Bill O'Reilly | Killing the Witches

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1:25Bill O 'Reilly has the latest book in his Killing series. If you recall, he's done books like huge bestsellers called Killing Lincoln, Killing JFK. And these are books that are not only about the drama surrounding the events of the assassination of Lincoln, the assassination of JFK, but also explores the kind of historical backdrop, like particularly with Lincoln, the Civil War. And then the flash forward from the assassination, which is the whole Reconstruction era, how the world changed after the Civil War, why the assassination of Lincoln and then JFK and so many others changed the course of events of what would have happened.

2:05He's, again, he's written 18 of these books in the Killing series. And the latest one, Killing the Witches, is very fascinating. Like we all learn about the Salem witch trials here in America when we were kids. It's like, oh, what a horrible time in, what a shameful time in human history where on very little evidence and very little, you know, very little sense of doing what's right and wrong. These women were killed when these kids, who knew what the agenda was of the kids? These kids accused these women of being witches and there was just no way out. You were just, these women were either burned alive or are hung, just cruel ways to kill someone.

2:49Like being burned alive is a five minute event of just nonstop pain for hundreds of innocent women in history who have been accused of being witches, which obviously there's no such thing as witches. They were not witches. They were not evil women. The accusers were evil and the accusers never faced trouble even after the Salem witch trials ended. And you see in this book, so again, Bill O 'Reilly does it again. the Salem witch trials happened in 1692, but it really begins with the pilgrims and the Puritans in 1620. He talks about all the events leading up. It's a fabulous history of early America, or I should say European early America, all the events leading up to 1692.

3:33And then afterwards, how it changed the course of human history. And I didn't know this, the relationship between Ben Franklin, the constitution and the Salem witch trials, which Bill describes in this book. But then furthermore, I asked Bill, what does he think about the relationship between the Salem witch trials and events happening now, even all the way up to the national discussion on Israel and Hamas? And his answers were fascinating and eye-opening. It's a very short podcast. He didn't have that much time, but I hope you listen. He said he would come back on again. So if you have any questions, please tweet them out to me and I'll be sure to ask him.

4:15Meanwhile, you should enjoy the book and enjoy this podcast.

4:21This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

4:37Bill, super enjoyed your latest book in the Killing series, Killing the Witches. Of course, as a kid, you learn all about the Salem Witch Trials, but I never really connected all the dots from the entrance of the pilgrims to the Salem Witch Trials to the Revolutionary War. It's such a great way to learn history in the dramatic way that you present not only this book, but all the killing series. So tell me about how the series started. You started with killing Lincoln. What made you think of the assassination of Lincoln as the starting point of the story, which describes both the past and the future, how the future changed because Lincoln was killed.

5:15And this goes for all the Killing books. Well, it's a fascinating story because the Killing series is the most successful nonfiction book series of all time. And about 2000, the year 2000, I had written a few bestsellers, contemporary stuff, the no spin zone is looking out for you, things like that. But I had pretty much said what I wanted to say. So I went to the publisher and said, look, I'm a former history teacher. I know how to engage people in reading and caring about what happened in this country. So let's write a book on Lincoln. He's a big guy and I don't think this story has been told as well as it should have been.

5:54And the publisher said to me, you're crazy. There's been a million books on Lincoln. Nobody will buy the book. And I said, well, I'll take less money. And I think that's the only time in my life, James, that I've ever said, I'll take less money. And I did. And then Lincoln sold 3 million copies. Boom. Because people want to know about their country, but they don't want to be bored to shreds. So we combine information with fun. And it's hard to say the word fun when you go talking about killing the witches or killing the SS or killing the killers, but the books move along. So that was the genesis of it.

6:35And obviously what's great about these, like let's take killing Lincoln as an example. The assassination of Lincoln is in itself dramatic and drama. There's John Wilkes Booth. There's the hunt for John Wilkes Booth. There's the events leading up to it. There's the what ifs he had knock onto the theater. There's also this, it's a pivotal point in U.S. history because the civil war is ending and a new country is ready to birth. And so you're using the drama of the assassination of Lincoln to basically provide history about the Civil War and what historic events led up to this killing, plus how the future, how Reconstruction, the integration of South and North completely changed because of this assassination.

7:18And I feel like you use that formula in every one of these books. Like with JFK, it's a way to talk about how the Vietnam War then, you know, divided the country, starting with the assassination of JFK. Like many people think killing JFK, they just think, what's the story of the assassination? How did you put it all together, the historical view, the 10 ,000-foot view that you do? Well, it's basically my journalistic skill level. So I combine, James, journalism with history. And I don't know of anybody doing that right now in America. And that's one of the reasons. So I'm always, okay, so it happened.

7:55All right, so Kennedy got assassinated. Lincoln got assassinated. What are the unintended consequences of that? As a journalist, that's a question you would ask. All right, so this happens, then what? And then the then what becomes unbelievably fascinating. And that's a big part of killing the witches because, okay, we take you to Salem. You see the insane little kids accusing people. 20 of them get executed, hundreds more in jail, just on the testimony of 10-year-old girls. No defense or anything like that. Insane. But then what happens? And what happens is a guy named Benjamin Franklin, who was a genius teenager in Boston, gets onto this and visits the top witch hunter, Cotton Mather, and Franklin takes away this stunning conclusion that religion out of control is the reason that these people were killed, which is true.

9:00And then he takes that into the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia when he gets older and more powerful. And that's why we don't have any religion in our Constitution, whereby Patrick Henry and Roger Sherman and other founders wanted the United States to be designated a Christian nation in writing. They lost. And we give you that whole brawl. So my job is to basically tell the reader the nuts and bolts of what we're talking about, whether it be Kennedy or Lincoln or Reagan or the SS, but then take it further. And that's why I think the series has been so successful. Yeah. I'll admit like as an avid history reader, I did not know, I didn't, I was not able to, until I read the book, I was not able to make the connection between the Salem witch trials and the separation of church and state in the constitution until you wrote it.

9:51How did you learn that? Like what did you learn that in the process of writing this book or? Yes. I learned it in the process of writing the book. I didn't know it beforehand, but we researched for six months before we start to write the killing books. Killing books take a year. Okay. And in the research process, Benjamin Franklin pops up and we went, oh, what is Ben doing? And then we got the documentation of his meeting with Mather and that he was so unsettled by it. It stayed with him his whole life. And then we traced it all the way to Philadelphia. That's kind of detective work. That's what we do in research.

10:32We find out things that nobody knows, like the Mayflower, we opened Killing Witches with it. James, you and I, we would not have wanted to have been on that boat. That was horrendous. Everybody, oh, Mayflower Pilgrims passes stuffing. No, it was horrible, that 66-day voyage. And then they get here and it gets worse. Why do you think anybody wanted to go to America given the high odds of death? They were booted out. The King James didn't want the Puritans there. First they went to Holland. Holland booted them out. I mean, these were crazy people. The devil was everywhere. You're going to hell. You can't have any fun.

11:14And the kids can't sing. They can't dance. They can't play. That's why these kids did it. They were so crazed because their lives were so miserable that they said, all right, I'm going to liven things up here in Salem. And they did.

11:42look as a manager of people as an employer as an entrepreneur and as even an investor in startups i can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire the best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

12:25And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altachirk. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

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13:45strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. You know, what disturbed me in the book, and what has always disturbed me about this story, is how willing people are to listen to things that are completely irrational. Like, why do you think, yes, they were a very religious group, but why do you think they were willing to kill 70-year-old women who had always been, you know, positive in their society, but just on the accusation of some girls who were probably crazy or vindictive, they're willing to hang or burn alive at the stake grandmas that they knew?

14:38fear if you objected to the witch hunt then the next day you were designated a witch you were accused so there were good people in salem but they we give a couple of examples of people who stood up to these clerics and these corrupt judges and then the next day they're they're accused of being a witch so everybody shut up i mean the governor was against these witch trials it seemed throughout. And he seemed to be somewhat of a voice of reason during this time, 1692. And yet they still continued. Like there was no way to stop these trials. Yeah, he was weak. William Phipps was weak. So he didn't want to rile up all the religious zealots, including the powerful Mathers, Increase Mather, first president of Harvard, by the way, and his son, Cotton Mather.

15:26They led this witch hunt. and Phipps didn't want to go up against him. So he's weak. And then Phipps goes off to fight the Indians in Maine and they accuse his wife, Mary Phipps, of being a witch. And that's the only reason it stopped because Phipps comes back, the governor of Massachusetts Bay, they tell him, hey, your wife's under arrest for being a witch. And then Phipps had the militia, he had the guns and he stopped it. But it might still be going on today if he didn't stop it, if his wife hadn't been accused. That's how out of control it was. I mean, and you're right, it took a militia to stop it.

16:04Like, I was surprised how many husbands, in the book you describe how many husbands basically fled as soon as their wives were accused. They didn't really stand up for the mother of their children. Well, how could they? They couldn't. But there was cowardice. There's no doubt about it. But there was no way out. and that's the harrowing thing. You know, it's two weeks till Halloween, James, and this is the scariest book you're ever gonna read because these people were trapped and these clerics and judges, they were making money off this too. There was that component because if you were convicted, which the state, Salem, seized all your property and all your assets and then judges and clerics got the money.

16:53Right. Just like the king got the money in England when they did it there. And the priests and bishops got the money in Europe. In Europe, they burned, you know, thousands of witches. So anyway, it's really a book that every page you're going to learn something. And it's scary. So if you're in a market for a Halloween book, this is it. I mean, I find this with all the killing books that they're really good. Like, I wish I had learned history from these books. and I'll get to that in a second. But with this killing the witches, we look back on it and we say, oh, obviously they weren't as sophisticated as we are.

17:31They weren't as intelligent as we are. We definitely never would have allowed that. And yet in modern society, we're now killing the witches all the time. Like there are people just screaming insanity all the time. And there's no way, even we see this with this current horrible situation between Israel and Hamas. Like, why is everybody so crazy and irrational? Well, the media is a big problem now, but I wrote Killing the Witches, James, because the witch hunt is back in the form of cancel culture. So the far left invented this cancel culture about 10 years ago, designed to destroy its opposition.

18:12Anybody speaks out against the progressive left, boom, you're going to have an accusation against you. You can look at it down the line. All right. And then the press, which once stood for due process, you're innocent until proven guilty in America. No, not anymore. You're guilty in the accusation, you're guilty. And the press slaps it. And that's why I wrote the book, because the witch hunt is back. And I figured that out while reading this book. So basically this happens in academia too. What changed academia and journalism to go from information gathering to activism? Zealotry. So I've been in journalism almost 50 years.

18:58When I first started getting out of Boston University with a master's in broadcast journalism, it was straight. Yes, in New York and in Washington, the people who ran the news agencies on a national level were a little bit liberal. Walter Cronkite, you know, that kind of thing. But they didn't let it permeate the presentation. After the Vietnam War, that changed. And the left started to dominate the news coverage. And the industry attracted liberal people because it's almost like a moth to a flame. So liberals went in and they started to run the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Network News, and other liberals followed, and they would hire only liberals.

19:46Now, I was a reporter. Nobody knew what my ideology was, and to this day, I'm independent. I don't have an ideology, but I was able to report the news, but all the commentators, I mean, I worked for Peter Jennings, liberal man, but he was disciplined. He didn't let it. I worked for Dan Rather, very liberal man. He did. Rather, let it seep in, OK, and I got worse and worse and worse and worse. And why? Why did the discipline change? So now, again, from professors to journalists, they have become activists rather than educators. Because a progressive left believes that anyone who is traditional or conservative is evil.

20:26They must be destroyed. And that's what we're seeing with Hamas Israel now. here's what really disturbs me when you see like a rashida taleb have her the palestinian flag in her office which fine whatever she wants to do but she has the palestinian flag and the lbtq plus flag doesn't she know rationally that it's illegal in the gaza strip to be gay they're not you can't have both flags and not be a hypocrite why does that well look i don't know the woman i I know that the people in her Massachusetts district vote for her. She's Massachusetts, right? Michigan. Michigan. They vote for her. I know she's a fanatic.

21:08There's no reasoning with fanatics. There's no logic. There's nothing you can do. They believe what they want to believe. Some of the beliefs are emotional. Some of them are calculated, whatever it may be. But the intolerance of the national media toward anything other than liberal thought has wrecked the media. The media has destroyed itself. If you look at the surveys, Americans know the fix is in. And they don't like it. You know, when I was doing the factor on Fox News, we would get six million a day on the two runs to watch. They get a third of that now. Two-thirds of the audience that watch me are gone.

21:50And it's because they know that they're not going to get facts. They're going to get ideology, even on Fox. Fox is right. So this is not a good situation because we the people depend on information to make our decisions. And the information is not flowing in an honest way. So the polarization in killing the witches ends, like you say, with William Phipps bringing in the militia essentially to save his wife. And then, of course, that passes through Benjamin Franklin, who helps devise the constitution, separates church and state. So it was a big historical thing to change this polarization. What happens now to change the increased polarization in the U.S.

22:35and maybe the world? It's not gonna change. So we are a tribal country now. We're in tribes, all right? And one tribe hates the other tribe and they're not gonna listen and this and that. So I was talking to John Stewart, the other night. I went to see his show. And I think you'll remember the rumble in the air condition auditorium. Do you remember that on the internet, James? No. Okay, you need to look that up. So it was Stuart and I, and we broke all records for viewing on the internet. And it was 2013 when Obama was running against Romney, I believe. So anyway, we did it in a funny, civil way, Stewart and I.

23:18Just Google O 'Reilly, John Stewart, and you'll see all the kind of back and forth. And we had laughs, but we got our points across so that the audience could make up their mind about who had the stronger argument. That's gone. That's gone. And it's because of the people who run the networks, the cables, they want to speak to the choir because it's much easier. You make money speaking to the choir. It's not as hard, and that's what they do. Well, Bill O 'Reilly, thank you so much for this new take on history through all these killing books, killing JFK, killing Lincoln, all of them. It's Killing Jesus, fascinating takes, and a great way to learn history.

24:01Killing the Witches is a great book, which again ties together not only the founding of America, but all the way to the Constitution and puts into real terms this irrational behavior that still exists. I just want to say what I really appreciate about you as an interviewer, when you interviewed Obama before the 2008 election, I thought that was just a class A job. There was no ideology. It was a great interview. I started watching you very much after that. And I really appreciate your presentation on things. So thank you again. And everybody should buy this Killing the Witches. It's a great take on history.

24:35So thank you. Appreciate it, James. Good interview. And thanks for having me on.

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