Speaker 1: So, Jay Dyer, how are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great, Glad to be in Vegas, having a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. We did multiple podcasts, but this is
Speaker 2: the one I'm looking forward to for sure. I enjoyed
Speaker 2: the hotch Ones too, but yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: A phenomenal honor to have you on. I can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough for coming on.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: How was it with the Hodge Twes?
Speaker 2: It was great. You never really know what to expect
Speaker 2: because they are kind of uh wild cards. You don't
Speaker 2: know what they're going to talk about, but I know
Speaker 2: they're going to talk about a Ran, Israel and Epstein files.
Speaker 2: So we spent I think about an hour and a
Speaker 2: half just kind of going wild. But they also like
Speaker 2: race jokes, so I impersonate them, which they actually love.
Speaker 2: They laughed harder at that than anything else. Hard twin,
Speaker 2: you don't think Islam is based? You don't think Islam
Speaker 2: based And I was like, you guys sound like fat Albert.
Speaker 2: They thought that was funny.
Speaker 1: Oh well, we have to link it in the video
Speaker 1: description it went.
Speaker 2: It was. It was very serious though, like it's like
Speaker 2: we're joking around, but we also got really deep into
Speaker 2: like why we do anything that Bbie wants you know
Speaker 2: pretty much.
Speaker 1: So unfortunate. So you are King of the ortho Ros,
Speaker 1: you do geopolitical you have written scripts for television programs,
Speaker 1: you are a published author, you do comedy. What am
Speaker 1: I missing here?
Speaker 2: Debates? I guess was the other thing that we actually
Speaker 2: accidentally fell into doing, and that was something that wasn't planned.
Speaker 2: There was an offer ten years ago, hey would you
Speaker 2: debate this atheist libertarian guy, Adam Kokish, And I was like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: why not? And then it was hey, will you debate
Speaker 2: this other atheist guy, Jfgary Eppie? Yeah, sure, why not?
Speaker 2: So that kind of just kicked off a snowball of
Speaker 2: offers and I was always like, well I don't want
Speaker 2: to say no. Yeah sure, So.
Speaker 1: How okay, so how did you first end up coming
Speaker 1: into the Orthodox Church or coming across it? If we
Speaker 1: just get the summary of that.
Speaker 2: So I remember I was raised Baptist, wasn't super serious
Speaker 2: about it as a kid, but when I was in
Speaker 2: high school get more interested in going to Bible studies
Speaker 2: and visiting with various denominations of friends. When someone of
Speaker 2: the Church of Christ, Charismatic churches, and even I think
Speaker 2: I went to the Callacters one time in high school.
Speaker 2: But I would say right around nineteen ninety eight ninety nine,
Speaker 2: I started noticing challenges on the Internet to Protestantism and
Speaker 2: Calvinism from Catholics. And I would go into like Yahoo
Speaker 2: chat and Instant Messenger rooms and do you remember those rooms?
Speaker 2: And I would debate with the Roman Catholics in there, like, aha,
Speaker 2: I'm going to own you Catholics. And I know that,
Speaker 2: like they weren't known apologists, but they would oftentimes put
Speaker 2: quotes from the Church fathers that I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: he really said that, Because as a Calvinist, you think, oh, Augustine,
Speaker 2: he's one of us, Like he teaches Calvinism and here
Speaker 2: he is talking about baptismal regeneration, here he is talking
Speaker 2: about the Eucharus. He's a bishop, relics all this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. So I was really challenged early on in
Speaker 2: about nineteen ninety nine two thousand by a lot of
Speaker 2: Roman Catholics. And I wasn't ready to leave Protestantism yet,
Speaker 2: but that prompted me to get into debates. And so
Speaker 2: I listened to doctor Greg bonceon debating a Roman Catholic
Speaker 2: named Jerry Madatis and That was a huge pivotal debate
Speaker 2: for me because I had all my faith in bonds
Speaker 2: and demolishing Mattatics in this debate, and turns out Mattatics
Speaker 2: did pretty good. He actually brought up some issues about
Speaker 2: tradition that I'd never heard, and so that kind of
Speaker 2: got me wondering about Catholic Church history. And I remember
Speaker 2: I bought Roman Catholic Catechism because I was curious what
Speaker 2: they actually say. And then I realized, I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: to buy the Church Fathers because I need that set.
Speaker 2: It was only a thousand dollars back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one.
Speaker 1: It's a lot more.
Speaker 2: I think it's two or three thousand now, But I
Speaker 2: bought the Philip Schaft set for my he's my Christmas
Speaker 2: and Birthday money to buy it back into think two
Speaker 2: thousand and one. So I just started plowing through the
Speaker 2: Latin Church Fathers because I thought, well, I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about Eastern Fathers, but I know about Jerome, I
Speaker 2: know about Sant Augustine, Saint Ambrose Spy, and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: start with those guys. So I started plowing through it,
Speaker 2: and I was taking some correspondence classes at the time
Speaker 2: from Monson's hit his own sort of study center, Southern
Speaker 2: California Center for Christian Studies is what it was called.
Speaker 2: So I was studying like pre subdisitional apologetics, transcendent argument,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. And I'm noticing, like, man,
Speaker 2: all of these Latin church fathers that I held in
Speaker 2: high regard, they're straight up teaching Catholic stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's a real crisis of faith at the time,
Speaker 2: and ended up becoming Roman Calthogue. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: entered into the novs Orto, went to the Nosorto consistently
Speaker 2: for about a year, and then somebody left a Latin
Speaker 2: Mass magazine on a pew one time and I started
Speaker 2: reading it. I was like, what's this Latin Mass. That's crazy.
Speaker 2: So then I realized, oh, there's a whole traditional movement
Speaker 2: within the Roman Catholic world. And that introduced me to
Speaker 2: the FSSP and the SSPX, and so I found a
Speaker 2: Latin Mass, bought a missile, and started going to the
Speaker 2: Latin Mass pretty consistently for seven or eight years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I would have to drive to Memphis or Nashville
Speaker 2: from where I lived. It was about two hours on
Speaker 2: Sunday to go to Latin Mass, and after a while
Speaker 2: it was just like I was super devoted to Tomism,
Speaker 2: super devoted to I didn't want to be a monk,
Speaker 2: but I was like, I really wanted to take this
Speaker 2: this seriously. And I did inquire one time about monastic
Speaker 2: life and the dude was so gay that I was.
Speaker 2: He was like, what, what has you interested in my life?
Speaker 2: I think he was hitting on me and I was like,
Speaker 2: now I'm straight, dude, and he's, oh, this is probably
Speaker 2: not for you. It was the dios, the diocese and
Speaker 2: spiritual advisor for Memphis, super totally gay, and so that
Speaker 2: really turned me off. I was like, dude, this is
Speaker 2: this is not what I want. And the trad world
Speaker 2: is very chaotic. There's not a lot of monastic options
Speaker 2: in the trusal Gathic world. So I just kind of
Speaker 2: put all that aside. And about two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: I was introduced to Orthodoxy online through Facebook debates. I'd
Speaker 2: heard of Perry Robinson, I'd read some of the blog,
Speaker 2: but there was a guy named Jonathan that was on
Speaker 2: john the Componic was a body of mine on Facebook,
Speaker 2: and I think he had converted from Calvinism. To Orthodoxy.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I had gone from Calvinism to Rome, and so
Speaker 2: we were having all these debates and discussions, and these
Speaker 2: guys started bringing up good questions, you know, good things
Speaker 2: I'd never considered. I'd not actually read Eastern Fathers because
Speaker 2: I think when you go from Protestant to Catholic, as
Speaker 2: most people do nowadays, when they do that, they just think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: those Eastern Fathers are cool. But it's all about Augustine.
Speaker 2: It's about Anselm, it's about Aquinas. The a's, right, the
Speaker 2: three a's, And you know, we don't really need to
Speaker 2: worry about those Eastern dudes. But I will wait a minute.
Speaker 2: Aren't all the councils Eastern?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean maybe I should read these guys who are
Speaker 2: doing the theology.
Speaker 1: Of the original language.
Speaker 2: For the most part, well, I don't know the language.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're doing it in Greed, yeah, and Greek,
Speaker 2: not Latin.
Speaker 1: They're not working from translations of the Bible, They're working
Speaker 1: from the actual actually exactly.
Speaker 2: And and I remember I read a lot of Augustine.
Speaker 2: I was super devoted when I became Roman Catholic. I
Speaker 2: took his name in chrismation. He's one reception. But what
Speaker 2: what I had done was just sort of defaulted, as
Speaker 2: many Protestants do, even the Reformation guys, like they all
Speaker 2: just defaulted to the Augustinian views on trinity or anything
Speaker 2: created grace. So I just again, after reading anti Donuts
Speaker 2: and all the Antidonus works, read all the City of God,
Speaker 2: read all the anti Pallagian works, a lot of the
Speaker 2: you know, Incrite and all that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 2: I never I read it, most of on the Trinity.
Speaker 2: It's massive. I read most of it as a Protestant
Speaker 2: or as a Catholic, and I just defaulted to thinking that, well,
Speaker 2: this is this is it, this is how you explained
Speaker 2: the Trinity. But it was only when I got into
Speaker 2: Orthodox critiques that it even ever occurred to me that
Speaker 2: he might have gotten something's wrong. So I grappled with
Speaker 2: that for a couple of years. That was a really
Speaker 2: difficult thing to let go of, because I think my personality,
Speaker 2: especially my twenties, have a tendency to really have hero
Speaker 2: figures and you don't want to see you don't want
Speaker 2: to see any flaws in your hero figures. But over time,
Speaker 2: the more I read the Caba Doocians, the more I read,
Speaker 2: I say Maximus Confessor. Kind of gradually here and there,
Speaker 2: I started realizing this is a different model to Trinity,
Speaker 2: It's a different model of grace, and that was huge
Speaker 2: for me. I was kind of left aimless for a
Speaker 2: little while. A few years in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: I actually went through the Orthodox CD ofcum in it
Speaker 2: and I didn't join. I was like, I'm not ready.
Speaker 2: I'm still super Tomistics, super Augustinian, not ready to make
Speaker 2: that leap yet. And I actually think that was the
Speaker 2: right choice, because if you still have all that baggage
Speaker 2: of Western theology, you're you're going to want to try
Speaker 2: to make Orthodoxy Latin, Yes, and you need to. It
Speaker 2: takes time to kind of cleanse a lot of that,
Speaker 2: a lot of presuppositions. Yeah, And so anyway, long story short,
Speaker 2: I didn't end up marrying the girl. We were both
Speaker 2: going to become Orthodox and we went through the Catechumen
Speaker 2: and we're gonna get married, and we ended up not
Speaker 2: doing that. And I just kind of wasn't sure for
Speaker 2: several years, so I didn't go back to the Novisordo.
Speaker 2: I was just kind of like, well, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to be Protestant. I'm not ready for Orthodoxy. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to roam or trid stuff anymore. So I just
Speaker 2: was kind of in limbo. And that was about I
Speaker 2: don't know, five or six years. And then around twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen thirteen fourteen, I started gradually reading more Orthodox stuff again.
Speaker 2: I started talking to some Orthodox friends again on Twitter
Speaker 2: or on Facebook and stuff, and I got really sick.
Speaker 2: Actually had two bad cases of pneumonia, and I mean,
Speaker 2: I wasn't dying, but it was like sick enough that
Speaker 2: I felt like a taste of death. And that was
Speaker 2: a huge kind of like spank. I guess you could say,
Speaker 2: chastise me to make me think maybe I need to
Speaker 2: actually get my life in order, I mean, And so
Speaker 2: I quit drinking. I wasn't an alcoholic, but I think
Speaker 2: I could have been, because I drank a lot and
Speaker 2: I felt like ruining my gut. You know, I'm super sick.
Speaker 2: I just need to make some changes.
Speaker 1: And how old are you at this point?
Speaker 2: Roughly this was twenty twelve thirteen, so I would have
Speaker 2: This is twelve years ago, so I would have been
Speaker 2: in my mid thirties, so mid thirties. Started going visiting
Speaker 2: some Mortark churches. Locally. Had an old friend actually that
Speaker 2: used to go to my Calvinist church whould become an
Speaker 2: Antiokin priest. Oh, and he ended up actually being at
Speaker 2: the local Antiokin church. That was an hour for me,
Speaker 2: an old friend of mine that I was high school
Speaker 2: with because an Antiokin priest. So props to Father Matthew Snowden.
Speaker 2: And so I went and met with him, and we
Speaker 2: talked and we had you know, some good inquiry discussions,
Speaker 2: and I was like, yeah, maybe I should revisit this,
Speaker 2: you know, catechumen situation. And so I redid all of
Speaker 2: that and stop smoking too, because I think the I
Speaker 2: think the pneumonia came from vaping. Actually, so I quit vaping,
Speaker 2: I quit drinking. Not that orthodoxy is about you know,
Speaker 2: puritanical morals, but for me, those things were you know,
Speaker 2: like obviously affecting my health and drinking it was really
Speaker 2: messing with my gut.
Speaker 1: But you know what the hardest part about vaping is
Speaker 1: what your parents should get.
Speaker 2: The reason we vaped was to quit smoking. Oh really,
Speaker 2: So it was it was an attempt to try to
Speaker 2: get away from cigarettes, and it worked for a little while.
Speaker 2: But I actually, I think the best medicine for smoking
Speaker 2: and vaping was pneumonia. If you get pneumonia, that's actually
Speaker 2: a great way to quit smoking. So I got it
Speaker 2: twice and the woman was like, if you keep smoking
Speaker 2: or vaping, you're probably gonna get pnemonia. The third time,
Speaker 2: I was like, you know what, I'm done because it
Speaker 2: was awful. I mean, I've been sick, but pneumonia was
Speaker 2: one of the worst. But anyway, so that was a
Speaker 2: good chastisement that came my way. That got me kind
Speaker 2: of thinking about mortality and those things can be good
Speaker 2: enticements to repentance. And so in twenty fifteen sixteen, I
Speaker 2: just kept reading Orthoxology like NonStop. Twenty seventeen, I think
Speaker 2: I met with Feather Snowden and we talked about inquiring
Speaker 2: catechumen and all that. So I did that through twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Then came in I think in twenty eighteen. My wife
Speaker 2: had actually came in a little earlier. We weren't married
Speaker 2: at the time, but she was at a different church
Speaker 2: in South Carolina, so she came in in the OCA
Speaker 2: a year before me. Anyway, So that's the long route
Speaker 2: story to where I kind of got back into But
Speaker 2: it was also by the way, a lot of biblical
Speaker 2: theology that got me back into Orthoxy because in Roman
Speaker 2: Catholicism they will give credence to the Bible. And I
Speaker 2: don't mean this as like a low tier Protestant critique
Speaker 2: that Roma College don't read their Bible. In Rome, it's
Speaker 2: so focused on papal documents in the traditional world and
Speaker 2: to devotions to this or that, Adam or whatever, that
Speaker 2: I do actually think that the Bible is not given
Speaker 2: primary importance in Rome.
Speaker 1: It's not. I mean, it's everything's about you know, like,
Speaker 1: are you doing the devotion to our Lady of the
Speaker 1: brown scapular, of the of the feast day of Fatoma
Speaker 1: of lords?
Speaker 2: Yep. And what I liked about Orthodoxy was that going
Speaker 2: back to the liturgy and realizing, well, this is actually
Speaker 2: just scripture come to life here in the liturgy. And
Speaker 2: even though Rome kind of is that or at least
Speaker 2: gives verbal greedence to that, it was just different. And
Speaker 2: I was just burnt out on all the Roman just
Speaker 2: the whole system. So I think really for me, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of like system breaking that had to occur.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense, Yeah, it is, And it's for
Speaker 1: people who have been in Catholicism. I think they they
Speaker 1: will understand exactly what you mean. It's very It's also
Speaker 1: just you go to talk to your parish priests and
Speaker 1: you realize these I mean, these seminaries have more fruit
Speaker 1: than an orchard. It's it's and it's like, as a
Speaker 1: straight guy, I mean, how do you how do you relate?
Speaker 2: It's a challenge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then and then on top of if you want
Speaker 1: to be married, you know, how are you relating to
Speaker 1: this guy who has to be completely you know, cell
Speaker 1: of it and live around women. It's very Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean how do you how do you advise people on
Speaker 1: marriages when you're not married?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's all those practical issues, and I think you're
Speaker 2: right to go back to like a lot of times
Speaker 2: for most of us, it's it's not ultimately a lot
Speaker 2: of these intellectual ideas that plays a part, but like
Speaker 2: there's all these other things going on in your life
Speaker 2: too that are are, like I said, enticements to repenting
Speaker 2: and seeing things in a different way. So yeah, So
Speaker 2: eventually I just kind of read my way back through
Speaker 2: the Book of Daniel particularly was a huge influence on them.
Speaker 2: So I took Daniel's name when it became Orthodox. Wonderful
Speaker 2: the Prophetdaniel, because so much of Daniel I think really
Speaker 2: just confirmed for me that the Messianic era began, you know,
Speaker 2: in the first Advent Daniel nine, et cetera. So Daniel
Speaker 2: was a huge empathus to return to the earlier investigation
Speaker 2: ten years prior in Orthodoxy. So so that was the
Speaker 2: long route to Orthodoxy.
Speaker 1: What's phenomenal to have you here. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's been a wild journey.
Speaker 1: It's not how you run the race, it's how you finished.
Speaker 1: You are known as like the king of the ortho
Speaker 1: Ros and every parish I go to three eighths of
Speaker 1: the guys or more. How did you come to Orthoxy? Well?
Speaker 1: I was watching internet videos who jade higher? Again and
Speaker 1: again and again. You've become this person who's effectively I mean,
Speaker 1: well just straight out you're missionary for the church, you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of unintentional missionary. You're making videos about what
Speaker 1: you think will need to hear. Okay, we have this
Speaker 1: vision of you know, missionaries to go into foreign lands.
Speaker 1: It's as so dangerous they don't realize it. I mean,
Speaker 1: people can ruin your reputation, They can come after your employment.
Speaker 1: It's just as dangerous, if not more so, to be
Speaker 1: on the internet than in real life. And people know
Speaker 1: you for theology. They know you were talking about essence, energies,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Vatican two, we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: the papacy, et cetera. But we want to get to
Speaker 1: know Jay outside of that. Okay, So you've written three books,
Speaker 1: one of which is right there, and you very kindly
Speaker 1: gifted me Esoteric Hollywood three excellent book. What is the
Speaker 1: story of how you ended up writing these books? Did you,
Speaker 1: I mean, when you wrote the first one, did you think, Okay,
Speaker 1: this will turn into a second, this will be a trilogy.
Speaker 1: Did you just think, I mean, did you intend to
Speaker 1: write a book? Did it start out as something else
Speaker 1: and move into a book? What happened?
Speaker 2: So I was in undergrad and then grad schools philosophy,
Speaker 2: lit history, and then in grad school I studied English
Speaker 2: and lit and I focused on how James Bond was
Speaker 2: used in the Cold War for psychological warfare. And so
Speaker 2: the British intelligence establishment, particularly through Ian Fleming, had really
Speaker 2: come up with this kind of ingenious idea to take
Speaker 2: fiction and British spy fiction had actually done this earlier
Speaker 2: than that, but to use that as a form of propaganda,
Speaker 2: because the British had a pretty tight lipped policy of
Speaker 2: an Official Secrets Act, where anybody was in intelligence couldn't
Speaker 2: talk about anything. So what they would typically do is
Speaker 2: write fiction stories about their exploits, and Ian Fleming famously
Speaker 2: is one of the most well known for that with
Speaker 2: the Bond character. Obviously, not everything in James Bond is real,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fiction, but it became this iconic,
Speaker 2: you know, symbol archetype throughout the Cold War for Western
Speaker 2: power and interest against the Soviets, and I just thought
Speaker 2: that was fascinating and it kind of brought together disparate
Speaker 2: interests that I had between movies. I was always interested
Speaker 2: in theater and film and performing arts and stuff like
Speaker 2: that back to high school. But it brings in intelligence
Speaker 2: agencies in that history, and it brings in cults and
Speaker 2: how Hollywood has cult So all of those things were
Speaker 2: an interest that I had, and I was basically just
Speaker 2: kind of working part time and taking all the college
Speaker 2: classes I wanted. For like ten years, I worked as
Speaker 2: a paint mixer, so I was for ten years manager
Speaker 2: of a Pittsburgh paint store. So I just basically, you
Speaker 2: bring me a swatch of paint right, and I match it.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that you have lots and lots of
Speaker 1: work in the morning and then most of the rest exactly.
Speaker 2: I read all day at a job where for ten
Speaker 2: years I could read, and so that's how I read
Speaker 2: all the Church, not all the Church Fathers, but many
Speaker 2: many years of Church fathers theology. Most of that time
Speaker 2: in my twenties, when I was a paint store manager,
Speaker 2: I was reading theological stuff wonderful. But then that allowed
Speaker 2: me to work part time and take all these college
Speaker 2: class is, and then I did grad school the same
Speaker 2: way where I was doing it part time, so it
Speaker 2: took me a lot longer than most people. But I
Speaker 2: wasn't married. I was singled throughout that whole time. And
Speaker 2: the Internet was obviously getting more and more prevalent on
Speaker 2: the present, and I was kind of stayed away from
Speaker 2: the Internet for a long time. But I started blogging
Speaker 2: maybe two thousand and seven, and back then I was
Speaker 2: beginning to Ron Paul, but I was interested in Orthodoxy
Speaker 2: and Catholicism, so I was kind of blogging about all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, and I even blogged a little
Speaker 2: bit about Zionism and that peaud a lot of people's interests,
Speaker 2: and I got some threats even back then, as somebody
Speaker 2: saying that they're going to be fired for talking about Zionism.
Speaker 2: Oh and it was it was actually a Christian Zionist
Speaker 2: that was threatening to who's a Calvinist, by the way,
Speaker 2: a Calvinist Christians Zionist was threatening to get me fired
Speaker 2: for talking about that on a blog. Which, man, things
Speaker 2: have changed from two thousand and seven to twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six because anyway, so long story short, that was all
Speaker 2: the academic stuff that I was doing blogging just kind
Speaker 2: of on the side for fun. But then I noticed,
Speaker 2: you know, as the Internet became more on the present,
Speaker 2: people were not just blogging but doing podcasts, right, so
Speaker 2: podcast pops on the scene. That'd be cool to do.
Speaker 2: So I started experimenting with just doing talks and audios
Speaker 2: in two thousand and ten or eleven, I think it
Speaker 2: was the first time I played around with that. It
Speaker 2: was all terrible quality, but I mean half my stuff
Speaker 2: is still terrible quality. So twenty six so I mean,
Speaker 2: you guys are doing good here, Like I'm still like
Speaker 2: ghetto boomer tech with my.
Speaker 1: I don't like it, I watch it, I enjoy it.
Speaker 2: It's a challenge, there's always some new tech thingle It's
Speaker 2: actually getting a lot easier though, Like in twenty twelve thirteen,
Speaker 2: like what was out there for tech and all that,
Speaker 2: it was a lot more challenging than stuff like now
Speaker 2: it's a lot easier to do. But long story short,
Speaker 2: I keep saying that phrase.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the book came up because there was a
Speaker 2: huge fallout with my graduate advisor and he was a
Speaker 2: super lib like a maga socialist green, just crazy lib guy,
Speaker 2: and he absolutely hated me.
Speaker 1: This is effectively hippy.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. In fact, he was one of the world authorities
Speaker 2: on the Luddites because lud Heites were anti type, right.
Speaker 2: So he sees the whole modern world as kind of
Speaker 2: like you know, capitalists, pigs that have taken over and
Speaker 2: the world needs to return to some sort of like
Speaker 2: you know, pre modern lud Eye.
Speaker 1: Situation Utopians in his views, some utopian pots.
Speaker 2: He's a big United Nations type of guys.
Speaker 1: And everything free, no consequences, and.
Speaker 2: He didn't like that. I was going to write the
Speaker 2: thesis on James Bond, and I wasn't like saying everything
Speaker 2: about James Bond's great I was just writing it as
Speaker 2: an analysis of propaganda Nicole war. That he thought that
Speaker 2: was too misogynistic, too toxic, mascots. It was all that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, right, So we had a He was
Speaker 2: falling out because after I'd worked for an entire semester,
Speaker 2: maybe two semester, forget on the thesis, and I had
Speaker 2: the first say thirty pages written, not a PhD, just
Speaker 2: a master's thesis, and he was like, oh, You're gonna
Speaker 2: have to start over. And he was doing that as
Speaker 2: a big middle finger to me because my previous advisor
Speaker 2: was really good. She got promoted to a different job.
Speaker 2: So I either had to start all over or fight
Speaker 2: the guy. So I was like that I wanted to
Speaker 2: fight him, and I realized like, I'm either going to
Speaker 2: punch this guy, jump over his desk and punch him,
Speaker 2: or I just have to leave. So I just walked
Speaker 2: off and I never went back to grad school. And
Speaker 2: so I finished two years of grad school. I was
Speaker 2: the thesis. All I had to do was finish the thesis,
Speaker 2: and but he was like, what, You're you gonna have
Speaker 2: to start all over. I was like, no, I'm out
Speaker 2: of here, and that was a pivot. Probably one of
Speaker 2: the best things that happened to me though, because like
Speaker 2: I would not have enjoyed academia. It's a very controlled setting.
Speaker 2: They don't want heterosexual white males there that are Christians.
Speaker 2: They don't want that at all, and they even make
Speaker 2: that clear like I had it in my undergrad phase.
Speaker 2: I had a history advisor who said, it's gonna be
Speaker 2: straight with you, Jay, if you're a straight white male,
Speaker 2: they don't want you in academia.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He told me that it's another more fruit than
Speaker 1: an orchard.
Speaker 2: Very similar to the Vatican.
Speaker 1: It seems to be racing one another that's trying to
Speaker 1: be fruit vendors. I mean, I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many people I know who have told me dropping out
Speaker 1: of their master's program or their bachelor's program their patient
Speaker 1: was the best thing that ever happened in them, because
Speaker 1: I mean, it just they realize what an artificial world
Speaker 1: it is. And you know, okay, you just get that now,
Speaker 1: you just get the reading.
Speaker 2: Listen to the reading, yes exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, you want to learn languages, you go to
Speaker 1: language institute. You don't go to university. By the way
Speaker 1: for anyone watching, We're teaching Greek and Latin on Patreon
Speaker 1: Ancient Greek and Latin. Just started a new cohort for
Speaker 1: Latin Greek. We have a second one going Contact me
Speaker 1: if you're interested in My contact information is in the
Speaker 1: video description. What got you Okay? So from there, I
Speaker 1: mean the first book. You have all this material for
Speaker 1: the first book, not realizing you're about to write a book.
Speaker 1: What happens from there?
Speaker 2: So the best thing about college was there's a couple
Speaker 2: things that are good about college and grad school. One
Speaker 2: of them is they will force you to read and
Speaker 2: write about people that you would never read and that
Speaker 2: you totally disagree with. Yeah, that was a good thing.
Speaker 2: So I had to read all these philosophy figures that
Speaker 2: I would have never read, like David Hume and Bertrand
Speaker 2: Russell and all those characters. But if you're consistently for
Speaker 2: many years, you know, hammering out ten twenty thirty page
Speaker 2: turn papers, you're going to get good at writing. So
Speaker 2: that was the best part of college for me, was
Speaker 2: actually kind of getting, you know, a decent hand on writing.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I think I'm okay.
Speaker 2: And so that was I think the best honing of
Speaker 2: the skill set out of all that. And I, just
Speaker 2: for fun on the side, was doing all these film
Speaker 2: analyzes because I've always liked film separate from writing theology
Speaker 2: papers and philosophy papers and religion papers. And then I thought, well,
Speaker 2: if I got all this material, I mean, it could
Speaker 2: conceivably be a book. But I didn't really think it
Speaker 2: would ever come about. I remember I got invited on
Speaker 2: a podcast by Oliver Stone's son, Sean Stone, and he's
Speaker 2: kind of a conspiracy guy, kind of like his dad's
Speaker 2: a famous director that build the conspiracy movies. And I
Speaker 2: was like, this would be cool. This is a this
Speaker 2: is early on one of the earliest podcasts that I
Speaker 2: was on. And the publisher of my book, who also
Speaker 2: publishes Whitney Webb's Epstein books, so he's known for that.
Speaker 2: He was like, hey, do you have a book? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, sure, which I did it and I
Speaker 2: have a manuscript. But I had a lot of essays
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, yeah, I could just take all
Speaker 2: these essays and just combine them into a book, and
Speaker 2: that became essar called one, which I'd written probably I
Speaker 2: don't know three or four hundred pages already on film analysis,
Speaker 2: never thinking it would be a book, and it came
Speaker 2: together in twenty sixteen as a book, and that opened
Speaker 2: a lot of doors for We did a full production
Speaker 2: TV show in twenty seventeen on the one season based
Speaker 2: on the first book and another guy, Jay Wiedener, who's
Speaker 2: a big film buff guy, and you can still watch
Speaker 2: that show. It's It's at Gaya TV. It's kind of
Speaker 2: a new ag network. But how that guy g A
Speaker 2: I A guy g A I a Gaya dot TV.
Speaker 2: I think it's been honked. This is almost ten years ago,
Speaker 2: but you can see the fat version of me they're
Speaker 2: sitting in the directors. We did like a Ciskel and
Speaker 2: Eberts style, but we do more of a philosophical breakdown
Speaker 2: of the films rather than like, you know, Ciskel and
Speaker 2: ebers was like, well this is good, no, it's bad,
Speaker 2: but we go deeper into like the meaning and the
Speaker 2: symbols of the films and the history.
Speaker 1: I could never figure out which one was Ciskel and
Speaker 1: which one was Ebert.
Speaker 2: Ebert was a fat guy. Oh okay, Ciscal's any ball guy.
Speaker 2: But it was that style in with like a theater setting,
Speaker 2: so it's a it's a nice show, it's a neat show.
Speaker 2: In fact, a lot of a lot of later offers
Speaker 2: for stuff came from people watching the show and they're like, Hey,
Speaker 2: that was actually a really good, really good show. Would
Speaker 2: you want to come do this? I'd like the Tucker
Speaker 2: thing actually happened because the Tucker Tucker's producer, Scooter, who
Speaker 2: became orthodox, he had watched Hollywood coded the TV show.
Speaker 1: So so how did you what you expanded it on that?
Speaker 1: How you ended up on Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 2: So when the book came out, I got the idea
Speaker 2: to just kind of mail it out to a lot
Speaker 2: of different radio shows and podcasts and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And right twenty sixteen, podcasts were still kind of they
Speaker 2: weren't as video oriented. They were more audio oriented. I
Speaker 2: remember that you have to download them exactly. So I
Speaker 2: remember going on a lot of radio shows that were
Speaker 2: just beginning to put the radio shows on podcast like
Speaker 2: Clyde Lewis's show. I went on that. I went on
Speaker 2: Coast to Coast with George Norrie. It was all audio
Speaker 2: back then. And then how did I let's see, what
Speaker 2: was the first big kind of offer was. I got
Speaker 2: an email I think in twenty nineteen and somebody said, hey,
Speaker 2: do you want to come on Alex Jones? And I
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, sure, because I had actually been on
Speaker 2: Alex Jones one time as a guest in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight.
Speaker 1: How did that happen too?
Speaker 2: Because I just called in and Alex was talking about
Speaker 2: the history of the Rockefeller family and their influence in
Speaker 2: America back in two thousand and seven or eight, and
Speaker 2: I called in super nervous or sweat running down my
Speaker 2: brow when I called in because I'd never been on
Speaker 2: radio before. And we talked for a little bit and
Speaker 2: he was like, I have you on as a guest.
Speaker 2: You know we're talking about because I'd actually read the
Speaker 2: book that he was referencing. I was like, I've actually
Speaker 2: read this Rockefeller book. We could talk about that. And
Speaker 2: so I called back in Monday and he was like
Speaker 2: it was like a thirty minute spot where we had
Speaker 2: a conversation. He's like, you need to write for us,
Speaker 2: write some essays. So I wrote three or four articles
Speaker 2: for Info Wars back in two thousand and seven or eight.
Speaker 2: But that put me on the radar, I guess right,
Speaker 2: And then I don't think Alex thought about me or
Speaker 2: heard about me again until by the book came out
Speaker 2: and I remember mailing it out, that mailed it to
Speaker 2: Alex and all the radio people I could think of.
Speaker 2: And then in twenty nineteen, again this is after the
Speaker 2: TV show had come out, Alex's producer reached out and
Speaker 2: was like, Hey, do you want to come on for
Speaker 2: hour interview?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure, and the interview went really well. We did the
Speaker 2: first book as an analysis of Hollywood and all that,
Speaker 2: and then they were like, we're really impressed. Would you
Speaker 2: want to host the fourth hour? So that led to
Speaker 2: hosting for the last six years, not every Friday, but
Speaker 2: most Fridays. I hosted the fourth hour of Box shows,
Speaker 2: so hosted many of the main show too.
Speaker 1: So it's a four hour show and needed the fourth
Speaker 1: hour and.
Speaker 2: The fourth hour for many years, and then I did
Speaker 2: many shows, so then doing not just Alex's show, but
Speaker 2: then doing Harrison's show, Owen Schroyer Show, and that opened
Speaker 2: up a lot more doors. So that led to eventually,
Speaker 2: when Scooter became orthodox, he reached out. It's like, Hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to be in Austin. We're gonna shoot an
Speaker 2: episode of Tucker Show, would you like to do a sketch?
Speaker 2: He's like, have any ideas. I was like, this is
Speaker 2: right when Klaus Schwab in the world are going before
Speaker 2: him and the COVID stuff was happening, and I was like,
Speaker 2: what if I said it as a joke to Scooder
Speaker 2: and I actually think we'd go for it. I was like,
Speaker 2: what if I put on like a crappy bald map
Speaker 2: ball cap and I dressed up with Klaus Schwab and
Speaker 2: I went around Austin in the park interviewing like dudes
Speaker 2: in Austin and this actually he was like, let's do it.
Speaker 2: And so he comes and he brings the film crew
Speaker 2: and everybody from Fox, and then we go out and
Speaker 2: I'm interviewing all these idiots in Austin in the park
Speaker 2: because they're all just like, you know, hippie dippy us.
Speaker 2: And it's a great clip. I'll send it to you.
Speaker 2: We never saw it, but you can still find it.
Speaker 2: It's all over Twitter and YouTube. But so that ended
Speaker 2: up being a ten minute segment of Tucker's last show
Speaker 2: before when he got fired. I was on the very
Speaker 2: last show on Fox where Tucker got fire. We always
Speaker 2: joked that I got Tucker fired. That was Klaus Schwab
Speaker 2: in the skit. But so that kind of kicked off,
Speaker 2: like I think openings for comedy stuff because I've always
Speaker 2: been into comedy and you're a funny guy. Thank you.
Speaker 2: So I would send that out to comedians and people,
Speaker 2: and I kind of talked a little bit to Sam
Speaker 2: Hide and DMS. I'd you know, I would always been
Speaker 2: I've been a fan of his stuff from a million
Speaker 2: dollar extreme when he was doing YouTube and well.
Speaker 1: Now he's huge. I mean you couldn't get into d
Speaker 1: I mean an average person could not get his DMS out.
Speaker 1: So this is way back.
Speaker 2: This is twenty eighteen. When I first kind of I
Speaker 2: saw Sam stuff in twenty sixteen seventeen, And when I
Speaker 2: first saw I didn't really get it because I didn't
Speaker 2: know what they were trying to do. I think with
Speaker 2: a million dollars stream and that stuff, Like a lot
Speaker 2: of times, it's a little bit of a learning curve
Speaker 2: where you've kind of oh, I get it now.
Speaker 1: Was this before or after his whole Like Joe Rocks.
Speaker 2: This was right when they got canceled? Yeah, yeah, canled
Speaker 2: for that one because like a super activist journalist had
Speaker 2: messaged Sam and was like, from bust I think it
Speaker 2: was a BuzzFeed and he was like, I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: you fired for that. I'm going to reach out to
Speaker 2: the producer of Adult Swim or whatever, and he did.
Speaker 2: He was like, you know, if you don't cancel Sam show,
Speaker 2: you know, we're gonna we're gonna take you down or
Speaker 2: whatever whatever. The yeah, the threat was to this, I
Speaker 2: don't remember the exact details of it, there's something like that.
Speaker 2: And so they folded obviously, and that kind of made uh,
Speaker 2: you know, because that was like one of their their
Speaker 2: top shows, an Adult Swim was was a world peace
Speaker 2: and then it gets the media gets canceled. So Sam
Speaker 2: always had this desire to like do season two, even
Speaker 2: with his own money, and so he just put that out.
Speaker 2: Like last year, they redid all of the season two
Speaker 2: on their own. But in the meantime, Sam kind of
Speaker 2: expanded into doing other TV shows. He did a weird
Speaker 2: kind of reality show called fish Tank that took on
Speaker 2: a life of its own. And then Sam started doing
Speaker 2: stand up, which he wasn't really a stand up before,
Speaker 2: is more sketch comedy. He did great at that. He's
Speaker 2: been doing stand up for the last couple of years
Speaker 2: pretty consistently, but I was always just kind of like
Speaker 2: off and on dming and being like, hey, what do
Speaker 2: you think about this? As an idea for a sketch.
Speaker 2: I would just kind of pitch ideas, and I think
Speaker 2: when he saw it there was I did a skit
Speaker 2: making fun of megachurch pastors that he thought was really funny,
Speaker 2: and then I did a skit right he saw the
Speaker 2: Tucker skit and he thought that was funny. So that
Speaker 2: kind of opened up the possibility of like I would
Speaker 2: just say, hey, if you ever do a show, I'd
Speaker 2: love to be involved. And then I think last year
Speaker 2: he said, Hey, I'm going to start a separate show
Speaker 2: called the Sam Hide Show where I just kind of
Speaker 2: sit and do monologues or interview people. And the first
Speaker 2: one was a collaborative effort of me and several people,
Speaker 2: Ryan Rivera, Pat Dixon, Brendan Wilds. Shout out to those
Speaker 2: guys kind of writing and throwing in ideas, and we
Speaker 2: put together this Dear Elon. It went super viral. I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe how like between acts, YouTube and all the outlets,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like twenty million views.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it was hilarious.
Speaker 2: I could believe how popular it got. And then the
Speaker 2: next one did really well, not as good as that one,
Speaker 2: but it was five ten million views. Dear Vivek, where
Speaker 2: we're making fun of like h one B Visas and
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff, making fun of Vivac. I
Speaker 2: mean that one, that one did really well. And then
Speaker 2: you know, there's been several that we were really super funny,
Speaker 2: and Ryan and all those guys are super super funny.
Speaker 1: So the line from Dearry Alan that I remember most
Speaker 1: clearly is Vvek is a nerd who just needs to
Speaker 1: go back that I fell apart when I heard that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well what was what was funny is that, like
Speaker 2: every one of us has kind of a different sense
Speaker 2: of humor. So like Ryan has a really he's really
Speaker 2: good impressions, and he has his own sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Pat and Brendan have their own. Pat's kind of like
Speaker 2: a Bill Burr sassy kind of guy. Brendan's kind of
Speaker 2: a he does stand up. They all do stand up
Speaker 2: except for me and Ryan and then uh and then
Speaker 2: Sam brings his own just kind of vibe and in
Speaker 2: two we kind of throw out all these ideas. Sam
Speaker 2: takes the print out and just runs with whatever he
Speaker 2: likes and it it gels I think really well. So
Speaker 2: we've done basically a sea one season of that Sam
Speaker 2: Hyde show and a lot of weirdos on like he
Speaker 2: Sam had I don't know if Sam and Ryan had
Speaker 2: the idea to get one of these guys that drinks
Speaker 2: thrown pea, like these Hindu minded people that and so
Speaker 2: that one was crazy. So basically for that show, we
Speaker 2: were all just like sitting there coming up with P
Speaker 2: jokes for like two days, Like, think of every joke
Speaker 2: you think of for P jokes for like two or
Speaker 2: three days.
Speaker 1: Okay, Sam Hyde, he's like six.
Speaker 2: Foot six basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's gigantic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like build like a linebacker. Yeah, And people think,
Speaker 2: like when I went on Pgo, both him and Nick
Speaker 2: are really tall, and everybody thinks like I'm a midget
Speaker 2: because standing next to like two, you know, multiple six
Speaker 2: foot six guys, it's like, no, I'm not a midget.
Speaker 2: These dudes are massive. So yeah, no, he's huged. But
Speaker 2: the Dodgemins are huge too. They're big dudes six three
Speaker 2: or four yea guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're also super buff.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, but uh yeah, So I mean that
Speaker 2: whole experience was Again, I mean, I'm just super thankful
Speaker 2: because I always wanted to do comedy. Where we live,
Speaker 2: there's no like avenues or venues for stand up, so
Speaker 2: it's like I'd have to move to do stand up.
Speaker 2: And I'm a huge fan of stand up itself. I
Speaker 2: like some stand ups and I like doing it, but
Speaker 2: I don't like having to try to make boomers laugh
Speaker 2: because Boomer humor is very different from like sam Hide humor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's age groups. They laugh at very different things,
Speaker 2: and so if you're doing stand up, you're going to
Speaker 2: have to try to mold what you're doing to some
Speaker 2: random audience of frat bros. Or you know, people that
Speaker 2: are not necessarily gonna like what you do. So this
Speaker 2: ended up being just a perfect venue for the weird,
Speaker 2: kind of eccentric, silly style of comedy that I'm into.
Speaker 2: And I like to do a lot of impress so
Speaker 2: that plays well on podcasts, but I think it's very
Speaker 2: limiting when it comes to like doing stand up. So
Speaker 2: writing for Sam ended up being a really good venue
Speaker 2: for doing that. We had a blast for this first
Speaker 2: first season. So so yeah, however would have thought of
Speaker 2: be doing that?
Speaker 1: How did you end up meeting the Hodge Twins and
Speaker 1: ended up on their pod? E've been on there what two?
Speaker 1: Three times?
Speaker 2: This was the second time a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1: How did this time go?
Speaker 2: So it turns out their producer. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: getting on podcasts has to do with producers and like
Speaker 2: schedulers and whether they like you. So it's not even
Speaker 2: necessarily like the podcast people like. They might not even
Speaker 2: like you, but if the scheduler person is a fan
Speaker 2: of your content and turns out the guy who produces
Speaker 2: their show was a guy who did a conspiracy podcast
Speaker 2: many years ago who liked what I talked about. So
Speaker 2: he ended up down the road producing for the Houde
Speaker 2: Winds and he was like, oh, I need to get
Speaker 2: Jay on here, and so reached out to them. And
Speaker 2: then Andrew Wilson was a huge connect because he he
Speaker 2: got me on the Crowder Show. He set up me
Speaker 2: going on whatever podcast to debate that crazy feminist chick,
Speaker 2: and then I'm about we're about to go back to
Speaker 2: la right now. To be that trick was we're gonna
Speaker 2: do round two with a different feminist girl. Uh here
Speaker 2: in a couple of weeks and uh so. So basically, yeah,
Speaker 2: it tends to be if the producer or schedule or
Speaker 2: likes what you do, they will try to promote you
Speaker 2: and get you on. But also one thing that's fascinating
Speaker 2: is a lot of these people have become Orthodox and
Speaker 2: then they will try to get you know, orthodox content,
Speaker 2: you know, on a big outlet like Joe Rogan. So
Speaker 2: you have Rachel Andrew and Joe Rogan and yeah, and
Speaker 2: so Andrew has been a huge help with that.
Speaker 1: And hopefully we'll see you on Rogan.
Speaker 2: That would be great. Yeah, I would love to do that.
Speaker 1: I have confidence she'll be on.
Speaker 2: I feel like, uh, you know, sam Hyde deserves to
Speaker 2: be on a little earlier because he's had such a
Speaker 2: no but he's had you know, obviously much bigger impact.
Speaker 2: So if I do end up going there, definitely, I'll
Speaker 2: definitely try to to say, hey, you should have Samui.
Speaker 1: What what is I mean? We watched sam Hi's videos
Speaker 1: and in them he comes off as manic is not
Speaker 1: the right word, but yeah, yeah in like a fun way, right,
Speaker 1: fun way, maybe a little scary once in a while,
Speaker 1: but like I mean, Sometimes he's very thoughtful, deep, you know,
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: When he was the Deil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that as well, but it's when he did
Speaker 1: the thing on Kirk. Other times he's just all over
Speaker 1: the place. What is he like in person when you're
Speaker 1: just having a conversation with him?
Speaker 2: In my experience, like with Sam, most people, I mean lost,
Speaker 2: Sam's playing a stupid character like Officer Maggot or something like.
Speaker 2: That's not the real Sam High. But I mean in person,
Speaker 2: pretty much everybody I met has been the same off camera,
Speaker 2: So like he's just a kind of super chill, very contemplative,
Speaker 2: faughtful kind of person. Like when we went up there
Speaker 2: to do the PGL podcast, when I was on his
Speaker 2: his perfect guy life I spent we went to dinner
Speaker 2: with Nick and then the next day, Sam's like, you
Speaker 2: ready to go to the gym. I thought he meant
Speaker 2: to work out, and I'm like, yeah, sure, he meant
Speaker 2: to box. So I'm in there boxing at like eight
Speaker 2: in the morning before I fly back to Florida. It's
Speaker 2: like I'm boxing his trainer, like this eight foot black
Speaker 2: dude trainer, and I'm like boxing because I'm not a
Speaker 2: boxer guy. Yeah, So Sam's just like over there, like analyzing,
Speaker 2: like he's a boxing coach. No, you need to do this,
Speaker 2: get you get your you know, do this, or you
Speaker 2: swing like this. So he's just a he's like a
Speaker 2: super focused, contemplative but art guy. So he's one of
Speaker 2: these people that's very left brain and right brain, which
Speaker 2: is not a lot of people. A lot of people
Speaker 2: are either one right Like if you're artistic, usually you're
Speaker 2: not left brain. But Sam's super analytical but also super creative,
Speaker 2: which is a fascinating mix. I think I have a
Speaker 2: little bit of that because my mom is super creative.
Speaker 2: My dad's super analytical, engineering type of guy. So I
Speaker 2: think it's a weird combination when you get that. I
Speaker 2: think Sam is definitely that kind of a person and
Speaker 2: very versatile, like he can do I don't know if
Speaker 2: you saw him do that YouTube fight where he went.
Speaker 1: And fought that the boxing match, but yeah, he did.
Speaker 2: That boxing match and did really good. Yeah four years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was he did very well.
Speaker 2: Yeah he won, he beat that dude and then but
Speaker 2: he can also do stand up very well, like he did.
Speaker 2: He does a great, you know, forty five minute hour
Speaker 2: set of sand up. We went to see him in
Speaker 2: Tampa and he was it was hilarious.
Speaker 1: And does he smoke a pipe privately or is that
Speaker 1: just for the show?
Speaker 2: Cigars? As soon as I got there, there you want
Speaker 2: a cigar? Yeah, sure, I don't. Maybe I said no.
Speaker 2: I can't remember because I don't.
Speaker 1: I try to smile.
Speaker 2: I try not to, but like you also don't want
Speaker 2: to say no. You're like being, you know, invited to.
Speaker 2: If Joe rogan off form me a cigar, I'm sure,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I know he had cigars. I don't know
Speaker 2: if there was a pipe, but but no, he's just
Speaker 2: he's he's pretty much. I think he's more of a
Speaker 2: serious conversation kind of person than you would expect because
Speaker 2: people think of Sam as a comedian and sketch guy.
Speaker 2: But he would be super serious talking about like philosophy
Speaker 2: or history or impression.
Speaker 1: I get that impression because you know, many people who
Speaker 1: have really high IQs and who are very serious, thoughtful people,
Speaker 1: they feel very alone and they have a hard time
Speaker 1: being They have a hard time relating to other people,
Speaker 1: so they try to like mimic this personality that's sometimes vulgar,
Speaker 1: sometimes rude, thinking that that's like, you know what, what
Speaker 1: other people want when in reality it's this person really
Speaker 1: just enjoys really deep, really serious conversations.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean he's We've had a few conversations
Speaker 2: about Christianity, Orthodoxy. He's working on he's been working on
Speaker 2: for many years creating a video game and he wants
Speaker 2: to incorporate Christian themes and sci fi and so we
Speaker 2: had several one or two long conversations about like Christian
Speaker 2: theology in this video game or and it might turn
Speaker 2: into a board game or I'm nice ser exactly where
Speaker 2: he wants to go with it. But but yeah, so
Speaker 2: I think I think he's definitely like today he's just
Speaker 2: saying basically, Christ is king, when Ted Cruz says, if
Speaker 2: you say Christ is king, you're against is Christ is King? Right?
Speaker 2: So so I think he has this recent in the
Speaker 2: last two or three years interest definitely in Christianity, and
Speaker 2: we've had a couple of conversations. But I know that
Speaker 2: he got tired. He got so many people asking him
Speaker 2: at his shows when are you going to become Orthodox
Speaker 2: that he actually said stop asking me when of Orthodox?
Speaker 2: So a lot of the Ortho bros Are also you know,
Speaker 2: a million dollar Streme sam Id fans.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, I mean several people in my parish
Speaker 1: big fans of Sam Hyde. What about I mean, you
Speaker 1: debated Nick Fantis back on the day before Nick was big.
Speaker 1: I mean have you had any contact with him since then?
Speaker 2: We've had a little bit of drama, uh in the
Speaker 2: last year, only because what happened was somebody said, would
Speaker 2: you debate Nick quent this again? I remember, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: sure I would. I said, yeah, I would. And then
Speaker 2: people don't realize that I have multiple people that run
Speaker 2: clips channels that I don't run. I run a couple
Speaker 2: of clip channels that people have given me that they
Speaker 2: don't want anymore. Like Kyle used to do my clip
Speaker 2: channels that he started, Oh, and he just gave it
Speaker 2: to me. You want dire clod, yes, sure, and then
Speaker 2: I have my clip channel called dire live Streams or
Speaker 2: whatever absurdities. But all those other clips channels, I don't
Speaker 2: even know who runs those. Oh they just clipped myself.
Speaker 2: And I told people because I got the idea from
Speaker 2: seeing other people doing this model, where if you just
Speaker 2: tell other people to run free with it, like it's
Speaker 2: a better mark approach. I'm not even a big marketing dude,
Speaker 2: but like, it just seemed more common sense to me
Speaker 2: that if I just let people clip the crop out
Speaker 2: of it, then that's less work that I have to
Speaker 2: do clipping because I hate doing clipping.
Speaker 1: So it also leads back to your.
Speaker 2: Make eventually leads back. So I just told everybody in
Speaker 2: the last year clip like crazy to go do whatever
Speaker 2: you want. And it's several of those clip channels have
Speaker 2: grown pretty good. And two of the clip channels reposted
Speaker 2: the Nick debate after I said I would debate him again,
Speaker 2: and that got back to Nick, who took offense to
Speaker 2: that because he thought I was trying to ankle bite
Speaker 2: and get attention, and he said, oh, Diere's a coward
Speaker 2: and I'm not ever going to debate him on theology
Speaker 2: again or whatever. I forget what all he said, but
Speaker 2: it was basically somewhat of misunderstanding because I said I
Speaker 2: would debate him again. I didn't say I'm going to
Speaker 2: debate him again, so he took it like I was
Speaker 2: talking smack when I was just saying I would ye.
Speaker 2: But also, like the only area that I've consistently been
Speaker 2: critical because I don't go into people's personal lives online
Speaker 2: typically unless there's some big voice of a voice of
Speaker 2: reason schedule, like, yeah, I don't usually talk about that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff unless we're making a joke, So I
Speaker 2: don't know or follow Nick's personal drama or anything like that.
Speaker 2: I just consistently have said I disagree with the papacy,
Speaker 2: the same position ten years ago when we had that
Speaker 2: debate where I disagree with the papacy. So when we
Speaker 2: talked about that happening, I said, I would just debate
Speaker 2: you on the papers because it's word the area I
Speaker 2: disagree and Nick said, I don't debate theology. It's I'm
Speaker 2: a politics guy. So really there was It was a
Speaker 2: lot of kind of smoke over nothing, basically. So I
Speaker 2: reached out to Ryan Rivera, who's friends with Nick, because
Speaker 2: right in the midst of all that, Sam had Nick
Speaker 2: on so they did a podcast and I said, hey, Ryan,
Speaker 2: would you reach out to Nick and say, Look, I
Speaker 2: wasn't trying to ankle bite or grab, you know, because
Speaker 2: I don't think your followers are going to like the
Speaker 2: fact that I would debate you on the papacy anyway,
Speaker 2: So like, I'm not I wouldn't really benefit from that
Speaker 2: anyway unless we debated something political because most of Nick's
Speaker 2: audience is into politics anyway, so they're not really going
Speaker 2: to care about my critique of the Vatican. So anyway,
Speaker 2: I think it's a lot of smoke over nothing. Really.
Speaker 1: What are some areas where just short summary of areas
Speaker 1: where you and Nick would differ on political geopolitical issues
Speaker 1: in a big way, or it would be more so
Speaker 1: matters of say nuance, What are you would differ.
Speaker 2: I mean I see clips of Nicks. I don't see
Speaker 2: this the full show on a day to day basis,
Speaker 2: and most of the clips that I hear is just
Speaker 2: typically the same this same stuff I talk about, and
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the audience that does like
Speaker 2: both of our stuff. They almost always say, you guys
Speaker 2: are pretty much on the same page.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I watched I've been watching a series with troll Webin.
Speaker 1: It's very good. It's very good. I mean, when he
Speaker 1: lays out what he wants, it's like, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is what I want too. I haven't listened to
Speaker 1: much of his stuff, just one on one, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's un rumbled hardly anything. I do listen to
Speaker 1: your stuff. I like your stuff. What about Steven Crowder,
Speaker 1: You've worked with Crowder before. How did how did you
Speaker 1: come across?
Speaker 2: I actually Andrew just set up a debate, or not
Speaker 2: a debate, a discussion with Crowder's co host Gerald. So
Speaker 2: Gerald is, I guess, the CEO or the co host
Speaker 2: of Crowder's operation. So Gerald does a show called something Apologetics,
Speaker 2: So he just basically has like he had Tim Gordon
Speaker 2: on to talk Catholicism and Evangelicalism, and before that he
Speaker 2: had had Andrew on to talk about feminism, and then
Speaker 2: he had me on to talk about Orthodoxy and Christian Zionism.
Speaker 2: So we had a we had a pretty extensive hour
Speaker 2: long conversation about like what's wrong with John Hagey and
Speaker 2: Ted Cruz and how is that not orthodox? And you know,
Speaker 2: what's the orthodox view of Israel and Zionism and all that.
Speaker 2: So that just came about because Andrew suggested me, and
Speaker 2: then I interacted with Gerald on Twitter. So we're supposed
Speaker 2: to do another one of these, a part two, because
Speaker 2: we had a really pretty pretty expansive It wasn't a
Speaker 2: heated disagreement. It was like we actually talked about topics
Speaker 2: that I didn't expect we would talk about. Well, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't I mean, we got deeper into Christian Zionism
Speaker 2: than I expected to get into so and that you know,
Speaker 2: he was pretty receptive. I think of all the criticisms
Speaker 2: that we would have as Orthodox so and I know
Speaker 2: I've not met Crowder. I think Andrew has but Crowder
Speaker 2: had an interest in Orthodoxy. But I'm supposed to go
Speaker 2: back on there and have a discussion again with Gerald
Speaker 2: round two. I don't know what he wants to talk about,
Speaker 2: but they have expressed some degree of interest in Orthodox ideas.
Speaker 1: So wonderful. Why do you think it is so many
Speaker 1: guys gen Z guys really like your stuff.
Speaker 2: I I think the Internet has made it easy for
Speaker 2: intelligent people to quickly assess issues that Gen X and
Speaker 2: Boomers took a decade to assess. So, for example, Christian Zionism,
Speaker 2: Boomers and Gen X, many of them are still stuck
Speaker 2: in just some sort of default. Well, of course, we
Speaker 2: got sport Israel America Israel in the Bible, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: BB and Yahoo was prophesied by John Hagen exactly.
Speaker 2: And what was that we were playing?
Speaker 1: This made Muslims. If one of them is good, that
Speaker 1: that makes the other one. Yeah, if one's bad. The other.
Speaker 1: One's good, right.
Speaker 2: The run is only two weeks away from a nucletar bum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the record, my neighbor bad, it was only
Speaker 1: two weeks from a nuclear bomb. So yeah, down the street,
Speaker 1: Bob is only two weeks from a nuclear bomb. Speaking
Speaker 1: of which, I'm only two weeks from another podcast.
Speaker 2: Who's next?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't say. I can't say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll go before, I'll go before Congress, and I'll make
Speaker 1: sure they'll all wear suits. My showman, they'll all stand up.
Speaker 1: Danny is only two weeks from another podcast.
Speaker 2: By region, is only two weeks away from a nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1: No one wants to be associated with that guy right now,
Speaker 1: not after.
Speaker 2: What he's a nuclear bomb now.
Speaker 1: Being around that guy is like having cat poop smeared
Speaker 1: on you. It's not It's not something you want to
Speaker 1: associate with anyway. Sorry, So where do you? I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why is it that they really get into you?
Speaker 2: I think that we were. I'm at a weird age
Speaker 2: group where I'm at the cosp of gen X and millennial,
Speaker 2: so I can kind of bridge that gap, and usually
Speaker 2: gen Z are going to be kind of looking at
Speaker 2: people that are a little bit older. Millennial that have
Speaker 2: been kind of doing Internet stuff. That's what they're going
Speaker 2: to see. And I think we ended up hitting on
Speaker 2: key problems in society that they can assess a lot
Speaker 2: quicker than boomers or gen X can, such as the
Speaker 2: problems of like evangelical Zionism, or basic questions about you know, well,
Speaker 2: Protestantism has all of these huge systemic level flaws. The
Speaker 2: Vatican has huge systemic level flaws for people that are
Speaker 2: entrenched in boomer gen X mindsets that are not open
Speaker 2: to questioning. You're always when you're younger, you're a lot
Speaker 2: more open to questioning than when you get older. So
Speaker 2: I think those guys are seeing a lot of good
Speaker 2: questions being raised. Even if I don't have all the
Speaker 2: right answers or whatever, I think we do a good
Speaker 2: job highlighting key issues that are problems, and they have
Speaker 2: enough discernment and can at least usually discern information decent
Speaker 2: enough to say, Okay, look, the Catholics are not addressing
Speaker 2: these huge issues. Protestants are not addressing these huge issues.
Speaker 2: And now we've at reached the stage where and I
Speaker 2: think you could vibe with this, like a lot of
Speaker 2: the Protestants and Catholics are kind of moving away from debating.
Speaker 2: Trent Horne has said I'm not going to debate anymore
Speaker 2: because Andrew and Jay have made it toxic. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what he said. Recently, he says I'm done debating is
Speaker 2: toxic now, I mean he may still do a debate.
Speaker 2: But that was something like that in the video, because
Speaker 2: I'm sure now that I've said that, the Darter's line
Speaker 2: about Trent's video it was something like that. And then
Speaker 2: in the Protestant world it was like Cleave and Galvin
Speaker 2: Ortland were like the last couple of dudes at debate
Speaker 2: and then then basically they've quit Cleaves or the Dox.
Speaker 2: So Galvin's not really going to do any more debates.
Speaker 1: He's come to the to the divine light side.
Speaker 2: West Hoff debated one dumb grifter Billy Corson, and now
Speaker 2: he won't debate anybody because multiple I mean, I've asked
Speaker 2: Wes multiple times for Ruslam, even reached out to west
Speaker 2: Up to debate me, and now he won't do anyone'll
Speaker 2: do it. So I think they basically the whole in
Speaker 2: the religious sphere, like those guys that basically quit, nobody
Speaker 2: really wants to have serious debate with Worthox people, because
Speaker 2: you performed very well, I think in the debates that
Speaker 2: you did with the Catholics. I think I've done well
Speaker 2: with Protestants and Muslims, and even even the Muslims have
Speaker 2: kind of like.
Speaker 1: The coverage of the Islamic dilemma was phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Thank you, phenomenal, And even the Muslims have kind of
Speaker 2: like died down. They're not as aggressive online as they were.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of people are seeing, like
Speaker 2: you know, when it comes to the actual intellectual issues,
Speaker 2: who did the best. Really, there's just a couple of
Speaker 2: atheists did an atheists debate a couple of days ago.
Speaker 2: That was the first time I've done atheist debate in
Speaker 2: probably three or four years.
Speaker 1: So people, I mean, like I hear this all the time.
Speaker 1: Like one cleric I was talking to a clergyman, Orthox clergyman.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, he's a boomer and he's a
Speaker 1: very nice man. I love him very much, And he said,
Speaker 1: I don't like debates at all. I think they're a
Speaker 1: waste of time. And you know, I'm thinking, like there's
Speaker 1: three people at my parish now simply because of that
Speaker 1: debate with Voice of Reason. There's three people at my
Speaker 1: perish because of that.
Speaker 2: Debates. I think this is a lost art form one
Speaker 2: because you know, this is part of classical pedagogy. You
Speaker 2: learned to do debate and writing rhetoric as well. That's
Speaker 2: all part of the classical education scheme. So it's odd
Speaker 2: to me that anybody who's educated, in no offense to
Speaker 2: your to your priests, that they would think that that's
Speaker 2: somehow bad or something. I think it's typically kind of
Speaker 2: a maybe an American evangelical mindset to think that that
Speaker 2: stuff is mean and it's it's too intellectual or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's also a boomer thing.
Speaker 2: It's a boomer thing.
Speaker 1: They grew up in a world that was extremely homogenous,
Speaker 1: and so the idea of confrontation is very like, we're
Speaker 1: civilized people, we don't do this. We can agree to disagree,
Speaker 1: meeting in the middle, put in a cyber what I want,
Speaker 1: what you want to meet. You know, that's a strength.
Speaker 1: Whereas for gen Z and for millennials, especially for gen Z,
Speaker 1: though they've seen like, look, there's no meeting in the
Speaker 1: middle with the barbarian hordes that are flooding across the
Speaker 1: board right there's no there's no meeting in the middle
Speaker 1: of these these he b barbarians. It's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: Totally different type of people. Yeah, and many of those
Speaker 2: people don't share the same appreciation for debate and intellectually
Speaker 2: they'd rather just punch you or you know, you know
Speaker 2: you're talking about to say, ad iq Arab Muslim populations.
Speaker 2: They're not going to debate you. They don't care about
Speaker 2: the virtues of the you know, federalist papers or we're
Speaker 2: going to get the you know, these feble to read
Speaker 2: the federalist papers and understand the Constitution.
Speaker 1: You're not hash tuns to be you know. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's the other things you hear people say,
Speaker 1: like well in the debates, it's so rude, and you go, hey,
Speaker 1: what about the church fathers. I mean, you have vitriolic language,
Speaker 1: I mean vitriolic language. Oh yeah, especially you know St.
Speaker 1: Cyril repeatedly calling mysterious names. You know, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you read Saint Cyril's somewhere around here, Saint Cyril's Glefira,
Speaker 1: it's commentary on the Torah. Uh. The editor has to
Speaker 1: give a disclaimer on the anti Jewish, anti Judaism. I
Speaker 1: should say anti Judaism, not anti Jewish, because we were.
Speaker 1: We don't hate Jews, right, it's not that we love them.
Speaker 1: We want to save them. We want them, We want
Speaker 1: them to be regrafted onto the body of Christ and
Speaker 1: to the chosen people. The Church Church is a chosen
Speaker 1: but we want to regrapt them. On right, the religion
Speaker 1: has become a cult. We we love Jews, that's why
Speaker 1: we want to save them. We don't have to save
Speaker 1: them from burning in hell for all eternity, because that's
Speaker 1: that's where it's going. I mean, without Christ, there's there's
Speaker 1: no salvation. That's what it is. And I hear this,
Speaker 1: you know, well, actually if I just we can't judge it. No,
Speaker 1: we can't. We can't. Christ is very very clear on this.
Speaker 1: I'm the Alpha of the Omega. There's one way.
Speaker 2: At can't reject Christ. Which is why it was so
Speaker 2: kind of shocking to me when we were having that
Speaker 2: last phase of the attempt at the Catholic Apologist to
Speaker 2: defend this idea that the God of Christianity is identical
Speaker 2: to the God of Islam, because Vatican too says that,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, John saysn't one John two that
Speaker 2: if you reject the son, you reject the father, you
Speaker 2: can't have the son without the father, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: this idea that, you know, oh, will appeal to more
Speaker 2: people if we just you know, pretend that the Abrahamic
Speaker 2: faith is this common generic monotheism. It's not. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's the you know, hard truth of John fourteen. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm the way that d'red in life. Nobody comes to
Speaker 2: father without me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's very straightforward. Yeah, but it's and it's
Speaker 1: you know, we're told constantly, well you're mean this. That's like, look,
Speaker 1: you leave these patristic works. They're really quite abrasive, and
Speaker 1: you go, well, that was a culture back then. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's now the culture. What are you going to do? Well,
Speaker 1: it was a culture then, it was, okay, but now
Speaker 1: it's not. But well no it is now it is
Speaker 1: now again. If you base your arguments and relativism and
Speaker 1: how the culture is, you've completely lost, right that objection.
Speaker 2: Well, Americanism is also premised on pluralism, and so people
Speaker 2: just assume, especially a lot of boomers, the presupposition is
Speaker 2: that pluralism is a virtue, is it. I mean, maybe
Speaker 2: it's not right. So you know, if we're committed and
Speaker 2: believe our positions, then you can't. And by the way,
Speaker 2: like you're pointed out earlier, these other cultures, they're not pluralistic,
Speaker 2: especially like Islam. Islam doesn't care about your tall rents
Speaker 2: and you're they're not going to return the favor of
Speaker 2: your you know, they they.
Speaker 1: Think that you seeding points and trying to meddle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't. Yeah, they don't view it as a strength
Speaker 1: to be reciprocated. They viewed as a weakness to be
Speaker 1: exploited exactly.
Speaker 2: So that's a kind of a naivety. I think that
Speaker 2: a lot of the boomer mindset is susceptible too, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that also the gen z is in millennials
Speaker 2: as well, Like a lot of people are just realizing
Speaker 2: that Protestantism and modern you know, gay Catholicism, it's just
Speaker 2: who wants that? So what's left? I mean, there's not
Speaker 2: a whole lot of other options. And there is, you know,
Speaker 2: a growing Orthodox Church, which you know, when you go there,
Speaker 2: you at least don't see hip hop mass. You don't
Speaker 2: see a clown mass. You don't see you know, some
Speaker 2: crazy Protestant past or I don't know, pouring angemima syrup
Speaker 2: on the Bible like some of the megachurch. Yeah, there
Speaker 2: was a megachurch pastor that was like, I think it
Speaker 2: was an analogy to like eating the Word, and he was.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't pour some hot some hot syrup on
Speaker 1: his bible.
Speaker 2: Ryo. Yeah, it went viral, it was.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: But I'm saying, like, that's just clown church, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean? Exactly who wants to go to clown church?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I think people see, well, at least Orthodox church visibly
Speaker 2: is esthetically pleasing, it's ordered, it's rational, it's sensible, and
Speaker 2: so I think just those kinds of basic things resonate
Speaker 2: with people who are looking for some idea of what
Speaker 2: a historic traditional religion would look like.
Speaker 1: I'm the one of the well actually that I know,
Speaker 1: the only person I know who's not surprised at the
Speaker 1: amount of conversions going on. And the reason is I
Speaker 1: could just tell with society going down the toilet and
Speaker 1: culture going down the toilet, people would come flooding in
Speaker 1: conversion because they want something stable, and like you said, okay,
Speaker 1: so getting back to that, point about when you go
Speaker 1: into an Orthox church, it looks ancient, it smells ancient,
Speaker 1: it sounds ancient, it feels ancient. Ancient is stable. It's endured, right,
Speaker 1: It's endured through the ages. But when you go into say,
Speaker 1: you know, your standard Roman Catholic church, you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of stripped down, it looks like a Lutheran church.
Speaker 1: You know, the Latin Mass movement is effectively dead. I
Speaker 1: predicted years ago when I was on your show that
Speaker 1: within our lifetimes the Latin Mass would effectively be like
Speaker 1: the most Arabic, right, you know, handful parish. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a tourist attraction. Now you're going to see more
Speaker 1: Latin Mass parishes surviving outside of papal control than inside
Speaker 1: of it. They really just want to get rid of it.
Speaker 1: And so you're left with what was what's effectively just
Speaker 1: you know, a you know, friendly community of boomers as
Speaker 1: opposed to something that really nourishes you. And that's not
Speaker 1: to say there aren't good people there. I remember, good
Speaker 1: people are Romans, Catholics, very good, you know, but it
Speaker 1: is it is not what it was. And you notice
Speaker 1: that whenever these Catholic YouTubers try to advertise Catholicism. It's
Speaker 1: always Byzantine icons. It's images of this traditional Latin Mass.
Speaker 1: When I lived in Seattle, it was one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety two parishes in the Archdiocese of Seattle. One of
Speaker 1: them was a Latin Mass. And they talk about how
Speaker 1: people drove from so far.
Speaker 2: I drove two hours throughout my twenties to go to
Speaker 2: Latin Mass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they drive so far, but so okay, and
Speaker 1: this is still all you can get. I mean, people
Speaker 1: are just they're not really into it. It's it's the
Speaker 1: audience is not there for it, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: the audience for the Latin Mass is not there in Catholicism,
Speaker 1: just like the audience for Western right Orthodox he is
Speaker 1: not really present in the Orthodox Church. That's not to
Speaker 1: slam the Western right stuff, but it's just it's a reality.
Speaker 1: How would you say that you've grown or changed as
Speaker 1: a person since entering the church?
Speaker 2: Good question.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many years has it been?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Seven?
Speaker 2: If you count catechumen, it in eight or nine. OK.
Speaker 2: But I think you know, Father Turbo Calls said it
Speaker 2: best when he said, when you're before your Orthodox you
Speaker 2: kind of think all these things out there, I'm going
Speaker 2: to fix all these problems out there you need to change.
Speaker 2: And then when you become orthodox and after a few years,
Speaker 2: start to realize all the problems that vices that you
Speaker 2: haven't fixed. Right. So I think that was the biggest
Speaker 2: revelation over the last several years, was rather than worrying
Speaker 2: so much about everybody else's problems in the politics and
Speaker 2: the geopolitics and all that stuff and fixing the world,
Speaker 2: it really changes the focus about beating the passions. So
Speaker 2: I would say that hopefully, by God's grace, I made
Speaker 2: some progress in terms of beating some passions. I don't
Speaker 2: think that I had as much patience nowadays as I
Speaker 2: did six seven years ago. So this year, for example, especially,
Speaker 2: I wanted to focus on, you know, due to my
Speaker 2: spiritual father's guidance and whatnot, just trying to be dispassionate
Speaker 2: about what people are doing in debates, because I had
Speaker 2: a tendency to just immediately react to whatever person in
Speaker 2: debates doing to me. If they're getting vicious, I get vicious, right,
Speaker 2: And so last two big debates we've had, I focused
Speaker 2: on just being dispassionate and letting them kind of go crazy.
Speaker 2: I don't have to be as crazy back, and you
Speaker 2: can still be effective, you know, without being super equally aggressive.
Speaker 2: So I just let the past two atheists go coat
Speaker 2: wild and I just kind of sit there and chill out, hopefully,
Speaker 2: and not just with that debate public setting, but also
Speaker 2: with my wife and other settings like being patient. Wives
Speaker 2: are great for learning patients like you have to you know,
Speaker 2: figure out how to nap gate that whole world. As
Speaker 2: you said, women have a civilizing effect on dudes. So
Speaker 2: hopefully my wife has also contributed to some spiritual growth.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously have other passions that I've not still
Speaker 2: get impatients still get you know, have lustful thoughts, still
Speaker 2: have temptation to other vices. But I think from a
Speaker 2: practical perspective, like learning to be patient with people has
Speaker 2: been the first big lesson and overcoming a lot of anger,
Speaker 2: I know, like like one thing that will happen. And
Speaker 2: maybe other people have discussed this new Orthodox world and
Speaker 2: when you become Orthodox, you you especially during land like
Speaker 2: you get tempted with certain types of things that are
Speaker 2: intent on ruining you. And I know that like a
Speaker 2: couple easters back, we had some really bad things happen
Speaker 2: and even my priest got really kind of in my
Speaker 2: face rebuking me, and he needed to. It was a
Speaker 2: good rebuke, but when the rebukes are happening, it's not pleasant.
Speaker 2: It's very unpleasant when you're getting reviewed. But looking back
Speaker 2: on that, I'm like, I'm actually glad that that happened.
Speaker 2: So the point being there is just that, like when
Speaker 2: you're in the Orthodox world for a while, you will
Speaker 2: begin to it's almost like there's a it's like a
Speaker 2: doctor assessing the main problems that you have, and your
Speaker 2: first inclination is to say I don't have those problems,
Speaker 2: but then over time you realize, oh, actually I do.
Speaker 2: So that has been I think the biggest revelation, hopefully
Speaker 2: for the first you know, eight years of Orthodoxy is
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. And then we had a good
Speaker 2: discussion with Father Turbo the other day, and I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people say he's spiritually gifted with being
Speaker 2: able to kind of immediately assess what your problem is.
Speaker 2: But he doesn't tell you your problem in an overt way.
Speaker 2: He kind of just talks to you and lets you
Speaker 2: realize what your problems are. So he's very he's very
Speaker 2: skilled and gifted at that and we did a good
Speaker 2: podcast something that highlighted this issue. And so I'm just
Speaker 2: giving a shout out to Father Turbo. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: hopefully I think that. But the other thing I learned
Speaker 2: too is like you're gonna be battling the passions your
Speaker 2: whole life. Yeah, and so you can't get like super
Speaker 2: down because you don't defeat all the passions within a
Speaker 2: couple of years. I think a lot of people have
Speaker 2: a mindset of, oh, I mean I'm orthodox now, like
Speaker 2: you know, it's over, it's cool. I one, Well, no,
Speaker 2: now you have to fight the passions and then you're
Speaker 2: gonna You're not gonna beat those overnight. So that's another
Speaker 2: thing you have to grapple with, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're always going to be battling these things.
Speaker 2: It's not like oh yeah, I mean, for example, I
Speaker 2: don't have it. I'm not I'm not tempted to steal stuff.
Speaker 2: That's not a vice for me. But other things are
Speaker 2: a temptation. So are those temptations going to go away?
Speaker 2: Probably not as long as I'm alive.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like St. Anthony the Great says, expect temptation
Speaker 1: till the last bru exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean when you enter the church, you're really entering
Speaker 1: the gym. So to say that you're entering the training center,
Speaker 1: you're being trained to be a fighter. And you know
Speaker 1: those periods are fasting, those are your sparring sessions. Those
Speaker 1: periods of non fasting, you're building up muscle, you're learning
Speaker 1: the moves. You go into Lent. That is your that's
Speaker 1: your tournament, that's your you know, that's your live tournament.
Speaker 1: You know your Wednesdays, your Friday is your sparing sessions.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you're gonna get beaten up during Lent. So
Speaker 1: to say you're going to be you know, despondent, depressed.
Speaker 1: We had a priest years ago who told me, years
Speaker 1: and years and years ago, Father Thomas Davis of Blessed Memory,
Speaker 1: and he said that you can tell that it's Lent
Speaker 1: simply from the confessions, because the rates of despondency and
Speaker 1: depression go up because demons don't like it when you're fasting.
Speaker 1: The hate it, right, it's it's I mean, you can
Speaker 1: tell that there's a devil that they're saying that there's
Speaker 1: demons simply from what happens when you start to draw
Speaker 1: close to God, they'll do anything to pull you back.
Speaker 1: They're losing someone. They hate that, and you see it,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I was actually went with someone
Speaker 1: to accompany them for an exorcism at Saint Anthony's monastery
Speaker 1: years appro two decades ago. And the priest starts to
Speaker 1: read the prayers over this person. And if you think
Speaker 1: you know who this person is, please don't say their name.
Speaker 1: But I remember that the.
Speaker 2: Priest sneaking and I saw him.
Speaker 1: The priest. It was a female. Actually, the priest was
Speaker 1: sitting here and I was sitting here, and the woman
Speaker 1: was sitting here, and the priest goes, okay, kneel down,
Speaker 1: and so she kneels, and I'm sitting here, okay, and
Speaker 1: the priest is here, and he lifted up his his
Speaker 1: stole right, which is what the you know, the priest
Speaker 1: stole there, and he lifted and moved it towards her head.
Speaker 1: And you know how like when you when a cat
Speaker 1: is sitting there and you reach your hand out and
Speaker 1: the cat kind of does that. That stole got close
Speaker 1: to her face and she went like that, and I
Speaker 1: put my hand behind her back, pushed her forward. He
Speaker 1: set the stole on her head and it slammed her
Speaker 1: into the ground and the pleading started in different voices.
Speaker 1: No Rue, She's squirming around, moving, and the priest has
Speaker 1: this book open. He's saying like this. He has this
Speaker 1: book of prayers of exorcism. It's in Greek, and I'm
Speaker 1: like sitting there, I'm kind of looking over it, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, like she's trying to move, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, God, what's she going to do? And she's
Speaker 1: laying on the floor like writhing. And I noticed as
Speaker 1: he's going through this book and the words are very large.
Speaker 1: Every time he said the name Jesus or Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: her body would drool like it was being electrocuted. And finally,
Speaker 1: what felt like ten minutes. I have no clue how long.
Speaker 1: It was probably about ten minutes, simply because the prayers
Speaker 1: for excorsism are fairly long. But she goes totally silent,
Speaker 1: and the priest looks up at me and he goes breathe.
Speaker 1: She doesn't move. He pulls out some relics moves them
Speaker 1: above her head. What she had done before during the
Speaker 1: exorcism with her eyes closed, He'd bring the relics of
Speaker 1: Saint George above her. That was another point where her
Speaker 1: body would like jolt all of a sudden is being
Speaker 1: electrocuted in I'll never forget that pleading sound. You know,
Speaker 1: they're losing someone. The demons are. They don't like that.
Speaker 1: They don't like it at all. They're punished horribly when
Speaker 1: they lose someone. Right, But it's you know, we have
Speaker 1: to remember that our actions are leading people to Jesus
Speaker 1: or pushing them away from Jesus. You know, even being
Speaker 1: too nice, you know, being a dish rag iss just
Speaker 1: as much pushing people away, telling people they don't need
Speaker 1: to convert. Yeah, yeah, oh, you're just fine where you are. No,
Speaker 1: you aren't. You're outside the training gym.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the elders said something like,
Speaker 2: sometimes tolerance and being nice is just a cloak for cowardice.
Speaker 1: Oh most of the time, yeah, most of the time.
Speaker 1: You know. It's why libertarianism is the movement of losers.
Speaker 1: It's just people that they just think it's like noble
Speaker 1: to be like resigned to failure. It's a sort of
Speaker 1: noble trail. I don't care about anything. They're far more enlightened.
Speaker 1: It's like you don't care about anything, therefore you're a loser.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's funny because also I think something
Speaker 2: that changed in me. And I'm not anti intellectual or
Speaker 2: anti book knowledge, but I do think that, especially in
Speaker 2: my twenties and thirties, like that was kind of an idol.
Speaker 2: And I care a lot less about the book academic
Speaker 2: stuff as I did in my twenties and thirties. So
Speaker 2: that's something else that's that's changed. And to me, it's
Speaker 2: interesting because it's a lot more freeing. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: still very interested in intellectual pursuits. I do intend to,
Speaker 2: you know, enjoyable. Yeah, it's fun, but it's not the
Speaker 2: main thing as it was for me my twenties and thirties.
Speaker 2: So that's another I think freeing aspect of orthodoxy to
Speaker 2: where you know, in the Roman Catholic or even the
Speaker 2: Protestant world, it's all really just ideas, and it's all
Speaker 2: about the system. It's all about you know, who's got
Speaker 2: the more coherent, you know, set of systemic you know,
Speaker 2: theological presentation.
Speaker 1: The magisterium obsession.
Speaker 2: And I don't care about that anymore more.
Speaker 1: About transformation exactly perfect, and we're we're about transforming the
Speaker 1: human and that's the real miracle that you see as
Speaker 1: a human transform.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just having much of ideas doesn't transform you.
Speaker 2: It just changes your ideas. Yeah, just changing out Calvinism, Urtonism.
Speaker 1: So ideas that don't turn into cha ines in life
Speaker 1: are just simply they're they're waste of time. And that's why, Like,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you get unbelievable amounts of requests for
Speaker 1: reading material and whatnot, and you probably have lots of
Speaker 1: people going, well, how do I understand essence energies?
Speaker 2: And it's like there's more basic stuff than that.
Speaker 1: Like are you praying in the morning.
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned earlier you wanted to actually recommend because
Speaker 2: and for people that are watching this, when you guys,
Speaker 2: you know you guys, email me DM me all the time.
Speaker 2: Ubi's been Orthodox lot longer than I have, so he
Speaker 2: would be a great person to recommend some places to start.
Speaker 1: These are great books if you want to read Patristic literature.
Speaker 1: Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, Produce Disease. You have Saint Cyril
Speaker 1: on the Unity of Christ, Saint germaineus have Constantinople.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I was Roman Catholic, actually, oh.
Speaker 1: It's great, it's in it's in facing English, and Greek,
Speaker 1: so it's actually about half the length. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at how little that is. It's actually half the length.
Speaker 1: Saint John Crasso also marriage and family life. Saint John
Speaker 1: Crassos some six books on the priesthood Isaac of Ninevah,
Speaker 1: hon Astatical Life, amazing work. Right. We have ONU Mystical Life.
Speaker 1: That's really good, really wonderful volume one. There's a few
Speaker 1: more volumes if you want really great homilies on the
Speaker 1: on the Bible, short homilies, you know Saint Peter chrysal
Speaker 1: Logos who writes, you know, homies are five minutes long.
Speaker 1: You can get them online. They're amazing. He talks about
Speaker 1: Old Testament typology and the New Testament. You learn theology,
Speaker 1: and that's really what people need to be doing, is
Speaker 1: reading church fathers, you know, not doom scrolling. And they go, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know where to start, and it's like there
Speaker 1: you go, here you go. And then as far as
Speaker 1: really great material for catechism, there's this great book, The
Speaker 1: Divine Services of the Orthodox Church. It's written by three
Speaker 1: scholars who are clergy. It's meant to be used sort
Speaker 1: of like a missile, so you can take it with
Speaker 1: you to church, and it gives explanations of the services,
Speaker 1: so you're not totally lost. I mean beautiful, beautiful illustrations
Speaker 1: in this book, beautiful iconography. You will you will know
Speaker 1: all of the things that most people don't know as
Speaker 1: you go through each service, regardless of what it is.
Speaker 1: So I know that you guys have really short attention spans.
Speaker 1: We all do because you know social media. But this
Speaker 1: is a great book simply because you don't have to
Speaker 1: read it all the way through you're in the service.
Speaker 2: I had a guy who messaged me a couple of
Speaker 2: days ago on Twitter and he said, Hey, I just
Speaker 2: walked into Orthodox Church for the first time. I was
Speaker 2: totally lost. What do I do? Well, there you go.
Speaker 1: There you got great book. You can find on Amazon
Speaker 1: dot com. The link is in the video description also
Speaker 1: for your books video description.
Speaker 2: So you go to my website Jasonelsis dot com. I
Speaker 2: have a shop there you can get They're all signed copies.
Speaker 2: So the advantage of getting it from me is that
Speaker 2: we do, you know, sign them. That's because Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: offers it and I don't make anything from whatever Bezos
Speaker 2: cells on Amazon. So if you get it from me,
Speaker 2: they're all signed, and I do have also a philosophy
Speaker 2: book as well. You can get the website. So there's
Speaker 2: three Hollywood books and then one philosophy book.
Speaker 1: What is your philosophy book on? We haven't touched on
Speaker 1: that yet.
Speaker 2: So a lot of the grad papers I wrote I
Speaker 2: thought were pretty good, kind of introductory issues relating to
Speaker 2: like the philosophy of uh, the logi, the logos, kind
Speaker 2: of analyzing that stuff from a philosophical perspective. There's an essay,
Speaker 2: a couple of essays on Plato symbolism in Homer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we did a big analysis. I did a big grad
Speaker 2: paper on Achilles' shield and all the symbolism in the shield.
Speaker 2: There's a there's an essay on Live Netz. There's an
Speaker 2: essay on critiquing Aquinas in there. It's just a lot,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a variety of things, but it's really
Speaker 2: written for people with kind of a mid level knowledge
Speaker 2: of philosophy if they want to to just read some
Speaker 2: of my essays and my ideas on some of some
Speaker 2: random topics. But there's also an essay on Machiavelli. He
Speaker 2: wrote a book called book Art of War, not sun
Speaker 2: Zoo's Art of War. But Machiavelli's Art of War. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of really fascinating like nuggets and tidbits in that.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of all over the place. And then
Speaker 2: there's another book. It's not really a book, but it's
Speaker 2: just somebody online collected together all of my blog posts
Speaker 2: and put it into a big, giant red book.
Speaker 1: It was very flattering.
Speaker 2: I didn't know they were going to do it. They
Speaker 2: did it, which I don't mind now, but originally when
Speaker 2: they did it kind of made me mad because I
Speaker 2: had no idea who it was they were selling it. Oh,
Speaker 2: so I tried to I kept trying to take it
Speaker 2: down from Lulu. They were publishing and selling it without
Speaker 2: my permission, and I kept trying to take it down.
Speaker 2: I was like, they just kept going back up. So like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess I'll just sell it. It's my stuff and
Speaker 2: they did put it together for me. But anyway people
Speaker 2: can get that that they want, but it's it's just
Speaker 2: old blog posts and there's a lot of philosophy, a
Speaker 2: lot of geopolitical stuff in there, some apologetic stuff critiquing
Speaker 2: the papacies in that book. But yeah, so, but the
Speaker 2: Hollywood books, they're not even if you don't like movies.
Speaker 2: The reason that the books are good is that I
Speaker 2: thought ten years ago a way to kind of wake
Speaker 2: people up to a lot of the real conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 2: Not crazy UFOs crap like that, but real stuff like
Speaker 2: who's controlling our government? Like why is their propaganda in movies? Right?
Speaker 2: That's kind of what I was going for, And I
Speaker 2: know that most people are not going to read a
Speaker 2: boring geopolitical book, so I thought, why not tie that
Speaker 2: into film and movies and that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 2: this one deals with Marvel. I'm not a Marvel fan,
Speaker 2: not into comic book stuff, but I had so many
Speaker 2: people saying, hey, how come you didn't deal with you know,
Speaker 2: Marvel movies in the first two volumes. That's like the
Speaker 2: biggest blockbuster stuff the last thirty years twenty years. Okay, fine,
Speaker 2: I'll do that. For the first fifty sixty pages, we
Speaker 2: Marvel stuff. I get into some of the occult satanic
Speaker 2: stuff in Hollywood. In volume three we get into some
Speaker 2: b movies that are kind of weird, and then we
Speaker 2: get into a lot of like weird early historical stuff
Speaker 2: with some of the first movies that were actually ever made,
Speaker 2: were actually based on Alistair Crowley, the Satanist, so The
Speaker 2: Mysteries of Myra, which was a weird serial in the
Speaker 2: nineteen tens or twenties, again one of the first movies
Speaker 2: ever made, which back then it was just kind of
Speaker 2: silent serials based on the most famous Satanist of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. So Hollywood's kind of born out of the
Speaker 2: Satanic ironically.
Speaker 1: Oh, I was blown away when I listened to Rachel
Speaker 1: Wilson's show on Joe Rogan when she went on, I
Speaker 1: had no idea about the history of feminist It's not
Speaker 1: an area that that I'm interested in, and I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you know. And then my brother listened
Speaker 1: to it as well, and he bought two copies of
Speaker 1: the book. He's like, you know, and really fascinating. I mean, wow,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm really like a history and language
Speaker 1: is kind of guy. I'm you know, it's like the doubt.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like, my language is like like my stake,
Speaker 1: you know, dad, you know, but uh it hearing that
Speaker 1: connection between between like you know, Alisair Cowley and Satanism
Speaker 1: and all these horrifying early in early Hollywood, the CIA
Speaker 1: is in there. You have you know, the tribe whoa Okayan.
Speaker 1: We really are controlled by a couple that There's no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. The things that you were saying ten
Speaker 1: years ago are beyond undeniable now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and credit to my publisher because he also
Speaker 2: published a couple of years ago, Whitney Webb's book One
Speaker 2: Nation Under Blackmail, which the second volume deals with Epstein,
Speaker 2: and she put that out four or five years ago,
Speaker 2: so it came out maybe twenty. But what's interesting about
Speaker 2: that is that all of the Epstein stuff in her
Speaker 2: book particularly, I mean, she's very very well sourced, but
Speaker 2: she went into a lot of connections with the roth
Speaker 2: child that kind of stuff that's all been born out
Speaker 2: come out. And my first chapter in Estar Collywood one
Speaker 2: dealt with the roth Childs in Hollywood. So the first
Speaker 2: book also touched on that theme ten years ago. And
Speaker 2: I feel vindicated as well. So, you know, again, shout
Speaker 2: out to the publisher because not not a lot of
Speaker 2: publishers are willing to put this kind of stuff out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean shout out.
Speaker 2: To Chris for doing that. He's he's always been a
Speaker 2: good a good publisher, So I appreciate that. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so like you said with feminism, I mean you, Rachel
Speaker 2: was spot on with that and and the history of it,
Speaker 2: going back into like Witchcraft, and you know, you have
Speaker 2: these weird, hideous women in the Middle Ages that were outcasts,
Speaker 2: and they kind of become the seed for where feminism
Speaker 2: would go. There's a direct direct connect between Witchcraft and feminism.
Speaker 2: But also Hollywood has been a massive evangelist for feminism,
Speaker 2: and I didn't cover that in the first two books,
Speaker 2: and so I spent about sixty pages or so in
Speaker 2: this book about just how self conscious I think Hollywood
Speaker 2: is in pushing the feminist gnostic archetype to reverse and
Speaker 2: invert the roles of men and women to where no,
Speaker 2: now it's the women that are the heroes. They're the saviors.
Speaker 2: And to be a hero woman you must also emasculate
Speaker 2: the man. Yeah, that's part of the whole ethos. So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 2: I deal with that in there, and then the last
Speaker 2: couple chapters deal with how Hollywood misappropriates the Antichrist, because
Speaker 2: ultimately Hollywood itself is Antichrist, but they have a lot
Speaker 2: of films that are presented in Antichrist in very bizarre
Speaker 2: anti Christian ways. So it's kind of a it's like
Speaker 2: they're taking Antichrist but making Antichrist something that it's not,
Speaker 2: to almost sell anti cas Christ.
Speaker 1: Do that makes sense, repackaging the evil putting, putting that well,
Speaker 1: not just putting lipstick on a pig.
Speaker 2: But inverting it. So basically, I mean, what Hollywood thinks
Speaker 2: is anti Christ is Christ, and what Hollywood thinks is
Speaker 2: Christ is anti Christ.
Speaker 1: That's obviously the oppress of white, straight, white male trope.
Speaker 2: And then there's also a couple of chapters on intelligence agencies.
Speaker 2: I mean, most of Part one and Part two were
Speaker 2: about that in Hollywood, but here I actually highlighted quite
Speaker 2: a few A List actors that people may or may
Speaker 2: not know were actually spies, quite a few, which is
Speaker 2: people most people don't know that, So there's a chapter
Speaker 2: on that. And even the last few years, the US
Speaker 2: National Archives have actually declassified several documents relating to some
Speaker 2: of the A listers who were spies. Sterling Hayden, for example,
Speaker 2: was an OSS operative. Jimmy Stewart was an informant for
Speaker 2: the FBI. Cary Grant worked for the OSS. John Forward
Speaker 2: was a director working with the OSS. A lot of
Speaker 2: the OSS people but then since especially during the Cold War,
Speaker 2: he had a lot of a listers that were recruited
Speaker 2: into being spies for the CIA.
Speaker 1: Wasn't Julia Childs the yessues in.
Speaker 2: The OSS, Yeah exactly. Yeah, a lot of British intelligence
Speaker 2: people for sure. But and then of course Massad too,
Speaker 2: and I do touch on some of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think like with CIA Massad I
Speaker 1: six like it's all just one mega.
Speaker 2: I think the I mean, the five eyes nations all coordinate,
Speaker 2: absolutely sure.
Speaker 1: Where do you see the situation in the golf going
Speaker 1: right now? Now keep in mind this is being recorded
Speaker 1: on Saturday, March twelfth, today thirteenth, March fourteenth. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is being recorded on Saturday March fourteenth. Where do you
Speaker 1: see the situation going in the golf? Because right now,
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone I talked to it's just like, we
Speaker 1: don't know, this could go anywhere. This is cool down,
Speaker 1: heat up in a bit, this could it's it's you.
Speaker 2: Know, well, I think Donald thought that because he had
Speaker 2: advisers telling him that, you know what, two weeks, yeah, wait,
Speaker 2: two weeks to flatten the Iran only don't worry, it's
Speaker 2: going to be four probably four or five days. I
Speaker 2: don't know, probably the best war ever. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's going to be two weeks to flatten the Iran.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a protracted situation. It's
Speaker 2: going to take a lot longer than Syria took fifteen
Speaker 2: years to top le Saud. I would imagine, giving the
Speaker 2: fact that it ran so much more powerful, military capable
Speaker 2: nation over Syria, that's going to take longer. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people have been surprised that they were
Speaker 2: able to achieve what they did with the failure of
Speaker 2: the Iron Dome exactly. I don't know if you saw
Speaker 2: the news today. I don't know if this is confirmed,
Speaker 2: because it was just on Twitter today. People not seeing
Speaker 2: that in Yahoo, so their speculation that he might for
Speaker 2: several days, so he might have also not made it.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know. So I suspect that it
Speaker 2: will be a protracted conflict. Of course, there's always the
Speaker 2: concern that this could bring China and Iran in as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, I should be trying to rush it on
Speaker 2: the side of run as a larger conflict as well,
Speaker 2: So that could I mean, it could be World War
Speaker 2: four if you count the Cold War as world War three.
Speaker 2: So I don't know where it's going to go, but
Speaker 2: I did not believe that it would be a few
Speaker 2: days or even two weeks or whatever Trump has said.
Speaker 2: So massive mistake in my opinion on the part of
Speaker 2: the Trump administration. I think Warpsee was a huge mistake.
Speaker 2: I think this is a huge mistake. Trump suppressing Epstein
Speaker 2: falls was a huge mistake.
Speaker 1: He's been a huge disappointment of the last six months.
Speaker 1: Six months un your a believable disappointment.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. But you know you you would know
Speaker 2: a lot more about the malice than I would. I
Speaker 2: just I just know about it from books, So from
Speaker 2: a book perspective, I would just say that to me,
Speaker 2: this is a repeat of the older Likud clean break strategy,
Speaker 2: the Odon plan. This is what Nat Yahoo and Lakuda
Speaker 2: wanted for a long time for the region, the great
Speaker 2: Azual project.
Speaker 1: Can you explain for the lessers with the greater, the
Speaker 1: Greater Israel project than the clean break.
Speaker 2: Are so in the I think early eighties, Ariel Sharon's
Speaker 2: advisor was a guy named Odd Yonnon, and it became
Speaker 2: known as the Odyonon Plan, which is kind of basically
Speaker 2: the same thing as the Greater Israel project, which was
Speaker 2: Israel wanted to move beyond being a limited power in
Speaker 2: the region to having dominant power in the region, and
Speaker 2: that meant that they would take you know, significant pieces
Speaker 2: and portions of land beyond what they had at that time.
Speaker 2: Fast forward to the nineteen nineties, for the exact year
Speaker 2: ninety eight or something like that, Net and Yahoo and
Speaker 2: the Likud at that time put out of people called
Speaker 2: the Clean Break strategy, where they wanted to break free
Speaker 2: from old older Israeli labor political leftist ideas of having
Speaker 2: you know, Camp David Accord, deal with the PLO, that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. They wanted to again move in the
Speaker 2: direction of right wing Israeli dominant in the region. They
Speaker 2: wanted to have a more of a capitalist model versus
Speaker 2: the labor model that they had. That's all in the
Speaker 2: Clean Bake strategy. But they met. They list, which is interesting,
Speaker 2: several nations that they I don't remember, it's seven or
Speaker 2: eight something like that, but it's like, it's a Raq,
Speaker 2: it's a Ran, it's Syria, Egypt, I think Lebanon probably, yeah,
Speaker 2: anything near the basically all or whatever basically surrounds I
Speaker 2: don't remember it could be.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time since I read the paper.
Speaker 2: I read it recently because I had a debate, a
Speaker 2: pseudo debate with David Wood and a postive prophet, Ridmon.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, So I read that was about a
Speaker 2: year ago when we had that halfway debate on the
Speaker 2: David Woods channel. So I don't remember if top we
Speaker 2: had it every specific nation, but I do remember that
Speaker 2: one of them lists, they're basically the same list, but
Speaker 2: they update what the strategy is from nineteen eighty two
Speaker 2: to ninety eight, and it's roughly kind of the same
Speaker 2: as what General was the Clark famously talked about with
Speaker 2: the Seven Nations playing to the Pentagon had that he
Speaker 2: saw after nine to eleven that we're gonna go into
Speaker 2: these countries. So in other words, nine eleven becomes a
Speaker 2: very useful tool in this toolkit of why we need
Speaker 2: to do what Israel wants in that region. So I
Speaker 2: would imagine probably Afghanistan is in there because it does
Speaker 2: factor into the Pentagon strategy during that time period after
Speaker 2: nine eleven for sure. So anyway, that is basically just
Speaker 2: that Israel needs a much larger and it also includes
Speaker 2: micronations or breaking up all these other countries into micro states,
Speaker 2: and that could include and has included, according to Victor
Speaker 2: of Strawsky, the former MASSAD guy actually arming people like
Speaker 2: ISIS and al Qaeda or Jolani in Syria. Right, So
Speaker 2: that's why you would see Israel supporting something like that.
Speaker 1: The main backer of Kurdish nationalisms or one of the
Speaker 1: main backers.
Speaker 2: The former head of MASSADE was in an interview a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago on her last year on Al Jazeira,
Speaker 2: and the guy says, would you aid and give military
Speaker 2: assistance and hospital assistants to Isis and al Qaeda? He
Speaker 2: says absolutely, And he says, would you do that for Hesbla?
Speaker 2: Of course not. It's like, well, wait a minute, So
Speaker 2: Isis and al Kaeda are allies of Israel, according to
Speaker 2: the former head of Massode, has belabbing Shia Ran obviously
Speaker 2: being in So that's kind of telling you right there, right.
Speaker 2: And then of course there have been many omissions that
Speaker 2: you know, Israel helped create an ormmas as a destabilizing
Speaker 2: factor against the PLO.
Speaker 1: So they took sche you've seen just some unknown guy.
Speaker 1: And then Gaza used to be known for its night life. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so I used to, I mean like before Hamas.
Speaker 2: For Hamas, right, and so in other words, people I
Speaker 2: don't think they think about it like they might actually
Speaker 2: want destabilization these places. People think these rules debocrasy, they
Speaker 2: won't freedom, and they want America over there. You know,
Speaker 2: they want different things at different place. In fact, one
Speaker 2: of the I think it's clean break oddly enough, said
Speaker 2: that they wanted a Coptic Christian Egypt. I thought that
Speaker 2: was really.
Speaker 1: Weird until it becomes stable, in which case, I.
Speaker 2: Mean then they would want it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's what people don't give it for.
Speaker 1: The israelis a stable nation anywhere as a threat everywhere exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a stable for the israelis a stable nation anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world is a threat everywhere to Israel.
Speaker 2: And when there's unstable Islamic rivals or terrorists, that's also
Speaker 2: an excuse for we must have all of the support
Speaker 2: from America because we're surrounded by our enemies. Well, you
Speaker 2: want decabilization, so that's what an excuse. So anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's the Greater is Or project, and you know
Speaker 2: that's what we've seen apparently, you know, BB essentially telling
Speaker 2: Trump what to do.
Speaker 1: As I'm watching this whole situation. You know, I'm in
Speaker 1: my early forty two, and you know, growing up, you're
Speaker 1: you're effectively taught by the news at Israel is just invincible,
Speaker 1: and watching these bombs fall in Tel Aviv is surreal.
Speaker 1: Watching these just streams of missiles landing and they can't
Speaker 1: stop them either, absolutely hiding the death toll. You get
Speaker 1: on Israeli Twitter with the auto translate from Hebrews.
Speaker 2: And they act like nothing's happening.
Speaker 1: No, some of the people I found, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: building next to me, that head.
Speaker 2: Oh you mean the people that are like not the news,
Speaker 2: you know, normal acting like nothing's happened.
Speaker 1: Oh, the normal people are going like building next week.
Speaker 1: I hit, oh, well, you know, twenty one people dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh okay, I mean yeah, I mean you're
Speaker 1: watching these burlage just coming in, you know, videos from
Speaker 1: like sailors out in the Mediterranean, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's no way this is landing and people are being killed.
Speaker 2: Well, it's very different from the eighties because my dad
Speaker 2: the only time he was deployed, he was deployed to
Speaker 2: the Gulf to sync to Iranian oil platforms. Under Reagan.
Speaker 2: It's called Operation Mantis, you can look it up. My
Speaker 2: dad was on the USS Bagley, which is one of
Speaker 2: the ships kind of in the upper part of that operation,
Speaker 2: and that at that time Reagan was very intent on
Speaker 2: beefing up the military and turning it into this kind
Speaker 2: of big neocon you know, global force. But I don't
Speaker 2: know that we're the same after ten years of like
Speaker 2: trans military, you know what I mean, Like, I don't
Speaker 2: know if we're the same capable country as we were
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties. Maybe it is. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not a military expert, but I did do it
Speaker 2: pretty pretty significant interview a couple of years ago with
Speaker 2: the Colonel Douglas McGregor, who was Trump's choice for National
Speaker 2: Security Director. D and I although the Congress didn't approve
Speaker 2: him because he was too conservative, he wasn't lib enough.
Speaker 2: But chromcgregor, I think has been pretty spot on with
Speaker 2: a lot of the criticisms of these these operations and
Speaker 2: Trump and pointing out that, you know, we're not the
Speaker 2: military that we were in the nineteen eighties. It's a
Speaker 2: lot different, so we may not be as effective in
Speaker 2: these operations. Like boomers want to believe.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also that it's not just that we're less
Speaker 1: effective and we're doing less well in these operations, is
Speaker 1: that there's there's very real repercussions for US going in
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, okay, was it three or
Speaker 1: fourth AD sites were wiped out almost right away? Okay,
Speaker 1: So now we have to pull them from Korea, South
Speaker 1: Korea in order to do it. So now our ally
Speaker 1: in South Korea is not protected. Okay, So these golf
Speaker 1: nations sided with the US. They sided with us because
Speaker 1: they said, Okay, you can protect us from Iran. You
Speaker 1: can keep the straits of hormones open, which is how
Speaker 1: we get our life blood or oil out of here,
Speaker 1: and we can make our money. They thought, Okay, the
Speaker 1: US can keep Israel safe, is what we've always thought.
Speaker 1: And then on top of it, if we can keep
Speaker 1: Israel safe, we can keep the region stable. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're watching as Iran, this country that we
Speaker 1: were told was give you toppled right away, takes out
Speaker 1: the THAD sites. They're bombing Israel with impunity. They're effectively
Speaker 1: trolling the Israelis by sending in missiles every few hours,
Speaker 1: so no one can sleep they're making people go crazy.
Speaker 1: Our allies are now learned. Okay, we can't keep them
Speaker 1: safe in the Gulf.
Speaker 2: We can't.
Speaker 1: We can't keep the straits of hormones open. We can't
Speaker 1: keep we cannot keep Israel safe. If we can't keep
Speaker 1: Israel safe, can we keep Jordan safe or Egypt? No,
Speaker 1: which means that now we have to spend more money
Speaker 1: buying these countries off to keep peace. That's what we
Speaker 1: effectively did. We buy off Egypt, we buy off tra Okay,
Speaker 1: then you have China watching. Okay, what are the countries
Speaker 1: in East Asia that depend on the US? You have
Speaker 1: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines to a very real extent,
Speaker 1: Australia less or so. But all those can't wom right,
Speaker 1: and so those countries are watching. And Okay, the US
Speaker 1: can't keep Israel safe, how's it gonna keep us safe?
Speaker 2: So it's a huge blow to American soft power and
Speaker 2: international you.
Speaker 1: Know, sway absolutely. I mean, we're not creating enough of
Speaker 1: these What are the missiles use for the bad sites?
Speaker 1: The we're not the missiles for outsite see uh iron
Speaker 1: domb missiles. What we can produce, like what seven of
Speaker 1: them a month. Iran can produce sixty seventy missiles in
Speaker 1: a month. Takes at least two of those those iron
Speaker 1: dumb missiles to go up and take something out. Okay,
Speaker 1: now that Iranians are pulling out super sonic missiles, this
Speaker 1: can really accelerate quickly. This can get really ugly. Yes,
Speaker 1: And people look at it, they go, well, you know
Speaker 1: this Israeli is being killed, real smalls being killed. These
Speaker 1: are potential Christians. Yeah, these are people being killed without
Speaker 1: chance to repent. There, these are human beings are being
Speaker 1: buried under buildings.
Speaker 2: I saw. I just saw the headline is shay and
Speaker 2: get a chance to look at it. But did Trump
Speaker 2: just okay, ground troops? Is that accurate?
Speaker 1: Do you know? I heard something about that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't follow.
Speaker 2: So now we're gonna have troops. I think it was
Speaker 2: in like five thousand troops, but I made I didn't
Speaker 2: confirm that, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: And this is really spiraling out of control quickly. And
Speaker 1: I remember Peter Zion. You know Peter Zion. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: does a lot of nice stuff with demographics and economics,
Speaker 1: but I remember years ago He's like, yeah, this Gaza thing,
Speaker 1: that's it's going nowhere. It's not going to spread.
Speaker 2: We also said that they be at zero.
Speaker 1: But I remember when he said this Gaza war is
Speaker 1: going nowhere. And I'm thinking, you do not know the
Speaker 1: Middle East.
Speaker 2: Not many Americans do as you. I'm sure you know
Speaker 2: you know the area. Yeah, when many Americans do not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when they're saber rattling, that's when you know you're okay.
Speaker 1: When they're quiet, that's when things happening. Oh. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: saber rattling is to make up for the fact that
Speaker 1: they can't do anything about it.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question, because you you have
Speaker 2: knowledge of this region. One thing I've never really understood,
Speaker 2: and I've read some books about Iran and some of
Speaker 2: these kinds of operations, but I'm so unclear on what
Speaker 2: do you think. It seems like Israel does engage in
Speaker 2: a lot of cover actions in Iran to disable the
Speaker 2: capabilities of Iran to have nuclear technology or whatever. So
Speaker 2: there's some reality to you know, killing nuclear scientists that
Speaker 2: Israel engages in. What do you think, in your opinion
Speaker 2: is the reality in terms of the capabilities of Iran
Speaker 2: versus the Israeli propaganda of two weeks away from a
Speaker 2: nuclear bom.
Speaker 1: I think if I had to place my money on it,
Speaker 1: I bet they already have one.
Speaker 2: And and why do you think net and y'all, who
Speaker 2: wouldn't just say they already of it?
Speaker 1: Because if he admits that they have one of the
Speaker 1: Israeli public, who's going to freak out? Okay, I mean
Speaker 1: you imagine that, Like, I mean, Jews are pretty skittish people.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't they be freaking out already? They're like in terms
Speaker 2: of what's happening, or maybe they are with the failure
Speaker 2: of Iron Dome.
Speaker 1: And well they are. I mean you go on like
Speaker 1: average people in Israeli Twitter and you read through the
Speaker 1: I'm so happy they brought back the auto translate of
Speaker 1: Hebrew on Twitter, but they yeah, they're freaking out. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's this is awful. I mean, this is absolutely I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is for them, like Turkish people getting
Speaker 1: DNA results like that earth shattering. Yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: is really scary for them. I think the Iranians have
Speaker 1: lived under I think they've lived under sanctions, They've lived
Speaker 1: under the brutality of the Iatolis for so long that
Speaker 1: they're just like another you know, sure whatever for the Israelis.
Speaker 1: I mean this is like, I mean, their military is
Speaker 1: not equipped for the US right.
Speaker 2: In fact, their.
Speaker 1: Military is equipped for mowing down civilians exactly.
Speaker 2: If there was a great interview a year and a
Speaker 2: half or two years ago with Larry Johnson, the CIA
Speaker 2: guy who now just come does podcast kind of like
Speaker 2: John Kiyaku. Oh yeah, he did an interview before right
Speaker 2: around October seventh, whenever that popped off, and Patrick Hansen
Speaker 2: did this great interview and they said he's hit. He said,
Speaker 2: if this goes into a full on conflict and Iran
Speaker 2: gets involved, he says, you will see that Israel's military
Speaker 2: is not as capable as people think. So he was
Speaker 2: actually he was correct. It looks like so I'm curious, like,
Speaker 2: what do you think this leads to? Because you know
Speaker 2: this region war three? You do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or four? Yeah, I mean it's kind of soft. But
Speaker 1: it's just he continually spread, Okay, the Iranians have been
Speaker 1: hunkered down and they're ready to fight. The US does
Speaker 1: not have the wherewithal because we're fat, dumb and happy. Right,
Speaker 1: We're fat, dumb and happy because that the hard work
Speaker 1: of previous generations have made such a luxurious, easy enjoyable
Speaker 1: life that I mean, we just we don't have the
Speaker 1: wherewithal the public opinion is not there. I mean, what
Speaker 1: does this war approval pulling out? I mean primarily most
Speaker 1: older generations, among the younger generations is probably you know,
Speaker 1: you know, single digits. And then even if you are
Speaker 1: for the war, the amount of money going into a
Speaker 1: surreal it's I think that the problem is that there's
Speaker 1: just not enough money to buy these people off, and
Speaker 1: we're just printing off money. And who's gonna.
Speaker 2: The future generations pay this infinite debt.
Speaker 1: Well, well they're going to pay the debt figuratively because yeah,
Speaker 1: the dollar will collapse, so they're going to pay for
Speaker 1: it in terms of the horrible I mean.
Speaker 2: Not horrible, ironic too, because remember remember Trump's campaign with here,
Speaker 2: you'll get world war three. If you go with Hillary,
Speaker 2: you'll get world.
Speaker 1: War three, not with me under peace candidate.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. I've been working I've been
Speaker 2: working on with Trump.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a very good Trump.
Speaker 2: I like that. Yeah, it's just and I actually shared
Speaker 2: I reshared his old campaign tweets like you'll get world
Speaker 2: War three with these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we've basically gotten. I mean, how is
Speaker 1: he now seventy nine?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we've basically I mean, we voted for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, we voted, we voted for what the left
Speaker 1: thought Donald Trump was. That's a Donald Trump I want, okay,
Speaker 1: and instead we got a seventy nine year old, six
Speaker 1: foot two Kamala Harris. It is unbelievably disappointing. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the first administration was full of neo cons and supposedly,
Speaker 2: oh well he didn't you know, Trump was not swift
Speaker 2: enough to understand DC politics and he shouldn't have put
Speaker 2: John Bolton all these people on his on his staff.
Speaker 2: And then now we get this time around. Oh it's
Speaker 2: going to be different. This time it's going to ruin
Speaker 2: the swamp. And it looked like, for you know, the
Speaker 2: first year, pretty pretty awesome actions, right, it was like
Speaker 2: all up on the up and off stuff was great.
Speaker 2: That was great, and then just the last six months
Speaker 2: is just complete derail.
Speaker 1: So have you I'm sure, well, I'm sure you have
Speaker 1: seen that video of the lawyers talking to the Doge
Speaker 1: kid and he just does not care. I have that's fantastic,
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, do you have any background in
Speaker 1: pant writing. And he's like no. And the thing is
Speaker 1: is that all these people with like you know, all
Speaker 1: these like sort of like slightly above IQ people, you know,
Speaker 1: the one of five of the one tens, the kind
Speaker 1: of people that really lead the left intellectually, they simply
Speaker 1: cannot comprehend someone with an IQ of one thirty one
Speaker 1: forty one fifty genius level, right, so one they can't
Speaker 1: compound us. Someone with an IQ one thirty one forty
Speaker 1: one fifty can handle things relatively with these that someone
Speaker 1: with a one five, one ten IQ with master's degrees
Speaker 1: is struggling with. I mean, like you know, IQ is
Speaker 1: based on pattern recognition. The higher IQ is, the better
Speaker 1: you aren't recognizing patterns. It's one of the one of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of high IQ. It does not take a
Speaker 1: genius to do grant writing and just be like well, okay,
Speaker 1: like standards say no DEI okay, well says Dum. And
Speaker 1: they're talking to this kid and he's like, well, says
Speaker 1: Deu in the title, and you realize is like I
Speaker 1: grew up in Seattle, very very very far left place.
Speaker 1: All the all the left really has is elitism and
Speaker 1: being smug. That's all I have. It's it's just say, oh,
Speaker 1: you believe in the It's like, yes, I do, and
Speaker 1: in the presuppositions I have. Like in your debate, you asked,
Speaker 1: why is racism wrong? Yeah, And the guy had no,
Speaker 1: like intellectual framework.
Speaker 2: Because it means you're an asshole? That was his argument. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: Well what's wrong with being an asshole? In your world view?
Speaker 1: Maybe that's God?
Speaker 2: So what's wrong with being an asshole?
Speaker 1: Right? And there's no, there's no I mean, maybe that's
Speaker 1: a survival technique.
Speaker 2: Being that one funny because in the debate he says,
Speaker 2: I actually hold you liable dire because you freely chose religion,
Speaker 2: which is a sickness for mankind. And he says, and
Speaker 2: yet you castigate gay people who don't make a choice
Speaker 2: to be gay. And I'm like, so, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, win it. Why could I not just
Speaker 2: be conditioned to believe my religion as a survival mechanism
Speaker 2: in the same way that you're giving a pass to
Speaker 2: homosexuals who don't make a choice. And he just sat
Speaker 2: there and was like, is this different? Well, why there's
Speaker 2: no God? We're all just conditioned just because of free will,
Speaker 2: Like you understand that in philosophy, most of today's atheists philosophers,
Speaker 2: they don't believe in free will because free will is
Speaker 2: just as much a metaphysical commitment as God. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: if God doesn't exist, and as a fairy tale as Brian,
Speaker 2: the opponent in the debate said, why is free will
Speaker 2: not a fiction? Can you observe free will in the microscope? Okay,
Speaker 2: well then how do you know that there's free will?
Speaker 2: It's not in molecules, it's not matter, So what is it.
Speaker 2: It's a philosophical, metaphysical commitment that you can't empirically prove
Speaker 2: with a microscope. Same argument's making against God.
Speaker 1: So he just couldn't fall.
Speaker 2: Uh No, he actually got that that was a challenge,
Speaker 2: and then he often went off into Trump. Let's get
Speaker 2: into Trump. So yeah, every time in the debate when
Speaker 2: there's a real significant sort of challenge, it shifts into
Speaker 2: let's talk about immigration.
Speaker 1: So unbelievable, unbelievable. Yeah, I really admire how you're able
Speaker 1: to debate people because I'm just not I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: a very bookish person who you know, I you know,
Speaker 1: I like, you know, just reading and studying and I'm
Speaker 1: not terribly articulate, and so I very much admire I'm
Speaker 1: very wild a boy, how you can just debate and
Speaker 1: ride away like break down these arguments. I just kind
Speaker 1: of have to stare out and be like, how would
Speaker 1: I phrase? You know? Howould I I mean? How did you?
Speaker 1: How have you always been that way? Is this training? Oh?
Speaker 2: It's a good question. I don't when you look back.
Speaker 1: On your early debates, so you're like, uh, or are
Speaker 1: you like, oh, it's been pretty well, or how have
Speaker 1: you developed? Have you developed as a debater any?
Speaker 2: If anything? I think the development would just be in
Speaker 2: being able to be way more concise, in nailing down
Speaker 2: with precision the mistake that is being made because I
Speaker 2: think early on it would take me probably longer and
Speaker 2: then have to think longer and have to talk longer.
Speaker 2: But if you talk a lot in ten years, which
Speaker 2: I think a lot of podcasts and a lot of
Speaker 2: of yapping in ten years, you actually get I think
Speaker 2: better at quick formulating the thoughts and just going of
Speaker 2: boiling it down. But also to say, with atheists or
Speaker 2: perhaps even with Muslims, and maybe even Catholics and Protestants
Speaker 2: as well, like the arguments that you hear are rarely
Speaker 2: anything new.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the same stuff.
Speaker 2: So when I was nineteen and twenty, it was the
Speaker 2: first time it started debating, and I listened to a
Speaker 2: lot of Bonds and debates and he would debate atheists
Speaker 2: and these people, and I would just listen to him
Speaker 2: and Gordon Stein debating over and over and over, because
Speaker 2: that's a really formative, excellent debaate. Anybody who is interested
Speaker 2: in that. That's a classic atheist theist debate, the Bons
Speaker 2: and Steining debate. You can find it on YouTube. I
Speaker 2: remember I listened to that probably ten or twenty times,
Speaker 2: and I just realized, Okay, this is a pretty you know,
Speaker 2: amazing strategy of debating is to just call in to
Speaker 2: question people's assumptions. And really that's the history of what
Speaker 2: philosophy is. When when Socrates is going out in the
Speaker 2: Apology and he's just sort of randomly asking people all
Speaker 2: throughout Athens, like, how do I know what the meaning
Speaker 2: of life is?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And he goes to the you know, the artisan and
Speaker 2: he says, oh, well, doing a craft is the meaning
Speaker 2: of life. And then he asked the politician of Poulticisans
Speaker 2: say politics is the real source of meaning of life,
Speaker 2: and basically no one has a clear answer. And then
Speaker 2: he goes to the oracle of Delphi and he says, well,
Speaker 2: who's the real wise man? And that oracle says you
Speaker 2: are because you don't know, and a lot low I
Speaker 2: keep people think that that means that we're all relativists
Speaker 2: and we should just have no He's just basically it's
Speaker 2: an apathatic approach to saying I have to kind of
Speaker 2: go through a questioning process of figuring out, Okay, well
Speaker 2: they don't have a consistent answer. They don't know. This
Speaker 2: isn't consistent. They don't know, And so debate is kind
Speaker 2: of the same type of thing for me, which is
Speaker 2: most people don't think about why their arguments are coherent
Speaker 2: or consistent. They just spout them out. And even people
Speaker 2: who are philosophers or professors, even most of them don't
Speaker 2: really think out their positions. And so a lot of
Speaker 2: people are just very arbitrary. I would say ninety percent
Speaker 2: of people when they argue, it's just arbitrary. It's just assertions. Okay,
Speaker 2: but why ought we believe? What's the good reasons for
Speaker 2: that belief? So yeah, just kind of those basic principles.
Speaker 2: In knowing basic logical fallacies, you're going to be able
Speaker 2: to beat ninety ninety five percent of people. Really only
Speaker 2: when you encounter like a studied professor who knows you
Speaker 2: know those topics really well, would you perhaps not do that? Great?
Speaker 2: But as you know, like I've not heard an atheist
Speaker 2: present any new or different argument than I heard when
Speaker 2: I was twenty.
Speaker 1: It's all just a problem of evil.
Speaker 2: It's that question, or yeah, or just repeating relativism and subductivism.
Speaker 2: Everything is relative. Okay, Well is that relative? I mean
Speaker 2: it's the same basic stuff, and it's I think it's
Speaker 2: the same with Catholic apologetics.
Speaker 1: I mean, what would you say just overall those like
Speaker 1: the top five logical fallacies you encounter in debates.
Speaker 2: Obviously number one would be people rely on at hominem.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, that can't be true because you're bad,
Speaker 2: You're mean, uh, you know, none of that has anything.
Speaker 2: Let's okay, fine, I'm Judas, But how is the argument wrong? Right?
Speaker 2: Because I mean, Judas Jewish can say something true, right, right,
Speaker 2: So his character doesn't have anything necessarily to do with
Speaker 2: the problem that he's that he's that he's addressing, unless
Speaker 2: the topic happens to be his character. In that case,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be an ad hominem, but next would be
Speaker 2: probably just non sequiturs. This is really common where people
Speaker 2: make leaps to things that don't logically follow from what
Speaker 2: they argued. Right, So, for example, I don't know something like.
Speaker 1: So Iran is bad, there.
Speaker 2: There for good? Right, Well, that's a non sequentor exactly
Speaker 2: genetic fallacy would be another classic one that the origin
Speaker 2: or the source of something really has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with whether it's true, false, or good.
Speaker 1: So fallacy.
Speaker 2: Three probably psychological report, which is not technically a fallacy.
Speaker 2: But a lot of times when you say this is
Speaker 2: very common with Matt dill Hunt. He does this all
Speaker 2: the time where he says, you know, I just find
Speaker 2: your argument is to be extremely unconvincing. And I've heard
Speaker 2: this argument for many times, twenty times in my last
Speaker 2: twenty debates, and I really just find this, Well, that
Speaker 2: has nothing to do It's you're giving us a psychological
Speaker 2: report of how you feel about the arguments, But that's
Speaker 2: not an argument.
Speaker 1: Is that the same as bagging the question? Maybe that's another.
Speaker 2: Word basically the same thing. Yeah. Also, people do parts
Speaker 2: whole fallacies all the time where they assume that's something
Speaker 2: that's true of part of an issue or part of
Speaker 2: a topic or something like that you can then attribute
Speaker 2: that to the whole thing, or correlation causation type fallacy.
Speaker 2: Those are common.
Speaker 1: What would be a good example of a correlation causation.
Speaker 2: Fallacy, Well, Brian too this where he said religion is
Speaker 2: bad because religion has caused millions of people that have
Speaker 2: psychological problems in many people to die in the last century,
Speaker 2: so religion is bad. Well, the fact that a lot
Speaker 2: of people died in the twentieth century is not necessarily
Speaker 2: distributed to religion necessarily, and you could make the same
Speaker 2: argument that atheism killed millions of people. Which again, if
Speaker 2: you're going to say that there's a connection between the
Speaker 2: cause of the thing and some other thing that might
Speaker 2: be correlated with it, that could lead you to you
Speaker 2: can conclude all kinds of things. But also something that
Speaker 2: came up in the branch s pirit debate, and this
Speaker 2: is that further degagon Anis highlights a lot, which is
Speaker 2: that when people people don't realize that in a debate,
Speaker 2: when you argue something, you're necessarily allowing the opponent to
Speaker 2: also have the same type of argument because of the
Speaker 2: rules of debate. You argue, for example, that well it's
Speaker 2: true because truth is relative and I can just assert
Speaker 2: whatever I feel to be true. Well, then the other
Speaker 2: person can assert the opposite, and so basically you can
Speaker 2: see the debate because no one can get anywhere because
Speaker 2: you've basically given up the laws of logic and critical thinking.
Speaker 2: So essentially, you know, flipping this is not a too
Speaker 2: quoqui fallacy, but flipping it that's another one. What about
Speaker 2: ism where you you know, that's a common one where
Speaker 2: people say when you say. I said to Brian, well, Brian,
Speaker 2: can you tell me on you know, we got into immigration,
Speaker 2: and I said, what do you think sensible immigration would
Speaker 2: look like if it's open borders in other countries? Should
Speaker 2: Japan have infinity migrants? And he said, yes, it's a
Speaker 2: universal rule that everyone should have a kind of open
Speaker 2: border's policy. And I said, how is that a universal
Speaker 2: rule if you're a moral subjectivist relativist. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: he went back and forth on well, it's my personal preference,
Speaker 2: but I want that for everybody. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: but how are you arguing that we ought to follow
Speaker 2: that if you're a reletist anyway.
Speaker 1: Point being is that how did you stay home with
Speaker 1: this guy?
Speaker 2: Because it was it was actually very similar to the
Speaker 2: Tim Fold debate, where it was kind of funny. Oh,
Speaker 2: it actually I was actually having fun with it. And
Speaker 2: so when, for example, he would get into there was
Speaker 2: a great point about racism where he said, and you
Speaker 2: you white people, don't you White Christian males don't give
Speaker 2: proper place to bipoc people and to Muslim erab peoples,
Speaker 2: whom I know very And he was like pounding, like
Speaker 2: they are good people. And I'm like, so you're dividing
Speaker 2: people up by the races. He's like yeah. I was like,
Speaker 2: wouldn't that be kind of aren't you doing a racism?
Speaker 1: This is Brian Shapiro And he's like, no, it's different.
Speaker 1: What's just a surname etymology on Shapiro here?
Speaker 2: Well, and then he talked about he disagree with this
Speaker 2: aspect like the synagogue of men and women being separated
Speaker 2: by genders and race. And I'm like, but Brian, you
Speaker 2: just said that you don't like white Christian males, So
Speaker 2: you're being racist, aren't you? On your own grounds?
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable to me because, like you know, I was
Speaker 1: received into the church by a priest as a convert
Speaker 1: from Judaism. And I've known many, many converts from Judaism,
Speaker 1: and I find that when when when they convert to Christianity,
Speaker 1: they almost always become very empathetic, very you know it,
Speaker 1: really like, they become very empathetic people. They're very caring.
Speaker 1: You know, they're very good at networking. So they go, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's you know, get and finances, let's get the church's
Speaker 1: finances worked out. But when they go down the atheistic route,
Speaker 1: it's just like nihilism on steroids. It's like, how nihilistic?
Speaker 1: How obnoxious can I get about this? It's very sad.
Speaker 1: It's very sad because you know, these are all humans
Speaker 1: who who need need to be saved. They're desperate need
Speaker 1: of of Christ, absolutely desperate need. And so no matter
Speaker 1: how much you know one likes or does not like
Speaker 1: certain ethnic or cultural groups, none of us can deny
Speaker 1: that these groups are better off outside the church. None
Speaker 1: of us can say that, like, you know, for all
Speaker 1: the for all the faults of say, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't like say you know, whatever culture name one, that
Speaker 1: culture is not better off unconverted. Yeah, they're better off converted.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting because the majority of that debate the
Speaker 2: day with that guy was all really just about practical effects.
Speaker 2: Religion hurts society. You as a white male who wants
Speaker 2: to have a wife at home. That hurts society, hurts women,
Speaker 2: it hurts BIPOC people, by the way. I was like,
Speaker 2: by the way, I am a BIPOC person. I identify
Speaker 2: as one, and can't tell me I can't identify as
Speaker 2: one because then you'll be being a bigot.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He didn't really know what to do with that one.
Speaker 1: But they hear that and they just they don't have
Speaker 1: the thought process to be like, oh wait, this does
Speaker 1: put me in a conundrum because they're very absolute about
Speaker 1: their absolutes. It's it's absolutism for them, relativism.
Speaker 2: For you for you, Yeah exactly, so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know again, it's just like whether you're debating with
Speaker 2: a sort of you know, rabbit atheist or a leftist
Speaker 2: or whatever materialist person, like, it's always the same line
Speaker 2: of argumentations and it never changes. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 2: actually see an atheist or somebody offer some kind of
Speaker 2: new type of Like it's basically just a repeat of
Speaker 2: the stuff that the Didn't Hawkins, Sam Harris people were
Speaker 2: saying twenty years ago. Doesn't really change very much. So
Speaker 2: again you know that though with I mean, the papacy
Speaker 2: debate's always the same, debate has changed, but yeah, I mean, anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, anyone is watching. If you want to come on,
Speaker 1: if you're willing to come out in person to Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: write to meet my contact infos in the video description.
Speaker 1: You want to tell your story, you have a book
Speaker 1: to promote, you have a film or what not that
Speaker 1: you'd like to promote. Let me know and you can
Speaker 1: be sitting where Jay is in you know, matter of weeks. Jay.
Speaker 1: If they want to reach you, how do they contact you?
Speaker 2: Find me on YouTube, find me on Twitter, find me
Speaker 2: on all the normal social media outlets, just under my name. Website.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I have a contact on there anymore,
Speaker 2: but you can subscribe with the website for the archives
Speaker 2: books in the shop. But I think there is an
Speaker 2: email on the website. They do want to reach me, okay,
Speaker 2: on the email on the website.
Speaker 1: Okay, And where are you going from here? After you leave,
Speaker 1: we get.
Speaker 2: Directly to La and then we have a couple of
Speaker 2: podcasts dealing with debates and Coolly, who's a black dude
Speaker 2: that does a YouTube channel year towards debates, going to
Speaker 2: be He's trying to set up a debate with the
Speaker 2: black yepri is Alie dude, which we had one of
Speaker 2: those guys. I think the guy that I'm going to
Speaker 2: debate actually did call in a year or two ago
Speaker 2: and it was a really funny exchange. So that's gonna
Speaker 2: be interesting. We've got Jamie Kennedy, the comedian will Be.
Speaker 2: We've done a bunch of shows with him. We're going
Speaker 2: on his podcast, Sam Tripley's podcast whatever podcast to debate
Speaker 2: another feminist jesse Lee Peterson podcast, another interview with Steffan Malinu,
Speaker 2: and then we're doing uh doctor Drew podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Doctor Drew. Okay, right one, I remember Doctor's
Speaker 1: Your Back when from high.
Speaker 2: School exactly love line when the nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the radio show I remember, I regularly called the
Speaker 1: radio show.
Speaker 2: He's kind of been having some conspiracy oriented people of late,
Speaker 2: so yeah, that was That's gonna be fun. And of
Speaker 2: course jesse Lee Peterson is a character.
Speaker 1: What is your wife working on? Terms of projects? Podcasts?
Speaker 2: So she and I do.
Speaker 1: We do.
Speaker 2: We're going to do a Lord of the Rings Hobbit.
Speaker 2: I did a part one of the Hobbit analysis, and
Speaker 2: she and I are going to do Orthodox appraise in
Speaker 2: the middle of Earth. Okay, so we're gonna do that
Speaker 2: in the next few days. We'll probably have another Orthodox
Speaker 2: conference down at our church in Florida this year, probably
Speaker 2: around November, and so she will be doing some Tolkien
Speaker 2: Hobbit stuff with me on the channel upcoming. She's done
Speaker 2: some literary and also she just did a deep dive
Speaker 2: with a friend of ours who's newly attending an Orthodox
Speaker 2: church based lit analyzer. So shout out to Bla. They
Speaker 2: did a podcast breaking down Gothic literature, so they did
Speaker 2: Frankenstein and some other Gothic texts. So she does that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff of late. So we're doing more lit stuff.
Speaker 1: Wonderful, wonderful. She's a very very lovely person, very nice,
Speaker 1: very polite, very well spoken. Is there anyone else you
Speaker 1: want to give a shout out.
Speaker 2: To, you know, shout out to David real Medwise, shout
Speaker 2: out to all the guys in the in the Discord Autocratic,
Speaker 2: shout out to Kai and Lewis at Orthodox SHO wonderful people.
Speaker 2: I hope I'm not forgetting anybody, but anyway, yeah, so
Speaker 2: uh shout out to you know, Sam Hid and all
Speaker 2: those guys.
Speaker 1: Wonderful Jay. It has been phenomenal having you on. I
Speaker 1: cannot thank you enough for coming out and thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Esoteric Hollywood. Buy it on Jay's website. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be linked in the video description. Jay, until next time,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I love