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Speaker 1: All right, shall we get started now.

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Speaker 2: The reason, the real reason that I'm returning to this

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podcast is this. Over the weekend somebody referred to Steve

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Hayward as the new me, and I thought, that's it.

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Speaker 1: The difference is that the remedy under the ADA and

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other anti discrimination laws is not stereotyping.

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Speaker 2: We don't then it's not race basically. I take your point.

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Speaker 1: I take your point, but you're saying then that if

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the problem of no access is about race, it's just

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too bad. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Stephen Hayward, Charles C. W. Cook,

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someone named Peter Robinson talking today with Charles Murray about

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his new book Taking Religion Seriously, Let's have ourselves a podcast.

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I really don't know what he've said at the end

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of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he've

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said either. Well, welcome everybody to Ricochet Podcast number seven

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hundred and sixty two. It's Stephen Hayward sitting in the

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host chair today the still vacationing James Lylax, joined as

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usual by Charles C. W. Cook and somebody on my

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screen who has identified as Peter Robinson, although I'm doubtful, Well,

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in the age of Ai Peter. I'm skeptical it's really you.

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Speaker 2: But it's I'm busy, so this is actually a hologram.

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Speaker 1: Right, okay, good? Where are you today? Are you out

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here in sunny California?

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Speaker 2: I'm at home. I'm at home. I am indeed in

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sunny California, right, I am preparing. We're having a big

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deal at the Hoover Institution next week, a celebration of

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the life and work of Thomas soul Right, and I'm prepping.

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I'm I got a rather chastening note from the Supreme

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Court of the United States earlier saying that Justice Thomas

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would be attending and that he'd been asked to speak,

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and that he would like me to have a conversation

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with him on stage. Now. I don't know about you,

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but that made me sit up in my chair.

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Speaker 1: Yes, it would mean to I would come, except I

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have a prior robbal Gay at the University of Mississippi

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all next week, so I'm very sorrey. I can't make it.

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Charles C. W. Cook is with us, but he had

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to dash to the front door to sign for the

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delivery of a passport, so I guess he's getting ready

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to flee the country or something like that.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: A special guest today, by the way, listeners is Charles Murray,

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who will be on with us in a few minutes

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to talk about his dynamite new book just out this week,

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Taking Religion Seriously. More about that and a proper introduction

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and due course. But first, I don't know how closely

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you're following politics these days, Peter. I find as I

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get older, I find it hard to keep up with

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the day to day rat tat tat of all the

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pundits and everything.

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Speaker 2: Wow coming from you. I always sort of relied on

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you to keep up on it. For me.

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Speaker 1: Well, I kind of keep up with the political science

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of it. I'll mention to you, since you are there

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at Hoover, I am reading just started last night, this

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brand new book by one of your colleagues, David Brady,

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the great political scientists. Oh yes, and I forget the

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title of it, but it's on sort of electoral cycles

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going back fifty years and it looks fascinating. That's the

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kind of thing I like, a sort of long form,

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data oriented calm conclusions about things and not polemics. And

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you know, the latest Twitter fight.

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Speaker 2: So forth, we do we do have a the midterm

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is going to just the midterm is going to be very,

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very important. I interviewed Speaker Johnson. Oh, this would be

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going back four or five months now in Washington, and

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I said to him on camera, what are you expecting,

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excuse me, for the midterms? And he purred like a cat,

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and he said, on camera, we're out raising them. We

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have the morale we're going We've also done a remarkably

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good job this cycle of candidate recruitment. We're going to

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retain the House. And then we went off camera and

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I said, no, really, how are things looking for the midterms?

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And he said exactly the same thing. This is a

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man who I don't believe is all that good at GILE.

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So I am here to report that the speed of

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the House really believes that the Republicans are going to

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retain the House in the midterms.

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Speaker 1: Well, now, I remember you saying a year or so

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ago that just observing from AFAR that you were impressed

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with Johnson coming into that job that's been so difficult.

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Now that you've met him and talked to him, is

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that is your impressed? Your favorable impression notched up stayed

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the same. Where do you land?

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Speaker 2: I walked into that impressed by Johnson. My view of

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him went up even more.

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Speaker 3: He is.

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Speaker 2: Well. He has to have political smarts to be able

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to hold that house together. And he has held the

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House together, excuse me, he's held the Republican Caucus together.

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And of course, as we all know, his majority is

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extremely slim. He has had to resort, as of course,

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anyone in that position would have to resort to calling

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in Donald Trump and give him a call list on

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important votes. You need to talk to these six guys.

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There are arms I need you to twist. Fine, Bill,

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Mike Johnson has done that. But he's a genuinely good, relaxed,

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calm human being. His staff like him, you know, Washington, Steve,

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you know, not all staffs like their principles at all,

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even when they admire them or respect them in a

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certain way. His staff genuinely enjoys him. He is honestly.

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He reminded me of my hero Ronald Reagan, in the

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sense that despite all the pressures he's under, despite all

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the activity worrying around him, he himself seems a kind

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of node of calm. A man really is comfortable being himself.

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I was just impressed by him. He does seem serene.

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I'll give him that.

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Speaker 1: And about his staff, at least they stay out of

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his shot. I'm like, sorry, that's right. That's what is

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Charlie is back passport in hand. Charlie. You know, one

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of the interesting things this week is I do like

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watching that Harry Enton guy on CNN their Polson I

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think shoots pretty straight, and he's pointing out what ought

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to be pretty ominous for Democrats, which is their generic

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ballot margin has been shrinking over Republicans, and now it's

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down to like three points, I think, and for variety

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of reasons I won't explain the Democratic generic margin needs

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to be larger from that to win a House election.

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It's just the way it all falls out. And that's

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even before you factor in any possible jerrymandering that might

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happen before the election next year. Do you think that

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this is just a reflection of the way the shutdown

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is not really working for Democrats or are there deeper

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tectonic plates behind the scene.

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Speaker 3: This is a weird moment in that usually all you

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need to do in politics is look at the popularity

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of the incumbent president or Congress and reason from that.

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But at the moment that's impossible because you see the

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headline which says Donald Trump is eight points underwater, or

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the Republicans as a whole an approval rating of thirty

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six percent, and then you look at the Democrats and

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they're twenty points worse. Now, in this case, they're not worse,

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they're slightly better on the generic ballot, but they're not

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better enough, and that is odd. Ever since I moved

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to the US, politics was thermostatic. You could pretty much

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guarantee that if a president had been there six years

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then there would be a pushback. Well, in twenty twenty six,

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Donald Trump woul't have been there for six years in

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quite the way that presidents are normally there for six years,

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because his terms have been set apart from one another.

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But he will have been president for six years and

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the Democrats are really in a bad position for that.

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If you compare it to, for example, twenty fourteen, where

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Republicans romped, it doesn't look like it's going to be

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anything like that sort of dynamic, which is odd.

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Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned Trump being underwater in his personal approval

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rag we have here something but something of a reversal

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from the Reagan years. Peter will remember this. It was

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said that Reagan's personal popularity was always very high, but

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the media and Democrats told us his particular policies and

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ideas were not popular. That turns out not to be true,

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by the way, if he really got into it. But

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that was the media spin and talking point. But I

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do think it is in the case of Trump. Trump

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himself is personally unpopular for all the reasons that we know, right,

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So it sometimes amazes me this approval rating is even

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in the mid to high forties. But I do believe

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that a lot of his policies are popular, correct, right,

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And so I think that that plays out, I think

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in an awful lot of the rest of the shaping

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of the political landscape.

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Speaker 2: This was the point that Barton Swim made in the

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Wall Street Journal What was it yesterday? Where he had

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this outrageous column which you called I think it was.

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He referred to Donald Trump as the tribune of democracy,

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the man who body democracy. Far from being a threat

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to democracy, he's embodying democracy. And he went through an

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issue by issue by issue, saying that although the Democrats

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are railing against him, they ought to think twice about

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how many Republicans, how many Americans approve of closing down

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the borders after the Biden years, A lot of Americans

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approve of that. Who approves of getting tough on crime

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in cities? All Americans? On and on, and it goes.

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The other bit of this is that Steve, you and

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I do go back to the Reagan years. I cannot

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recall seeing the Democrats in such total and utter disarray.

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And if you close your eyes and try impartially to

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say to yourself, Democratic Party, what are the names that

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come to mind as the leaders or the most prominent

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members of the Democratic Party, And you get Elizabeth Warren,

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Alexandria Caesio Cortes. We're going to get Mom Dami, apparently

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he's on course to win election as mayor of New York.

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You've got Bernie Sanders. You've got Chuck Schumer, maybe the

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least unpopular of all these figures. In other words, Peter,

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you're leaving somebody. Peter, Yeah, because I'm leaving. I'm leaving

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him to you. So everybody I just named, everybody I

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just named is way over on the progressive left, and

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the country just won't have that, Okay, now over to

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you and the governor of the Golden State.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, right, well Newsom right, he's leading. By the way,

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the latest poll i've seen shows Newsom as the front

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runner for twenty twenty eight number two Alexandria Cossio Cortanz.

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Watch he choose the Democratic Democramtocratic Nation presidential nomination.

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Speaker 2: Right now.

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Speaker 1: We'll talk about Newsom later on. I prefer to talk

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about him as little as possible. But he's taking a

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big gamble on his reapportionment initiative. I think if he

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loses that the blue will be off the rows, and

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I think he might, but we'll save that for some

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other day.

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Speaker 2: Have we seen any polling on that. It's difficult on

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that initiative.

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Speaker 1: But it's always been very bad on California ballot initiatives.

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But a couple of polls have it with his initiative

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and a slight lead. So I wouldn't be confident if

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I was.

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Speaker 3: New for it to pass. Is it a simple majority? Yes,

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it's sixty in Florida.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's simple majority. Uh, and so we'll see all

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by mail. I think it's just the only question on

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the ballot. Well, here, maybe I will spend thirty more

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seconds on this. You may remember Peter, but maybe you don't.

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You were I was a teenager at the time. But

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Ronald Reagan, in his second last year's governor ran Proposition

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one as a special ballot measure in nineteen seventy three,

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and it was a great measure. It was a tax

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and spinning limitation initiative. But it was complicated and it

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lost because the you know, the media and all the

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unions ran a very clever campaign against it, and Reagan

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made a couple of mistakes in the campaign and that

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you know, stopped his momentum heading towards the nineteen seventy

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six cycle. I think, and I think the same thing

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could happen to Newsome. This is a gamble that Newsom's taking.

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So we'll see just my special by way.

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Speaker 2: Just we keep hearing that the President Donald Trump really

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wants to cut back on and possibly even eliminate mail

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in ballots because he considers them insecure. Well, I have

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news for the President. He can relax because here in California,

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in my household, I have five children. Two of them

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are residents of Michigan, one is a resident of Texas,

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and one is a resident of New York, only one

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of my five children as a resident here of California,

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and yet I just received ballot mail ballots for all

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of my children. I could I so so. I mean,

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of course, it's just out. It's crazy. The mail voting

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is out of control. I now they made a mistake

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with me, because if I do vote for all my children,

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I won't lawyers leave me alone.

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Speaker 1: I won't do it.

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Speaker 2: I'm not that excite guy again Prop fifty. Every single

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time I was.

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Speaker 1: Afraid you were about to commit to a felony, and

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I was going to mute you in case you started

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down that road.

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Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I wouldn't do that. But the idea,

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right the mail in ballots in California are in any

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way secure is absurd, preposterous.

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Speaker 1: Do you know who else was opposed to mail in balloting?

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Jimmy Carter? Really, I don't know if you remember that story.

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It's twenty years ago now, I think two thousand and five.

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Jimmy Carter did some fancy commission with James Baker was

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the co chair, and their report was very strongly critical

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of mail in ballots because of the potential for fraud.

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Speaker 3: It does work quite well in Florida. But the cost

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of it, and the Democrats would never accept this is

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that they dish what's the word, de register or unenroll

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you after every election. So if you want to mail

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in ballots, not to register to vote, but if you

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want a mail in ballot, you have to reregister every time.

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You have to opt in wow, each each in every election.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that would be a better way of doing it.

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Speaker 3: Just send them out at infinitum.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And Charles Murray joins us now on the podcast

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to Charles is a Resident Scholar Emeritus at the American

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Enterprise Institute, author of so many books that if I

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list them all and recall some of the controversies about them,

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we would use up half of our time at least.

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But we're here today to talk about his brand new book,

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Taking Religion Seriously. Charles, Welcome to Ricochet.

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Speaker 4: I'm delighted to be with you guys.

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Speaker 1: Well, now, I do have an important opening metaphysical question.

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I think it's a high metaphysical question.

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Speaker 2: I can't wait.

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Speaker 1: Well, it is, what is the Aristotelian ideal of the

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best dry martini?

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Speaker 2: Huh?

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Speaker 4: Well, here, I'm I'm thinking, of course, of Robert Bork

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who had very strong opinions on all of this, chief

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among them being no allies that this is a drink,

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not a salad. In Robert Pork's words. The second thing

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is that a martini is by definition gin. Vodka is

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another drink. Similarly, onions are not martini's, they are another drink. Now,

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having said all that, I have decided, after long consideration,

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that you don't want to put any vermouth in a martini, or,

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if you know the proverbial, wave it over the bottle.

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I used to go to the Palm Restaurant with Charles

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Crauthemmer and Bill Bennett and Pete Wayner for lunche three

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or four times a year, and I was mystified as

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to why I liked the martinis of the Palm better

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than the ones I made. And I tried all kinds

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of different driver moose, and it turned out that the

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Palm doesn't put an invermouth, that's spartits. And I have

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stuck by that wisdom ever since.

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Speaker 1: So do you ever find out their secret? Do they

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have a secret gin or something? No?

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Speaker 4: The secret is that if you have a twist that

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you really do a good job of getting the lemon

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oil out, and that is that's important. If you do that,

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the gen takes on a sufficiently lovely lemonae aspect that

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it makes it qualitatively better than if you don't get

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those few drops of lemon oil.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that is the correct answer, by the way,

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on all fronts. But let's move on from distilled spirits

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to Charles has never been more himself. Charles has never

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been more himself than in discussing a martini, because he

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begins even then by defining his terms.

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Speaker 2: Right, that's right.

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Speaker 1: Well, let's move on from the stilled spirits to the

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Holy Spirit and your new book taking religion seriously. So

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I guess Charles, let's open up this way. I think

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for all your longtime readers and people who followed your

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work for decades now, this is an unexpected book, an

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unusual topic, a somewhat unusual approach. I mean, you are

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chiefly an empiricist, although my observation is you've always been

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an empiricist in the mold of James Q. Wilson or

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patten weinhand, someone who wants to have data but also

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thinks like a reasonable human being. So how did you

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decide before we get into some particular important aspects of

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the book. How did you decide that you're going to

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write this book and declare for the wider public what's

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been going on in your spiritual life.

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Speaker 4: It's all Mick Everstat's fault. Mick Everstat is one of

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the nation's premier demographers and colleague at AEI, and he

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had been interviewing me, along with another colleague, Carlin Bowman,

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for some long videos that AEI was doing kind of

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an institutional history and in this case, my life at AEI,

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And somehow we got onto religion in the last hour

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of three and Nick, who is a devout Catholic, was

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entertained by I think that's the right word, by the

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eccentric ideas that I've been developing about my religious beliefs.

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And when they turned off the cameras, Nick looked at

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me and he said, it ought to be your next book.

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And I had at that time been struggling with a

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semi autobiographical book about my role in the conservative movements

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and the libertarian movements in the eighties and nineties, and I

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was really bored with it. You know, my career hasn't

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been that exciting and enough for maybe an article but

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not for a book. And this really appealed to me

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because the fact is, Steve that this evolution. I will

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try to avoid the word journey, which is way overused

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when you get to religion. But this evolution of my

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thinking has been going on for thirty some years and

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it's been an important part of my life that I

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really haven't talked with anybody about. And the other thing

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which justified me in saying yes, I'm going to write

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it is I think I am representative of millions of Americans.

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I'm thinking of well educated, successful people, adults forties fifties,

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for whom religion has never been a big deal. They

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aren't militant atheists. They may identify as agnostics, but basically,

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you know, what's the point That there is no such

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thing as a personal God? That's certainly true. We live

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in the world of the Enlightenment, where we know a

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whole bunch of other things about religion aren't true, and

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so who cares?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 2: And I've changed from that?

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Speaker 1: Okay, So I think if I think, maybe it's not

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too much of a simplification to say that your path

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to taking theism seriously has two major prongs. One is

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you review some of the science which shows that the

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randomness hypothesis of the universe is implausible, and other things.

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And then there's the logic of morals, which i'll hold

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for a moment. Also on the science, there's one part

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I just want to ask you about, and I know

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Peter's jumping in his chair to get in. I was

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delighted to see you talk about the shroud of Turin

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at some length in the book, which is a thing

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that's fascinating me for a long time. Then you also

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mentioned another thing that's been on my mind, which is

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quantum entanglement, this very weird business in physics where the

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two particles separated can be in harmony with one another.

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And then you mentioned a third one, which is that

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I think it's Paige one forty three. You mentioned that

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I won't find it the actual observation of particles can

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change their behavior. In all three of these cases, I've

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thought to myself, and this is a little bit too

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crew perhaps or irreverent, But these are all God's little

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jokes on the rational mind. I mean, when the particles

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change their behavior when we're deserving them in a scientific experiment,

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it's kind of like God sitting back saying, AH caught

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you looking, didn't I.

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Speaker 4: Well, there have been a whole bunch of things that

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have happened in the last century that are God's little jokes.

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For example, what could be a one better prank than

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to have physicists discover in the twentieth century what is

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basically a gloss on Genesis. I mean, the big bag

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is Genesis, let there be light. And also when you

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have the enlightenment view saying we're all materialists. Now, the

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brain is where consciousness resides. And once the brains, consciousness quits.

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Speaker 1: What could be.

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Speaker 4: Funnier than to have science and the ability to keep

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people bring people back from near death experiences provide a

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great deal of evidence saying maybe it doesn't work out

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the way we expected it to. Maybe consciousness can exist

395
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independently of the brain. This is not theologians arguing for

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a life after death. This is the science saying something's

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going on that we can't explain through existing euroscience.

398
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Speaker 2: Peter jump in stephenm I permitted, Charles, I'd like to

399
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come to the question of miracles, on which you're tiptoeing

400
00:22:26,279 --> 00:22:28,880
up to it in a moment. But first it's sort

401
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of for me the threshold question is this Maybe I'm

402
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the outlaw. I just don't know. I would like to

403
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put this to you and then just see how you respond.

404
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But when you say I Charles Murray, I Charles Murray.

405
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Charles Murray, who produced at least three of the most

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controversial books of the last several decades and two of

407
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the most important, Losing Ground and Coming Apart. You produced

408
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two books in your career that everybody had to read,

409
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all right, and then you say, oh, by the way,

410
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I've never really been particularly interested in God. Now that

411
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stops me cold, because all my life I haven't been able.

412
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I did try. I got to college, I got to

413
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Dartmouth and realized that all the cool professors were atheists,

414
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and so I tried it. And I was only able

415
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to keep it up for two weeks. I remember it

416
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exactly too, and then it just became too much of

417
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an effort. I have. The existence of God seems to

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me everywhere present. I haven't always been happy about it.

419
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Lord knows, I haven't always lived up to the implications.

420
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But I can't imagine how someone can go through the

421
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kind of life that you've led, the life of the mind,

422
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the life of awareness, the life of constantly interrogating this

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and that aspect of reality, the life of someone who's

424
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such an American patriot, and we see God all over

425
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the Founding. The founders had different levels belief in different

426
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but He's there. How can it be that you went

427
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through decades of your life just not particularly interested in

428
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the question.

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Speaker 4: All right, we are getting to what I consider the

430
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only potential real contribution that the book has most of

431
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the book is, you know, I am not an expert

432
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:22,400
on a whole variety of things that I talk about

433
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in the book, And I say explicitly in the text

434
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I'm talking from my perspective about the Big Bang and consciousness,

435
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and that I'm not an expert in any of this.

436
00:24:33,799 --> 00:24:36,599
I'm like you, I am forced to try to make

437
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judgments about fields in which I don't have the time

438
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to master them. So in that sense, I'm not making contributions.

439
00:24:43,559 --> 00:24:47,440
But I think it is a contribution to say that

440
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spiritual sensitivity is the same kind of thing quality and

441
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human beings, that the ability to appreciate music is, the

442
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:04,119
ability to appreciate great art and great literature. In all

443
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of these cases, you have a trait that is not

444
00:25:10,519 --> 00:25:13,759
iq at all. I mean, we all know really smart people,

445
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and actually I'm kind of one of them who looks

446
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at a picture in a museum, a great picture, and

447
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I'm not moved. I leave it in five seconds and

448
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go on to the next one, and soddenly there are

449
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people who are tone deaf. Literally, well, you are on

450
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the right hand side of the normal distribution in spiritual sensitivity.

451
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For you, not being preoccupied with God, not his social utility,

452
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but the truth value of God is as natural to

453
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you as it is for some musicians to lose themselves

454
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in the music. And it says unnatural for me. And

455
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I'm also married to a woman who is at the right, say,

456
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:04,440
had side of that distribution on spiritual sensitivity, and I

457
00:26:04,599 --> 00:26:08,960
have the equivalent of a score of seventy five on

458
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the IQ scale when it comes to spiritual sensitivity. So

459
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I think that's an important point to make for a

460
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couple of reasons. First, is, if it's true, and I'm

461
00:26:22,039 --> 00:26:26,200
sure it is, that means that people like me have

462
00:26:26,279 --> 00:26:32,759
to cobble together ways of getting into these problems that

463
00:26:32,839 --> 00:26:35,599
you don't have to do. You can take a much

464
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:38,319
more direct route than people like I can. And the

465
00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:42,759
other thing is I want to disabuse my fellow people

466
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with the spiritual sensitivity of seventy five. I want to

467
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get them from I want them to stop saying, oh,

468
00:26:52,279 --> 00:26:57,079
people who claim all of these things about spiritual realities

469
00:26:57,079 --> 00:27:01,200
are just deluding themselves. I want them to realize, you

470
00:27:01,279 --> 00:27:04,079
are the one with the handicap. You are the one

471
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:07,359
who it has does not have access to this information.

472
00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:11,440
Speaker 2: So it's a trait. It's a trait. It's a truth

473
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that like many traits you've just spent your life studying.

474
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There's a bell curve here at Human beings vary on

475
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:19,960
this point.

476
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:24,640
Speaker 4: And I'm not talking I'm talking about reality, all right.

477
00:27:24,799 --> 00:27:29,599
The beauty of music is not in the imagination of

478
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,000
people who are going to appreciate music. They are the

479
00:27:32,039 --> 00:27:34,599
ones who can see the beauty. Similarly for great art.

480
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,559
And I'm saying, people who have spiritual sensitivity are seeing

481
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,119
things that are true that are very difficult for me

482
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:42,480
to see.

483
00:27:42,759 --> 00:27:44,359
Speaker 1: Can I just let me jump in for second, Peter,

484
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:48,240
which is a short clarifying follow up question. So you

485
00:27:48,279 --> 00:27:50,759
know you used the phrase of Peter, the bell curve

486
00:27:50,799 --> 00:27:52,920
and Charles you talked about, you know, different modes or

487
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:56,440
levels of spiritual perception but do you think in general

488
00:27:56,559 --> 00:28:00,000
human beings have an instinct for reverence.

489
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:06,200
Speaker 4: Well, they certainly have. There is a religious instinct that

490
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:12,519
is evolutionarily driven. Nicholas Wade has a very nice book

491
00:28:12,519 --> 00:28:22,440
about that. An instinct for reverence, that's the Yeah, it's

492
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:28,920
it's it's I think. I think the God sized hole

493
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:35,480
that people talk about, I think that is. I think

494
00:28:35,519 --> 00:28:39,119
that is a human characteristic. And I think that for

495
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:44,759
most of us, well we all have the God sized

496
00:28:44,759 --> 00:28:48,480
hole buried in there somewhere. Some of us never have

497
00:28:48,559 --> 00:28:52,319
to access it. A lot of times that becomes apparent

498
00:28:52,359 --> 00:28:56,079
to people in times of great stress and tragedy and

499
00:28:56,119 --> 00:28:58,680
so forth. That if you live a life that doesn't

500
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,920
have much tragedy, it may very well be you can

501
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:05,279
ignore it. We can distract ourselves. But I think the

502
00:29:05,319 --> 00:29:07,279
God's size follow was a human characteristic.

503
00:29:09,559 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 2: Charles, by the way you put your answering all kinds

504
00:29:11,759 --> 00:29:15,920
of questions for me, you remember, as I Steve would,

505
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:20,279
I Charlie wouldn't. Arnold Bitchman. Arnold Bichman was one of

506
00:29:20,279 --> 00:29:22,680
my closest friends here at the Hoover Institution. I remember

507
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:25,160
walking into the lounge for a cup of coffee one afternoon,

508
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:28,559
and Arnold, who then must have been ninety one or

509
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:32,720
ninety two, looked up and said to me, do you

510
00:29:32,759 --> 00:29:36,720
believe in God? And my first thought was, Arnold, is

511
00:29:36,759 --> 00:29:39,039
a little late in the day for you to be

512
00:29:39,119 --> 00:29:42,920
asking that question. But truly it had just kind of

513
00:29:43,079 --> 00:29:45,799
worked his way to the front of his mind. All right,

514
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:51,119
So onto this question of miracles. I'm not exactly certain.

515
00:29:51,759 --> 00:29:54,559
Bear with me if you would, because I'm on the

516
00:29:54,599 --> 00:29:56,880
bell curve that puts questions in a sloppy way, not

517
00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:58,799
as beautifully and precisely as you do. Try.

518
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 4: You're the best interviewer I've ever had.

519
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 2: Oh would you repeat that for Steve to hear that?

520
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:08,319
So I did an interview a couple of months ago

521
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:13,480
with Carlos Air at Yale. Carlos as a new book

522
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:18,759
out entitled They Flew, and it is a book that

523
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:23,000
takes seriously as a historical matter. He's a professor of

524
00:30:23,039 --> 00:30:29,599
history at Yale. Accounts of two particular kinds of the

525
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:35,279
miraculous behavior supernatural behavior. The accounts all come from Catholic

526
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:39,039
not all, but overwhelmingly they come from Catholic countries Italy

527
00:30:39,079 --> 00:30:42,319
and Spain for the most part. And we're talking about

528
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:47,839
the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century, although one of

529
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:53,359
the figures involved, Padre Pio now Sat Saint Peo, died

530
00:30:53,359 --> 00:30:58,000
in nineteen sixty one. And Carlos makes the point that

531
00:30:58,039 --> 00:31:03,680
we have extremely good document mentary evidence that certain figures

532
00:31:03,839 --> 00:31:09,720
levitated in prayer and certain other figures were capable of

533
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:12,319
or experienced by location. That is to say, we have

534
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:17,839
documentary evidence that they were seen, spoke, touched in two

535
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,279
places at once. And one of the reasons we have

536
00:31:21,319 --> 00:31:24,960
such good evidence, particularly for the older figures, is that

537
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:27,720
the Roman Catholic Church itself found all of this a

538
00:31:27,839 --> 00:31:32,680
terrible nuisance, doubted it, and in case after case after case,

539
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:36,799
set up tribunals to investigate the matter with the apparent

540
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:41,440
hope of tamping it all down. Okay, And Carlos makes

541
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:46,640
the point that we have historical we have eyewitness testimony

542
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,119
for these events that is at least as good as

543
00:31:51,119 --> 00:31:56,319
the eyewitness testimony we have for the speech that Elizabeth first,

544
00:31:56,440 --> 00:32:02,839
the first gave it Tisbury, or that because of our

545
00:32:04,319 --> 00:32:06,680
not I was about to say Western, that's mistaken, because

546
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:10,079
of our secular, because of the Enlightenment, Northern European frame

547
00:32:10,119 --> 00:32:14,400
of mind, that we have inhabited. We don't see it.

548
00:32:15,319 --> 00:32:18,160
There is an aspect of reality, and his argument is

549
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:23,440
this is reality. Reality is big enough to contain strange

550
00:32:23,559 --> 00:32:27,279
things that strike us as levitation and by location, and

551
00:32:27,319 --> 00:32:31,039
we're not seeing it. So in this book, do you

552
00:32:31,079 --> 00:32:34,960
find yourself seeing more of reality? Is that a fair

553
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:36,880
way of putting the question. I see you nodding, You

554
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:37,720
see that. I was.

555
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:40,559
Speaker 4: I was so interested in your account of this book.

556
00:32:40,599 --> 00:32:44,720
And the title is the title is simply they flew. Okay,

557
00:32:45,119 --> 00:32:47,880
they we got done with this podcast. I am getting

558
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:52,640
the kindle version of that book right, and because I

559
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:57,400
am wholly sympathetic to that point of view. There are

560
00:32:57,599 --> 00:33:02,920
a variety of things that are extremely well documented that

561
00:33:03,519 --> 00:33:07,039
just look an awful lot, like miracles, and some of

562
00:33:07,039 --> 00:33:13,000
those involve of healing. But I'm not talking of something

563
00:33:13,039 --> 00:33:16,720
as simple as taking away the leprosy. I'm talking about

564
00:33:16,759 --> 00:33:19,519
what I read recently that has happened within the last

565
00:33:19,599 --> 00:33:24,039
decade or two with people who are dying a very complex,

566
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:33,599
thoroughly diagnosed diseases and got well instantly. Okay. I I

567
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:38,480
think that Carl Sagan's statement that has become such a

568
00:33:38,519 --> 00:33:44,079
cliche that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is true. But

569
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:46,319
what I think that a lot of the skeptics of

570
00:33:46,359 --> 00:33:50,799
the world don't recognize is what extraordinary evidence we have

571
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:57,960
for some really weird stuff. And nicely put so basically, well,

572
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:00,240
I wouldn't have used the word stuff for this were

573
00:34:00,279 --> 00:34:07,720
a less polite company. But anyway, anyway, the when it

574
00:34:07,759 --> 00:34:12,679
comes to miracles and the Bible, I still, you know,

575
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:17,079
struggle to decide how much I accept as true and

576
00:34:17,199 --> 00:34:20,119
not true. And of course the resurrection is the acid

577
00:34:20,199 --> 00:34:25,360
test with all of that. However, the idea that miraculous

578
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:29,880
things happen, I have no problem saying there's a lot

579
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:30,679
of evidence for that.

580
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,440
Speaker 1: So Charles, we have the ideal audience for your book.

581
00:34:35,519 --> 00:34:39,559
In our third host, Charles CW. Cook. Who, Charlie Cook,

582
00:34:39,599 --> 00:34:42,519
I don't think I'm betraying any real private information to

583
00:34:42,559 --> 00:34:46,599
say that you describe yourself as a church going agnostic.

584
00:34:47,119 --> 00:34:53,199
Speaker 3: So Charlie Cook, Hi, Charles, this is true what Steve

585
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:55,280
says in a sense of books. For me, I'm on

586
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:58,000
page forty two, so I haven't got beyond that yet.

587
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:02,599
But you started in night teen eighty five, so you

588
00:35:02,639 --> 00:35:06,280
were all around forty then I'm now forty and I

589
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:09,199
like you have the seventy five IQ thing, I think,

590
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:11,400
and I compare it with music. I actually took my

591
00:35:11,559 --> 00:35:14,199
car yesterday in for its annual service and I was

592
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:17,000
playing music in the car, and I was so emotional

593
00:35:17,079 --> 00:35:19,639
getting my car done because of the music that I

594
00:35:19,639 --> 00:35:21,639
thought I must be right on the right hand side

595
00:35:21,679 --> 00:35:25,760
of your distribution for music with religion religion, I'm not,

596
00:35:26,119 --> 00:35:28,440
but my wife is. I'm married to a Catholic and

597
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:30,280
she is devout, so she has that. So I think

598
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:36,119
I have the ideal patterns for the book. But my

599
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:41,679
question is so I had Rosstauthat on my podcast a

600
00:35:41,679 --> 00:35:44,400
few months ago, and he's also written a book about religion,

601
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:46,440
and I said to him, what is your aim here?

602
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,199
And he said, my aim is to convert you. My

603
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:52,719
aim is to convince you that I'm right, and preferably

604
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:55,559
you will become a Christian, and preferably you become a Catholic.

605
00:35:55,639 --> 00:35:59,519
Right this book, which I haven't finished yet, is that

606
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,159
the aim or is there aim more to sort of

607
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:08,639
dis dispense with this sneering that you see among a

608
00:36:08,679 --> 00:36:12,400
lot of people who are within the world. We inhabit

609
00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:17,000
people who are well educated where they really look down

610
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:21,920
on all of these ideas as being silly or prehistoric

611
00:36:22,079 --> 00:36:26,480
or superstitious. Is that the aim of the book or

612
00:36:26,599 --> 00:36:28,960
do you have a more specific goal?

613
00:36:29,360 --> 00:36:33,800
Speaker 4: No, Actually, you sound to me like my ideal reader. Okay,

614
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:36,599
I mean you are exactly the person I'm at and

615
00:36:36,639 --> 00:36:37,159
what I'm.

616
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 2: Saying to you you should charge him more.

617
00:36:40,159 --> 00:36:40,760
Speaker 1: What I'm saying.

618
00:36:42,159 --> 00:36:46,559
Speaker 4: What I'm saying to you is I feel your disability

619
00:36:47,679 --> 00:36:51,519
because I share your disability. And what I'm going to

620
00:36:51,559 --> 00:36:55,760
give to you is not a handbook. I'm just going

621
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:59,119
to give you an example of how you can cobble

622
00:36:59,159 --> 00:37:02,840
together way of thinking about this that will get you

623
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:07,039
deeper and deeper into what I am confident is a

624
00:37:07,159 --> 00:37:09,880
really important should be an important part of your life.

625
00:37:10,199 --> 00:37:13,360
And when you get to the end of the book,

626
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:17,000
you'll see that the last chapter, which has to do

627
00:37:17,039 --> 00:37:21,599
what last chapters always do, I explicitly don't try to

628
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:26,679
foist Christianity on my readers. I say, look, there are

629
00:37:26,679 --> 00:37:28,760
two things I think you ought to take away from this,

630
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:34,920
but neither one of them is directive about except to say,

631
00:37:35,079 --> 00:37:38,360
this is a worthwhile endeavor and you really should invest

632
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:41,199
the effort. And not only should you invest the effort,

633
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,719
but you can despite our seventy five scores on the

634
00:37:45,079 --> 00:37:52,800
perceptual perceptual ability scale. And that's it. So it's a

635
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:56,960
I'm not trying to own the agnostics and make them

636
00:37:57,199 --> 00:37:59,119
feel bad about being agnostics.

637
00:37:59,199 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 2: I'm trying to.

638
00:38:00,039 --> 00:38:05,559
Speaker 4: To say, you too, can recover from this if you

639
00:38:05,599 --> 00:38:06,800
give it some effort.

640
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 3: Another interesting thing that I'm picking up despite only being

641
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:14,880
forty two pages in, is very often the way that

642
00:38:15,039 --> 00:38:18,320
this topic is set up is as if on the

643
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:21,400
one hand you have religion and then on the other

644
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:24,280
hand you have science, and never the twain shall meet.

645
00:38:24,599 --> 00:38:28,079
But it's quite interesting just reading the chapter on the

646
00:38:28,159 --> 00:38:31,320
creation of the universe or the Big Bang, or however

647
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,079
you want to look at it, how intertwined a lot

648
00:38:34,119 --> 00:38:36,559
of those questions seem to be, which is not the

649
00:38:36,639 --> 00:38:38,639
way we talk about it.

650
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:44,079
Speaker 4: I think that the relationship between science and religion has

651
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:48,840
flipped one hundred and eighty degrees, and they'll get to

652
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:52,639
this later in the book, But from about fourteen hundred

653
00:38:52,679 --> 00:38:57,800
to nineteen hundred, roughly, you had a situation in which

654
00:38:58,119 --> 00:39:00,719
a variety of phenomena that had been and seen as

655
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:05,079
evidence for God were explained by science. And that's where

656
00:39:05,119 --> 00:39:08,400
the phrase God of the gaps comes from that, and

657
00:39:08,519 --> 00:39:13,480
science progressively reduced the number of gaps and apparently reduced

658
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:19,000
the space for religion. And in the twentieth century, starting

659
00:39:19,079 --> 00:39:24,440
with the astronomical discoveries in the early part of the century,

660
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:29,880
it's science that has discovered new phenomena we didn't even

661
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:33,239
know existed, for which they have no answers. So the

662
00:39:34,119 --> 00:39:37,719
Big Bang is the classic example. Are the three choices?

663
00:39:38,159 --> 00:39:40,400
Are we just the beneficiaries of a one on a

664
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:42,840
trillion chance, which is kind of hard.

665
00:39:42,639 --> 00:39:43,119
Speaker 2: To deal with?

666
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 4: Do we have a million universes? So that that's not

667
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,519
real plausible either, which leads you with the alternative that

668
00:39:54,320 --> 00:40:01,960
the parsimonious plausible statement is the universe was intentionally created

669
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:06,760
for some purpose. It's not random. It's not Richard Dawkins

670
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:13,280
Pitilla's in different universe. That's by the way, I have

671
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:15,920
a quote I really love well. It begins the chapter

672
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:18,800
in The Big Bang, I think Rutford Jastro saying that

673
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:22,559
the scientists who have been studying the universe and cosmology

674
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:26,760
clamber over the final rock, ready to make the final discovery.

675
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:29,119
And there's a band of theologians that has been sitting

676
00:40:29,159 --> 00:40:33,239
there for centuries. And also in the case of consciousness

677
00:40:33,719 --> 00:40:38,960
existing independently of the mind, that's science has let us

678
00:40:39,039 --> 00:40:45,000
discover those possibilities, and it can't explain them through standard

679
00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:46,360
scientific paradigms.

680
00:40:48,599 --> 00:40:53,639
Speaker 2: Charles Peter here again, in a way, I have another

681
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:55,840
question for you. Then I think back to Steve, and

682
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:57,639
in a way, it's getting back to this, which side

683
00:40:57,679 --> 00:41:03,199
of the bell curves went on. I feel I may

684
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:05,880
be mistaken, but I feel that many people feel that religion,

685
00:41:06,119 --> 00:41:12,119
spiritual matters, all these things are fundamentally intuitive. And you say,

686
00:41:12,159 --> 00:41:15,159
I listened to a good deal of your conversation the

687
00:41:15,199 --> 00:41:18,440
other day with Nick abersat at AEI, and you said

688
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:22,280
something that I found very striking. I'm going to paraphrase you.

689
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:24,679
I can't quite quote it, but this is a close

690
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:29,400
paraphrase that once you begin taking these matters seriously, you

691
00:41:29,519 --> 00:41:34,519
discover that spiritual matters are among the most intellectually exhilarating.

692
00:41:34,559 --> 00:41:38,119
I think that's the phrase you used, intellectually exhilarating subjects

693
00:41:38,599 --> 00:41:42,199
you will ever have encountered. And I thought to myself,

694
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:48,599
coming from Charles Murray, who more than most people, Martini's

695
00:41:48,639 --> 00:41:54,159
aside lives in his mind, that is a very arresting statement.

696
00:41:54,199 --> 00:41:55,639
Could you unfold that a bit?

697
00:41:56,800 --> 00:42:03,239
Speaker 4: Well, I will give a concrete example of I'm starting

698
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:08,119
to get more interested in Christianity after I read C. S.

699
00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:13,880
Lewis's Mere Christianity. But then I immediately run into the

700
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:18,159
revisionist literature on Christianity, the bart Ehraman's of the World,

701
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:22,880
and who argue that, oh, the Gospels weren't even really

702
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:25,159
written in the ordinary sense of that word. They were

703
00:42:25,639 --> 00:42:32,000
incrementally put together, redacted, augmented by anonymous authors. We have

704
00:42:32,079 --> 00:42:34,320
no idea who wrote the Gospels, et cetera, et ceter

705
00:42:34,679 --> 00:42:38,719
and we really have no clear idea of what Jesus

706
00:42:39,079 --> 00:42:44,360
really said. And that was all very aerod diede and

707
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:49,320
it was even persuasive. But then I came across the

708
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:52,519
title of a book I don't know how called Jesus

709
00:42:52,519 --> 00:42:55,440
and the Eyewitnesses, and.

710
00:42:57,159 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 1: It was a book.

711
00:42:58,039 --> 00:43:04,079
Speaker 4: The thesis was that the Gospels are very clearly intended

712
00:43:04,119 --> 00:43:08,679
to emphasize the degree to which they're based on eyewitness testimony.

713
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:15,199
Point Number one. Part of being exhilarated is to have

714
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:19,280
a fresh take on things, and all at once. Here

715
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:24,880
is out of the tired nihilism of the revisionist scholarship.

716
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:27,840
Here is this thing saying, actually, you go back to

717
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:30,079
the Gospels. There's a lot of eyewitness stuff in here,

718
00:43:30,079 --> 00:43:33,440
and here are my reasons for arguing that, which involves

719
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:38,880
some really interesting understandings of Aramaic and the original languages

720
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:42,360
in which the New Testament was written. And there are

721
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:47,000
sentences that make more sense if what you're really reading

722
00:43:47,159 --> 00:43:53,400
is Peter's a transcription of Peter's testimony to Mark, but

723
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:57,920
it should read we went across the river, we cross

724
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:01,320
the sea, and instead they used the they did. But

725
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:05,960
it's a very sophisticated book. So at the same time,

726
00:44:06,519 --> 00:44:11,079
I had a scholar who was taking an unpopular stance,

727
00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:15,280
documenting it to a fare thee well and documenting it

728
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:20,239
in really ingenious ways. And I just love that, and

729
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:22,800
that that's true of a lot of the other things

730
00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:26,320
that I got into in the traditional defense of the

731
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:30,760
New Testament, where I say, you know what, this is

732
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:34,480
meeting all of my tests for plausibility, and tests that

733
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:37,039
the revisionists fail miserably.

734
00:44:38,079 --> 00:44:40,159
Speaker 1: Well, let me Charles Tross to an end with a

735
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:44,320
sharper version of Peter's question. So, by the way, Charlie Cook,

736
00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:47,239
if you run out of time. Read the last chapter

737
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:50,559
of the book where Charles restates the whole book and

738
00:44:51,159 --> 00:44:52,199
puts it in a summary form.

739
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:53,320
Speaker 2: I'm going to read the thing.

740
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 3: I'm going to read the whole thing. I always did.

741
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: I'm a completionist, right, and you'll be converted by the end.

742
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:01,440
We think that's that's what Peter Robinson while anyway, there's

743
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:03,400
a fragment of a sentence here towards the end of

744
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:07,519
Charles Murray where you say God must not be anthropomorphized.

745
00:45:08,679 --> 00:45:10,679
And I'm in heated agreement with that statement for a

746
00:45:10,679 --> 00:45:14,840
bunch of reasons, and it's absolutely the unknowability of God.

747
00:45:15,079 --> 00:45:18,239
I've long ago became something of a fan of the

748
00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:21,599
Protestant theologian Karl Bart, even though I'm more Catholic in

749
00:45:21,679 --> 00:45:25,719
my theological sensibilities. Generally, he said God is holy other

750
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:28,840
gone's under as the German phrase work right, in other words,

751
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:33,519
that we cannot have rational knowledge of the nature of God.

752
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:39,480
And so my challenge is is that that has to be,

753
00:45:39,559 --> 00:45:43,400
in other words, the final to use Cureguard's phrase, But

754
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:45,719
I don't actually like the leap of faith. That's got

755
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:49,679
to be hard for you, given your rational empirical nature.

756
00:45:50,079 --> 00:45:55,280
Speaker 4: Exactly and it's not a leap of faith. Things can

757
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:58,920
make more sense to me if, for example, I keep

758
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:04,000
reminding myself that God exists outside time, which not all

759
00:46:04,039 --> 00:46:09,760
theologians agree with, but some, some pretty good ones do, because,

760
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:13,079
for example, you have billions of people praying to God

761
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:16,519
and he's supposed to listen to all those and maybe

762
00:46:16,559 --> 00:46:21,199
there are more billions of beings on other planets are well,

763
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:25,960
if God is outside time, that's no problem because there's

764
00:46:26,079 --> 00:46:28,639
no rush, you know, he doesn't have to do things

765
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:35,360
sequentially and in a variety of other ways. I don't

766
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,480
want to anthropomorphize him because it makes it too easy

767
00:46:38,519 --> 00:46:41,119
to condescend to him, and of course you shouldn't use

768
00:46:41,119 --> 00:46:43,920
the word him. That's why I like to use the

769
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:47,880
analogy between me and God and me and my dog.

770
00:46:48,559 --> 00:46:51,800
That and even though my dog is half Border Collie

771
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:54,480
and is way too smart for his own good, he

772
00:46:54,519 --> 00:46:57,800
doesn't have the slightest idea of what I am in

773
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:02,519
any important way. And even I'm pretty smart, I don't

774
00:47:02,559 --> 00:47:06,760
have the slightest idea of what God is in any

775
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:13,639
concrete way. I can the concept, for example, that God

776
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:18,599
is love. Well, it's not just somebody like c s Lewis.

777
00:47:19,159 --> 00:47:23,840
My wife got started on all this because the love

778
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:26,840
she felt for our new daughter Anna back in nineteen

779
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:31,719
eighty five was, as she put it in her brilliant phrase,

780
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:35,039
she loved Anna far more than evolution required.

781
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 2: And see, this is what happens with.

782
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:44,360
Speaker 4: People like us, you know, when you've got an Oxford

783
00:47:44,400 --> 00:47:47,159
and a Yale degree, you say things like I loved

784
00:47:47,159 --> 00:47:51,800
her far more than evolution required. And she felt that

785
00:47:51,840 --> 00:47:56,559
she was being a conduit for some greater love, which

786
00:47:56,599 --> 00:48:00,920
is very much like C. S. Lewis's argument that a

787
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:04,719
lot of the moral law is God's way of revealing

788
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:09,119
himself to us. And so I have I can say

789
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:13,480
to that degree I can understand God. But I just

790
00:48:13,559 --> 00:48:16,239
want to keep in mind that's just a tiny part.

791
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:18,840
Speaker 1: Well you know, Gosh, I'm going to go back and

792
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:20,480
find this. A few months ago I wrote a long

793
00:48:20,679 --> 00:48:24,639
essay on my substack called can God time Travel? And

794
00:48:24,679 --> 00:48:26,519
I think I said, no, that's a ridiculous question. But

795
00:48:26,519 --> 00:48:28,920
I forget my chain of reasoning. But I wish we

796
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:31,119
had time to talk about C. S. Lewis. I've got

797
00:48:31,159 --> 00:48:34,360
my old copy of the Abolition of Man, which I read,

798
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:36,920
according to my fly leaf in nineteen seventy six, when

799
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:38,880
I was a senior in high school, and I'm still

800
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:41,199
reading it now, all these years later. And so my

801
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:44,480
last question is where to from here are you going to?

802
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:47,239
How are you going to extend your speculations from here?

803
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:49,679
And can we expect maybe some more articles or maybe

804
00:48:49,679 --> 00:48:51,800
even a sequel book to this? Oh?

805
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:55,079
Speaker 4: No, no more articles, the more secret. Well, I too

806
00:48:55,159 --> 00:48:57,800
quickly say that there are no more books. I've been

807
00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:03,360
caught out. I keep writing another one, but I'm really.

808
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:08,400
Speaker 2: Obvious we will all be meeting Charles in purgatory. We

809
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:11,599
will have ten thousand years to get really good at poker.

810
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:19,519
Speaker 4: Well, what I see as my next steps are to

811
00:49:19,679 --> 00:49:23,480
try to join the party. I'm referring to something I

812
00:49:23,519 --> 00:49:25,960
say on the last page of the book that I

813
00:49:26,039 --> 00:49:28,920
often feel like a small boy with his nose pressed

814
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:32,239
against the glass, watching a party on the other side

815
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:36,079
that he can't join. And I'm referring to people like Peter,

816
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,159
who has access to the kinds of joys I don't

817
00:49:40,199 --> 00:49:42,840
yet have access to, and I would still like to.

818
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:47,159
And it's also true that I still have this person

819
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:51,719
living with me named Catherine, who is at about one

820
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:56,239
hundred and thirty five on the distribution of perceptual spiritual perception,

821
00:49:57,039 --> 00:49:59,559
and figure if I hang out with her another ten

822
00:49:59,639 --> 00:50:01,440
or fifty years, maybe I'll get there.

823
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,719
Speaker 2: Charles. Does Catherine say to you, oh, Charles, I'm so

824
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:08,920
delighted that you've been able to work your way to

825
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:12,000
the Or does she say, Charles, it's about time.

826
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:17,679
Speaker 4: I do remember a conversation we had maybe twenty years ago,

827
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:22,159
maybe fifteen before I had got I was sort of

828
00:50:22,199 --> 00:50:25,719
a little ways along on this, and we were talking

829
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:27,639
and she just looked at me and said, Charles, you

830
00:50:27,679 --> 00:50:32,599
believe it to God? She announced it to me, and

831
00:50:32,679 --> 00:50:37,239
I said, well, yeah, I guess I do. And she

832
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:41,559
also her other role in life is to lovingly roll

833
00:50:41,639 --> 00:50:44,800
her eyes as I get interested in something like the

834
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:47,760
Shroud of Turin, or for that matter, when I am

835
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:52,360
interested in other historicity of the Bible, because to her,

836
00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:57,239
that's largely beside the point that it's the substance lies

837
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:02,719
in Jesus' teachings, lies in the kinds of ways you

838
00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:08,519
can enrich your life by contemplation and prayer. And her

839
00:51:08,599 --> 00:51:12,679
husband is out there being the empiricist again and looking

840
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:16,960
up news sources and putting together data, and I think

841
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:19,760
she thinks it's kind of cute, and I think she's

842
00:51:20,119 --> 00:51:25,480
glad that I'm doing it, But she's way further along

843
00:51:25,519 --> 00:51:27,840
than I am. She does not have she does not

844
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:29,159
have her point that out to me.

845
00:51:29,519 --> 00:51:33,199
Speaker 2: If you know, I so love the idea that there's

846
00:51:33,199 --> 00:51:35,559
someone on the face of the earth who looks at

847
00:51:35,639 --> 00:51:38,039
Charles Murray and says, oh, he's so cute.

848
00:51:39,119 --> 00:51:41,400
Speaker 4: Well, so I'm really glad she thinks so, and she

849
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:43,159
believe and use that phrase.

850
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:43,559
Speaker 2: But.

851
00:51:45,079 --> 00:51:45,559
Speaker 1: She does not.

852
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 4: She does not condescend to me. But if you if

853
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:52,519
you know Catherine, she know she would never do.

854
00:51:52,639 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: That, right, Well, I do, and Charles give her my

855
00:51:55,480 --> 00:51:58,559
best and thanks for joining us. Good luck with this book,

856
00:51:59,199 --> 00:52:01,639
so much fun. We'll catch up in person sometime soon,

857
00:52:01,679 --> 00:52:02,119
I hope.

858
00:52:02,239 --> 00:52:02,480
Speaker 2: Yeah.

859
00:52:02,519 --> 00:52:05,400
Speaker 4: Well, I would just assumably not take another ten years

860
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:06,880
before I'm on a ricochet again.

861
00:52:07,119 --> 00:52:11,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, it's a date deal, right, byebye Charles, Bye

862
00:52:11,079 --> 00:52:16,920
bye toaqre Well try to cout. The other big story

863
00:52:16,920 --> 00:52:19,280
this week, which I gather you follow as part of

864
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:22,639
your duties of hosting law Talk, is the oral argument

865
00:52:22,679 --> 00:52:25,880
at the Supreme Court over racial jerry mandering under the

866
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,920
Voting Rights Act, where once again we had the delight

867
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:33,320
of watching Justice Ktanji Brown Jackson make an utter fool

868
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:36,920
of herself. But beyond the spectacle, what are your takeaways

869
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:37,960
from what we heard this week?

870
00:52:38,519 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 3: Well, we talked about this on the most recent Law

871
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:44,360
Talk this week, and I asked John You and Richard

872
00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:46,719
Epstein to explain this to me, because on the surface

873
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:54,159
it seems incomprehensible. You have Louisiana passing these redistricting maps.

874
00:52:54,800 --> 00:53:00,880
They pass a map and the map apparently dilutes minority

875
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:06,760
votes too much and thereby is in violation of Section

876
00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:09,159
two of the Voting Rights Act. So they pass a

877
00:53:09,199 --> 00:53:13,760
new map that creates a second district in which minorities

878
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:17,280
are a majority, and that's illegal because it violates the

879
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:22,199
equal protection clauses. So they just can't win. They create

880
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:27,639
a minority rich district that's racial gerrymandering, and if they don't,

881
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:32,440
then they're violating the Voting Rights Act. The problem, obviously,

882
00:53:32,800 --> 00:53:37,320
is that both parts of the Constitution that are relevant

883
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:41,719
here are fighting. You've got the fifteenth Amendment and its

884
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:44,639
expression in the Voting Rights Act against the Fourteenth Amendment.

885
00:53:45,199 --> 00:53:49,639
So it's tough. But from what I understand, the real

886
00:53:49,679 --> 00:53:52,480
dispute is where the Section two of the Voting Rights

887
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:58,679
Act actually requires the creation of majority minority district and

888
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:03,960
also whether the Supreme Court ought to assume that conditions

889
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:06,480
in the United States are the same in twenty twenty

890
00:54:06,519 --> 00:54:09,280
five as they were in nineteen sixty five, which they're

891
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:10,239
very clearly not.

892
00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:11,599
Speaker 1: So.

893
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:15,280
Speaker 3: I suspect what's going to happen in this case is

894
00:54:15,320 --> 00:54:18,119
that there will be a majority, probably six to three

895
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:24,159
of justices who say, look, we are not allowed, absent

896
00:54:24,199 --> 00:54:29,920
extraordinary circumstances, to sanction government decisions that are explicitly based

897
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:33,920
on race. This is a government decision that is explicitly

898
00:54:34,159 --> 00:54:36,920
based on race. Section two is not quite as clear

899
00:54:37,719 --> 00:54:41,119
as progressives claim it is in justifying it, and even

900
00:54:41,199 --> 00:54:45,199
if it were, the reality on the ground is not

901
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,079
remotely close to what it was in nineteen sixty five.

902
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:50,960
And so what you might get, although I think this

903
00:54:51,039 --> 00:54:53,800
is questionable on originalist grounds, but what you might get

904
00:54:53,920 --> 00:55:00,159
is a version of where, oh gosh, I forgot no

905
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:03,599
name the Supreme Court justice from Arizona who was the

906
00:55:03,599 --> 00:55:04,639
first female.

907
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 2: And Andrede O'Connor, thank you, Sandraday O'Connor. You maybe be

908
00:55:08,079 --> 00:55:09,119
forgiven for forgetting.

909
00:55:10,599 --> 00:55:13,119
Speaker 3: But Sanderday O'Connor and I wasn't a fan of this

910
00:55:13,159 --> 00:55:15,280
because I don't really think the constitution works like this.

911
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,159
But SANDREDA. O connor famously said that, you know, affirmative

912
00:55:18,159 --> 00:55:21,280
action was okay, but maybe not in twenty years.

913
00:55:21,599 --> 00:55:21,800
Speaker 1: Yeah.

914
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:22,199
Speaker 2: Yes.

915
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:25,079
Speaker 3: And the thing is with that is that is better

916
00:55:25,119 --> 00:55:29,119
than permanent racial discrimination. It's worse than saying racial discrimination

917
00:55:29,239 --> 00:55:32,880
is flatly illegal. So I think the Court just may

918
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:34,960
go down the road where they say, look, there have

919
00:55:35,039 --> 00:55:37,400
been points in our history where this was justified. It

920
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,000
is no longer justified. We're not allowing this one.

921
00:55:40,320 --> 00:55:42,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the clearest things

922
00:55:42,199 --> 00:55:44,920
Chief Justice Roberts has ever said was that counting by

923
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:47,920
race as a sordid business. And so, Charlie, I think

924
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:49,760
we saw two things out of it this week. And

925
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:54,039
then Peter, see what you think. One is what you

926
00:55:54,079 --> 00:55:57,599
put it is it's obsolete. I mean in nineteen sixty five,

927
00:55:57,719 --> 00:55:59,480
it was one thing to say in nineteen sixty five

928
00:55:59,519 --> 00:56:02,880
to say, Mintgomery, Alabama, No, I'm sorry, you can't elect

929
00:56:03,079 --> 00:56:06,159
your entire city council with at large, you know, the

930
00:56:06,199 --> 00:56:08,719
whole city votes for five candidates. You have to have

931
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:13,760
districts where where you know black candidates could possibly get

932
00:56:13,760 --> 00:56:16,559
a majority. Okay, I think we've gone from something like

933
00:56:17,159 --> 00:56:20,599
I think in around numbers one hundred elected blacks in

934
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:23,280
office in the old States of the Confederacy to now

935
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:26,079
over ten thousand. So why do we still need to

936
00:56:26,119 --> 00:56:28,440
be doing it this way? And then connected to it,

937
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:32,679
I think you really saw exposed this week, especially Soda

938
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:40,679
Mayor and Jackson, the transparency of why they want these

939
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:44,480
districts done. They want to elect black Democrats. And I

940
00:56:44,480 --> 00:56:46,360
thought it was very effectively parried by one of the

941
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:50,320
advocates for Louisiana that in fact, there are something like

942
00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:53,119
what sixty black members of Congress or members of the

943
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:55,280
senior loves of the government, and only fifteen of them

944
00:56:55,280 --> 00:57:00,480
are in majority minority districts. And then politically here I've

945
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:03,519
always said for long time to liberals, I said, well,

946
00:57:03,519 --> 00:57:05,559
wait a minute, is it a good thing? Isn't this

947
00:57:05,599 --> 00:57:09,480
really creating a ghetto? Shouldn't you want white candidates to

948
00:57:09,519 --> 00:57:12,360
appeal to black voters and black candidates to appeal to

949
00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:15,400
white voters. Is it on our politics more healthy that

950
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:18,159
way than in trying to divide us up and say

951
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:23,000
your political interest in ideology should be determined by your melonin.

952
00:57:22,679 --> 00:57:26,599
Speaker 2: Level correct correct correct, by the way I was struck.

953
00:57:27,679 --> 00:57:30,079
I didn't follow them the arguments or the case with

954
00:57:30,239 --> 00:57:33,079
anything like the degree of interest that you and Charlie did.

955
00:57:33,199 --> 00:57:38,679
But arguing for I believe this Solicitor General and for

956
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:44,239
the State of Louisiana were a lawyer with a Hispanic

957
00:57:44,639 --> 00:57:48,239
surname and another lawyer who was clearly of South Asian,

958
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:52,119
Indian or Pakistani descent, the idea that we're in nineteen

959
00:57:52,119 --> 00:57:56,519
sixty five is absurd. My question would be as follows

960
00:57:56,559 --> 00:58:00,480
to follow up on if I may on, This is

961
00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:03,559
not me just making yak talk. This is me asking

962
00:58:03,599 --> 00:58:08,559
a real question to see what Charlie thinks. I interviewed

963
00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:13,599
three or four months ago Justice Alito and Justice Alito rather,

964
00:58:13,719 --> 00:58:18,400
to my surprise, the way he's very cautious, speaks in

965
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:24,039
measured terms. Even his demeanor is measured and moderate and cautious.

966
00:58:24,880 --> 00:58:27,679
But the one place that he was just explicit, so

967
00:58:27,719 --> 00:58:29,800
to speak, on Varnish, not that he spoke with any

968
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:34,960
particular anger or energy, but he was absolutely explicit in

969
00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:38,280
his view that the Constitution is color blind and that

970
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:44,199
drawing distinctions based on race is unconstitutional, full stop. Now

971
00:58:44,679 --> 00:58:47,000
this is in my head because I'm doing I'll be

972
00:58:47,039 --> 00:58:51,639
interviewing Justice Thomas on Monday morning, and I looked at

973
00:58:51,639 --> 00:58:55,480
his concurrence as Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard, which

974
00:58:55,519 --> 00:59:01,159
held two years ago that admissions Patscha, Sora Dey, O'Connor,

975
00:59:01,199 --> 00:59:04,559
and Grutter saying, well, as long as you mean well

976
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:10,000
and as long as we can expect discrimination in admissions

977
00:59:10,079 --> 00:59:14,119
university admissions to fade over time, it's constitutional. And in

978
00:59:14,199 --> 00:59:16,239
Students for Fair Admissions, the Court found that it just

979
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:21,440
wasn't constitutional. And in his concurrence, Justice Thomas was utterly

980
00:59:21,519 --> 00:59:27,239
explicit and really quite ringing in the You could almost

981
00:59:27,239 --> 00:59:29,000
hear him saying it almost felt like a piece of

982
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:34,480
oratory rather than a dry analytical document. Again, that the

983
00:59:34,519 --> 00:59:39,840
Constitution is color blind. Is the court fight with all

984
00:59:39,880 --> 00:59:45,519
of this jeremndring. If making distinctions based on race is unconstitutional,

985
00:59:46,159 --> 00:59:49,639
then we stop our analysis right there. This gets thrown out.

986
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:53,760
We stopped just trying to parse how things were in

987
00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:56,039
nineteen sixty five, We just stop it right there. Does

988
00:59:56,079 --> 00:59:57,719
the Court have the guts to go that far?

989
00:59:58,079 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 3: So I actually slightly disagree with the analogy because I

990
01:00:01,559 --> 01:00:04,239
do think there's a legal wrinkle here. If you look,

991
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:08,519
for example, at the question of affirmative action. You mentioned, yes,

992
01:00:08,679 --> 01:00:13,360
affirmative action is, in my estimation, banned both in statute

993
01:00:13,519 --> 01:00:16,760
by the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four and

994
01:00:17,199 --> 01:00:20,760
by the Fourteenth Amendment. That is a clear case. I'm

995
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,559
with Alita. I watched your excellent interview of him, and

996
01:00:23,639 --> 01:00:27,000
I see why he was emphatic. The wrinkle here is

997
01:00:27,039 --> 01:00:31,320
that while the Fourteenth Amendment bans racial discrimination, the Fifteenth

998
01:00:31,400 --> 01:00:35,519
Amendment leaves it up to Congress to enforce voting rights,

999
01:00:35,920 --> 01:00:39,719
and it gives it some wiggle room to consider race.

1000
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:41,679
And the reason for that, obviously is that if you

1001
01:00:41,719 --> 01:00:45,159
look at the South at the time, it was predicted

1002
01:00:45,199 --> 01:00:50,000
correctly that Southern states would try to prevent freed slaves

1003
01:00:50,360 --> 01:00:53,679
from voting. Where I think progressives have made a big

1004
01:00:53,719 --> 01:00:57,880
mistake is they conflate voting rights, that is, making sure

1005
01:00:57,920 --> 01:01:00,320
that people are not prevented from voting based on their

1006
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:03,920
skin color, with racial gerrymandering, which is not the same thing.

1007
01:01:03,920 --> 01:01:08,679
And that quote from Justice Jackson where she said black

1008
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:13,800
voters are disabled was preposterous because she wasn't suggesting that

1009
01:01:13,840 --> 01:01:16,239
black voters are unable to vote, they can't go to

1010
01:01:16,280 --> 01:01:18,480
the polling place, they can't fill in the mail ballot.

1011
01:01:18,679 --> 01:01:21,039
She was suggesting that if they are not given their

1012
01:01:21,039 --> 01:01:25,199
own racial enclaves, then they're somehow unable to participate in

1013
01:01:25,239 --> 01:01:28,039
American democracy. But I do think it's slightly more complicated

1014
01:01:28,239 --> 01:01:32,199
than the other areas where I'm one hundred percent against

1015
01:01:32,199 --> 01:01:36,719
any racial questioning whatsoever, because the fifteenth Amendment does allow

1016
01:01:36,800 --> 01:01:40,119
Congress to consider it in an affirmative sense. It's just

1017
01:01:40,159 --> 01:01:42,000
that they've taken it way too far. And now what

1018
01:01:42,039 --> 01:01:47,960
they're doing is they're creating areas within states in which

1019
01:01:48,280 --> 01:01:53,360
the government, the federal government no less, basically says the

1020
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:59,079
Democrat has to win because they conflate Democrat and African American.

1021
01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:02,519
So it is slightly different. But yeah, I mean, the

1022
01:02:02,719 --> 01:02:04,880
last thing I'll say is it has annoyed me in

1023
01:02:04,920 --> 01:02:07,119
the media coverage because the media coverage has all been

1024
01:02:07,559 --> 01:02:11,639
conservative justices may weeken Voting Rights Act, but you could

1025
01:02:11,719 --> 01:02:16,280
just as easily write conservative justices may bolster equal protection Clause,

1026
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:16,840
which is.

1027
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:19,360
Speaker 2: Good nice, yeah, yes.

1028
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,079
Speaker 1: Well all right, so both of you mentioning Justice Alito

1029
01:02:22,519 --> 01:02:24,760
allows me to circle back to where we began with

1030
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:28,599
Charles Murray because I'm reliably informed the Justice Alito is

1031
01:02:28,639 --> 01:02:31,960
a Jen Martini man, a dry gen Martine man, and

1032
01:02:32,039 --> 01:02:34,280
not with an ollif this is what havi Arcis tells me,

1033
01:02:34,320 --> 01:02:36,880
who knows him well and as another fellow Martini man.

1034
01:02:37,400 --> 01:02:40,719
But that brings us to the end of our show today.

1035
01:02:41,360 --> 01:02:44,239
This podcast brought to you by Ricochet dot com. Please

1036
01:02:44,320 --> 01:02:47,440
support the site by becoming a member. It's the best

1037
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:51,880
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1038
01:02:51,920 --> 01:02:54,480
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1039
01:02:54,559 --> 01:02:57,960
leave a five star review at Apple Podcasts or Spotify

1040
01:02:58,079 --> 01:02:59,840
or the other places where you may source your pod

1041
01:03:00,079 --> 01:03:04,079
cast material. It brings us new listeners uh and uh

1042
01:03:04,400 --> 01:03:07,440
and makes us allows us to grow our audience. And Peter,

1043
01:03:07,599 --> 01:03:09,199
great to see you. We were worried he in the

1044
01:03:09,199 --> 01:03:12,800
witness Protection program somewhere and uh, Charles, I will see

1045
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:14,880
you again in two weeks. I'm away next week, but

1046
01:03:14,920 --> 01:03:18,159
I will see you again in two weeks. Bye bye, everybody.