The Eastern world. It is exploding, violence flaring. Bull is loading. You're old enough to kill, but not for voting. You don't believe in war. Boards ain't gun. You're toting. And even the Jordan River has your body is floating. But ya tell me over and over and over again, my friend, I. You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. Don't you understand what I'm trying to say? And can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today? If the button is pushed, there's
no running away. There'll be no one to save. We'll the world in a grave. Take a look around you, boy. It's bound to scare you, boy. And you tell me over and over and over again, my friend. I. You don't believe we're on the deave of destruction? Welcome everyone. This is Michael Moore. This is my podcast. I'm recording this here on Sunday, April 14th. There's a 5 minute podcast I listen to every morning and I've been doing it for probably since
before they called it a podcast. But jeez, how long have I listened to this man? 15 years, maybe longer. It's called the Writer's Almanac. I used to 1st listen to it on the local NPR station in Traverse City, MI and it was like 9:00 every morning and something like that. And they ran the Writer's Almanac and basically it was a very brief thing talking about which writer's birthday this was. Then talk about maybe some key historical events, maybe ones
we'd forgotten about. So I just got in the habit of listening to that every day. But I was just thinking about it here today because I was listening to the writers Almanac. Now he doesn't record it anymore. So they are playing old episodes on this particular day, but it has to be because they always says, you know, this is Sunday, April 14th, so obviously it changes every year. So right now they've been playing episodes from 20/20/13 and 2007.
I think 'cause the the, I guess those years line up to the days of the week that we're in right now in 2024. So I listened to it this morning and I thought wow, the things he went over, what happened on April 14th on this Day in History and what happened with one specific author and also well 2 authors and something that helped all of us who work with and believe in the printed word. So I just, I just wanted to share with you before we thank
our underwriter for today. And then and then I have something I want to say about what's going on in the world. So let me just, I just made some notes listening to the writers Almanac this morning. And here is what happened on April 14th on this Day in History in 1939. The Grapes of Wrath was published on this day and he told the story of how Steinbeck wrote this book, one of the greatest novels in American history, in five months.
He wrote 2000 words a day, finished it in five months, decided to write it in essentially inside an outhouse, an old outhouse, you know, that often times was the where the bathroom was for people's homes back 100 plus years ago. And so he had a just a a small bed, a desk typewriter and a gun rack. And this great book was born in that outhouse in just five months. But it when he sent it off to the publisher, he said I'm really sorry, this is not my best work.
I know I could have done better, but it won't be very popular. I just want to warn you. So I hope you're not planning to make much money with this because I just, you know, it's a story about a family that loses everything in the Dust Bowl and moves to what they believe will be paradise called California, only to be harassed by police all along the way and taken advantage of by those who believe in profit.
Of course, the book, when it came out on this day, 1939, so that's 85 years ago today, it became a huge, huge hit with people who read books, which back then was quite a few people and knew that he was telling their story. He had their voice, John Steinbeck. And then of course, very, very soon after that they made it into a movie starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. And of course it was a book I read very early on in my youth and was seriously, seriously moved by it.
And if you haven't read it, I would encourage you to give it a try. I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised. And of course, if you have read it, which many of you have, not a bad time to read it again. Then he said that this is the day reminded all of us that this is the day that President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, sitting in Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, watching a play. And Booth found the presidential
box. The security guy who's supposed to be guarding the president was thirsty and went to the bar next door for a drink. And Booth put a very small pistol to the back of Lincoln's head and put a bullet right into his brain, then leapt off the box onto the stage, shouted something about glory to the South. I don't know. Those aren't the exact words, but basically he was a Confederate supporter.
Traitor A believer in slavery. There's a great dramatic mini series that just came on Apple TV called Manhunt, and it's based on a book about the 12 days of the whole country looking for John Wilkes Booth to capture him. I highly encourage you, if you like good television, to watch this manhunt. It's what it's called. Also on this day. In 1828, Webster's Dictionary was first published. Noah Webster spent 30 years
compiling this dictionary. He started it out as just wanting to create an American spelling book because in the early years of this country there are so many different regions and dialects and different languages spoken. The Continental Congress actually tried in the, you know, mid 1700s to pick a national language because there were so many people that spoke English, French, Spanish, Dutch, lots of Dutch. And so they voted and English 1 by 1 vote in the Congress over German.
You believe that, like if that vote had gone the another way, we'd all be speaking German. Of course, my German fans and Germans that are listening to this place, I'm not when I'd be laughing. I'm not mocking the fact. It's just that we, you know, you know, we're busy people and it it takes three times as long to say every German word than it does saying it in English. So I'm just saying, if we were all German speakers, I don't know how much we'd really get
done. But nonetheless, the German people today wonderful people. But Webster decided that that we needed an English Dictionary for American English and he thought it was crazy to the way the British you know, color had to be OUCOLOUR. The word wagon had to have two GS. And then he just started looking at this and going it doesn't need all these U's and it and they don't the places where they have to add a the British added an extra letter. He's like the hell with that stuff. You know.
So music used to used to be spelled MUSICK. Why do you need the K? So a lot of that way he just he just kind of made it easier And but it took him 30 years to do this. So when it was published on this day in 18 I think it was yeah 1828 it had taken so much time and and it costs so much to print because they're you had to hand feed paper. You know if you're going to print a book sometimes it could take half a day to print one copy of a book. I mean it was that that's how
slow it was. The printing press in 1828. So they had to charge the $1520.00 for this, which back then that was like buying a book that cost 200, three, $100, like nobody could afford it. So you know, he never, really never regained what it cost him to do this. But he had a significant impact on our American identity and our culture as it was then and as it became. So it's very interesting. I went and read a little bit about Noah Webster today. Also on this day in 1912, the
Titanic sank. An hour before it sank, the radio operator on the Titanic got a warning from a ship that had just passed these icebergs to warn the Titanic that there was some serious ice sticking out of the water straight ahead
and it was late at night. The guy was tired and he was getting a lot of messaging a lot of rich people on this inaugural trip on the Titanic coming to the New York City and and a lot so a lot of people were sending messages to who was going to greet them at the dock in New York. And so finally when this guy from the ship that it was an hour ahead of them said be very very careful it's dangerous.
The ice he he on the wireless on the on the Telegraph ticker whatever it's called where they bang out the letters he writes back to the other ship. I'm busy. Shut up. Jeez. Oh my God. This ship was was touted as like the most safe ship. It could withstand the the worst kind of if you ran into something or or you got struck in the fog by another ship that you this ship will not sink but not looking for ice and not warning the lookouts to look for
ice icebergs. The ship comes upon one the Titanic and sort of just kind of gently scrapes it. It was only about 10 seconds of scraping, scraping and that was enough to punch a number of holes all along the side of the ship which was not prepared for a scraping. I can't remember how many died, but I know it was well over 1000 dead. A few hundred got in the not enough lifeboats and and that was that and it was on this day and then the final thing on for April 14th.
This is considered kind of officially the the day that the modern day printing press was founded. That was first used in 1863 where you didn't have to feed paper by hand anymore. And not only that, it was not only a self loading, self feeding paper press, it would print on both sides of the paper. Unheard of. So the printing press have been around since you know what, Probably the 14 or 15 hundreds I think. Don't hold me to that, but the
Gutenberg German press. But from 1863 on, it just got a lot easier to print newspapers, to print books. And this is the day it all began in 1863. So just a little history for this day, thanks to the Writers Almanac. I think you could just just look up, type in Writers Almanac and they'll send it to you for free every day. They're using the old tapes because whatever happened on April 14th still happened on April 14th, even though they don't do the the Radio podcast
any longer. So. So before I continue, I'd like to take a moment to thank our underwriter for this week's episode, a longtime supporter of my podcast and that is Shopify. Shopify is the all in one global commerce platform whose whole ethos is to help businesses grow and make running a shop, be it an actual physical store or online or even a non profit, to make it as straightforward as possible and make the tools accessible to everyone.
So if you run your own business already, or have an idea to start your own shop, whether to support yourself or your family, or to raise money for a 'cause that you care about, check them out. They can help you at every stage, from your first order to your millionth. There's a reason that millions of people from 175 countries around the globe use Shopify, and that 10% of all e-commerce in the United States is powered by Shopify.
So sign up for a $1.00 per month trial period at shopify.com/rumble and make sure you type rumble all in lower case. Go to shopify.com/rumble right now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. shopify.com/rumble Rumble all in lower case. And thank you Shopify for supporting this podcast and for supporting my voice. It's much appreciated. OK, so I have only really only one thing I want to say here
today of of of importance. And again, much of what I'm saying is directed to our President Joe Biden, who actually may be the most progressive Democrat in my lifetime to be president of the United States. And he continues to try to do so many things that I think many people are grateful for, are going to be grateful for, as we see over the next few years how good he's been supporting working people and working families, You know, obviously hasn't done everything I would do.
But I'm not him. I didn't run. He did. And as I've said before, I mean no president ever showed up to a picket line of a union being out on strike as he did in Detroit last year supporting the UAW union that my family was involved in helping to create as participants in the Flint sit down strike in 1936 and 37. And no president ever done that. No president. I don't ever remember a president taking sides in a strike. You know, trying to always be neutral between business and labor.
Not this guy. He just goes off on his own thing and follows his conscience and and which makes it so sad right now that his conscience is telling him to support the slaughter of 10s of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. And it continues every day, and I've done my best since October 7th to first of all offer my deepest sorrow and grief and condolences to those who were killed on that day, to, you know, essentially beg that the hostages be released.
And for the Israelis to release Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are not tried. They're just sitting in prisons wanting to stop this before it got any worse, understanding why of course Israel, like us, wants to retaliate. But like us, when we retaliated after 911, what did that get us? It it, it got us like a 21 year war, 22 years, the longest war in our history, thousands of dead American soldiers between Afghanistan and Iraq. And for what?
For what? And Biden said if he got elected he was going to just just friggin end it. And people were upset They didn't like that idea. Oh, no, we haven't. The Taliban will come back. Yeah, well, maybe, but no more lives lost. Plus, we're not. I'm not even mentioning here how many hundreds of thousands of lives that we took in Afghanistan and Iraq. We never like to talk about
that. When we talk about Vietnam, we never talk about a slaughtering at least 2 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians. And there are, there are some studies and reports that have that number even higher at 3 and 4 million over a, you know, decade long, 12 years long war
for what? So. What I've been thinking today after the Iran firing, sending hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles, other kinds of rockets into into Israel here this weekend, and because because we do war so well, we had helped the Israelis build this, what they call this Iron Dome and they were able to to shoot down every single drone and every single one of the Rockets. There were a few of the ballistic missiles that made it
through but didn't hit anything. They hit like a a runway of a I think an Air Force Base there or whatever. I don't. I've not seen any numbers maybe maybe there were some people hurt or I don't think died. There's amazing onslaught fired from Iran because they wanted to retaliate for Israel bombing their embassy in Damascus Syria here a couple weeks ago. What you know one of the one of the rules of war is you don't you don't bomb diplomatic
missions right. But course, these the Israelis, you know, they're as we know, certain number of them. They're at least the ones that vote for Netanyahu and he's only been elected six times, I think are. So the damage that we, in larger terms, we, the West, we the white people, we the Christians have done to Jewish people over hundreds and hundreds of years has completely undone them.
On one hand, they know how alone they are and so they have had to build up a means to defend their lives, their families lives, etcetera, etcetera. No real thought has gone into why Arabs and Muslims and Palestinians are so upset. If you just study it just a little bit and you can, you don't have to go back 5000 years or back to Moses.
You can just go back to World War 2 and then what happened after World War 2. And well, I guess a lot of well-intentioned people thought, as they should What are we going to do about the Holocaust that was not enacted by, obviously us in the United States, not the British, but the Germans? What do we do to make sure this doesn't happen again?
What do we do to salvage what's left of their lives, of their people, of the genocide that was taking place, to eliminate every single one of them off the face of the earth? We had a responsibility to do something about that. It just really wasn't thought out very well.
I've said enough about that in past podcasts, but I think everybody, I hope everybody, as angry or upset as you are, as I am, about what Israel has done, about what the Netanyahu government has done, about the people who have voted for him, he can't leave them out. It's that we have to find a way so that there is less death and more life.
And the way that they have chosen since the slaughter of their people on that day in October has been, so I'll use Biden's words over the top, so irresponsible, reckless. He uses the word indiscriminate, but clearly part of a plan put
together by intelligent. Looks like mostly men there in the war cabinet there in Israel, as it often is anywhere, put together a plan that that they're just going to keep killing not soldiers, not Hamas soldiers, but anybody who looks like they're Palestinian. And so I don't know what today's number is. What is it at 3334 thousand? That's the official number. It's much more than that. They've not been able to recover any of the bodies out of all
that rubble. So we'll we'll learn the real number someday, but it's horrific. And the fact that half of them are women and children, so many children, thousands and thousands of dead babies and children, it looks like somebody wants to get rid of them, like get rid of them and the the so whether it's going to be continue killing all of them or push them into the desert into Sinai, which the Egyptians don't want or you know, whatever it takes, but it's right now it's starvation.
Starve them to death. Starve them to death. Wow. And we're fun to get. I know I've said this a lot for now. Almost 6 1/2 months. I'm sorry. I'll keep saying it. You and I are responsible. You and I can pull the plug on this anytime. You and I don't actually hold the plug. That's held by one man. President Joe Biden can stop this tonight. Pull the plug on the money. Pull the plug on the offensive armaments. Stop the carpet bombing. Stop the killing could stop it
right now. They've already succeeded in stopping the Hamas is not waging a war, as I've said. Of course, they don't have jet fighters and battleships and nuclear weapons like Israel does, So it's not really right to call it a war. And they're killing essentially took place in one day. They've been no more invasions into into Israel to kill more people. So that has been successfully stopped back in October. So what's this all about then? Why? Why more killing? Why more killing of
Palestinians? You know, Israel is a country that for decades has had the support of all good people throughout the world, support them, living, surviving, thriving. All of that. Not so much the part about taking the land from people whose land it was. Bulldozing their homes, killing 10s of thousands of them in 19, 47 and 48. Yeah, not that part. But again, we don't talk about it much. I don't want to think about it. We could end this, President Biden.
You could end this now. You know what's wrong. I know you know what's wrong. And I know I sound like a broken record. And I know that you know that you're going to lose this election in part because too many people are going to stay home. They're not going to vote for Trump. They're not going to switch their vote from you to Trump. No, that is not how this is going to play out as what happened to Hillary in Michigan, she lost by two votes per precinct, 2 for the whole state 2.
And that's what's going to happen to you. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of young people between the ages of 18 and 30, probably 30-5, maybe even 40. Young people don't want war. Why? Well, why don't they like war? Because they're the ones usually sent to go and die in the war. And so no, they don't support it and they don't support you. And now they're sick of you. Sick of what you've been doing and you can't see it.
I know you've got good people working for you, your aides, people in the White House. They must have said something to you that you've got to kind of bring this to an end and then make reparations to build those homes back for those people and get them some food and drinking water. I usually record these podcasts on Sunday. You go to mass every Sunday. Do you understand that murder is
a sin, maybe the worst sin? You know, one of the I know I can't remember if this was in Life of Brian, but just one of the great funny moments in the life of Jesus is when he just said, look, you know, because everybody want to know what's the worst commandment or what's the, what's the thing? We mostly have to don't kill people, right? You know, like that. What is that?
That that 9th or 10th commandment where you're not supposed to covet, be jealous of, envious of your neighbor's donkey or house, you know they got a better house than you. It's a it's a sin to covet that. That's not the same as killing somebody. That's a bad that is maybe the that's the worst. And then and then Jesus came along and said actually, you know, I'm, I'm just going to give you the Cliff notes of the 10 commandments. It's it's a lot of commandments to remember.
So really there's just two. Your first commandment is to love God. Of course you know he's the spokesperson for God, so he's let's get God in there right away. Got to love God. And then the second one is you have to love your neighbor as
yourself. Which means if you just if the English of that or the grammar is correct, how can you love your neighbor if you don't love yourself first, if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not a good person, you have to love yourself to get through this life and then you have to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And they his disciples, the fishermen, Fisher dudes that were following him around like wow, we only have to remember two things. Love God, love our neighbor.
Oh, And then And then he, when he was finishing up talking to them, he threw a third one in. Oh, and by the way, love your enemy. And they're like, whoa, whoa, what? Love our enemy. Yeah. And then, of course, now they open it up. You can't keep, you know, you can't keep encouraging Jesus to preach because the dude just kept on talking. And so he goes, yeah, love God, love your neighbor as yourself and love your enemy. And then he adds and do good to those who persecute you.
Oh yeah, and while you're at it, if they slap you across the cheek, you were to turn your head and show them the other cheek and tell them that if they need to, they can slap that one
too. OK, these these lessons are, you know, in many American churches are not really ever taught because this really goes against the whole thing of being a warring nation, being a hawk, wanting to kill the enemy, even if it's a made-up enemy, even if it's a fake enemy, even if that enemy had nothing to do with 9/11. So Joe, you have to love your neighbor, You have to love your
enemy. And Netanyahu and the Israeli government is the enemy of all of us who believe in peace and justice, who believe in stopping any form of genocide. And I'm, I'm speaking as an American. So we're the O GS of genocide, you know, 203040 million native people killed by us, by our ancestors, people that you know the land we're living on now. We have to stop this, Joe, you have to stop it. And please, would you please just do it. Be a politician for once.
Just be a politician. A politician. What does a politician want most to get re elected? Why are you guaranteeing possibly losing the election and Trump being back in the White House? What is freaking wrong with you? Stop it. I mean I'm serious. Stop it. We can't have you lose. We can't have Trump in the White House. And so many of us now wish there was another alternative. But the third party alternatives that exist, they are not an alternative, but they are there
on the ballot. And a lot of people are going to vote for them, but mostly people are going to stay home. That cannot be. And our job, all of you listening to this right now, is to make sure we've got two jobs, really. One, we have to stop Trump and #2, we have to stop Biden. We he has to turn around right now. He has to end the slaughter. And perhaps offer penance. Ask for forgiveness.
Every politician after Biden, especially Democratic ones, need to learn the lesson of what happened to Joe Biden when he did not listen to the American people. And the American people, by a vast majority right now are against this war. Stop the war. Get yourself re elected. Put Trump out to pasture. What part of that don't you get? Young people are the ones who hate war the most because they know you need their bodies to stack up, to pile them up in the hopes that the next war will be
won. On behalf of the interests of the United States of America, you need to understand that that is not the interests of young people. And in fact, right now, amazingly, it's not in the interests of the vast majority of Americans who want an end to this. You know what you have to do. Mr. Biden, This is Michael Moore. This is my podcast. Thanks for listening. I'll be back later this week. Take care. You may leave here for four days in space, but when you return,
it's the same old place. The pounding of the drones, the fright and disgrace. You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace. Ain't your next door neighbor. But don't forget to say grace and tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend. You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction? Nah, Nah. You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction?