really bad thing.

GLENN: I do on top.

STU: That being said, this is a great example of where his instincts work perfectly. This is all set up over a long period of foundational stuff from his first term. With the decision he made, to come out and just announce the agreement with Netanyahu. We agreed. We agreed to this peace deal.

Now, in theory, we have no position to agree between these two parties. But he came out and all of the focus had been, look at all the bad things Israel is doing. Look at how bad, they're so evil. They're so bad.

And he said, we agree with Israel. Now we just need Hamas.

And so the world's attention was like, what's Hamas going to say?

Finally, he was able to focus his attention to the appropriate place. To the party that is holding the hostages, to say, hey. How about asking if they want to a freaking cease-fire for once?

He was able to do that. In a way that I think only Donald Trump could achieve. Which leads to this, over a long foundation.

GLENN: And here's another thing.

You know, this guy has walked through wall after wall after wall of fire. Everybody calling him everything. Nazi, every day.

Here's a guy who, you know, in a time period where the whole world is like, the Jews control everything. Donald Trump is run by the Jews.

He not only kept his relationship with Israel solid and helped them, when he thought they were right. But when they were wrong, in his view, he chastised them.

He knew how to do it. And still hold their respect.

And gained the respect of places like Qatar. And say, so Qatar. When he chastised Benjamin Netanyahu and Benjamin Netanyahu had to I think apologize to some degree about what they did in Qatar.

That's when the Middle East went, wait a minute.

He's not being controlled by the Jews! You know what I mean?

That should be a really big wake-up call to everybody who thinks that Donald Trump is just being controlled by the Jews.

No. No. No. He's not.

He does what he thinks is right. And he'll chastise both sides.

And he will support either side. When they're right, to get to a deal. That's good for everybody.

This deal could be amazing.

I don't have any -- and it's not because of this deal.

I happen to -- I read the end of the book. So I know how this ends.

This will not -- you know, this is not --

STU: You skipped ahead?

GLENN: I skipped ahead. I skipped ahead.

STU: Don't ruin anything.

Don't -- no spoiler alerts.

GLENN: I won't. No spoiler alerts.

Let's just say, this might last for a week. It might last for a thousand years. I don't know.

But we will be in this situation again. We all know that. We all know that. But let's take and celebrate peace while we can.

And the hostage is coming back. That is massive. Massive.

And due to Donald Trump.

Today, if you don't like Donald Trump, fine. Fine.

But how do you take this one apart?

Honestly, how do you not claim this is a massive victory, for the whole world?

STU: Well, I can tell you, that a lot of people on the left are rooting for it to collapse, which is a shockingly revealing moment. I mean --

GLENN: Wait. What?

STU: They are -- you know, they're not going to be out there like, we hope this collapse is.

But you know they hope it collapses.

They don't want to give Trump credit for it.

And they would rather have this continue. They would rather have this war go on.

Than admit that the reason it's ending is because Donald Trump was able to negotiate this deal.

That is central!

GLENN: I think anybody who has played politics with the Palestinian, you know, all that stuff. And all the stuff on the streets. That -- that has been a very effective tool for them. And so I would agree.

And they don't want that tool to be taken away.

STU: You think the Hamas wing of the party wants this? You think Rashida Tlaib is all thrilled about Donald Trump's efforts here. They will hear about Ilhan Omar -- how wonderful --

GLENN: Those are extremists.

STU: I mean that. This is a very revealing dividing line on the left. Right?

If there is anything that is ever going to happen, that Donald Trump can be given credit for. That you think this could be clear. John Fetterman. Fetterman has obviously pretty good on this issue. But Fetterman came out, gave a statement that should be basic. Basic. Like, hey, this is good. And I really hope it works. Donald Trump did a good job on this.

That's the type of stuff that should be obvious for everyone to be able to --

GLENN: That's what "Tip" O'Neill would have done. "Tip" O'Neill and Ronald Reagan, they got together. They disagreed. They fought hard, but they had dinner.

Yeah. Because "Tip" O'Neill could say, that was good. That was good. What he did was just good for all of us.

STU: That worked well. Good. I'm glad that happened. You should be glad that happened. We should all be rooting for the success here.

Even if what the -- you know, like, I rooted -- again, I have all sorts of criticisms the way Barack Obama dealt with the Middle East.

Yeah. Plenty of them. And we went over them over and over and over again.

And plenty of issues with specifically the way he went after Osama bin Laden. But on the day that it happened, really happy about.

Very happy that we were able to do it.

Now, look, it's our military that does it. They can say all this stuff too. They can say, oh, well, the real reason is. Blah, blah, blah.

But we can still be happy, that this occurred. And you can still be excited and give credit where credit is due.

GLENN: This is a win for all humankind. For humanity!

For life!

Stopping Hamas from torturing. You know, torturing kidnap victims.

Stopping the bloodshed that was happening because of the war on both sides.

That is a win. Having the possibility of a stable Middle East, at least for a while. That's a win!

That's a win all the way around. Everyone should be happy. I don't care if you like the president or not.

Everyone should be happy that mankind, put one on the chalkboard for all of mankind today.

This is a huge -- never seen -- this is on the good side. Never seen this one before. Didn't see this one coming.

I mean, we should all be able to say, wow!

And thank you. Because he's the -- I really, truly believe, when it comes to negotiating things like this, there is nobody better.

I mean, that's what he does for a living.

And he knows it. He knows how to read people. He knows how to it.

And this is evidence of it.

STU: And he will do things that are so out of the norm. That it resets everybody's thinking. You know, I mentioned --

GLENN: If he wouldn't have done that. If he wouldn't have done that, we wouldn't have all the Middle East signing on to a peace deal.

STU: I respect. What would they have done in a situation like Trump was with Netanyahu?

Their advisers would have said, "Look, this is great. You guys are together on this. Let's go to Hamas. We'll talk to them. We will see if we can get something done. We don't want to ruin it by announcing it publicly. There are times, where that tactic cannot work. But it worked really well here."

He forced them to basically say, "No, we don't want a cease-fire," or, "Okay. We'll go along with this."

And, by the way, you go down this list, there's a lot of stuff -- this is Hamas never, ever having control of this region ever again is built into this agreement. Now they've only talked about -- they're only on phase one here. So we don't know that we get all of this stuff. But like, there's a lot here that really improves the lives of Israelis, of --

GLENN: Palestinians.

STU: Arab Israelis in the region. You know, Palestinians. Other Arabs in the region.

GLENN: Saudi Arabia. Everybody.

STU: Yeah. Not to mention, just globally.

Right? This is a positive.

GLENN: Look what this does.

That's Turkey. So that separates Turkey from Syria, which is right in bed with -- with Iran.

I mean, think about how this box is. If you have the entire Middle East, now operating with Israel, and saying, we have a right to exist. Think about what that means, for this block, now to Iran. Iran doesn't mind being a pariah.

But now, everyone is officially saying, aisled do business with them.

STU: We will choose business over these guys.

That's a big statement in that world.

GLENN: That's a big deal. Big deal.

RADIO

Gold is at $4k an ounce. What that means for YOUR dollar

Gold has reached a record high price of over $4,000 an ounce. So, what does that mean for your dollar? Financial expert Carol Roth joins Glenn to explain why this news is so concerning and why many big investors have started to buy gold.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Well, Carol Roth, welcome to the program. How are you?

CAROL: I'm doing great, Glenn! I'm actually celebrating my 26th wedding anniversary today, so it's a blessed day.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Congratulations! Congratulations! It's weird. I'm coming up on my 26th on January.

CAROL: Oh, fabulous. Fabulous. It's a good amount of time to be married, yes.

GLENN: It is. It is. So, Carol. Let's talk about the price of gold hitting --

CAROL: It's over 4,000.

GLENN: Which is nuts. And I don't think people really understand. I don't think the average -- this is my guess, and I want you to correct me. I don't think the average person is buying gold. I think this gold-buying is happening from sovereign funds and central banks, mainly. Also, Asian markets. I don't think Americans really understand what $4,000 an ounce means. Can you explain it?

CAROL: Absolutely. I think the world both, investors and central banks are catching up to the things that you and I have been talking about for years. So, you know, we're ahead. We warned everyone. And now this is a little bit of catch-up. Interestingly, you know, as you noted, the average American is very behind in terms of what gold means.

When you look at Chinese households. When you look at Indian household. There are estimates that each one of those country's households owns up to 30,000 tons of gold at this point. Which to put that in context, the US government owns 8,133 times.

GLENN: So the Indian households, all of them combined, 27,000 tons.

CAROL: Right.

GLENN: What we say we have, is he 8100. Wow!

CAROL: So the households in China and India are really ahead of the curve. When you look at data for the US, it's a little bit hard to get good data. But from what I've seen, the estimates are only about ten to 11 percent of US households at all, have exposure to gold.

Now, I know that your audience is very sophisticated and is ahead of the curve. And I would imagine blows through that number. But just shows how sort of unprepared US households are in general.

GLENN: When you're looking at Indian and Chinese households that own gold. Does that include all the gold jewelry?

CAROL: Yes. Yes. That's actually, particularly in India. One of their preferred ways of procuring gold. Yeah.

GLENN: Okay. So gold has -- gold has shot up over $4,000 in record times. I mean, breathtaking time. What is causing that?

CAROL: Okay. So there are a confluence of factors, and I think the two most important factors, which, of course, are linked. Are what Wall Street is now calling the debt debasement trade. Which they're just caught up. And gave it a cute name.

And changing the global financial order. And they're very much linked.

GLENN: Yeah. Tell me, what is it? The debt debasement? What is that?

CAROL: They're doing the debt debasement trade, which is just basically what you and I have been talking about, which is our unsustainable fiscal position.

GLENN: All right.

CAROL: And what all of the money printing that we've seen over the past 17 years, what that has done to our purchasing power, and how that's going to catch up to us.

So as a reminder, our debt to GDP is at emerging market crisis levels. We were at 120 police levels of GDP.

We're running deficits equivalent to a war-time level. Or recession level, while we still have growth.

Which is crazy. We have interesting interest rate -- or interest payments that are outpacing defense spending.

So everyone is now finally catching on to the fact that this is an unsustainable financial position.

And it is going to be very difficult to get out of. Without there being some sort of additional debasement of our currency. Which is a fancy way of saying, a diminishment of your purchasing power.

What's really crazy. There's a chart that's been going around, and they did kind of a comparison of different asset classes. Price in US dollars, price in gold.

So if I look from the end of September 2018, out seven years, and you look at the top 100 NASDAQ nonfinancial companies. It's called the NDX. In US dollar terms, that is up 236 percent. So you think you're super rich, right?

But in gold terms, solid money that doesn't -- you know, that doesn't have its value debased. It's only up 4.7 percent.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

CAROL: Yeah. Of course. The S&P 500 up 133 percent over that period in dollar terms. It's down 27.6 percent in gold terms.

And what's called the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which is the value of homes, the way that's measured. Dollar terms, 60 percent. Oh, houses. So expensive In gold terms, it's down 50 percent.

In fact, right now, it takes less gold in terms of ounces, to buy the median single-family house, than it has in decades and decades and decades.

So it goes to show, that even though we see these dollars. They're buying less and less. And now, you and I were talking about this forever.

But now Wall Street is catching on. Oh, that's not a great thing. And so in terms of preserving the hard-earned capital, we need something that is that -- that hedge. That mutual hedge that is going to retain its value.

And that's why more investors, institutional investors. Funny enough, a lot of millennials, more than anyone starting to really get in to gold.

GLENN: You know why? Because millennials have not been trained their whole life. Trust the system!

CAROL: Yes.

GLENN: And they see it clearly. And they look at it, and they're like, well, this doesn't make any sense at all. And they're going to spend this.

And they will wreck the dollar and everything else. They just see it without being trained over and over and over again. Like, trust the system. They don't trust the system.

And once you realize, the system is rigged in a million different ways. And the system is not telling you the truth.

I mean, that is amazing. When you look at the stock market. And you say, it's actually down, when you compare it in US dollars. To gold!

What's happening -- let me explain this to the audience. What all that means is: Gold is only going up in dollars. It's staying -- it's staying stable. But it's costing you more because of inflation. The dollars are buying less! So it looks like you're paying more, but you're really not. It looks like the stock market is going up, but it's really not! It's what it costs to get in with dollars. If you're going in with gold. You'll actually see that if it was all done in gold, the stock market is down. The price of housing is town.

It's the dollar. It takes more dollars to buy, than it does with gold, which holds its value.

That is -- if people could understand that one thing, that changes all the conversations of, the government has to do something to make housing more affordable. No, they don't. They have to stabilize the dollar. They have to stop spending so much money.

CAROL: Yeah, I mean, if you think of the three definitions of money, it is a medium of exchange. You know, how you helped to exchange goods.

It's a unit of account, which we say, things are priced in dollars, and it's supposed to be a store value. The unit of account, that you just talked about. My friend Steve Forbes has a great analogy, and he talks about other measurements.

You know, imagine that your clock, you know, one day, at 12 o'clock, you know, means midnight. And another day, 3 o'clock means midnight. Or 6 inches to measure a curtain one day. And then the same measurement is like a foot, a different day.

You can't have -- a consistent measurement if the unit of account continues to change. And that's what we've been seeing here with the dollar. And unfortunately, it has not been to our favor.

Which means, that when you work really hard to earn something and it's valued in a dollar, that over time, that -- that work that you put out, your productivity is worth less and less.

And so what gold is meant to do. It's meant to be Capitol preservation. It's not a risk asset. It's not meant to take on risk. And maybe go up a ton. And maybe go down a ton. It's really meant to be a counterbalance to what you have earned. So that you can preserve your purchasing power.

GLENN: You know, I've been saying this for a long time. That you put your money. And I have money in the stock market. You put the money in the stock market.

If things really go awry, go ahead. You're going to cash out for an awful lot of money. But those dollars. It will be paid back to you in dollars.

Those dollars will be worth less, even though there's more of them stacked up, than that ounce of gold, or, you know, that 10 ounces of gold, or whatever you had!

The stock market is paid in dollars. And so as the inflation goes up.

But gold keeps its value!

Keeps its value and hold it steady.

So, yeah. You will be paying more in dollars if you try to sell your gold. But that will continue to increase while stock markets will go down. Am I right?

CAROL: It's a counterbalance. So if things were to shift, and for some reason, you know, things were to change with the dollars, which we would need a lot of different catalysts. Then your gold goes down. It's a counterbalance, which is why it's important to have that diversification in your portfolio. And to have the gold hedge.

What's interesting, Glenn. Just the history, we're talking about millennials.

You know, they went through the great recession. Financial crisis.

They're kind of keyed into this. But if you think about when we came out of the '70s with this crazy inflation. We came out of the gold standard. It used to be very commonplace for a financial adviser to sit down and say, okay.

We've been through this. And so you should be putting, you know, five to 10 percent of your portfolio in gold. As the stock market took off in dollars. And became this big thing.

And they started seeking fees. That went away. Financial advisers, who don't get paid sometimes at all, when you allocate to gold. Stop recommending it.

GLENN: Yep.

CAROL: And now we're seeing a shift back, now we're seeing, you know, oh, yes. You should have some. Some of the big names out there saying, even more.

GLENN: Ray Dalio just came out and said, 15 percent.

CAROL: Yes, we've seen big names like that, anywhere from ten to 20.

And when they surveyed high net worth investors, which are $250,000 in assets or more, they're averaging right now, 21 percent of their holdings in gold.

So it's a very big flip in recent years, on how this is being viewed bit people who have accumulated those dollars and are worried about them.

GLENN: Okay. So let me just summarize here before we move on. On to some other questions.

That is exactly what my grandfather who lived through the great depression said. What are the people with big large amounts of money doing?

I want to do that. And if I did do that. I would be better off in the great depression.

You just heard it, 20 percent or more, right?

From big dollars.

They're investing in gold. 20 percent!

You should -- you should have some!

CAROL: And it's interesting. Some of the portfolios we're seeing is coming from not only the equity peace, but from the fixed-income peace, which is pretty interesting too.

GLENN: Amazing.

TV

Unmasking Antifa: The Dark Truth Behind Its Well-Funded Network | Glenn TV | Ep 461

The cities of Portland and Chicago are turning into war zones. Federal agents have been ambushed, police have been ordered to stand down, and mayors are defying the Constitution. It’s insurrection in plain sight. Glenn Beck heads to the chalkboard to uncover the hidden support and funding networks propping up Antifa. Glenn debunks the myth that Antifa is decentralized and leaderless, tracing connections from Soros to Tides and other shadowy nonprofits. Plus, independent journalist Nick Sortor joins from outside an ICE facility in Portland, where he was wrongfully arrested by police following attacks by Antifa members.