We are counting the days down. Next Thursday is the last broadcast -- this broadcast -- on this network. I can't thank you enough for joining me on the last couple of years on what has been an absolutely incredible journey and a life-changing journey for me, and I hope in some way that you have been affected and now, go out and affect or infect others.Now, tonight, we're going to talk a little bit about history. This book was written by a friend of mine. We talked about it last week.
If you're going -- trust me, if you are going to order it, you should order it at the beginning of the episode. I understand it's already three weeks out of print. So, it's going to be -- they're printing them as fast as they can.
Chris Stewart is a guy who -- I read one of his other books on my last vacation. I think it was in January. And I actually called him while I was on vacation. I got yelled at by my wife, "What are you doing? You're on vacation." I said I have to talk to this guy.
This is the best written history book I have ever read because he's a fantastic story teller. And the stories that he tells in "Miracle of Freedom: Seven Tipping Points that Saved the World" are the stories of how we got here and how we came this close to not being here.
He left out the American Revolution, which I might argue with. But he said at the end of the book -- and I'm not going to spoil it for you -- but I said at the end of the book, I know there are more than seven tipping points but these ones -- these are remarkable.
The defeat of Islam in France where we had -- we had no reason to win -- Christians had no reason to win against Islam in France. But they drew a line in the sand.
The Mongols in Eastern Europe. When I heard John Kerry, do you remember -- do you remember when John Kerry testified and he said, this is reminiscent of Genghis Khan. And I thought who says, "Genghis" except for someone married to Teresa.
But I knew that Genghis Khan was a bad guy. And I knew that he was -- you know, things were later quoted as reminiscent of would be very bad. But I had no idea.
Two days before was it two days before or one day before the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria went out? Does anybody know what happened in Spain?
Two days before they set sail, pretty significant. Pardon me? They were looking for a bail-out? No. They weren't looking for a bail-out.
BECK: Yes. They purged the Jews. And I thought -- my gosh, what a dark period. And then the next day, boat goes out to start a new period of real enlightenment. It's amazing.
And then 1940, a story of one man alone. Everyone called him crazy. And, really, it was a turning point. We saved the world because of one man in England.
Chris, first of all, best written stories of history. You can't turn the pages fast enough. You bring it to life. Thank you for writing history this way.
STEWART: You know, and that's one of my favorite stories in the book. People always ask, what's your favorite story? And it's really impossible to choose just one of them.
And think about this -- in the history of the world, thousands of years we talk about, we've selected seven stories. And each of them are so compelling and so interesting and they literally are these tipping points. Some people ask, let's start with this or why is this interesting to you? I always feel like, it's my favorite child.
STEWART: And that is, this book is a story of freedom. It answers the question as you were indicating, where does freedom come from? And it also makes a point that freedom is extraordinarily rare.
In the history of the human race, scientists estimate that maybe 100 billion to 110 billion people have lived on this earth, maybe 125 billion, depending on who you talk to. And yet, a tiny, tiny percentage of those people have experienced anything that we would consider free today.
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