Speaker 1: And then I started realizing, well, there's a lot of
cults that are popping up, right, Like Hollywood has a
lot of cults, a lot of.
Speaker 2: Different Was there a specific shift that happened in Hollywood
where it went from like we're gonna use James Bond
superhero America's great, to like, no, we're going to start
diving in some of this more cult imagery.
Speaker 1: And his papers were about then chemicals actually changing gender
in men and women in the future set.
Speaker 2: We could give this a listers who are immersed in
Hollywood are spies? Are verified spies for America?
Speaker 1: Is that is that?
Speaker 2: Is that your mind having a chemical trip? Or do
you think it's actually opening you up to a spirit realm?
I only ask for Alex Jones, is your connection? I
have a buddies whose daughter was at Sandy Hook when
it happened, and so hearing anyone say like this wasn't
real when I know people directly connected, I was like, man,
this is it's a bad look for anyone to be
propagating this line. All right, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: I am with.
Speaker 2: Someone that is known to many as a renaissance man.
I think he's a he might be a savant with
the amount of books and amount of study he's done.
We're talking about his new book, Esoteric Hollywood number three.
We got number two right here. This is gonna be
a funk podcast, Jay Dyer, Thanks for being here, man, absolutely, Man,
Can you put a mic up a little bit closer
to you.
Speaker 1: I absolutely glad to be here. Glad that stoking some
drama with you led.
Speaker 2: To a podcast we'll get We'll sure, we'll get into that, man.
Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 2: You're all the way from Nashville.
Speaker 1: We did. Yeah, we came from Tennessee. It was a
long drive, so a lot of weird interesting things in California.
California is a weird place, is it? Glad to be
But it's more weird than Nashville. But Nashville's getting more
and more weird because everyone's coming there from California exactly. Yeah,
you're welcome, So we're becoming California. Man.
Speaker 2: I know you primarily from the debate stuff, and I
know you've done some other stuff that's kind of loosely
connected to I don't use the word conspiracy, but I
don't know how else to describe it, right, And then
you're like this Onion, where like I appealed away and
I went deeper on some of your stuff in this
esoteric Hollywood series is really interesting, which I wanted to
get into. I'm a big film guy. You talk about Inception,
you talk about some of my favorite movies, so I'm
like really excited to talk to you about that. But
before we get into that, for folks who don't know
anything about Jay Dyer, give us a little background where
you're from your story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm from the Bible Belt. I grew up in Tennessee,
small town in the middle of nowhere, but my dad
entered the military, so we moved out here to San Diego,
so I lived here for a lot of my youth.
We moved back to Tennessee for high school. Okay, so
in high school I was a pretty wild party dude
and then started getting into Christianity about my senior year,
so I read the Bible cover to cover my senior
year and started going to Bible studies. Got invited to
a bunch of different Protestant churches. I was raised Baptist
but never really took it very serious, but then I
got interested in theology pretty hardcore. I went to Bible
College for a couple of years, didn't finish it because
I wasn't I was no longer convinced of Baptist theology.
A Bible college, and I was at a Baptist school
and they actually caught me drinking a beer at a
restaurant one time. They kicked you out, and well, they said,
either you can leave, or you find another school and leave,
or you're gonna pay double tuition because I got like
a Baptist discount rate.
Speaker 2: So because you were a Baptist. Yeah, so, but Baptist
don't drink typically folks who don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So at this Southern Baptist Theological seminary Bible college,
it's called Boys Bible College, they gave me an ultimatum.
So I was like, all right, well, I guess I'll
go be a Presbyterian then, so okay, it was all
over beer. So you.
Speaker 2: Start what made you go from like I'm kind of
casual in my faith, so like I'm going to take
it seriously.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start going to college. So being super
well party dude, I had a really bad acid trip
and I'm not one of those people that like God
spoke to me my astid true it wasn't like that,
but I did have a pretty bad experience. It was
like a very jarring bad tres when I was seventeen.
And that's what kind of got me interested just in
like spirituality and good and evil and kind of philosophical questions.
So I started reading the Bible at that point, and
that's what got me into going to Bible studies, going
to you know, different Protestant churches. I didn't know what
church I was going to be affiliated with, so I
wasn't really convinced a Baptist, and I had a time
period where I went to some charismatic churches because I
read the Book of Acts and I was like, well,
looks like they're doing that stuff, so where are my
avenger powers? Exactly? Yeah. Yeah, So I had a phase
of that. But then I realized like, well, if I
wanted to choose a church, I probably should learn some
church history. Sure, and so I thought the best avenue
for that would be Bible College. Okay, so, still being
technically a Baptist, I went to Voice Bible College for
a while, and then I went to a different It
was an unaccredited seminary, Bonson Seminary actually at here in California. Okay,
so I don't know if you know who Greg Bonnson is,
but he was like a really famous apologist for Presbyterianism. Calvinists,
apologists debated all the ath back in the eighties and
nineties was really good. So I went to Bonson Seminary
for about a year, and then I started doubting Protestanism.
So that took me into a totally different direction.
Speaker 2: But so you go from kind of casual sounds like
mainline Baptists, sounds fairly strict in terms of no alcohol.
Speaker 1: That's that's well, I didn't know it was just the
Bible College had that policy. Okay, so you know most
Southern Baptists have in the past had a no alcohol policy,
but this Bible College was strict on that got it.
And so plus I was arguing with everybody about theologies.
I think they were looking very way to like you
were that guy. Maybe he needed because I was wondering
about that, like infant baptism or believers Baptism and so anyway,
but I ended up moving on to just different places.
So you go from.
Speaker 2: Baptist Presbyterian, kind of more Calvinist leaning, getting more into
church history, and then where do you land after that?
Speaker 1: So I had a professor at Monson Seminary who was
a church history professor, and he's assigned this massive amount
of church like church fathers in church history. So I
read all of that, and then I was just in
this quandary and I was like, well, you know, what
about the canon scripture, what about the sacraments? This kind
of stuff. So I decided I was gonna have to
read Augustine himself because I had not yet read him.
I only read.
Speaker 2: Because the Calvinists love a gust I know, right.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I gotta go see what he
actually says. So I wrote All the City of God
at Bible College, and then I read against the Dentatists
and against the Palladians, his anti Pallasian writings. So I
was becoming more and more convinced of like a high
view of the sacraments, that kind of.
Speaker 2: Stuff you felt like in the circles you were in,
there wasn't a high view of like communion and battle.
Speaker 1: Because I was in a hardcore like Westminster Confession, interesting
Calvinist churchure. Okay, so they had a pretty I mean
amongst Calvinists, it can differ but my pastor happened to
be pretty low church. So you go.
Speaker 2: So you read Augustine, which is interesting because Augustine, from
understanding as he was like a North African dude, right,
So for folks who were like Christianity's a white man religion,
it's like, well everyone kind of loves Augustine. Protestants, Catholic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's a Numidian though, And I don't know
if he was half black, half white or what, but
I mean, yeah, he was definitely ethnic ethnic to say
the least. Yeah, But I loved his theology and so
and I went beyond that. I read like on Christian Doctrine,
I read I love the sermons above the Church Fathers set.
Basically is what happened that big thirty eight volume Philip
Schaft set. You read all of that. No, I just
started plumbing through Augustin, Okay, just just a Gustin and
then you went to the rest got it? Well, I know,
I didn't even read any any Eastern Fathers. I was
just like, I don't know about that, Okay. So I
read Jerome and then I read Ambrose. So I went
heavy into that because I was trying to figure it
out like with this professor who I had, and we
ended up having this big confrontation because he was like,
you can't believe this and that. I'm like, well, but
you're assigning me to all the guys that do believe that. Anyway,
long story short, that read that led to me starting
to read Aquinas and starting to reading a bunch of
Catholic stuff. So when I was twenty three, I became Catholic. Okay, Yeah,
so I was Catholic throughout most of my twenties, okay,
and you're like, all in, yeah, I was. I went
to inquire about monastic life, okay, and then I realized
all the dudes there, including the guy who's in charge
of it, they're all skittles, should say, Okay. I was like,
you could tell that just from it was obvious. It
was obvious. But I had other people telling me in
the traditional Catholic circles like if you go that route,
they're all skittles. Uh huh as well known, Yeah huh.
Speaker 2: I've I've had Father Simon On who's Catholic priest, so
he's local, and I connected with another one. I didn't
get that vibe.
Speaker 1: Well, no, no, I'm talking about Dominicans specifically, because I was
really into Aquinas, so I was like, okay, he was
a Dominican, so I'll just check this out. I went
and met with the Diaces spiritual advisor. Dude.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm good, You're good, okay, and so
so Calvinists to Catholic and you're you're you're all in.
Were you starting to do Catholic apologetics or not?
Speaker 1: Really? I did, Yeah, it was kind of like apologetics
that got me interested because my hero was Bonson, okay,
and he debated a famous Catholic apologist who kind of
was best friends with Scott Harn. You probably heard of
Scott Harn a little bit, and uh, that was like
there was this wave of people that left Calvinism in
the nineties for Catholicism and that was like Mattatics and
Scott Harn and then I liked all those guys, read
all those guys. So I read Scott Hahn's book and
then I got into Jerry Mattatics stuff and he beat
Bonson in a debate. So for me that was kind
of like a crushing moment because with these written debates
or what kind of debate no audio audio? Okay, you
can still find you still find out. Yeah, Boonson versus Mattatics.
They debated Kennel Scripture and they debated Mary I view
look Mary, So yeah, I should go back and check
check some of that out. Doctor. Probably find those I
think they're I know they're on word in P three.
I don't know if they're on YouTube or not. But anyway,
got it now. So that was me when I was
like twenty twenty one twenty two. I was like just
trying to weed out all this stuff and reading all
these books. I had a job, by the way, that
made it really easy for me to just read all day. Yeah,
so what was your job? A paint mixer? A paint
mixer okay, literally watching paint dry mixer mixing. No, no,
So like, uh, it's funny because my last name is
dire and so there had to be some kind of
providential connect God has like a humor dying the past.
For ten years, I was a paint store manager, paint mixer,
but like from I'd say from like because all the
painters are drunks, right, so they come in at like
first thing in the morning, hungover. Yeah, and then nobody
comes in the paint store until like four in the afternoon,
you have like a whole day to dis and read
very blue collar of you. It was I'm gonna have
to put on some genes Canadian succeedo like Zach Sparazzo. Okay, Now,
did you ever go down.
Speaker 2: The route of the what is the the Catholics that
don't like the second Second Vatican Council was?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I went progressively hardcore tradcast. So when I became call,
like in two thousand and three, I went to the
regular church.
Speaker 2: It's like mel Gibson vibes, right. I eventually went there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, that took ten years or nine years. I
went to regular like Novasorto down the road church. But
then I got somebody handed me some information about the
Latin Mass, so I started reading a lot of traditional
Catholic stuff. So within a few years I was going
to the Society Saint Piece the tense Latin masks for
the next almost decade.
Speaker 2: Now the church who were going to are they in
communion with Rome or are they considered schinematic?
Speaker 1: The first church I went to was just normal, normal
Cathocolic church, and then I got more and more trad
and went to the Memphis SSPX Chapel, which they're in
this weird status where like they will say the name
of the Pope in the in the Mass and the liturgy,
but Rome considers them in this like halfway not full
communion status. H So they've been they've been arguing with
Rome for the last twenty years. And the theory there
is that they changed the order of communion around the
Second Vatican Council. It's a lot of things. It's like
the SSPX would take issue with the Novasorto mass itself,
they would take issue with the acumenism of Vatican two,
the statements of Vatican two about Muslims and Christian abortions
and all that kind of stuff, So they would take
issue with all that. So for the SSPX, like a
Vatican two is a tricky issue because the popes have
obviously taught it and confirmed it. They don't like it,
they want to reject it. So it's this really weird
kind of halfway position.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, so then from from there you go from
from Catholic to Eastern Orthodox. Is that when to change it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, so in two thousand and seven I started
doubting because two thousand and eight nine, right and you
know these things are not black and white, like you
have phases where you doubt something. And so I started
reading Eastern Church Fathers. And at the time I was
dating girl who we were both going to be Orthodox
and get married. So we went through the Catechumenate. But
I was still very Tomistic, very Augustinian, so I just
wasn't ready to convert to orthoxy So I just held.
Speaker 2: Off, okay, and just but you were going to Eastern
Orthodox Church.
Speaker 1: So we did the whole year of like we did
a community, the whole catechumen in two thousand and eight,
and then when it came time to be Chris made
and received an Orthodox Church, I was like, I'm just
not ready to do this, okay, So I held off.
Speaker 2: So did you go back to Catholic a little bit?
Speaker 1: But then I just kind of like was just in limbo, okay,
So I didn't do anything, okay because I didn't want
to go back to Nubsorto. I didn't believe the tradcat
stuff anymore. I wasn't convinced of Orthodoxy, so I was
just in a kind of a limbo state, in a limbo.
Speaker 2: Was there was any moment in your journey there's like
some sort of crisis of faith in general, like like
I'm not even sure about all of this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I had a period where like I was like
not sure about it. I was never atheist, but I
was like, maybe Christianity isn't true. So I read perennialists,
I read neoplatonists. I was interested in all that stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just around the same time you're working on your
philosophy degree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, so this is finishing up undergrad and
then about the time of starting grad school around twenty
eleven twelve thirteen, would.
Speaker 2: You say you were like a theist at that point
a deist? What would you have now?
Speaker 1: I would say, like maybe platonism Neoplatonism, Like I thought
there was definitely a God. I never doubted God's existence,
but I was like, well, maybe it's Unitarian, maybe it's
not Trinity. Okay, right. So then what got me back
in that direction was I started reading Saint Maximus a
Confessor around twenty thirteen, and then I read I was like,
I'm gonna go back and reread the Bible. So I
went back through the entire scriptures and I noticed a
lot of stuff I'd never noted. I mean, I was
always really interested in biblical theology, but rereading it from
the Lens and the Vanas point of Eastern Church fathers
was something that I think was a momentous change my views. Okay,
because at that time I'd read not just Maximums, but
I read a lot of the Cabbin Doshans like Basil
and Gregory and Gregory and so yeah, it's like I
was like, all right, I guess now all the tomistic
baggage that I kind of had like stuck in my
head kind of washed away, and I went back to
just divine revelation scriptures and it was like seeing it
through new eyes, I guess.
Speaker 2: And so then you go back to your at that
point you have to go stuck the Catacumin process all
over again, or you did read, Yeah, you have to
start the whole thing I did. And what is that
process like? Because like we're seeing a postive prophet. I
guess he's in the process of Catecumanism.
Speaker 1: I don't know, hopfully.
Speaker 2: I said that, right, what does that entail? And it's
a year, which I think is good. I think, like
give people a year to sort this thing out. What
was that process?
Speaker 1: Like pretty flexible depending upon who your priest is, Like
they will kind of make that decision based on where
they think you are, So they might do six months
or they might do three years. So Orthodoxy is pretty selective,
like they're not it's it's it's not like Baptists or
anything else. Reading Catholic right, Catholic RCAA is like a
few months. So no, it's like a I think mine
was about eight months? Eight months?
Speaker 2: And are you not allowed to do communion during that part?
Speaker 1: They're not giving you don't commune, but you are expected
to attend regularly, And I think it's just kind of
like is this person serious?
Speaker 2: You know, so I'm assuming there's some discipleship that's happening
with the priest and like one on one time and
reading and stuff like that. How intensive is that part?
Speaker 1: I guess? I mean it wasn't intensive for me because
I was used to read theology all the time. I
think if you are not used to theology, it might
be a little intensive because you probably have to read
a couple of books max. You're going to be going
through at least a year, usually a year of the
church's liturgical cycle to get used to the feasts, and
in Orthodoxy, like the liturgy is kind of the Bible
theology in action. So you're getting Biblical theology through services,
and you go through most of the scriptures within a
year or so.
Speaker 2: In terms of the Sunday morning liturgy, you're covering a
lot of scriptures.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and any of the other services like vestpers
that you can like, they will encourage you to comes
as many as you can.
Speaker 2: How many would you say you were coming to as
you're going through the process of becoming a category.
Speaker 1: For me, because we lived about an hour from church,
it was just Sunday stuff, okay. And then part of
the time I was in Florida, so I was doing
I was doing another going to a different Orthodox church,
but doing my catechisa still through my Tennessee priest. Got it.
Speaker 2: So and this at this time, are you kind of
finishing up your undergrad are you still doing your.
Speaker 1: No, by this this is like twenty sixteen, seventeen, I've
already left academia, Like I quit in twenty thirteen, I think, Okay,
And so I was already doing like a blog and
podcast and doing that full time. Yeah, but was received
in the church.
Speaker 2: I think in twenty seventeen, officially in twenty seventeen, I think,
so yeah, yeah, okay. And then so around the same
time you finish your degree in was a philosophy.
Speaker 1: Undergrad and Flushing history, and then I started grad school
focusing on psychological warfare and film and how symbolism is
used to propagandize in pop culture. Okay, so I was
in my grad work on that. I was doing a
grad thesis on that and how James Bond is used
in the Cold War for that. So that's what kind
of got me in this mode of writing a lot
about film yep. And that's what my blog started out.
It was just like Hollywood movie symbolism, that was it.
And then it expanded into other topics and things that
I was interested in, just because I was like, I
can't just talk about movies all the time and drive
me crazy. It's monotonous. So you know, I'd write essays
about philosophy, and then I write an essay about geopolitical stuff,
and then eventually that led to a book, and then
it led to accidentally actually debates, which was not something
I ever had planned to do. And yeah, it was
all accidental.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you got two books that are out Esoteric Hollywood,
Esteric Hollywood Part two and then the third ones coming
out this July.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and philosophy books.
Speaker 2: I got in philosophy books, and you go from writing
about this stuff as an undergrad into on your masters
to really picking apart the symbolism. But from your perspective,
it sounds like, if I'm tracking correctly, the symbols weren't
just used as propaganda for the Cold War. They sound
like they become more darker in some of these films
where we're now dealing with full on occult stuff.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Was there a specific shift that happened in Hollywood where
it went from like we're gonna use James Bond, superhero
America's great, to like, no, we're going to start diving
in some of this more cult imagery.
Speaker 1: Yes, I would say after the sixties counterculture revolution, you
have some avant garde filmmakers who were self professed Satanists,
like Kenneth Anger. They were very into Crowley. He's a
famous Skittles avant garde like icon.
Speaker 2: By the way, I just want to say I love Skittles.
We're taking that. We usually say OLGTV because all of
our TVs are OLGTV skittles, brilliant.
Speaker 1: Keep going and anger was like in the circles of
the Rolling Stones and hanging out with like people from
the Church of State Nanton Leave that kind of stuff,
which I know that's not theistic satanism, it's just kind
of atheism with like troll costumes. Yeah, but there are
sides and groups that do take us seriously. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh and where they start kind of strolling and then
all of a sudden we had Shane Smith on and
that that was his journey. He's like, oh, just kind
of playing around, being silly, and then it's like witchcraft
and dark dark forces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I kind of inadvertently found that interesting through
the grad work, like studying Hollywood and symbolism, and then
I started realizing, well, there's a lot of cults that
are popping up right, Like Hollywood has a lot of cults,
a lot of directors, a lot of A listers. They're
tied into cults, and many of them are working for intelligence,
like they worked for the CIA, they worked for the FBI.
Some of the most famous A listers have been OSS operatives,
FBI informants, and CIO produced. So in Hollywood, yeah, some
of the most famous A listers on record is declassified.
So the third book as old chapter on people like
Sterling Hayden, it was declassified. The A listers who were
immersed in Hollywood are spies, are verified spies for our
for America, for our side for Okay, I was going
to say that was really crazy. Well, the belief was
that a couple of them were agents. So like for
a long time, Marlene Dietrich was suspected of being a
spy for Tiny Mustache Man.
Speaker 2: And so and so, how famous are these folks? Are
these like Dwayne the Rock?
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are A listers of that time, right, and
there's they're verified spies. Well, she was suspected of being
a Tiny Mustache Man spy, and so the FBI and
the US intelligence like investigated her and had to follows
on her. But it turns out she was actually trying
to spy for the OSS, which is the he's predecessor
in America. Interesting, Yeah, Sterling Hayden was a verified OSS
agent operative.
Speaker 2: When you say verified, how verified are we talking? He
actually was like, we can go to the CIA's website.
Speaker 1: And National Archives.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, okay.
Speaker 1: Carry Grant was an informant he spied on because they
thought Errol Flynn was a tony mustache man spy, so
they asked carry Grant to like inform on people. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now now when you say spies, is it kind
of like, Hey, you're famous. So you get a knock
on a door from the CIA and when you go
over to do this press tour, we want you to
keep an eye on stuff or they like c I
A operatives who were trained.
Speaker 1: Both well, can be both. I think in Carry Grant's case,
he was just asked to spy and inform. Jimmy Stewart
Jimmy Stewart, right, the most famous like a lister of
his time. Huh, he actually was, Like he worked for
the FBI. He made FBI propagand the movies. You can
go watch his FBI movies. In fact, Laurel Canyon, which
is a famous movie studio. If you drive up Wonderland
Avenue on the hole and drive you get to the
top and there's a giant aircraft or excuse me, air
force studio that was like the pre eminent studio of
its time. I think I have it covered in the
first chapter of the first book. All of the A
listers had Department of Defense badges that gave them access
to this secret studio that the Air Force owned. So
there's a clear connection right there. In fact, Marilyn Monroe
had a badge like a DoD badge. So a lot
of these people are actually recruited to also do varying
levels of.
Speaker 2: Short work, and so in that it sounds like as
there is the rise of the hippie revolution, a sex revolution,
all this sort of stuff. It goes from hey, we're
just kind of fighting this Cold War, keeping an eye
on our enemies, pushing American propaganda, to now there's this
countercultural and darker stuff and darker stuff is rising up.
Would you say that that was calculated and intentional or
would you say that all of a sudden, the people
who are the artists and the creatives are going down
this in their own worldview, and so it starts into
the media.
Speaker 1: A degree of both. You can look at things like
the Esslin Institute, which was pushing kind of the think
tank behind the whole counterculture New age movement of the sixties. Huh,
and Esslin was promoted by very powerful, wealthy people. You
can look it up and they've had all the most
famous kind of new ag people go and speak there.
Over the years, Deepak Chopra, Aldus Hostley, they've all promoted
all that stuff from Esslin, which is you know, a
big sur drive up big sir, there's a escellin up there. Ye.
Speaker 2: Deepak Chopra has had like an office out here and
Insinita's I think, yeah, he's he had a pretty big
footprint here locally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So all that stuff was supported from the top down.
But a lot of the people in that counterculture maybe
not the mainstream, but many of them were into that
avant garde like Satanic type stuff. Not so much Levey,
but more so Crowley, who was pretty serious about his Satanism.
And he was a British spy too by the way. Wow, Yeah,
he worked for m I five And Crowley is kind
of the forefather not just of yoga in the West
with Madam Blavatski, but the sexual revolution. So the sixties
counterculture stuff Owes it's ethos actually to alscra Croley and
many of the people in the sixties kind of culture,
like doctor Tim Leary who worked for the CIA. On record,
he called himself the new Alistair Curley because his idea
was we can really revolutionize the culture not just through
drugs but also through sex. So sex and drugs and
so Hollywood played a key role in that in the sixties,
and a lot of the counterculture people coming out of
the Laurel Canyon scene were also directly connected to intelligence.
Speaker 2: What was the motive behind, Like why do you think
they wanted to create this countercultural or kind of hedonistic,
weird new agy thing driven by sex and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: Drugs and so some of the people who were Fabian
socialist technocrats had already talked about the strategy and this
plan in the nineteen twenties and thirties so Bertrand Russell
talked about it. He was very open. He lived in
a like a pan polygual relationship before anyone else did.
Ste Wells was a famousism for like War of the Worlds,
but he also wrote all these mainline geopolitical books like
Open Conspiracy, New World Order. That's from him, it's his book,
and in those books he describes how they would revolutionize
Western civilization through counterculture, through sexual revolution to make the
West more amenable to a future of socialist technocracy. So
that's explicitly what's in those books. So they're playing a
long game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're thinking that's the generations ahead.
Speaker 1: Fabian model is the slow it's their symbols a turtle
and a wolf in sheep's clothing, So that's a slow
burn model.
Speaker 2: Isn't there some crossover with some of this and the
postmodernist and the folks who are into critical theory. The
French philosophers that that were also into the PDF stuff,
the pdf file stuff, and they were trying to normalize this,
and for whatever reason, that didn't get normalized, but some
of this other weird stuff got normal.
Speaker 1: You got to do it in phases, right, So if
you want to get to that like extreme level, you
kind of you take it in that slow burn mad
like you have one revolution, next revolution, next revolution. Right.
Feminism worked the same way, and you couldn't have the
skittles had you not already had the feminist revolution. Right.
In my second book, the first chapter actually addresses what
you're talking about. I talked about the deconstructionists. You know,
the CIA went and like made alliances with the French
postmodernist deconstructionists. Yeah, I mean, this isn't Surprise or the
culture War. It's called the Congress or cultural freedom. It's
in chapter one, you said the ABA. No, I think
it's the chapter before introduction. Yeah, I think it's in
the introduction. You see.
Speaker 2: The cool thing is just real quick. The cool thing
about this is you have citations for all this, so
you're not just like winging it.
Speaker 1: No, there's like three hundred and sixty footnotes of that,
yeah on the first one. I forget how many's in
the second one. But yeah, yeah, that's from the academic background.
It's like you had a source of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's good, it's good. I mean when I
was working on my own book was the same thing.
It was like I would have quotes in there and
it would dig up the actual quote. But when I
thought the president, I thought who said it?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: So okay, So they're rolling it out in phases. They
can't just jump all the way into kids kids skittles.
They have to be a bit more careful and then
over time, why do you think the kids skittles things
never caught on? Like or is it catching on with
some of this transformer stuff today it is catching on.
Speaker 1: But they had to do it like in the phasees.
Speaker 2: So today like the the the would you connect it
to now kids don't have to give consent, who are
incapably given consent for anything else, but are able to
make life changing things happened to their body with drugs
and stuff that like this kind of coming out as bad.
Would you say that that is now the let's try
and alleviate consent from children because they can make like
would you connect those two?
Speaker 1: Does that make away say? It's the culmination of what
these revolutionaries wrote about. For example, Eldus Huxley wrote not
just Brave New World, but he wrote Brave New World Revisited,
And in the introduction he talks about this book is
not strictly speaking fiction, This is what the technocratic lead
actually have planned for the future. And if you go
back and rebrave New World, which we just did a
book club on this a few months ago with my buddy.
Quite frankly, I read it ten years ago. We reread
it last year, and I never even noticed. The second
chapter is all about pedo stuff. The World Socialist Controller
mandates pedo stuff for the dystopia. Wow, yeah, that's the
dark second chapter. It gets really dark. I won't say
what else goes on, but he actually calls himself Christ
has let the children come into me in the context
of peedos, it's gross, but Huxley's telling you that the
sexual revolution is what prepares the way for the brave
new world.
Speaker 2: Do you think that there's been some slow down with
some of this stuff now that there seems to be
a massive cultural pushback, specifically against the transform ideology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all of that is spearheaded out of Tavistock.
Second suit in the UK is kind of the spearhead
of They were behind mk ultra originally, and Huxley played
a role in that because he was actually going torgy
events with Crowley. They partied together, and Croley wrote a
book called Drug Diaries, And I did an interview with
doctor Richard Spence, who's a professor kind of a historian
of this stuff, and he wrote a book on Crowley
and he's the one that demonstrated that Crowley was a
British intelligence operative and that's how he got linked up
with Huxley, who was part of this inner click of
Fabian socialist eleites. Right. So when Huxley saw that Croley
had this drug diary, he was like, this might actually
be an interesting study at a like a government level.
So that became part of Tavistock that eventually becomes mkulture
in the US. It's the same program, but it's just
different continents. And that led to the idea that you
could engineer and change the human being, not just in
his mind, but eventually it becomes a change of the
entire physiognomy in the biology of a person. So I
actually dug up. In the first book, there's a chapter
where I talk about papers that were written by people
like doctor Holger Heyden. He was a famous scientist who
was invited to nineteen sixty nine min Control conference in
San Francisco, the rock Fellers put on, and it was
sponsored by CIA's Voice of America, and his papers were
about drugs and chemicals actually changing gender in men and
women in the future. SEC we can use this nineteen
sixty nine. Yeah, and I signed doctor Holger Heiden's papers.
You can still find him on Google scholar if that
still exists. But when I was writing the book, I
was like looking up Google scholar and finding all this
stuff and so and so. This stuff then starts kind
of seeping into the media. There's a white paper written
in I forget the exact date. Maybe in this I
think in this early seventies. It's called Changing Images of Man,
and it's put up by Stanford Research Institute, and that's
one of the key papers where they talked about re
engineering all the Western civilsa's thoughts not just about the environment,
which is a lot of the green agenda stuff, but
also man himself. And so they begin to talk about
how we need to convince man that man is the problem. Gee,
and that's what leads to a lot of this sort
of depopulation, anti natalist type stuff.
Speaker 2: Stuff is dark, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just giving you the sources.
Speaker 2: I'm just okay, So let me ask you this. Ver
one does it? I sashally this offline, But like, does
watching films now suck for you because you're you're looking
at this through like this kind of critical lens and
connecting the symbols, Like are you able just enjoy films?
Speaker 1: I yeah, because like a lot of this I was
doing like ten fifteen years ago, when I was really
watching movies from that kind of advantage point, huh, which
I mean I still do to a degree, but like
most movies suck nowadays. Anyways, Yeah, there's not that good.
But I mean when I go back and watch an
eighties movie. I'm not like trying to pick it apart necessarily, ok, So.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you a question. So then, in
this way, like I think that there's something about the
human story that will seep out in different aspects with
regards to media, where people can infuse things unknowingly like
flawed broken people can infuse things unknowingly that still point
to something transcendent and potentially godly absolutely right, So, like
I had this conversation recently, I'm Racey coming to America, Right,
So the prince doesn't want an arrange marriage, he doesn't
want someone to marry them for him. He wants to
come as a as a regular person. So he comes
and granted the movie as you know, Fortication all kinds
of sexual stuff, and he meets a queen. He wants
to find his queen in America, so he goes to
Queen's ironically enough, and he wants a woman to love
him for him while secretly having this entire royal powerful identity. Right,
And so like I see something like that, I kind
of parallel it to the story of Jesus. Like Jesus comes,
doesn't come as the messiah warrior you know, to establish
a political kingdom. He comes as a lowly servant and
wants people to love him for him instead of what
they can get from him, the power they can get
from him. And so I'm not saying that Eddie Murphy
is a Christian writing a Christian story, but I see
parts of the Christian story in a lot of media
as well. How do you how would you like process that?
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, I mean my books are not all negative. Like,
there's plenty of good messages. There's plenty of good film,
you know, film analyzes that we do, and like you said,
like even stories of just sort of heroic virtue or
natural virtues, those those exist yeah, outside the Church, outside Christianity,
and those are those those messages are fine. I think
Christianity is always historically, when it encounters positives in cultures
outside of the Church, you elevate the positives, the virtues
that are there that are natural, right, and then you
just try to eat out the things that are demonic
or unnatural. So there's a healthy form of inculturation, as
it's called in Christian missionary work. Historically, a lot of
Orthodox missionaries like Saint Herman of Alaska have the same
attitude where anything that you would find in the Inuit
culture that was good, you can elevate that and you
just get rid of the idoltysic stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in our framework, maybe we would use language like reject, receive, redeem, right.
So there's certain things within culture like we just have
to reject, like you can't be a stripper for Jesus,
you can't be a meth head for Jesus, can't be
a pimp for Jesus. Right, But then there's other aspects
where we can redeem. Genre like hip hop.
Speaker 1: Right, although if you go to my Only Fans you
can see that I can pull it off.
Speaker 2: Oh god, are you one of those guys that got
the only fans before they became explicit?
Speaker 1: It's just me and my yoga pants. Yeah, exactly, it's
just rated. It's just rated PG thirteen.
Speaker 2: So but yeah, like a like a genre like hip
hop or death metal or whatever, you can take that,
you can redeem it. You can use it for God's glory.
And then there's other aspects of culture or we can
just receive. We can receive aspects of culture that are
good stories or good food or good right, like those
things that aren't necessarily attached to anything of the occult.
Speaker 1: Or Mond Devine. Right, Yeah, exactly, Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Okay, personal question, I don't I didn't see you talk
about Star Wars any of these. I just glanced at
the chapters. Have you went through all the Star Wars films?
Speaker 1: We did a podcast on that some years ago. Okay,
I kind of dissected it from an esotary perspective, but no,
that's like the one. That's the one you haven't big one.
Speaker 2: Star Wars is a mixed bag man, because there's parts
of Star Wars that are like, oh, this is full
on like the fourso Eastern philosophy. But then I was
watching episode nine and the cool thing me and my
son watch it, and you saw. I got the text
during dinner last night and I was like, he wants
me to come home finished episode because we started it
on May fourth, sorry, episode three, and there's aspects of
it that we get to discuss and be like, hey,
this is not the way God is, this is not
the way Jesus is. Like God is a personal god,
He's not this force. Right though, there is a good
and a bad right, and there is a realm that
we don't see anyway, I was watching episode three with
him and the moment where I don't know if you
remember this, but where Anakin goes to the Dark Side,
the Sith that's presenting to him the Dark Side says,
the Jedi aren't telling you the full story, and the
Jedi they're wrapped up in their dogma, and their dogma
doesn't allow them to fully explore how powerful the Force is. Right,
And so because Anakin wants to save his love from death,
he keeps getting these premonitions that she's gonna die, and
so he wants to save her. And the appeal is
that the Jedi and the light is dogmatic and they're
bad and they're too archaic and they're understanding and the
dark Side it's more nuanced. Then, it's more you know, enlightened,
and it doesn't have hardcore binaries, right, and there's more
power over it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of what Satan is saying in the Garden, right,
He's like, you know, did God really say that? You
know what I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I was watching that and then I was thinking
about our conversation. I was like, oh, man, I wonder
what j Woul think about this, because it's it's it's
it is. I instantly thought of the garden. I instantly
thought about that lie, and then the the perversion to
try and escape death, which only Jesus did, and then
offers us in the resurrection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't need to ask about Star Wars. You
don't need to. And so that's the one thing I
didn't analyze. I'm just sorrying four part four of your
book Star Wars. It could be if we do a
part four. Yeah, I was gonna start doing some Billy
Williams impressions here in a minute. Hello, what have we anyway?
Speaker 2: So so so let's talk about the latest one, and
you giant, you jumped into one of my favorite movies,
which is Incemption. And in your theory, Inception is pushing
kind of like a gnosticism and Cobb is always in
his dream. There's theories that he ends up waking up
at the end, and then there's theories that he doesn't
wake up that meaning the end, he's still in his dream.
Your assessment of it is that there's a connection to
gnosticism and that the entire thing is all one big dream.
Speaker 1: Right, So a couple of reasons why I took that
route was I remember when I wrote that analysis, I
was reading a book on Hollywood and surrealism, and a
lot of film directors are influenced by surrealism, like David Lynch,
and the idea surrealism is that we have no delineator
between the sleeping state and the waking state. There's no
clear line to know, and so we may actually always
be in a dream state. I don't believe that, but
I'm saying that's what surrealists believe. And a lot of
the directors in the forties and fifties, even some of
the pretty notorious and famous ones who were even connected
to the Black Dahlia case, which was a famous ritual
murder case of Elizabeth Short in Hollywood. It's one of
the earliest connections of Hollywood to the occult that was
kind of in mainstream news. Some of those directors were
really into that, and so there's kind of been a
trend in some big level Hollywood people to push this idea.
And I think that you could argue that Christopher Nolan
and his brother are influenced very much by that, and
Carl Young definitely when Nolan does films, he'll even end
the screenplay reference Carl Young and so we get that,
and he's definitely a gnostic. Like I just read Young's
Archetypes of Collective Unconscious. We did a couple of podcasts
on that book. He's the guy.
Speaker 2: Is he the guy who said that he knows God exists?
And then kind of have to walk it back when
we think about the same guy or that you Carljung
is the gnostic cycling. He's the father of psychoanalysis, right,
So he was freud student and he disagree with Freud
because he thought Freud was too sexual, like it was
everything was just instinctual based drives. And Young in the
direction of reviving neoplatonism and gnosticism by his own admission,
like he says, I'm a gnostic. Does any of this
have any crossover with idealism and this idea that like
everything is just our ideas?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Where what is the Oh there's a guy that's super
popular about it. He was on Jonathan Pago's podcast, and
his whole metaphor is that the plane is the controllers
on the plane aren't really indicative of anything and deers yeah, yeah,
And so it's like this weird kind of idealistic thing
of how you're perceiving life. And you're saying this, you're
connecting this to gnosticism, which is which is interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, so again in archetypes, the collective unconscious, Carl
Jung says, I believe and I want to revive plato
idealism and narcissism. So that's his worldview.
Speaker 2: Why is this dangerous?
Speaker 1: Well for many reasons. I mean the earliest opponents of Christianity,
even in Paul's time when he writes to Timbothy, he says,
beware of those who claim to have knowledge or the noses.
So Paul was warning right early on. And then in
the second third century we have Iran Aus when he
wrote against Heresies in one eighty. The first three hundred
pages of that book is him just detailing like all
the insane gnostic sects that existed at that in one eighty,
right in the Roman Empire. So that's our earliest source
for the main opponents of Christianity in the first two
centuries were the Gnostics.
Speaker 2: And they go on to influence the Islamic view of
Jesus right like the source material that Muhammad would have
had access to in a region they say would have
been more gnostic accounts.
Speaker 1: It's funny you said that, because this morning I woke
I don't know why I woke up thinking about this.
I was thinking about Dawcatism, which is the idea that
Jesus didn't really down on the cross, didn't really have
a human nature. And the Quran says all Lah tricked
everybody into thinking disappeared. Yeah, so that's a form of Dacatism.
And I was reading a couple of years ago when
I was debating all these Muslims, the Oxford Handbook to
Islam admits that these Arianism, Gnoscissism, and Nestorianism influenced Mohammed,
which is interesting because that vindicates Saint John Damascus, who,
writing in the seventh century, was one of the first
to say these new rising Islamic believers are influenced by
Arianism and Astorianism. So modern scholarship has basically vindicated Saint
John Demascus's original analysis of this rising heresy of Islam.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is NaSTA. Yeah, I mean not totally, but
elements of it.
Speaker 2: And so from you know, Christopher Nolan, I think as
a Catholic or went to Catholic school or something to
that degree, you feel like this indirectly had a bigger
driver and a bigger influence on him, specifically with inception
than his own Catholic herodsage in his own background.
Speaker 1: Well, I think his brother does a lot of the writing.
So they call it together, and like in Batman begins
pretty sure, I'm going for a memory you exp Yeah,
you have Scarecrow basically reciting his quote Union perspective. So
one of the villains is literally saying, like, have you
not read Carl Jung? Let me tell you about the
archetypes of collective unconscious, and then he talks about like
the Shaft the shadow archetype and references I think himself
as the shadow archetype. And in Batman Joker, that's the
same idea here is that you know, when Joker's talking
to Batman, he's like, I'm the other side of you,
You're me, We're you know, we're the same, We're flip
side of the same coin, right, And the Union idea
is that you don't fight the vices and the demonic,
you integrate the dark side into you. And the one
of the worst things that Young wrote was an essay
called aon ai o n I think it's a whole
book but I only have a like a five page
section of it which is the most relevant, and it's
called Antichrist, right, And in that anti it's that section
is is arguing that Jesus and Antichrist are flip sides
of the same coin. So all of us have within
us Jesus side and an Antichrist side, and you've got
to integrate the two together. That's Jungian psychoanalysis. So it's
all balanced. Anything about the shadow self, right, that's what
that's what the shadow self, he says. Antichrist is a
shadow self to Christ, and they're they're both dialectical necessities
of the other. So to have good, you gotta have evil.
To have evil have good, which is all a Coult
philosophy basically anyway. So that does definitely influence the ethos
of the way that both Nolan's approach film. For example,
if you watch West World, I think in part two
of the Annalysis the.
Speaker 2: West West West World was dark man, it was, and
it was super dark.
Speaker 1: It is and it's gnostic, and I covered that in
there because I think Jonathan no One wrote West World,
and so uh Tenant has some gnostic esotery themes and
it is very confusing to completely the way they are. Yeah,
it's weird, man. So so this this this obsession with gnoscissism, Like,
by the way, all Hollywood has this obsession, and there
have been directors talking about most directors are pretty obsessed
with union archetypes gnostissism. So it's like dominates Hollywood.
Speaker 2: But there's a hedonism in Hollywood though that like is
after pleasure, right, so so so it's interesting that like
gnarscissism elevates the spirit world and the enlightenment and more
information while also wanting to experience more pleasure in the
material physical reality. Like it's such a perversion of Yeah,
it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: And I mean, but it didn't have to make sense,
right because I mean all of these sort of unbelieving
world views and philosophies are going to have these kind
of contradictions and tensions and they're not going to be coherent. Yeah,
and even Aernais mentions, like there's so many different gnostic groups.
Some of them were like into full on hedonism. Some
of them are into like you know, basically ram and
Yogi type stuff where you just roll in poop and
you don't eat for a year. You know. So, Uh,
there's two extremes of gnostics, and I don't I don't think.
I think the whole point is that you're accepting contradictions,
you're accepting things that don't make sense in unionism and gnosticism.
Speaker 2: Well, it's such a perversion to the to the incarnation
of right because.
Speaker 1: Jesus takes on matter. Yeah, he takes on matter. They're
saying matter is bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, fully god fully man. Uh, it takes on matter,
can experience temptation, yet overcomes it. Right creates a pathway
for reconciliation for people, and it's such a I think
gnosissism is such a nasty heresy because it's so appealing
and it definitely speaks to that pride aspect that people
want of knowing more and having more information and having
the right information and having all these things that it's
interesting that you're you're you've connected it so well to
what's happening in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I think it was the director. Have you ever seen
Dark City? I think that's sounds familiar. Yeah, it's It's
got rufus Sewell and Jennifer Connolly in it. It's a
nineties pre matrix Matrix type of movie. Okay, it's a
pretty good movie. But the director, I think his name
is Richard Iode and he was interviewed some years back.
I think I put it in the Third Book, but
he said something to the fact of like, if you
want to understand Hollywood, just look at Nacissism, like the
directors and the little ethos is like, that's the governing ideology.
Speaker 2: Interesting, okay, so tell me this. And I know you
you're Eastern Orthodox and you don't write the aligned with
what we do. But when you see stuff like The Chosen,
which I'm sure you could, you can have all kinds
of issues with The Chosen House of David. These are
movies that are not movie series that are now being
made by Dallas Jenkins a John Irwin. Amazon is looking
at the uptick in Bible sales and they're seeing that.
You know, I think last year was a record breaking
fourteen million Bible sold, many of them to new believers.
So Amazon is tracking this and in Amazon Studios is
now getting behind these productions and throwing hundreds of millions
of dollars into Christian stories. Right, does that give you
any glimmer of hope in terms of Hollywood shifting because
you also believe that Hollywood's dead, right, but there seems
to be this this shift happening in terms of the
media in film, and then i'd also argue in music
is moving away from a lot of this stuff you're
exposing in your book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I can appreciate that and give props
to it. I think Mel Gibson really kind of pioneered
this with the passion and showing that you can make,
you know, movies like the way Hollywood used to make
Ten Commandments Been Her which are kind of Christian movies, right,
you can go back to that and be very successful.
And so that kind of shows that maybe even the
ethos of Hollywood is not dominated by the money and
the numbers, like why would you keep making things or
even big companies like Disney that that don't do well
to push the woke kind of agenda. So I think
that demonstrates that it's not just about money, it's actually
an agenda. And yeah, I think there's a lot of positive,
you know, Christian films being made, Christian companies, a lot
of independent films that are wholesome and coming out, and yeah,
I think we could have seen that that that trend
was coming. I mean a lot of the I mean
I'm not a huge fan of like the Christian streaming
platform movies and stuff, but I think they're an indicator
of the culture shifting.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm not opposed to Christian films. I'm
just saying, like some of their corny, like pure flicks,
corny stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's one what is the one that would
just take out all the profanity and all the sketchy scenes.
It's like an in It's like a it's like a
browser extinction. I can't remember what is it?
Speaker 1: A vid angel? Yeah, d Angel?
Speaker 2: And the pure Flix is an actual like streaming platform,
right that I saw integrated I think in Amazon, Like
I was on Amazon and that always have pure flicks
in there. I don't know if it's an add on
or not. So it's like that's interesting. And then again
like knowing that they're i mean, the Amazon is spending
hundreds of millions of dollars on Christian media right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we watched the David the King, David, what did
you think of that? I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: It's good, right, I thought it was great.
Speaker 1: I've not seen chosen, but I don't. Yeah, I mean,
I don't know much about it other than that everybody
talks about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think and both of those Bible
shows are going to take creative license to fill in
the stories. And some people have an issue with that.
Other people don't have an issue with that, you know.
So if they're like David, you saw David, Like there's
this entire backstory of David and the daughter and all
this stuff, and it's like, well, where's that in the Bible?
But it's like the meat of the story is the same.
But then there's other or like David when he goes
after did you finish it? I don't want to spoil
it for you? Okay, So David when he goes after Goliath,
Goliath throws a spear and he makes contact. It's like, well,
that's not in the scriptures. It's like, well, but is
it probable? And does it create a great sequence? You
know that sort of stuff. So I think people have
issue with the not the I wouldn't say that have
issue with the theology. You have it as much as
the There has to be a fillain of the story
to create character development and all this backstory yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean for a movie, you would have to have that. Yeah,
I don't see a huge problem with that, as long
as you're not introducing something heresy. Yeah, like, yeah, we're
going to add the part where the aliens come down
to David. Right, I'm for sure that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Give them the thing, you know, I think I think
it was they go deep into David's backstory and David's
mom and this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was early on. I remember that. Yeah, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Thought it was. I thought it was a great show.
I think I thought House of David is like the
show that I want as a dude, where it's violent,
but it's like, you know, it's sentimental, it has a
great story. It kind of checks all those boxes for
me in terms of a series that I enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think Christianity has been in the
last few hundred years in the West in general, and
this is even in the realm of orthodox you like,
people have been very soul on pacifism and not being
you know, masculine and not having self defense, you know,
these kinds of attitudes that I mean, well, King David
should be a model, like you know what I mean.
Like there are biblical archetypes for different types of people,
you know what I mean. So if you're a father
and you have a household, that you want an archetype
of that kind of a warrior to look up to.
And even in the history of Christianity, I mean, you
have plenty of Christian kings who live virtuous lives, very
famous Serbian Orthodox kings that we think are saints. So
there's a long tradition of the warrior saint, which I
think we need to recover in the West because we've
been sold through liberalism, modernism, postmodernism, this idea that Christianity
is synonymous with pacifism and you know, just nonsense, which
is it's just liberalism. Is one of the first things
that pushes is pacifism, and that emasculates the culture in
the society.
Speaker 2: Would you connect that to Christians being afraid to lean
in to the institutions and lean into Hollywood and lean
into creativity and lean into media, meaning that a lot
of times it seems like there's been an exodus from
these arenas. And yes, I get it, Like, if you're
in Hollywood, it's probably very difficult until recently to make
something you're pumped on, or to participate on a project
you're pumped on. But do you think that that's added
to it, like leaving the institutions, leaving the media, the entertainment,
the arts when we used to drive all those things.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, I think unless you are willfully choosing
a monastic life, then you're called to be in the culture.
And both are options, right. It's just like Paul gives
the option like if you would like to remain single,
you can do that, but it needs to be something
you can do, and it needs to be a gift
that you have and you need to demonstrate that and
if you want to go live in the monastery and
do that. But even the people in the monastery, like
they create elements of culture that we use, especially in
the Orthodox world. Right, there's a lot of iconographers. There's
a lot of people who create you know, candles and
you know, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: So and they're kind of they're also there to kind
of pray for for the rest of.
Speaker 1: Exactly the world exactly. And and you know, Christism talks
about Saint John Christiam talks about you know, married people
living in the world and needing to be involved in
the culture. So yeah, I think we have a role
of duty to be involved in that. And that's I mean,
the whole history of the church has always said that
it's both. Yeah. And at Niceia, for example, there was
an early debate in the church about could you be
a soldier and be a Christian because you had a
faction of the early church that said kind of the
way that like Roger Williams and sort of like some
of the Rhode Island Baptist thought, uh, you have to
eschew all government service because for whatever reason he thought
government was like evil like Satan created the government or something, right,
And some of the early Niceing pre Nicene Christians bought
that too, right, so they had also under Roman occupation,
you could see what Yeah, you could see why they
would think that. Yeah. And so when when Nicea happens,
one of the issues that come up to send the
cannons if you're the Canons, and I see it is
the question of canon Christian be a soldier. And the
council says, yes, you can still be a soldier, and
they cite you know what John the Baptist says to
the Roman soldiers, you know, don't be abusive to people
and you know, collect the right amount of tacks, don't
like steal from people. Yeah, if you couldn't be a soldier,
John the Baptist would have said, you need to stop
being a soldier, right, right, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's good, that's good. I think. I think
passivism is connected to a fear of culture, and the
fear of culture is connected to a complete wasting a
way of culture without anyone there being the light. I
am also empathetic to people that are like, well, dude,
it sucks trying to be the light, you know, but
up until the last couple of years, where now you
don't if you're like a bunch of my buddies are
in music right, and there's some of the biggest streaming
artists on Spotify, some of the biggest touring artists like
doing arenas now, right. I got somebodies that are doing
stadiums now and they are more or less on their own.
They don't have to operate within any major label machine.
Vanilli is one. Yeah, No, Lucian Grange isn't involved, Universe
wasn't involved. Like these mega conglomerates aren't telling them what
to make, and they're more successful than their secular counterparts, right.
So I was mentioning this to Jordan Peterson. I don't
know if you know who Phil Wickham or Brandom Lake are,
but their next tour, they're they're literally hitting stadiums on
their next tour, right, And this is like overtly Christian
worship music, and they're going from arenas to stadiums. The
only other people that are doing stadiums are like a
listers like Kendrick Lamars says. There's not a lot of
folks that are in stadiums, and so Brandon Lake, Phil
Wickham that are more or less, you know, fairly niche
artists are transitioning to the stadiums forst Frank is doing
ten thousand people a night in arenas. This is outstreaming
the bigger hip hop artists, the bigger pop artists. This
is outperforming their ticket sales. It's happening right now on
the back of this decentralized revolution that's happened.
Speaker 1: The same things happening I think in every air of
the arts right, Like I mean podcasting right, doing your
own media right, Like people don't want the degeneracy on
the whole. I think most people want the return to
wholesome and so that's why it's working.
Speaker 2: Do you think the return to wholesome is because people
are returning to Christ or do you think the return
of wholesome is because this like yearning inside of us
that maybe we don't even know why we want something different.
Speaker 1: All the above. I mean, you know Augustin Santagustin said
that you know, we have a hole in our heart
that is infinite until God fills the whole. So I
think at a macro level and at an individual level,
the society also wants what we have, yea, So it's
just natural to move in that direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was listening to CS Lewis on Near Christianity.
He said something similar where he said the idea that
there is a yearning for something beyond what we have.
So like, you'll have them, you'll enjoy the food you're anticipating,
you'll enjoy the sex in your marriage, you'll enjoy the pleasure,
but it's still fleeting, and you know there's something beyond this, right,
And he's like, that's an indication that there's something beyond
this world and there's something And he goes on to
make the claim that those who are actually heavenly minded
end up making the most earthly impact, because if you're
thinking of a world beyond this world, you're going to
make a bigger impact on this world. If you're only
thinking about this world, you're not going to make an
impact on this world, which is what's kind of paradox.
Speaker 1: Opposite of like what the Marxists say, right, the Marxists
say that the only way to make an impact is
to forget this not existent and beyond. You have to
secure your here in the now. So it's a reverse, right,
the atheistic Marxist versus like what Lewis talks about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting, Okay, you said Hollywood has predicted the end
of the world, participating in that alchemy ritual working culminating
in a synchromatic self fulfilling prophecy. In your new book
that's coming out in You go deep on this idea
of armor get in in the prediction of the end
of the world across multiple Hollywood films. Unpack some of
that for me, And why do you think there's this
prediction happening? Why is it is fascination with the end days?
And how is it different than the biblical account?
Speaker 1: It's very different, although ironically kind of like what you're
saying with this yearning for the beyond that we all
kind of have. Even if you're not a believer, or
if you're you know, an atheist, you still have this
craving for something more than here and the now. I
think there's an implicit sense in all of us as
well that everything has a beginning, middle, and an end.
So your life has a beginning, middle and end. Conversations
have beginning, middle, and end. We're in that middle aged stage, Jay,
you and me in your life has a middle age, right,
And so I think when people make movies and you
do stories, you're limited in terms of the basic patterns.
You can interject all kinds of infinite variations of characters
and details, but there's only some any kinds of stories
that you can do. Even if you tell a story
outside out of time, like Tenant or something like, there's
still a beginning milling in and the focus of that
third book towards the end of it is not just
the end of the world. But I thought it was
very providential that when I wrote the first book in
twenty sixteen, and it's almost ten years later, like how
much things have changed since twenty sixteen. I don't think
of twenty sixteen, people were thinking the old legacy Hollywood
system could come to an end. The studio system now,
granted it's not perfect, like it's now going to be
like the big tech companies like Amazon and Apple Studios,
but the old system is kind of dying out, and
it promoted and used so much toxic, degenerate stuff to
destroy the culture by design effect. Edward Bennet is one
of the most famous propagandasts. In his book Propaganda, he
said Hollywood is the greatest engine of propaganda the world's
ever seen. And I cited that in the first book,
and then here we are ten years almost later for
the third book, and it's emblematic that Hollywood is having
its own apocalypse. So I thought it would be fitting
to write on the Hollywood apocalypse films. So I'm trying
to playing on, you know, dual senses there. But yeah,
I saw I covered like Rosemary's Baby and a lot
of the influence that the satanic subculture had at that
time in the sixties. On Roman Polanski, who himself was
involved in some pretty nasty stuff. I won't say what,
but he can't come to America. But so because of
what he was involved in. But so you've got that,
You've got other apocalypse films that John Carpenter did, which
I think are a little more positive in terms of
their critique of the dystopia and the end of the world.
They're kind of dark, but they're also maybe you could
say pseudo Christian or almost Christian and their themes. You have,
you know, the notion of virtuous sacrifice and overcoming you know, Antichrist,
that kind of stuff. And I get into some of
the you know, more ridiculous stuff that Hollywood's put out,
like the Omen and that kind of stuff, which loosely
references biblical and time stuff, but very very much twists
it into something maybe almost neo gnostic, like we talked
about earlier. So it's interesting because a lot of the occultists,
like they actually like the Book of Revelation. They don't believe,
I'm but they don't believe. They don't believe in it
as the Christian perspective. They argue, oh, this is a
secret Gnostic text that you need like a code, and
my cult will give you the code to decode it.
So they believe that it's actually a ritual working that
you can invoke Babylon the Harlot into time and space
to achieve the end time and Crowley himself thought he
was the Beast of the Book of Revelation and he
would make his girlfriends his consort Harlot, so the beast
and the bride of the Beast the Harlot right Revelation
seventeen eighteen. I mean, it's crazy, but he had that view,
and then a lot of occultists after him who follow
his work. He's very influential, like all the way down
to like like all these people are, so they think, oh,
I can you know, participate in the invocation of Babylon.
If you remember, my wife put this in her book
when Katy Perry did the halftime show. Yeah, she wrote
out on a giant beast, So it was like the
woman rides the beast, right, it was intentional like apocalypse symbolism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what's his name? I can't remember the guy's name,
but the guy who directed the Rihanna Umbrella video, which
is all pretty pretty upbeat and bubbly, like this happy
bubbly song. Rihanna's big first hit just recently came out,
and like said, yeah, jay Z asked me to put
these Illuminati type symbols in the video. And so some
of it, he said was accidental, like he had her
in a triangle and she was like boxing. He's like
that was like accidents. But he's like this other stuff
like he asked me to do this, and he his
theory was more or less he's trolling. He's just trying
to stir up controversy, get people talking to to kind
of lean into this whole thing of like this mystique
that he was trying to build for himself and his artist.
But but like much like my buddy Shane Smith who
started trolling with Satanism and oh, it's just we're just
atheist trolling God and Christianity, and then it starts to
potentially get a hold of you.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah, yeah, I think in the world of the
pop stars, we've seen that for a long time. In fact,
we were just watching some old Madonna stuff from like
the early two thousands. If you watch her the song
that she did for Uh Die Another Day, the James
Bond movie with Pierce Brosman, If you watch that music video,
like it's full of like cabalistic ritual invocations, like literally
and she's got like cabalistic texts written. I had a
friend who's who knows Hebrew, and he was like telling me,
all the what what the inscriptions say because it's written
in Hebrew. But Madonna famously in the two thousands came
out and said, oh, I'm an actual coblist.
Speaker 2: Yeah's true practicing cabal is it cabal or a cabalist?
Speaker 1: Well, if you believe it and practice that, you are
a colt. But what you're practicing is at and that's
like a that's like a Jewish medieval wish mysticism. But
if you read Chrisham Sholam, who's kind of the ultimate
cobblist scholar of the last century, he just says, kabbala
is it's Jewish gnostic philosophy theology. So it's equivalent and
very synonymous with neoplatonism too. So anyway, but yeah, I
mean so in other words, you can go back to
when nobody was in you know, two thousand and two
three thinking about this stuff like we do nowadays, Like
what's that someone mean in that video? Like they were
putting it in the videos, you know, back then, and
we've retroactively kind of gone back through a lot of
those music videos and I want to be nuanced because,
like you said, it's not like every artist and every
you know, cinematographer making the videos is like we got
to pack everything so like it'll be both right. There
could be accidental things, and I also think some of
these people might even tap into things that they don't
even understand, you know what I mean, Like a lot
of people are doing drugs, a lot of people are
doing LSD, A lot of people are doing getting inspiration
from avenues that can be a demonic influence. Does that
make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's very prevalent, right,
people tapping into other stuff. I've never done any of
those harder drugs that like I've just smoked weed. But
would you say, because you said you've dabbled in LSD
and that was the thing that like maybe five times,
and I said had a bad trip once? Was the
bad trip which led you to faith? Or was it
a good trip that llegited faly because I remember you
talked about it.
Speaker 1: Was I mean it was a factor. It wasn't like
I had a bad trip and then the next day
I was at church. It was like I had a
bad trip and it was a really dark experience and
the darknesses will push you to the light. It was
a factor that got me on that path.
Speaker 2: Gotcha interesting, I would I would hope that more people
would go your route with experimenting with that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, a lot of people who I've met in
the last five years that have come into Orthodoxy, they
came from the psychedelia d mt J Rogan world that
came into.
Speaker 2: What do you think that Do you think that that's
that is that is that your mind having a chemical trip,
or do you think it's actually opening you up to
a spirit realm, like a real spirit realm.
Speaker 1: I hate to keep saying both, but I feel I
think it's both. I think it's both of Yeah, do
you think it's always both? Or do you think for
some people it is just a chemical happening inside of
their physical frame. Yeah, it's a hard question because I've
actually tried to study this sum on an academic level.
There's a good book written I forget the guy's name,
but it's an Oxford Press book on the history of shamanism,
And in that book, the guy argues that we can't
I think Jordan Pearson even says the same thing. We
can't say that it's totally mental, because there's a consistent
pattern that most people in discrete shamanic traditions across the world,
they have an actual pattern to their trips, to their journeys.
And if it was all purely subjective or a mental career,
you wouldn't necessarily see these sorts of patterns, which suggests
that there is some architecture or some realm that has
some reality to it ontologically speaking, that people are tapping
into and then separate from when I was reading that
book on shamanism, I was reading some of the Orthodox
saints and elders talking about the same idea that when
you go into these dissociative states or these ultraconscious estates,
there are patterns and regularities that suggest that it's more
than just a pure mental creation. Interesting. That's interesting. Okay, So.
Speaker 2: Ironically you mentioned this earlier. Hollywood consistently predicting the end
in their apocalyptic stories indirectly or directly, maybe is now
has led to the end of Hollywood as we know it.
And with media being decentralized and with you said just
kind of like this reorganization of the conglomerates, you know, Apple, Amazon,
kind of becoming the new Hollywood if you will, do
you feel like Hollywood's dead?
Speaker 1: Yeah? In fact, you know, one of our good buddies,
Jamie Kennedy, the comedian guy who does the Jamie Kinnedy
experiment and tons of classic movies, Alby's most wanted. Like,
We've done a couple live shows with him and he
comes and does stand up. The first interview we did
with him, he was like, Hollywood's dad, did Hollywood's dad.
Our first interview was like, that's the first thing he says,
and I'm like, what do you mean. He's like, oh,
it's dead. It's It's like, it's it's all you know
what we're doing. Yeah, that's the future. Huh. So you
got people in Hollywood have been there since the nineties,
you know, doing well back in the two thousands, a
list movies. But yeah, I think Hollywood predicted its own
demise by pushing an anti Christ message in philosophy is
ensuring your own apocalypse, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Irony, Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Okay, you talked a bit
about like your comedy live events, said Jamie Kennedy. Was
that one of those two of those?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like I haven't. I've just seen this
stuff you showed me on your phone and on Instagram.
But it sounds like you guys are creating. You're creating
content that's very interesting because you're talking about esoteric collig
which you're talking about philosophy, you're talking about Orthodoxy, you
talking about Christianity, theology, you're debating Muslims. But then you
have these live events where you're kind of infusing this
where you're doing music. Is it cringe core?
Speaker 1: Is that what you called it?
Speaker 2: Comedy? Like a live podcast type of thing and lectures?
Tell me about those and kind of what what what
made you guys go? We should we should consider doing
in person gatherings.
Speaker 1: We kind of joked about doing live stuff a few
years ago, but I didn't really think that I had
the audience yet to do it. And then I have
to give credit to Sam Tripoli their stand up, because
he he was like, dude, you gotta do live and
I was like, I never thought about that, And I
was like, what do you mean. He's liked, just go
rent out, you know, an event space for one hundred
and hundred fifty people, sell tickets and have people come
and you know, just do your talks live, and uh yeah,
he was spot on. He nailed it. And he's been
doing stand up for twenty years, so he's you know,
he knows the vibe of live stuff. And I was
a little iffy about it just because I've never done
a live, live event before. And then so we did
our first one in Nashville last year and it was awesome,
Like we had all of our you know, hardcore devoted
you know fans and followers show up and it's just
like a big party basically, and the way we structure
it is like I open it up, it's an all
day event, so basically from like two or three in
the afternoon until you know, nine or ten at night, right,
so you're getting your money's worth forty fifty dollars ticket.
It's not just me, but it's also Jamie does my
wife does a talk and then usually what we've done
is have a guest with us. So depending on what
city we're in, So for in LA, we get somebody
like Jamie Kennedy, if we're in Austin, we get other
stand ups or comedians there to come out and do it,
and then I do a talk on whatever the book
is this year. I usually tie it into like you said, spirituality,
orthodox theology, geopolitical, conspiracy quote unquote, topics, film, Hollywood, all
of it is tied in. Yeah, and it makes for
like a whole, you know, day long party. We have
book signing at the end, merch all that stuff. Everybody
loves it.
Speaker 2: And is the comedy aspect that you do? Is it
like stand up? Is it written? Are you writing your
jokes out word for word? Is it more improv Tell
me what that's like.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much improv I mean I do have some
kind of you know, set stuff that I do, but like,
so we do a little crowd work and then a
lot of it's impressions. I do like fifty impressions and
would you do an impression? Maybe, okay, if you guys
are nice to me, all right. So there's a lot
of impressions we've done, and then we do the music
the song. So most of the songs are kind of
improvka And that just happened because I was doing live
streams and people were like, hey, why don't you play
some royalty for your music in the background. Yeah, So
I was doing it just kind of to have music
in the background, sure, and then like I started rapping,
I started singing, and it was so dumb that everybody
loved it. So people started clipping it and I was like,
I don't know, just make this into like a song, right,
So then we started doing songs and it's just another
little niche pivot thing that we have. So that's so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been talking about doing live stuff, so I was,
I mean, we talked a lot about it last night,
but I've been really intrigued by that and ultimately, like
I think what's cool about what you do is that
you don't allow yourself to be pigeonholed to one thing.
So the live events aren't just one thing. They're they're
kind of.
Speaker 1: All of it. We don't really have debates. I mean,
we do Q and A usually because a lot of
people want to have like, you know, I want to
ask you a question about this book in that book. Yeah,
so there's a lot of Q and A. But I've
only done one live debate, which is, you know, odd
because we've done so many debates over the last eight years.
But that was because I kind of body it to debate.
Three way debate Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, so but yeah, except
for debate, it's everything else that we do, some movies, comedy.
Speaker 2: On what's the demographic of the folks that are showing
up to this, like what ages, backgrounds?
Speaker 1: Usually it's I would say twenty to forty five and
mostly people who are married with kids, so a lot
of young couples. When you get a lot of Orthodox churches,
like they're dominated by young people and their kids. So
I think we've seen a huge influx in the Orthodox
world of people in our demographic audience. Niche not as
many girls and moving to get some females. But my
audience is like ten percent female, ninety percent dudes.
Speaker 2: Which your YouTube tends to skew heavily towards dudes in general.
It's a very male dominant platform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, like we I would say probably thirty
percent of the audience is you thirty to forty is Orthodox,
thirty to forty maybe Hollywood conspiracy interested people, especially if
we do it in LA it's a lot of movie
crowd people. And then like thirty forty percent Alex Jones audience.
Speaker 2: Okay, so okay, that's interesting, and you've how long have
you been doing stuff with Alex Jones.
Speaker 1: I got invited on in twenty twenty to be a guest,
and they really liked the segment and was this remote
or was this in person? The first one was remote,
and then the producer was like, yeah, that was a
really great segment. We're looking you know, would you like
to do a Fourth Hour host as a test? So
I did that for a few weeks and then I
just got a regular spot of Friday hosting for the
last five years and that helped grow the audience a lot.
And Alex has been super cool and we've done several
in studio like specials and reports and all that over
the last five years. But the last couple months, because
of his legal issues with them trying to shut down
Info Wars, there's been no Fourth Hour hosts. So all
the Fourth Hour hosts were kind of paused because it's
in limbo as to what's going to happen in for Wars.
Speaker 2: I thought he regranted, like I thought, wasn't that the
Onion bought Info Wars And that was not true.
Speaker 1: That was not true.
Speaker 2: No, that's actually kind of funny that the Onion buying
Info Wars.
Speaker 1: And then they just kept saying that they had but
it's still like in legal limbo because it keeps going
back and forth between I don't know all the legalities,
but it's it's right now. It's technically in limbo, so okay,
it keeps going to the judge and the judge has
to like sift through.
Speaker 2: Are they making him sell info Wars?
Speaker 1: That's what they're trying to do. Okay, he's already set
up the backup AU shows network, Yes, but he doesn't
necessarily he's not yet yet lost in force per se
got it, but they're still trying to get it.
Speaker 2: Where would you put him in terms of the category
or the spectrum of like serious conspiracy theorists that's citing
stuff like you are, versus like more of a pop
surface level conspiracy.
Speaker 1: I have to get Alex's credit because I started listening
to two thousand and three to Alex, and he was
the one that was citing all of these texts that
I was kind of skeptical when I first heard him
back then, and that led me to go and pick
out all the texts he would reference and I would
just read them all. And so one of the things
I do on my channel is what I call a
global elite lecture series. So I literally lecture through these
like massive, like thirteen hundred paged homes that no one
else has time or energy to read, like Tragy and Hope. So, like,
Alex would talk about this book for years and I
finally decided, Okay, I got to get it and read it.
He's one of the top geostrategists for our oligarchical elite.
He was Bill Clinton's mentor. And so I went through
this whole thing, and somebody said, hey, why don't you
just do lectures on these books that way, it's sourced,
it's not theorizing, it's not speculation, it's literally just grounded
in those sources. Yeah. So I would say, absolutely, Alex
knows his stuff. He's not nobody's infallible. He's gotten some
things wrong, sure, but I have too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you think with regards to the Sandy Hook thing,
that was just a thing he just kind of struck
out on.
Speaker 1: I think what he did was he would have people
on that were all views like totally denying it, saying
it was real but it was a conspiracy, saying that
there was no conspiracy. So he would have an open debate,
and there were a couple people that they didn't really
vet very well, Like not Alex, but like some of
the team just didn't vet the people coming on very well,
and those people ended up kind of being suss I
guess you could say, very sort of shady characters who
were making a lot of outlandish claims. So when the
trials were happening, if you watch some of the legal
proceedings on like the long crime channels or whatever, that's
what they were bringing up, like why did you not
vet these people calling in and doing this and that?
So that was the grounds for at least I think
there was three cases in one of the cases is
what I saw. But so I think there was a
failure on some of the team to that. But Alex,
I mean you probably like big name people have a team, Yeah,
you know what I mean. It's like they come in
and do the show, and you've got the people they're
supposed to be.
Speaker 2: It's more so like the researchers and the people they
allowed to influence his frame of that situation failed him
to that, and he doesn't do all of his own
research per se and in that that's why he made
some of the statements about it being method crisis. Actors
and it's all fake and all this stuff is real.
Speaker 1: There was a main dude, and I don't want to
get like to, you know, but he was calling in
often and really pushing that line, and that influenced the
Alex and that's what led to your promoting this on
your big platform. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, that's crazy. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to hear a take like that because usually
it's just like, dude, this dude just kind of jumped
all the way out the window and said some crazy
stuff about.
Speaker 1: Well, he walked it back after. I know, he walked
back there. Well even right after there was like some
heat back in twenty thirteen. Then he kind of walked
it back and was like, look, I don't I'm just
giving a platform to everybody. It's a it's a radio
call in show, right, so people call in and say
all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's the They played the clips of him
making the statements. What you're saying is influenced by the
people that called in and some of their sources. I
only ask for Alex Jones one cause your connection. I
have a buddies whose daughter was at Sandy Hook when
it happened and I knew him back then while they
were going through it, and I know the amount of
counseling she had to go through and how damaging that
was to their family, lost teachers, lost friends, And so
hearing anyone say like this wasn't real when I know
people directly connected, I was like, man, this is It
is a bad look for anyone to be propagating this
sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I think what happens is that when you start to
read a lot of this kind of stuff and you
if you don't stick to like the source material like
I'm talking about, Like, what happens is you can develop
a kind of a gut reaction to see everything one way.
And in logic, it's there's two fallacies that are very
closely as social. One of them is the gambler's fallacy.
The other one is Texas sharpshooter fallacy. So like, for example,
if I roll a dice and I get let's say
I roll it twice and I get a three both times,
there's no logical necessity that I'm going to get a
three the next time I roll it right, And it's
called the gambler's fallacy. Because humans have a tendency to
want to easily interpret if let's say that there was
an event where, let's just for the sake of argument,
let's say the government was involved in a false flag,
and then you had another event where the government was
involved in a first false flag, and then let's say
and let's say it was verified. Right, because those do exist,
right the Gulf of ton King singing Lusitania, those are
known admitted false flags Northwoods operation documents. But let's say
another event happens and we don't yet know what's going
on or the details. Human nature has a tendency to
just assume, well, that one will also be the same
as these. You say, but there's no necessity necessarily to
that event being a false like just because.
Speaker 2: Because your brain is recognizing the pattern exactly. So you're like, oh,
there's this happened, has happened. And to his credit, he
has been right on quite a few things, and so
you're seeing these things that he that that you're right about.
So then this also has to be that because it
fits some of the similar categories. And then the sex
of sharpshooter fallacy is what you just kind of throw
out a bunch of things, something sticks and therefore you
think it you hit your bulls eye right, you moved?
Speaker 1: Is that what it is? Like you move the target
to site? Well, see, I got it right, but you're
ignoring the other you know, data that doesn't conform to it.
So it's selective data analysis, right to conform to what
you want to be the truth, the truth or what
you assume is the truth.
Speaker 2: Exactly do you think there's any correlation to just his
mindset of going so deep in this stuff that perhaps
distorted his lack of logic and reasoning abilities that got
him into this mess, Meaning like you're so immersed, like
people that are chronically online, they're so immersed into a
specific subgenre or specific culture, subculture, and then you're you're
you start losing the ability to logic and reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to a degree. Although I mean I think, you know,
Alex probably had other stuff going on at the time.
I think he was getting divorced. It wasn't very healthy.
There's people, Yeah, I mean, there could be all kinds
of things going on that partially influenced some of that.
But I also think the like I said, like in
terms of human nature, like anybody, all of us are
that way, Like if if somebody say, came presenting counter
narratives or information into orthodoxy, right, Like, my initial reaction
is going to be to run to all the data
that backs up orthodoxy. That's just how we are as humans.
So I think that everybody has an innate sort of
just aversion to their paradigm being challenged. Were all that way,
and if, like you said, if you are always constantly
studying this information from a kind of conspiracy perspective, you
can definitely develop tunnel vision and it could lead to
those types of errors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm just looking up. This happened twelve
years ago, so he was like late thirties, so I
you know, like you said, all of us are susceptible
to it. But if you're dabbling with alcohol, going through
personal stuff, dealing with maybe some substance abuse issues.
Speaker 1: I think it was getting divorced to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going you're probably more susceptible to really slide
into It's just crazy if in how this flesh is out,
I mean, what a crazy billion dollar stupid tax in
a way, you know, we're like, man, that's a lot,
and I could understand how he can end up in
that situation. But that's a massive price to pay to
try and then figure out how to pay these people
and if he's going to pay them, and if he's
going to have to sell it or not sell, like
it's just just a mess.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's limits. So I think the
billion dollar thing was like a media it's not really that.
Oh there's like limits in you know, both states. You
know the limit it's in the millions, it's millions. Yeah,
So I mean, if it's in a millions, it's not
a billion, you could probably figure out a way to
pay it, right. I mean, they had auditors come in
and audit everything, and because there was a guy who
claimed that Alex had like tens of millions that are
stashed or something that was hidden in the company or something,
but they never found any of that, and so there,
if you don't have the money, like you're not, they
can't get it. Yeah, you know what I mean. There's
no debtors prisons in America as far as I'm aware.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. So
our very own Zax Barazzo's brother actually saw one of
your videos about the Mahdi and said, you've done some
coverage on it. And we just covered the Madi and
they responded to us. His cult podcast, the official religion
website YouTube responded to us, and you coverage of the Madi.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the guy?
Speaker 2: You think he's a method actor, You think he's he's
he's sick in the head. You think he's tapping into
some actual demonic forces that are potentially helping him do
these miracles that he's alleged of doing.
Speaker 1: What do you make of it? It's funny you say that,
because the first thing I noticed was the airbrush image
of him, So look like DJ Khaled without any gray
in his It's just like he looks ten years younger
in that.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's first of all, it's preposterous,
like on the surface, and then you notice it's like
it's like a weird He's got these icons around him
that look kind of Catholic, kind of worth of box.
And then he's got a giant bust of some dude
that looks like a Caesar bust but looks like a
like an accountant. I thought it like Phil Jackson, it
looks like Yeah, I was like, why do you have
a do you have a bust of like an accountant
or Phil Jackson there, so weird aesthetics going on, and
then like why are you wearing a beanie? And then
he she gave an explanation of the beanie, which I
thought was funny because he's connecting with the working man
exactly job with that gene. He's got full gens, right,
he's got Jean shoes over there, Jean, he's got Gene socks. Dude,
But uh you I mentionined Jeene socks. Did you get
some gene socks to say? Blessed God on it? Great?
Great working class right there. The other thing that was
weird about him, which is like all cult leaders, you
noticed because we did a bunch of podcasts on show
back in the day, and it's like they're on pills
or something something like he's like this and he doesn't
move and he's like I am the muddy and he
talks really slow. I found this clip of show where
he's talking about mine and I am drunk right now.
He literally says that, and like he's like with a
huge crowd. You think he looksicated and out of it,
But how about that nine foot stage where he's like
I noticed in cameras video t You did a really
good camera Britoozie when he did the breakdown of like
his background and the Arab Spring stuff is a huge
red flag because he was a mega activist in the
Arab Spring, which if you go into the history of
Air Spring, it's promoted by Western intelligence. There's a great
book that deals with some of that feel spectron Dominance
foat ing Dahl, really good book, good introduction to geopolitical
stuff from an academic perspective. People are interested because I
get asshole the time. Where should I start? That was
a good one start. But I think that it's also
a clear engineered mix of perennialism, neoplatonism all which I've
read and studied pretty extensively, and Shias stuff, and Shia
Islam is very amenable to Sufism, very close to sufism,
which is neoplatonism. And the advantage of neoplatonism is that
it's kind of a skeletal thing that allows you to
pick and chew use from the world religions, and that
way you can say, oh, look, all these world religions,
they're actually my superstructure neoplatonic religion, and you're all just
manifestations of kind of the pieces that I have as
the full picture, and a lot of cults do that.
A lot of religious movements are clever enough to latch
onto that. So I think it's definitely some kind of
op engineered whether he's fully involved or somebody else in
the background, I think it's very sus and I think
there's probably some intelligence background, especially with their their Really
you think you think he would be a CIA, Well,
I don't know a CIA, but it's very likely it
could be something like that. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, the air Spring stuff was weird. We talked
about that a bit too. That's a that's a tail sign.
Speaker 1: It's something something's going on, something in the background. Yeah,
And so.
Speaker 2: What would be the would okay, would the intelligence connection
be correlation of causation to what he's doing?
Speaker 1: Now, again just just going on gut analysis. Spending a
lot of time studying cults and religions and the overlap
with intelligence stuff, because they have a lot of interest
in cults and religions. In fact, I might even write
my next book on religion and intelligence. We've done a
lot of lectures in the last few years on that
specific subject matter because very few people go into that.
People don't know that the state has a vested interest
in wanting to make churches forms of what's called soft power,
and soft power is a way to, if you're the state,
or if you're a superpower, to extend your influence in
other cultures through non kinetic warfare. So you're doing it
not with guns and tanks, per se, but with culture.
Hollywood has been a very powerful engine of Western soft power.
You know, I mentioned writing about James Bond and the
Cold War. Bond was a form of projecting Western soft
power to other nations in the Cold War. Right, so
you've got these Soviets, they're tyrannical, they want to lock
you down. James Bond represents you know, Eastern masculinity, capitalism,
you know, free love, you know all these kinds of
things that Bond is supposed to represent. So likewise, intelligence
agencies are very interested and have always been interested in
cults and religions. Curly was a spy, as we said,
many many new Agers, Madame Bilvatski, there's really good she's
the mother of all the New Age movements. There's a
lot of good evidence to suggest that she was also
a spy. She worked with a KGB one of her
handlers was actually a KGB guy, So I think that
it's very possible. It's very likely. I don't know for sure,
but the Arab Spring activism definitely suggests a possibility there.
There have been a lot of connections between the CIA
that not many people know about, and like Shia and
Sufi movements. CIA's made a lot of contacts with Shia movements.
You can look into the history of the Nashkebondi and
they were relevant because they were involved in drug trafficking.
I'm not saying that this dude is connected to the
Naskebondi these orders.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 1: In the situation like the Cold War, a lot of
times the Western intelligence operatives found it beneficial to make
alliances with Muslims for the purpose of fighting Soviets so
like the most famous example is nineteen seventy nine Soviet
conflict where Brazenski and Carter Robert Gates they all openly
wrote about and strategized to use al Qaeda against the Soviets,
and so they armed them, they funded them. Is called
Operations cyclone, well known s declassified. In fact, Max Blumenthal
wrote a really good recent book on this subject matter
called I'm not paid to promote aybody, I just have
these with me. So his book's really good management of savager,
which is Western support for certain Islamic sex huh. And
that can be Sunni sometimes Shia, and even can be
cults and weird groups like we're talking about with this
guy now, not proven, just my assessment.
Speaker 2: Just based on your gut and just kind of understanding
some of the background.
Speaker 1: The way that a lot of this stuff usually works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they kind of putting him in motion
and or do you think they're still currently supporting him
in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I'm just just looking at
the background and the red flags that usually pop up
with these kinds of mouthpieces for this kind of stuff.
I mean, I don't think every cult is run by
a spy agency, but you'll notice certain red flags that
pop up where there's a likelihood of that, Like Scientology.
I don't you know, I don't want to get you
in legal trouble with Scientology, but like they have a
long time connection with For example, Russia and other countries
have banned Scientology and Joe's Witnesses because they're pretty well
known covers for espionage really Joevay's witnesses and Mormons. Wow,
what it's well known? Yeah, that's crazy. What is the
how well known?
Speaker 2: And what is the what is the evidence what Russia
openly says because these are they say, but I mean,
like what evidence do they have to like verify that?
Speaker 1: Well, that's when you'd have to go into like a
lot of spy biographies and like histories of espionage and
connections that did Western intelligence agencies have had, not just
with like certain groups of Islam, but with religion in general.
I mean, if you think about it from the vanage
point of the state, like you want to be using
any means that you have at your disposal, and so
if you've got already made bunch of people who are
activists or missionaries, missionaries a classic spy cover, not saying
all missionaries are spies, it's just a classic I mean
usaid red Cross. These are classic covers for various types
of espionage activity. For example, I just did a shared
an old article that's on the CIA website covered Action
magazine from nineteen eighty three from the CIA is on
website an article about CI support for one of the
evangelical dictators in Latin South America montt. So people are interested,
you can go read on my wall that it should
be pretty high album on my wall. But that's one
example of just one during the Cold War where the
CIA reached out to this guy and said, we want
you on board. We're going to raise money for you
with Jerry Falwell Billy Graham, and so the evangelicals raised
a lot of money to support this evangelical supposed dictator
Latin South America Mont. So that's one case that's admitted.
But if you want a book on this, I did
a talk from an academic text from University of Florida.
His name is Michael Graziano, and he wrote a thesis
that was published called Errand into the Wilderness History of
the CIA in Religion. That whole book is about the
agency's attitude towards religious movements, particularly in the cult, but
not exclusively, because there's also a chapter then about Iran
and Shia Islam. And it's a natural posture. People don't
know about it, but it's a natural posture for the
state to take to try to make alliances with various
religious movements interesting. And we give you one examp more example.
That's a declassified. That's proof of this. It's called the
Doctrinal Warfare Program. A very famous Catholic named David Wimhoff
wrote a giant, eight hundred page book on it. It's
really good. It's called Time Life Magazine. John Courtney Murray
in the American proposition, it's the name of the book,
and it's about the two tenty thirteen do you classified document?
The Doctrinal Warfare Program, which the CI set up under
people like CD Jackson to recruit as many Roman Catholic theologians,
scholars and prelates as they could. And we don't know
all of them, but we know that John Courtney Murray,
the famous Jesuit americanist philosopher, was in it. We know
that to some degree the head Cardinal Spelman involved. But
the idea was that it's a Cold war. We got
to do whatever we can, So you're going to work
with us at every capacity that we need you to
help beat the Soviets in the Cold War. The problem,
and I agree that like Soviets are bad guys. I'm
not pro communists, but the problem is that now you've
made this alliance with the intelligence agencies, now they have
a lot of leverage with you, and if you look
into Operation Gladio, another declassified thing that ties into the
Vatican Bank, that helps to explain a lot of this
as well.
Speaker 2: I'm sure this goes the other way too, though. Like
we just recently saw the big scandal with there was
a company that was hiring the likes. I think the
most prominent name I remember was Tim Poole to for
Russia these crazy videos. They're getting paid outlandish amounts to
kind of make this like soft Russian esque propaganda videos.
And this happened hugely within the conservative sphere as well.
Speaker 1: Well. I know Tim, and I know Tim has always
been cool to me. He's always had me on and
been very positive. I don't think that I never detected
like that Tim wants to push Russian propaganda. So I
think what happens in these kinds of situations is that
an entity with money and donors reaches out and says,
we want to support your media group, will give you
a ten million dollars. I don't know the background of
that situation, but I'd seriously doubt that Tim would be
He's pretty media savvy. I doubt he would be.
Speaker 2: It was a third I think it was directly to Tim.
There was a couple that was running some sort of agency,
and this couple was being paid they i think were
verified to be Russian spies or somehow connected, and they
were going out and hiring conservative influencers, speakers and giving
them pretty crazy amounts of money for very low performing video.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not trying to deny that basically all countries
do this. Yes, I'm not saying it's good, but I'm
saying like China has, you know, people that they influence
with money and media and operatives, Russia has people. Every
country essentially does this to some degree with if they
have the capability to do so. So this is just
what happens.
Speaker 2: Would you would you feel comfortable putting Tucker's tour of
a Russian grocery store in a similar category. He's there,
he's surprised, you know, he has seen this video.
Speaker 1: He's like, they have bread, they got this, they got this,
and it's like it's just like it just seems like
straight rush. Yeah my Tucker left. Yeah, yeah, he does that.
He's like, oh they got bread, they got this, they
got that, and and it was like what are you, Like,
what are you doing? Dude?
Speaker 2: Like why are you in Russia grocery shopping to show
them that they have a like better produced than America
and it's cheaper.
Speaker 1: I love Tucker, so I don't. I don't think that
he's a Russian operative or anything like that. I think
he at least seeks to in these situations try to
get both sides. I thought his Putin interview was pretty good.
I thought he asked really good questions. I don't think
it was any kind of like softball thing. I think
it was a real valid interview. Putin's spent a lot
of time giving this history that was it was like
a history a history chorus. Right, yeah, but I don't
I didn't see the grocery store thing, so I'm not
familiar with that.
Speaker 2: It's pretty funny, Okay, it's just like come on, But
I actually I didn't mind the Putin interviewing. I was like, oh,
this is interesting, you know, to try to steal man
their paradigm of how they view Ukraine and why they
view it as a part. Right, it was like, okay,
this is good. But when I saw him shopping in
the grocery, my dad, I don't know if you know
how much about my background I grew up in the
Soviet Union, So I was a Sarbajohn Armenian growing up
in Azarbaijohn. The Soviets completely let that whole situation go
to hell, massive ethnic cleansing of Armenians from and then
we came to America. My dad was he's like a
he was working at a restaurant, but he's also kind
of a bootlegger getting products from all over. Anyway, when
we came to America, he my mom and my dad's
played but he still had a business and still has
some form of businesses back in Russia today. And so
hearing his perspective today and he's not like he's not
a crazy leftist and he's not a far right guy,
and he's just like a yeah, Soviet Union was like
it was all right. Russia now really bad and the
stuff that they have going on. So like hearing his
perspective and how he's had to manage and navigate dealing
with Russia today is like, dude, no, like this is
it's not good.
Speaker 1: I had a friend that moved there and took his
family there and they lived there for about a year,
and they were wanted to try out like living out
in the country, like the good ways outside in Moscow,
and he said it was the worst part was that
he did think there were a lot of people who
were serious about their Orthodox Christianity. But the problem was
that there's still a lot of the bureaucratic holdover from
the Soviet period, so like getting simple things done is
a huge ordeal because of all the paperwork and bureaucracy.
And so they ended up moving back, I think because
it was around the time that Putin said, like anybody
who like, if you're from the West, you have to
go back because of the war starting. So he was
forced to come.
Speaker 2: Back, probably in his best interest. Interesting, Okay, Yeah, I
always thought that the ability of governments to influence people
and used in social media and soft powers is always
very fascinating.
Speaker 1: So there's a great story. There's a movie called Spy
and it highlights like everything that we're talking about. It's
about this Nordic I think she was Swedish. She's the
most famous Swedish actress in the forties and fifties. Her
name was Sonjo Wiegert. And there's a movie they made
about her called Spy. Everybody should watch it because she
gets basically compromised and forced by her government to sleep
with the tiny mustache man high command and they had
her father arrested and so they forced her to do it.
They were like, we're not going to release your father
unless you sleep with these people. And so it ruined
her career because everybody thought she was a trader for
tiny mustage man, right, but she was forced into it
for her dad. So it shows the complexity of these
kinds of situations of like, it's not really good guy,
but it's just power struggles. It's not a good guy
bad guy. I'm not again, like I'm not for tiny
mustas man, I'm not for Soviet communism at all. But
you can have problems every way and it's really complex. Yeah,
for sure.
Speaker 2: Can you put your mic down a little bit so
that we can your faces lookut off? Okay, for sure.
So tell me a bit about I think a lot
of people know you for your debate stuff. Tell me
a bit about, like what are the orthor Bros. What
is this Eastern Orthodox community that's online, and what do
you make of it in the broader sense, right, because
there seems to be some people that love the world
of I guess Orthobros. I think it's meant this a
derogatory term, and then there's like we're more enlightened with
our approach of our faith. Is that a clear distinction?
Do you think that that's a fair now?
Speaker 1: Well, it's so it's like a thing that wasn't planned.
It was you know, in I want to say twenty sixteen,
I got asked to do a debate with a libertarian atheist.
So I debated Adam Kocash. It was like the first
online debate, and there's a bunch of libertarian guys that
hosted it and were the moderators. And then that led to,
you know, hey, why don't you debate this atheist guy
over here? And so I was doing a lot of
blood sport debates back in twenty seventeen with Andy Worski
on YouTube, and those were kind of unmoderated, halfway moderated,
just kind of on the cuff, and this sort of
kicked off a debate culture, I guess you could say,
on YouTube, which kind of was there with some of
the new atheists back in the two thousand and late
two thousands, who you know, TJ. Kirk and these kinds
of people who were kind of doing debates, but it
started really ramping up twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, so we
had a lot of huge name people coming in start
doing debates, and then that turned into I had a
couple of friends, one of whom was interested in Islam
but ended up being Christian, and another guy who was
atheist but became worth at all. They started a channel
called Orthodox Shahta, which is geared towards opposing Islamic arguments.
So they were trying to get me, Hey, why don't
you start debating Muslims. I don't know anything about Islam
other than like I'd read geopolitical stuff, but I didn't
know the religion. And so twenty seventeen we started doing
a lot of Muslim debates, and then we got more
of those twenty eighteen, and then we started debating the
sort of big name Muslim people. Right, it is all virtual,
primarily all online. All right, Yeah, it's snowball. There was
like an organic, just sort of growing, snowballing thing that
attracted a lot of young people watching these things from
YouTube and other outlets Twitter, et cetera to start inquiring
at orthodoxy. Right, So this this kicked off twenty seventeen
and there have just been waves of people being interested
in Orthodoxy since then, and is around twenty seventeen when
father Deacon doctor Ernis a good buddy of mine, it
was actually out here from Anaheim. He made a joke
one day, he was like, Hey, I'm out here with
the orth Thobros, and it was just him and just
stuck and it stuck. But then, so then what happened
was mainstream media outlets and like they started doing hit pieces, right,
So there was a couple outlets that wrote hit pieces
saying that it was like this evil online cult and movement,
which is weird because they were arguing this is right
around the time COVID starts. Right, so about half the
Orthodox world and churches shut down and we're doing online
in each churchy way, there were Orthodox churches doing each church. Yeah,
by half of I would say about half the orthox.
I honestly thought that was only a no no Roman
Catholic and I would say in the Orthodox world was
split totally unrelated.
Speaker 2: I saw a video today of Saddleback Church, which is
one of the biggest megachurches, a video an instructional video
on how to self baptize yourself.
Speaker 1: Somebody said somebody sent me that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I legit thought that the Orthodox were just like, nah,
we're not shutting down.
Speaker 1: Like I thought that was it, okay, I mean, and
it was really just like it just depended on like
the bishop, sure, right, because it was actually centralized, so
it's just a bishop. There's no pope or anything. So
but when that happened, what it was a weird situation where, uh,
there are a lot of the people who were opposed
to me doing apologetics and debates online. They started saying, oh,
he's just creating an internet church, which was weird because
always from the very get go we said you have
to be involved in the local church, like you can't.
There's not such a saying as internet Orthodox doesn't exist.
So it was a really weird hypocritical stance for the
people who are pushing for the shutting down the churches,
which we always opposed, even during the entirety of kouf. Uh. Yeah,
I'm still used to I still use the code from
twenty twenty dude, like the coup, right, the coup crisis.
But we were the ones that were always telling me, no,
you have to go to church, and like the people
who attacking me s it's online. Colt are saying, Oh, no,
he has an ecult. But by the way, don't go
to church and watch it online. It was just nonsense anyway.
Speaker 2: And you're and just to be clear, you've said this
offline to me, you said that, how did you describe it?
So you're not an Orthodox streamer. You're not an Eastern
Orthodox streamer. You're a streamer, creator and author who's Orthodox,
which I think is a fair distinction to make in
terms of your contribution with your books and all the
other stuff you've done, but also just your own temperament
and how you're probably engaging in these conversations where you're
it doesn't sound like you're trying to be the poster
child for Eastern Orthodoxy.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. Like all this stuff happened like inadvertently,
I started a discord that was just for my stuff
and that organically grew into like a giant I mean
giant for discord, like twelve thousand people who are Orthodox community, right,
So it's the largest Orthodox discord. Now, how active are
you on that thing? I'm only in there, in and out.
Speaker 2: So we think about shutting down our discord because we're
seldom on it.
Speaker 1: I can't keep up with it, like it's too much work.
But there's a lot of good dudes the clergy now
to run it. So I gave it off to Clergy's
cool and so like the way orthodox it works, like
you you've got to have oversight, right, and there are
now there's plenty of priests and people out there, the
people that are friends of ours, like Father Moses McPherson.
His channel's blown up. You've got Father Josiah. You've got
plenty of people who are priests doing content now, but
that didn't exist in twenty seventeen eighteen. There's like maybe two.
Speaker 2: People, right, it's cool to see clergy online, Yeah, regardless
of the stream, Like I think it's I think it's
the more the better.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, I would rather them shudle that stuff. Sure,
I don't mind, like like I don't mind doing an
atheist debate or a Muslim debate, but like when it
comes to giving spiritual advice or you know, counseling, I
don't do any of that, Like that's not my role.
Speaker 2: Why wait until this entire thing premieres on YouTube? Why
not sign up for a free seven day trial of
our Patreon community and see this entire interview as well
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And you'll also get access to the extended version of
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All right, So head on over to Patreon. Link is
into description or pen comment. Here's a little preview of
what's available on Patreon. So is orthopros considered a derogatory term?
But you and Sam have your situation. What was your
impression of the debate you had with him as a
debate partner on value tainment? And then when do you
think that devolved to what ended up devolving to? Which
will get into.
Speaker 1: We don't make judgments about individuals, and like, I don't
know your destiny, I don't know the work of God's
spirit in your heart. I do believe it. Liked the
thief on the Cross, and I tried to bring some
you know, philosophical internal critiques to the table, and I
think it was a blowout because if you go and
I mean it's had multiple millions of views across the platforms,
if you go to the Pressure for a channel, you
can see forty thousand ish comments ninety eight percent is
long lost.
Speaker 2: Some of the folks that I see that are coming
towards Eastern Orthodoxy seem to have a crippling fear and
anxiety around their own salvation.
Speaker 1: The argument that you're making violates the very thing that
you just said would relativize the positions.
Speaker 2: The argument that I'm making right now.
Speaker 1: Your argument is no different than anyone else's argument you're citing.
You're saying, I have this position, they have that position.
You have your position. Yeah, of course, but that has
nothing to do with its line