Pints With Aquinas - Social Media, Converting to Catholicism & Being Married to Candace Owens w/ George Farmer

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

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Let's go. George Farmer! Pints with Aquinas. Or as they say in America, George Farmer. Do you feel like it's the Rs that give us away whenever we try to do their accent? There's something about the word water, which they can't pronounce. Water. Wadder.

Wadder. Or the word no. What? Did you say no differently to me? No. That's way more proper. No! I think mine has a seven in it. That's way more proper. No! I think mine has a 7 in it.

Well, it's the Queen's English fundamentally, right? As a result, it's like... I joke that I speak American and English, and most Americans don't understand that joke because they just think that American is the only language. I did once hear an American in a souvenir store say, do you speak American? And I went, oh, this is what they mean about, we sound good, do we, everything's coming through? Wonderful.

So we are recording from our new cigar lounge in Steubenville, Ohio, Chesterton's grand opening is this Friday in Steubenville, Ohio, ChestertonCigars.com, you can go there, check out our Instagram page, we're pretty pumped about it. And I have a cigar aficionado here. So I'm glad that this could be the episode that, this is a very different setup for me. I feel very uncomfortable.

I'm used to my table. I'm deeply honored to be. I thought I was the first British guy, but then obviously we discovered that that was not the case. First interview from the cigar lounge is wonderful to me. Should I tell the story about what you could be doing right now? Or should you? Go for it, I don't mind. It was the greatest sentence a human has said to me. Should I tell the story about what you could be doing right now? Should you? Go for it. I don't mind. It was the greatest sentence a human has said to me ever I think including my children and wife. It was better than when

William said daddy We're driving and you said that This is just like what I'm like. We have very different lives Kanye West calls your wife Candice Owens and invites her to a Kanye West calls your wife Candice Owens and invites her to a what fashion show in Paris yeah last minute and Candice asks you if you want to go and you said no I'm going to Steubenville with Matt Fred I've got to do pints with Aquinas it's my favorite show on YouTube I've peaked it is quit yeah this is the this is the zenith of your career yeah yeah really is. There's nothing better coming down the park. Yeah, it was all very last minute.

She, it was kind of like a Sunday morning, 4 a.m. sort of book flights mad last minute dash. Why 4 a.m.? What were you? Because it was, it's one of these things, I mean, there was, you know, kind of it was all in the build up to trying to get over there for Monday, And then it was it wasn't happening on Saturday. And then on Sunday morning, he was on he was already back in Paris and he was texting her early. And

so then she woke up and there was all these kind of heat she'd been put on a text chain with his travel person and flights were being booked and all this craziness. My Sunday morning was chaos, but I said I can't go because I've got Steubenville, Ohio. It's amazing. London, Paris, Steubenville. That's right. That's right, that's good.

This is great. Yeah, so when did you move to America? Moved over in 2019. For marriage? Yeah, pretty much when I met. So Candice and I met in December of 2018 and we got engaged very quickly after 17 days. Thursday just looked up. What?

Yeah it was one of those things. It was very much a God thing. The Lord was in control of that whole process. And, I mean, it was quite a funny, the full story is quite entertaining. I mean, the full story was she, she actually came to London to do an event with the organization she was with at the time, which was called Turning Point. And even the buildup to that story is quite funny.

So she basically Charlie Kirk, who runs Turning Point, and Candice were kind of doing a speaking tour of the US and UK. You mean? No, this was this was still when they were in the US. Right. And she said to him one day, she was like, I feel that we should go and do some events in England, we should go and do some events in London. And Charlie sort of was like, okay, well, you know, we'd sort of, they'd sort of been thinking about doing something, or a sister organization in the UK. And so she then became very belligerent about it. And she, when she looks back on it now, she says I had no idea why I was so belligerent about going to the UK.

But there was this kind of great calling that she felt that we needed to go and do this event in London. We should get the Turning Point UK chapter on the map, etc. etc. And so Charlie got in touch, well she got in touch actually with some people in the UK and sort of said, hey, heads up, we're coming over in December of 2018. And that info was relayed to me, I was quite involved in British politics at the time. So it kind of made sense. I'd heard of her organization, her organization is called Blacksit, which is the black exit from progressive policies. And, you know, I was very involved in Brexit. So, you know, it was kind of like a synergy there. And she came over and she did this, we did this event, they did an event at the Royal Automobile Club in London in 2018, which was for about 300, I would say 300 to 400 people people and I was in the audience and I just

Something about her demeanor just kind of instantly struck me and it was It was very unusual. I remember messaging a friend of mine, you know a couple of days after it's just been like there's something different about This girl is something different about had you met her yet or just seen her from we'd shaken hands and that was it And then the next night I organized this dinner for a whole group of people. So it was her and Charlie as well and they actually turned up three hours late because they were doing a podcast in the countryside. And so when they came back into town it was kind of like three hours late but we sort of got to know each other a little bit better. And then the next week I flew over to the States to see her speaking at a conference in Florida. And nothing had been said. Like there'd been no romantic overtures at all at any of these, at any of this point. It had all just been very kind of above board and talking about politics

and engaging in kind of philosophical conversations. And then at the end of December we started, I called her a couple of times just to kind of chat and again you know just had these long like prolonged conversations which were mainly about politics and trying to understand what she wanted to do in life. And at the end of December, I was actually flying to South Africa at the time for New Year's and I called her and I just said, listen, I know this is completely crazy and we've just met, but how do you feel about getting married to me? Just real quick. I missed the bit where there was any sort of... There was literally nothing romantic had been said up to this point.

Okay. I mean, literally nothing, nothing romantic had been said up to this point. Okay. I mean literally nothing. So I missed nothing. We hadn't gone on a date, we had not talked about marriage or the future or anything like that. Alright. And I just, and she said yes. No.

Yeah. Come on. She did. That didn't happen. Yeah she... You're making it up. It's all fiction. Fake news. No, it was. This guy is not even Candice Owen's husband.

I thought it was weird that he would refuse to go to Paris. Who is he? What a strange thing. Some random guy that just pulled off the street and stood in his room. That's right. You called her up and said, how would you feel about getting married?

Were you nervous? Were you serious? Or were you partly expecting? Was this a pick-up line? No, I mean, no, I was a hundred percent serious. I mean, you know, I felt that there's a little bit of a story there also in relation to like the hand of God in all of this, which is that, you know, when I was first up to this point, I had been kind of, I would say, dormant in my faith and not really living a godly life, not really living a life which was meritus of being worthy, being called a Christian life really.

But I had been praying this prayer because I'd been saying to the Lord like, please can you show me the path before my feet? You know, what is this path that you, what is the path of my life? Where do you want me to end up? What do you want me to do? And in the aftermath of first meeting her, about a week later, I had this long car ride, some car journey where I was driving down to Devon, which is a county in England,

which is about three and a half hours outside of London and I remember having this very powerful vivid emotion kind of overwhelming sense of God speaking to me saying you are praying this you are asking for this so here is here is the path There are now two paths before your feet. There's the path that you've walked currently which is, you know, in many ways I would say like a life not lived for him, right? It was a life lived for me. And then there's a second path which I'm putting in front of you which is a life which you don't necessarily know the outcome of yet. You don't know where

this path is going to lead but this is the path that I'm putting before your feet and it's now up to you to choose it. And that car ride that I had, you know, kind of was formative in some ways because I just really, I felt this overwhelming sense of I have to act, this is it. This is that cringe-worthy moment that they talk about in in in all films where it's like you have to you have to choose

the the right path for you you know and um and so it was that kind of moment and I realized that God was speaking to me and and and so I called actually my dad at the time and I and I said to him I said I know this is crazy because next weekend is Christmas, but I'm going to fly to America tomorrow and go and spend some time at this conference where she was speaking at. I'm getting mixed up in the timeline. Was it after this car ride where you felt God speak to you that you then called her? So we met on December 11th. We had dinner on December 12th. It was about a week later on December 18th

that I had the car ride, the car journey. The next day I flew to the US. That was when we spent three days together just getting to know each other. Then I flew back to England for Christmas. I spent Christmas with my family. And then the week after Christmas was the week that I called her a couple of times,

started to get to know her. I said, hey, do you want to FaceTime? It was like, I was expecting like a 10 minute FaceTime. We ended up FaceTiming for like three and a half hours. And then on December 29th, I asked her to marry me. Wow. So that was the kind of, I mean it was crazy. I mean everyone thought I was mad. Everyone thought we were both mad. You know, I mean it was just nuts. Like my

parents were kind of like, what is this? You know, are you being serious kind of thing? And you know, one of my sisters was, she actually just laughed about the whole thing. She was just like, this is so not you, but it's also very you. And so she kind of, she came out with that line, which I thought was quite a funny way of putting it. And then, a lot of my friends kind of didn't believe it, or they sort of thought that I was trying to hoist something on them.

And then they kind of realized that I was being serious. And then a lot of them got on board. And then kind of, we didn't just sort of announce it to the world because it was too much for a lot of people to process. They just thought that it was like a joke. And so we kind of held back announcing it and I think we finally actually put something out about it kind of in February or something like that. But that was the kind of timeline that we went through. How long were you engaged for until you married? Eight months.

Eight months. Yeah, we got married in August of the following year. August when? August the 6th. Yeah, don't miss that out. August 12th for me, that's why I asked. Oh really? Yeah, 2006.

Oh wow, that's so cool. I had the pleasure of meeting your bride yesterday. What an unbelievable one. Yeah, exactly. So alright, so you were raised nominally Protestant, evangelical. Yeah. Yeah, so my upbringing was what's described in the,

I'm conservative evangelical. So my father was, he is a really big Christian. I mean, he's a conservative evangelical guy in the UK. He himself had a very kind of powerful religious experience which converted him when he was in his mid-30s. You know, he grew up in some pretty squalid conditions in post-war Britain, which was not a kind of great place to be. And he's spoken about this, I think, publicly as well.

So his testimony is out there but basically he kind of went to bed one night you know being kind of I would say an agnostic or a kind of you know atheist secular nominal secularist and he heard a voice call him in the middle of the night you know which said Michael just said his name. And he got out of bed and he just said, Lord, what must I do? You know, and he just knew straight away that that was God's voice calling him.

And so he, you know, much to kind of my mother's, I guess, you know, confusion the next morning kind of gets out of bed. He's like, I'm gonna go to church, you know, want to find a church that teaches the Bible and so, you know He walked into the church and one of the big churches in the city of London, which is the financial district of London called St. Helens St. Helens bishops gate and It's quite well known in in the UK as a kind of big evangelical church

it really found its footing and in the 80s under the evangelical church. It really found its footing in the 80s under the rectorship of this guy called Dick Lucas who's still with us in his 90s. He's a great man, very astute thinker. And he became fully committed to the Lord. I mean he just started, he wanted, I think my father would say that, you know, his belief in scripture, he doesn't want that to be any barriers between himself and, you know, kind of understanding God, right? And so, you know, he and I, I mean, this was obviously much later on, and there's much more to go in the story between now and then, but he and I talk about the Catholic Church, you know, quite some

quite a bit often, because he's I think I guess he's quite interested in why I converted to Catholicism. But he he he then became this Christian, you know, he started getting very involved in the church, started supporting the church in the UK quite quite vigorously. There's kind of two big movements in the church, started supporting the church in the UK quite quite vigorously. There's kind of two big movements in the UK, I would say in terms of the Protestant kind of quote unquote revival. So there's the charismatic movement, which is, you know, really spearheaded by a church in London called HTB, Holy Trinity Brompton. And the past there was a guy called Nicky Gumbel. And that's, they run the Alpha course and you know there's many, you know there's, there are

good people there, you know there are many good people there. But then there's a second kind of, I would describe that as the kind of what's traditionally termed as happy-clappy, you know it's like it's quite a lot more kind of arms in the air speaking in tongues. Which is a little different to the English temperament. Like here in America, it seems to make sense. Americans tend to be a little bit more colorful, loud, extroverted as a nation. Yeah. So it's not.

Yeah. Like, I mean, it's, it's very un-English. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, their services are kind of, I would describe them as intense. I had to pick a word. It's quite intense. But that was not the movement that he fell into. He came into the opposite, I mean not the opposite, but a few degrees of separation away is the St. Helens of the world,

but a few degrees of separation away is the St. Helens of the world, which it was very, it was kind of low church, I would describe it as like, I mean, the similarity in the US would be Baptist. That's the kind of denomination that it would classify under. And really, it, I mean, we went to church, you would sing a couple of hymns, then there would be a scripture reading. And then the majority of the service was the sermon. And the sermon would, you know, I mean, it was not unusual to push 35 minutes, you know, to 40 minutes. And so you're sitting there, people take notes, you know, it's kind of, it's just quite thirsty

writing down. But it's quite intense in terms of intellectual training, I guess. And that was the church I grew up in. That was kind of what I knew. I just didn't know anything else. I really just knew this style of scriptural understanding. And my day was formed as a boy of coming down in the morning. I would read the Bible with my father. I would pray with my father. You know, he gets up super early. You know, he would spend some time reading the Word of God

and then he would pray for a, I mean. What a beautiful example for a young boy. Yeah, and you know, the funny thing is, of course, is that I didn't know any different. So I just thought that this was perfectly normal. Like everyone. This is what all fathers do. Yeah, all fathers do this every day. Um,

and I guess it was kind of by the age of sort of seven. I remember getting into my first theological argument at school at the age of seven. Um, and, and I kind of knew there was something different about what we were doing just because of the fact that there was so many events which happened on Sundays in the UK, like sport events or get togethers. More often than not, sports were conducted on Sundays. And my parents always said, well, we don't do that. We go to church on Sundays. And so I remember raising this with a couple of my peers at the tender age of seven of seven, six, seven, eight.

And I was like, well, I can't come to sports on Sunday because we go to church on Sunday and they kind of looked at me quizzically as if there was something kind of wrong with that, with that analysis. So I remember about seven, eight getting into my first kind of arguments about it. And, you know, I still remember to this day day the first religious debate that I had at school, which was there was a Muslim guy in my class and I was in my class and he and I started getting into kind of like, you know, the tender age of seven thinking that we could settle the world's scores between Islam and Christianity. And we started arguing about it.

And what was, and I vividly remember it because what happened was the rest of the class, who clearly had not been kind of raised in a, soaked, I would say, in theology in the way that he had and I had, took offense at the idea that any religion could be exclusive in terms of its access to the Lord, right? And so to some extent both of us were pilloried by the rest of the class because... At seven? Yeah, they were like, well, you know, all the religions are a way to God. Yeah, that was kind of really arrogant to say that there could be one. Exactly, right. The idea that that ridiculous relativistic sort of cultural and religious indifferentm idea has permeated the heads of seven-year-olds

What does that say about the culture in which they were raised? I mean it says that it it is a great flag Waving you know kind of this is exactly where the UK is yeah I mean that is exactly where the UK is I mean spiritually your moral relativism has permeated the whole of society UK is, I mean, spiritually, you know, moral relativism has permeated the whole of society. And I, you know, I mean, I can talk endlessly about how the decline of faith in the UK in some ways is like a hallmark of the decline of Britain, right, I would say. And there have been plenty of politicians who said that. I mean, Thatcher actually famously wrote that in one of her books, Statecraft.

She talks a lot about how America, America's reliance upon faith has actually been kind of what has made it great in some ways. And Britain, the Church of England now is kind of like, I mean, you might as well just pick up a left-wing newspaper and read it. It's that bad. It will be exactly the same messages as you'll get from the pulpit. And church congregations are in a state of absolute, you know, that in, I mean, I wouldn't even say they're in decline, they're already dead. You know, I mean, it's just, it's completely

empty churches, church building shutting, you know, it's a generational thing. As the older generation, the kind of baby boomers, you know, pass away, they were really the last ones who held on to the Church of England as a kind of institutional church. What was it like when Pope Benedict gave Anglicans the ability to become Catholic? Were you in England? Was that a big thing in England in your circles? I mean, yeah, I mean, I would say that you've seen, I mean, you've seen just a huge movement of the clergy,

particularly from the Church of England to the Roman Church. And I think that's in part motivated by the decline of the Church of England, but it's also, I mean, it kind of comes back to the why are we Catholics? Like there has to be something in it. There has to be, you can't just say your church is declining, ergo, become a Catholic. You have to say, well, what doctrinally is attracting you to this, to this faith system. And you

know, Bishop Nazare Ali, who's now Monsignur Nazir Ali, who was the former Bishop of Lee, no, Rochester, sorry, under the Church of England. He was a very prominent bishop, raised in Pakistan, you know, became an Anglican priest, elevated to the Diocese of Rochester, at one point he was being touted as a future Archbishop of Canterbury, which is the kind of, you know, the premier diocesan rank in the Church of England. He converted and he's written several times about what drew him in, both from a moral perspective, but also from a doctrinal perspective. And I mean, Ratzinger set up the Ordinary at Our Lady of Walsingham to deal with the incredible number of clergy who were converting away from the Church of England. And that's been hugely successful. I mean, it's had hundreds of, I mean, maybe not hundreds, dozens, I would say, of priests and former bishops who have moved over. There

have been three bishops, I think, in the last I'm going to get this wrong now, but I think it's about the last two years who have converted to Rome and all former bishops of the Church of England. I mean it's it is a big move and there was kind of a little bit of a I guess people were kind of entertained. I mean theology doesn't dominate British life, you know, it just doesn't dominate British life. And in the same way that, for example, in the US, you know, like I would say that when I moved over here, one of the first things I noticed, I said this to my parents at the time,

was like being a Christian in America is just so much easier because it's so much more accepted in public life. And it's funny because I say that to Americans and they go, well, yeah, like you should have seen it 10 years ago when it was so much easier. Kind of thing. Yeah. And so there's this kind of constant feedback from, um, from Americans that

they, they thought it was much easier 10 years ago and you know, now it's got so much harder, but it is much easier than being a Christian in England because. Like there have been so many people in British public life who have really hidden their faith because they feel afraid of talking about it. And that is kind of, that's kind of like what it, you know, what it is in reality, like you can't get up there and say, you know, I'm a Christian or I'm a believer because you get pilloried by the world and the press. And so, I mean, Tony Blair famously is like one example, Ruth Kelly being another example.

Tony Blair obviously former prime minister for 11 years. Famously, his press officer, who was a guy called Peter Mandelson, he's now Lord Mandelson. He famously said, you know, we don't do God. And that was the new Labour government, which was in charge of Britain for 13 years. And he said, you know, we don't we don't do God in this government. And actually what was revealed afterwards, and Mandelson, Mandy, as his as he was nicknamed, Mandy came out afterwards and said, you know, Tony

Blair actually very much did do God. He just couldn't talk about it because he didn't want to. And Tony Blair became a Catholic. And Ruth Kelly, one of his senior advisors is, you know, I think she's a very well-known Catholic. She actually basically retired from public life because she said you can't really be a Catholic in government because the social teaching of the secular world in the UK prohibits you from being able to put into place Catholic social teaching. Am I right? I think I heard once

Catholics can't become Prime Minister in England. Is that still true? No, you can now. That was, you know, gosh, that's a history lesson right there. But there was something called the, I'm going to get, I'm always vulnerable to being fact-checked here, but I think it was the Test and Corporations Act of 18 something or other, 32, I want to say, which was basically the last limiting factor for Catholics to be members of Parliament. And so they were barred from becoming members of Parliament. And there were numerous pieces of legislation, particularly in the beginning of the 19th century. It was kind of, it was a sort of 1800 to 1850, kind of those 50 years were very much defined by

like the primacy of the Church of England trying to maintain its primacy in terms of its kind of influence over legislative politics in the UK. Catholicism was basically banned from, you know, in public life from the time of the the Jacobites and when Charles I had his head chopped off and James VI became king, you know, so that was kind of the fall out of that and it was basically a, you know, 250 year hangover from the Commonwealth with Oliver Cromwell being in charge. Well, and of course even before before that with the Tudors, where Henry VIII, of course, really in Elizabeth I's reign was when the primacy of Protestantism was kind of well established

in the UK. And ever since that time onwards, it just became exponentially harder for Catholics to have positions in public life. All right. So seven-year-old, you're debating a Muslim. So how did you start to think about Catholicism? Yeah, well, I mean, at that stage, so I started picking up that something was very different

just about me and about the way that I was being raised because faith was just not important to most people, most people of my age, you know, and I kind of realized that there was something not quite the same, you know, it was just a bit different. And so, you know, around, I continued to grow up in a home where, you know, regular church attendance was just a de facto norm of everyday life. Reading the Bible every day was a de facto norm of everyday life. Praying with my parents, we had grace before meals.

You know, my dad, his kind of nickname was the God Squad, you know, I mean, in the UK and the kind of financial circles that he moved in because him and his business partner or a couple of his business partners were all very strong Christians. And then I guess by the time that I kind of went to St. Paul's, St. Paul's is a big secondary school in England, you know, I was pretty, well I thought I was pretty well versed in kind of anti-catholic, like I can defeat the Catholic Church, you know, on all doctrinal points. And you know, kind of classic arrogance of a 12-year-old teenage boy who thinks he knows

everything. And there was a priest at St. Paul's. So St. Paul's is an Anglican school, but But there was a priest there, an Anglican priest, who what I would describe him as was like a high church Anglican, right, which is kind of Anglo-Catholic as it's called in the UK. And Anglo-Catholicism is, you know, there's for example, like he would genuflect when he walked into the church. This was something which was totally, totally opposite to how I grew up. He, the service that he conducted was done investments, again, something completely opposite to how I, how I grew up. And there's a kind of fun punchline to the story at the end of it, but without ruining the punchline, he, you know, he basically started defending Catholic viewpoints. So I walked into the classroom being like, this is it, yep, I'm good, I know the answers. And I started spouting off about, you know, he and I kind

of had quite a few classes together. And really by the kind of age of 15, I think I was in the thick of trying to defeat him on Catholic theology. Would you say at the age of 15, you had a living relationship with Jesus Christ and were trying to abstain from sexual impurity and things like this? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Wow. What a, what a grace.

You know, I mean, like all teenage boys, there's living in a major global city, you know, there's, there's temptations everywhere. But I definitely had a knowledge of the Lord. You know, I was, I was engaged in a... Yeah, I mean, I was definitely engaged in a living relationship with God at this point. And that would... I was battling with this question of Catholic theology. I was kind of baffled by how he had

started defending, for example, like sacramental theology. So, you know, I walked in and basically said, well, the sacraments deny the effects of grace. You know, like to say that you require the sacraments is an obstacle to knowing God. And therefore, like you can't, you can't be justified by, by if you require the sacraments, right? And this priest, his name is Patrick Orsopp, he, you know, I remember vividly having this conversation with him where he was just like, well, the sacraments are all about grace. They are actually exactly about grace. This is the whole point.

And I didn't really have an answer to this. You know, I didn't have an answer to any of these points that he raised because having been raised in a home that was, you know, I would say not anti-Catholic, I guess, but it was, I mean, it was anti-Catholic, but it was more just that Catholicism and Catholic teaching wasn't taught. Like, why would it be taught? You know, we were not Catholics. So why would it matter? And, you know, there was a kind of stereotypical view of Catholics, which was smells and bells and rituals, right, and, and an obsession with Mary. And so the there had never really been any coherent intellectual debate about Catholic

doctrinal points, it had all just been an echo chamber. And as a result when I walked in to start to try and attack the points that I had been raised in this echo chamber to attack, I had very little to fight back against when sound doctrinal arguments were put back to me, right? And this is what he started to do, this is what Father Allsop started to do. And that really kind of, in the same way that people who have profound religious experiences and people who have political conversions often become more zealous than anyone else. For me that was the first step. Were you processing this with your father at the time?

Yeah, I mean, I was I was asking a lot more questions by this point. So another like another very big thing, which I think is kind of is interesting, is that, you know, the process in my church, St. Helens, at the time, basically, you know, it's kind of like I started asking the question, I was like, well, what happened before the Reformation? You know, do we just, do we just believe that nothing happened before? Like, what happened

to Christianity for the first 1500 years? I was just, I was very inquisitive about this. And I kind of didn't shut up asking these questions. I'm like, well, and then what was funny was that there were a couple of Christian teachers who, like evangelical teachers, like those, I think I'm going to get his name wrong, but I think there's one called Gary Lennox, who gave a, I remember we went on Christian summer camp every year, which was for the whole family. And he gave a talk series on the early church or like on the on on the first 1500 years And what was I was so excited to listen to this series because I was like wow This is gonna answer the questions that I have about what happened before the Reformation

and What was funny was that he started off by saying, you know, like there I mean he basically started off by saying there were lots of Christians before the Reformation. It's just that you kind of had to, you have to seek them out. You have to kind of look into the writings of the bishops. And you did find quite a few Christians. And as soon as he sort of said that, it kind of triggered in my mind, well, hang on a sec. So what are we saying here? Like, and then all these questions, I mean, all the questions that so many Catholics I know have been through themselves when they have asked themselves these questions kind of started coming up. Because then, because

then he was saying that, you know, there were like bishops from 11th century Spain who were talking about the effects of grace and how justification by faith alone was, you know, was doctrinally sound and all this kind of, and as soon as he started saying this, I realized that there was, there was a Christian church before it. It wasn't that the church had just started in, you know, the date that Henry VIII decided that he wanted to get divorced from Anne Boleyn, you know, this was a Catherine of Aragon.

You know, he wanted to get married to Anne Boleyn, but it was, there was a church which existed before this. And now, of course, when I look back on it, it's kind of funny because that's a question that like, there's a book called Crossing the Tiber by Stephen Ray and you know Stephen writes in that book like the fundamental question that he as a former Baptist had was you know was the early church Catholic and then became Protestant. Was the early church Protestant and then became Catholic. And was the early church Protestant and then became Catholic? Right?

And that was kind of where I was. That was where my faith was at this point. I was like, well, hang on a sec. Was the early church Catholic or Protestant? And then for me, that elicited hundreds more questions. Have you heard of Peter Crave's question to his university professor? No, I haven't.

You know much about Peter Crave? I've listened to him on your show. Yeah, yeah really worth reading. He just, Jordan Peterson just interviewed him. It was the one time I wish Jordan Peterson would have spoken less. Just let Peter Crave shine. Did you watch that? Do you watch it? So good. So he's in a class with a professor and he says, all right so he just started learning about the Church Fathers. And so he says, okay, so you're telling me

if I got into a time machine, and he said, I still remember the way the professor looked at me, like he used some kind of sci-fi nut. If I got into a time machine and went all the way back, I would feel more comfortable as a Christian in the first, second, third century than a Catholic would. And the professor said, exactly.

And he thought, okay, good. So now all I gotta do is go back and read what these early Christians taught and I'll convince myself that they were all Calvinists and you know the rest of the story, he's a Catholic. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and that was kind of, so then what happened was I was,

by this point I was asking way too many questions to just be, I mean, and I mean, by this point I was asking way too many questions to just be on. I mean, and here I will kind of become a little bit more polemical about the Protestant Church, you know, because this is really where the answers started to fail, which was, like, the first thing which was that every time I kind of reached, every time I wanted to have these questions answered, they were effectively shut down because this was considered like, why is this relevant? Was the constant question which basically came back to me.

Like I remember. Is this from your dad? Who's saying this? This was from like study group leaders and youth group leaders and all the, and anyone who was kind of in a position of authority within like a very non-hierarchical church. You know, it was like the evangelical conservative movement doesn't really have a hierarchy. It's not officially, it's under the

Church of England. It's now under GAFCON, which is a separate breakaway group from the general synod of the Anglican Union. But anyone kind of within that church hierarchy started to push back on my questions because I was just interested. I mean, it wasn't like I was trying to be difficult. I was just asking relevant questions about what did happen in the first thousand years. And then once this door had been opened, other questions started to come in. For example, I mentioned this to you yesterday, but it was like the whole basis of my faith had been

scripture. Scripture alone and solid scripture and everything that you could possibly take was from the Bible. You didn't need anything else. And so I said, fine, if that's the truth, if that's the case, then why does the Protestant Church deny the real presence? Because Christ quite literally says, this is my body, this is my blood. He doesn't say this is a symbol of my body, this is a representation of my blood. He literally says this is my body and this is my blood. So I was now in a stage where I was using Protestant arguments to defeat Protestantism. I was saying, well, hang on a sec, this doesn't make any sense. If we are basis on scripture alone, then why are we denying what scripture

says? Because it doesn't say at any point this is a representation. So at this point, you know, I was kind of, my own mind was in rebellion against my own mind. You know, it was, it was, I was being thrown left, right and center. And of course, you know, fundamentally kind of behind all of this, there was this, you know, one of my religious studies teachers at school, Father Rulsot was, was I guess not pushing,

but he was answering many of, was, I guess, not pushing, but he was answering many of these questions that I had, but not with the answers that the Protestant Church was giving. So he was answering them with Catholic answers to questions about Catholic doctrinal issues and the first thousand years and all this kind of stuff. Do you know any Catholics at this point in your life? No. I knew one. I'm still friends with him to this day.

Your age or? Yeah, my age. That's right. And he was a Greek Catholic. And, you know, I was sort of plugging, it was kind of funny, actually. I mean, that's, that's the kind of side story, but he, he and I had always clashed about this. And I kind of mocked him for his Catholicism. You know, have mercy on me Lord. But, you know, I was kind of mocking him consistently. I was like, oh, you just, you know, smells and bells rituals, the rosary, you know, and, and then I sort of started to ask more questions to him and kind of, I was like, well, hang on a sec. Like what do you believe? Like what do you actually believe? Like, well hang on a sec, what do you believe?

What do you actually believe? Because I actually don't know what you actually believe. I realized that I didn't really know what he believed. I think it's a good thing to realize that if another person's position seems ridiculous to us, there's a good chance that we don't understand that position. It doesn't mean people don't hold ridiculous views, but if people have thought out their views,

they usually have reasons to believe the things that they do, reasons that you might be able to sympathize with, if not go all the way with. And I think that's just a good lesson. I mean, it's easy to sit here as Catholics and say, why don't the Protestants understand us or something like that. But of course we do the same thing. It's just a much easier way since you don't have the time to investigate every religion you wish to dismiss, nor are you called to do that. I think we'd be an impossible feat. So we do just sort of dismiss things that we don't wanna have to engage.

But then when you get somehow inserted into that world, either through questioning your own worldview or the witness of someone from that particular worldview, that's when you start to take these things a little bit more seriously, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, I was know, I suddenly was very interested in what he actually believed. And then on the, you know, then there was also more doctrinal issues which started raising it. I mean, you know, there were two other kind of things that really started making themselves

feel present in my life, which was one, the idea of church unity. And... in my life, which was one, the idea of church unity. And... How was the Church of England taught in history class in England, in a Protestant school? I mean, I'm sure it's a long story, but just sort of sum it up for us. I mean, how, because from our point of view, it's like you've got this king, he was like really horny

and had a bunch of wives and one of this other one couldn't get an annulment, started a church. Like, is that how it's... I mean, that's pretty much... Yeah. I. Yeah and maybe several but like yeah. He had wonderful calves. Do you know this? No. This is something about Henry the Eighth that is often taught like it was it was considered a medieval England or like kind of like the Renaissance, the late medieval period you know to promote your calves. Okay. It was like a this was a symbol of your kind of masculinity.

His calves were mooing. Henry VIII had massive calves and this was considered to be like a sign of his masculinity. But yeah, is there a more sophisticated story that gets offered to little Protestant English boys? No, no, good. I mean, there is a kind of, I guess there is an attempt to kind of justify the basis of the church, you know,

in the grand schema of the Protestant Reformation across Europe. So, you know, obviously kind of the rise like Luther, it's kind of attempted to kind of squished into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, you know, it's kind of like a- Makes it a little bit more respectable if it's about doctrine.

Exactly, that's right, yeah. And the corruption of the church. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a makes it a little bit more respectable if it's about doctrine. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. And the corruption of the church. Yeah, corruption of the church. I mean that that is something which you know was very is quite frequently taught like how heinously corrupt the Catholic Church was you know and and obviously you know Luther in the back end of that was obviously rebelling in many ways against what he perceived as the corruption of the church. And so Henry VIII is kind of slotted into that,

kind of like, here's one we did earlier, you know, kind of neat package. Yeah, I'm with them, what they said. Exactly, that's right. Shut up, Henry. Yeah, I mean, but of course, you know, in many ways, people can see through it, obviously, because he had six wives.

I mean, the man was a serial philanderer. He obviously was not a devout man, I mean, even though he is actually taught as somebody who really did respect the church, respect the Catholic church. Defender of the faith was a title the Pope gave to him, because he wrote a book defending Luther's errors. That's right.

And not defending, attacking Luther's errors. And he, you know, and of course, never has a son of the church fallen so far, you know? I mean, he just divorced and then proceeded to execute, you know, numerous Catholics and bishops who defied him. And, you know, obviously had Thomas Moore executed. And it was just, I mean, kind of a horrendous track record on the back, on the back end, the bat nine.

So, so, yeah, he kind of. But that is how it's really taught. You know, there's not really much nuance to it because it's kind of it is what it is. I mean, people can see through it. Like you wanted to hang about. You wanted to get married to this girl Who was you know kind of parading around in front of you in your court? So you but you had a legitimate Catholic wife You know

There's not really much more to it than that. There's not kind of much more sophistication than that So there isn't a kind of I would say there's a vague attempt to try and justify it in the light of the Reformation. But most history teachers, most history teachers that I was taught by weren't people of faith themselves. Right. So as a result, they don't make any attempt to justify what he did through the lens of faith. Right. They just say, this is exactly what it says on the tin. You know, he, he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. That's it. So, and of course that in turn raises more questions about what is the Church of England?

I showed you that meme yesterday, which is just like, can I divorce my wife? No, that's bad. Okay, watch this, the Church of England. It's just, and that's kind of where we ended up. I'm gonna slap you this, Neil, and if you can throw it up, because it's that good. Yeah, but I mean, the other,

that was, in some ways, my parents and kind of the faith background that I grew up in, was not really like a, they weren't really denominational, if you know what I mean, right? They kind of said, I always used to ask them this, I'm like, what denomination are we? And they would just say, well, we're conservative evangelical, and I mean, right? They kind of they kind of said I always used to ask them this I'm like what denomination are we and they would just say well, we're conservative evangelical, you know I said well, does that mean that we're part of the Church of England and they were like well

Not really, you know, maybe a little bit, you know If we had to be defined by something it was kind of the Church of England that we were defined by but really they didn't Sit within denomination. My parents to this day are still very you know, like I would describe them as non-denominational in many ways, right? Which is why they're closer in some ways to the kind of Baptist organization in America, which is very low church and very kind of in some ways non-denominational, right? The Southern Baptists. I just sent it to you there. Do you see that? There is some, I, this, so now that he's throwing it up, I'll explain how I laughed out loud this morning. Because last night you sent me this image and I'm like, yeah, yeah, that looks fine.

I didn't, because we were with Scott and in his wonderful basement library, so didn't have time to, and then I opened it up this morning and I looked at it and man, is it on screen? Isn't that funny? That font just screams. Church of England.

The Church of England. I don't know how. Memes are something, the internet. Yeah, that's amazing. The Church of England. I don't know how. Memes are something, the internet. That's amazing. The deep memes. The Church of, okay. The deep memes.

All right. Yeah, yeah. So. Yeah. But I mean, that was, you know, really, because I was brought up in, because every time we pushed, I kind of pushed the denomination question on them. They kind of came back and said, you know, like, we don't really subscribe to denominationalism. Yeah, it's really whether we kind of are you a Christian or not? Like, are you a believer or not? Right. And as a result,

you know, the Church of England itself was kind of like a by a by thought, you know, as a as a young as a young man in England, you know, it wasn't really something where I kind of thought, oh, I'm a member of the Church of England, it was just something that was there, I guess. The justification for the doctrinal beliefs that they held were far more linked to Luther than they were to the act of supremacy under Henry VIII, right? So that was like Luther and Calvin were far bigger in the minds, in kind of the mind's eye of my church as a child than say like, you know, the leading bishops of the Church of England, you know, I would say that Calvin, Calvinism, Calvin, Zingweley, you know, all the all the kind of major reformation

theologians were much more prominent in terms of Protestant thought from where I grew up than say like Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy or anything to do with the early Church of England when it was originally founded. That kind of links back to the Church unity thing, which was another huge question at this point in my mind, which was just that how Paul writes in his letters, you know, you must be a unified church. Like this is very important to the New Testament Scriptures. And so again, kind of coming back to the same point about how did one, I was using scripture to defeat Protestantism, right?

And this is kind of what I was, because I was looking at the Protestant world and you've got like 28,000 denominations and you've got all of these different groups. And I kind of, I was asking myself, I was like, hang on a second, are we saying that the people who are saved in this world are only like the 1200 people who go to St. Helens on a Sunday? You know, that kind of, it just seemed a very narrow scope of salvation, right? So the soteriological claims of kind of-

That is one thing I think I would have found compelling against Protestantism is this confusion around the way in which we're saved. So baptism, you know, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, it's like you've got the Calvinists are baptizing babies and that baptism is effective for the elect. You have Baptists who don't baptize babies. You have all sorts of manner of view about baptism. It's like 2000 years after Christ and we

still aren't, we haven't nailed that one down. Yeah. So you got all these Protestants going off the same book and coming up with, that just seems so unlikely if God was to guide the church into old truth and away from old error that we would be confused about that fundamental thing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean again, you know, coming back to the baptism thing, which is a great point, you know, unless you are baptized with water and spirit, you shall not enter the kingdom of God. It's like, I don't know how much clearer you can be.

I mean, I genuinely don't know how much you have to you have to be. But yeah, there's so much debate over the sacrament. Or in St. Peter's letter, baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of so. And again, all of these areas that I was using scripture to defeat the Protestant argument that none of this was important, right? And so the church unity thing was huge in my mind because that was just massive in terms of like, how can we be saying that there's just so much of the Christian world like the alleged Christian world which is not saved you know you're writing off you're writing off the whole of Catholicism you're

writing off the whole of Eastern Orthodoxy as not even Christian right which was kind of is that the view you held oh yeah pretty weren't even Christian yeah they were they were they were Christian in name only you know like nominalism basically. So there was that kind of huge area which started looming very big in my mind. And that was a big driver of me towards the faith. And then the other kind of big area was that there's a verse in Hebrews which talks about when you were a child, you were fed milk and when you grew up, you became a man, you ate adult food.

I'm paraphrasing here, obviously. But, and then Paul writes, you know, but when you were infants in your faith, I fed you spiritual milk, but now you require spiritual food. And this passage was like, you know, just, I remember it hitting me because I was thinking like, I've reached a limit of everything that I can know under This branch of church teaching. I'm coming up against all these roadblocks

They there's no answers for what happened to Christianity before the Reformation. There's no concept of Christianity They're not even interpreting Scripture using Scripture to confirm what Scripture says There's no church hierarchy. like where's the central authority? You know, there's no concept of apostolic succession. Like, you know, even things like in the Acts of the Apostles where, you know, the handkerchief and the shadow, you know, are being used to cure people. Well, like his great example of relics, you know, like there is there is a clear definition of sainthood of relics All of these doctrinal Catholic points

I mean at this point I was you know I I was basically already there but were you reading Catholic books at this point or just asking questions? So I started to read Catholic books. What was the first book you remember reading? So the fuck I mean I Went straight in with the heavy stuff. I mean I Cardinal Ratzinger a principles of a Catholic theology one. It's the first one I mean, I went straight in with the heavy stuff. I mean, I, Cardinal Ratzinger, a principal of the Catholic theology, was the first one that I read. Wonderful. Is this when you were at Oxford? This was just before I was at university. So this was when I was 17. And, you know, I was just like,

okay, we're going to go straight in with the heavy guns. You know, I was like, I want, I want, I knew this guy, I didn't know much about Cardinal Ratzinger at the time, or Pope Benedict, as he was then. But I just knew that he was supposed to be a preeminent theologian within the church. And that was kind of what I had heard about him. And by the way, you know, he was I forget what year his election was, was it 2004? I think it was 2005. Yeah, five, Five was it? Yeah around then so and I just remember thinking like, you know again here was this great contrast like great contrast between a man who is being widely touted as like a heavyweight Catholic intellectual theologian and like the flip side being all of these questions that I couldn't get answered

So I just thought maybe he's got some answers. And so I started reading his work and that was kind of like, I mean by that point I was there, you know, I mean it was just... Had you attended Holy Mass at this point? No, I hadn't. I was too frightened to go to Mass. I used to go, well so that's, I mean I had gone to Mass and I had just sat at the back of the church. So Westminster Cathedral, which is the mother church of England really, I mean, it's the one where the- The coronation takes place.

Well, no, that's Westminster Abbey, right? But Westminster Cathedral is the big Catholic cathedral in London, right beside Westminster Abbey. And it's where the cardinal, traditionally the UK cardinal has his seat. And that was not, was that given back to the Catholics? It was built by the Catholics in, in the 19th century. So kind of like at the height. So England's Catholicism is quite a funny story because basically in the late, I mean, obviously John Henry Cardinal Newman, you know, very,

basically in the late, I mean, obviously, John Henry Cardinal Newman, you know, very, you know, Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, very well-known Catholic thinker, but his original movement, the Oxford movement, as it was called, you know, was actually a revival of the Church of England, right? And this is kind of not that many people understand this. It was traditionally considered to be like an area

where people were trying to get to understand the Church of England more. And then what happened was he became a Catholic. And this kind of shook. I mean, it was seismic. I mean, it's funny to think now, like, I always like these little kind of anecdotes from history, but like, just how much faith played a role in the mind of generations before us. You know, like I studied Byzantine history when I was at university and like, there's this great story and I'm sure it's familiar to many people, but like, there's some big monastery in Constantinople at the time and one of the monks wants to go down to the market to get a loaf of bread.

And it's kind of in the mid of the Nestorian crisis, you know, the Nestorian kind of councils. And he basically gets mobbed on his way to the market by this crowd of people arguing about the nature of Christ. You know, I'm just like, and yeah, you know, we've got like Lizzo twerking, you know, nowadays. It's just like, it's at the country. And we, and we claim that we're getting smarter

as a human race. I'm just like, well, hang on a sec. You've got a crowd of, I've got an angry mob in Constantinople arguing about the dual nature of Christ. And now we've got like, you know, TikTok. You know, it's just kind of like this chasm of intellectual thought between where we were then

and where we are now. And, but Westminster Cathedral was built in the latter half of the 19th century because England went through this great Catholic revival, And, but Westminster Cathedral was built in the latter half of the 19th century because England went through this great Catholic revival, which was really the first time that England had had a Catholic revival for almost 400 years, 300 years. And it was led by John Henry Cardinal Newman at the time. And so he kind of spearheaded that movement. But Westminster Cathedral is this beautiful

Byzantine style church in London. I mean, it's very dark. It kind of reminds me a little bit of St. Mark's in Venice, which is one of my favorite churches. And I went and sat in the back of Westminster Cathedral and just kind of sat there for many, like I prayed a rosary for the first time I didn't even I kind of didn't even know what I was doing. I had to kind of look up how to do it

You know, I I Went I sat at the back of the church. I watched the mass Several times I was trying to understand what was going on and for me that was just kind of It just felt I felt at home almost straight away. I remember the first time I realized how similar the high Anglican liturgy was to Holy Mass. I was in Adelaide looking for a church shortly after my conversion and so still didn't know a lot of things.

I showed up at this cathedral, so I thought, well that's Catholic. And so I went in and I was kneeling and thought, it's funny they had a British flag. It's just different, you know? And then a woman came out and went, nope, and I'm going in the vestments. Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, yeah, the Church of England. I mean, that's a, see, it's funny that like so many English churches have like, churches have got British flags in place of the tabernacle. They've got pictures of the armed forces. It's funny because it is a national church. When I look back on it now, I guess it must have seemed, in some ways, the Church of England

– and this is kind of a bit of a meta thought really – but in some ways the Church of England is like, it's a great symbol for, like it's a great litmus test of England. And that sounds, I'll sort of go into a bit more detail, but it sounds ridiculous to say that, but the Church of England's ascendancy as a church was directly linked with England's ascendancy as a world power. And in turn, its decline has been you know like with the Church

of England's decline yeah England has declined alongside the Church of England. When you first prayed the Rosary were you afraid of offending God? No not at all. Because I think there's probably a lot of Protestants out there who are open to Catholicism and there's that big hurdle which is namely Mary and devotions to her and they might be attracted to the Rosary but afraid of being attracted to it, they might want to pray it but don't want to offend God. How did you overcome that obstacle? Yeah, I mean, it comes back again to the early church for me. I was finding all these answers in the early church to questions that I didn't, to questions,

some of the questions I didn't even know were questions until I realized that I had these questions in my heart. Again, it came back to that kind of early church. So the Theodicus of the council of Chalcedon, I think it is, in 452, which basically says, well, and it made perfect intellectual sense to me. At this point I was kind of reading about Mary, it was the early days of the internet, I was just kind of downloading as much information as I could from wherever I was,

reading books, trying to understand, engaging with as many Catholic people as I could find to engage with. And I just remember reading about the Theodicus and it made sense to me if Christ's nature is truly God and truly man then surely it must be accurate to say that Mary gave birth to God, right? So she must be the mother of God, right? And so that argument was so blindingly self-evident in its logic that I just had no argument against it. And I was like, okay, that makes absolutely perfect sense to me. Of course, Christ can't be divided in nature. This is exactly what the early church was talking about. And so as a result, you have to say, well, that truly must therefore mean, as the early church proclaimed, that Mary was the mother of God,

which means that devotion to Mary is a sound part of doctrinal and Catholic teaching, which makes perfect sense to me, because you are asking for the intercession of Mary as the mother of God to carry the prayers to the feet of her son. So, you know, this made, again, there was nothing which I was coming up against which raised any significant intellectual barriers to me. I wasn't thinking like, I mean, the first thing that I was coming up against which raised any significant intellectual barriers to me. I wasn't thinking like, I mean, the first thing that I was easy to, I mean, the real presence I was already basically,

I mean, the real presence in my opinion was just the easiest thing to understand. So for me, I became Catholic in 2000 when I was 17, and I came back and the only people my age who were enthusiastic in their love for Jesus Christ were my evangelical friends or those who I had met in my small little town. And so I was hoping we could kind of get together and kind of share this beautiful faith and then they started sort of questioning the certain things I did.

And I remember like, because I didn't know much about my faith at the time, unfortunately. And so in my mind, the only kind of scriptural reference I could point to to these Protestant friends who defend the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was, what is it Luke 22 something, this is my body, this is my blood. Which is good enough but I had no idea about John 6. Like I just I don't think I ever read it. And so I remember picking up the Bible one day and reading him say like, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you. And I just was shocked that that even existed in the Bible. And then I

wondered if they even had that in theirs and was shocked that they did have it in theirs and still found, they still found the Catholic belief so, yeah, so absurd. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, just I was was I was I was being dwarfed by this weight of intellectual Catholic thought at this point, you know, I was just being crushed underneath any crushed by the Catholic Church, you know, it's like destroyed by the Catholic Church. Do you have like Catholic interlocutors at this point? Like you had that one friend, but do you have others who are trying to argue into the faith? Or is it just you, Ratzinger,

and your rosary at the back of Westminster Cathedral? Well, by this point, I was transitioning from secondary school to university and to Oxford. And, you know, talk about a fast track to faith. I mean, it was, like Oxford as a place is, I would say, the beating heart of kind of English theological thought, you know, it's the kind of center, it's the center of the faith. There's several monasteries there, there's, you know, there's...

Duns Scotus was there. Yeah, that's right, yeah. You know, like Blackfriars is a Dominican monastery in the middle of the town, there's a Benedictine house there, there is,. There is a house run by the Jesuits. There's a house run by Opus Dei. There's all these different groups who have centers there. It must be amazing to be there. Yeah. And it's also, by the way, the heart of Anglican thought as well. There's Christ Church Cathedral. The University Cathedral is literally Anglican and it's

in the middle of Christchurch. And most of the colleges, you know, have chapels on them, all of which are pretty much Anglican. So, you know, it was kind of the first time that you were not surprised to see monks walking down the road, which, you know, was kind of a real novelty in England because there aren't that many monasteries after Henry VIII destroyed them all. So, So you know you just see like some Benedictines walking down the road you're like oh wow a Benedictine. Yeah. You just never really see a Benedictine. Yes. And so by that point I was kind of deep in inquisition territory and I contacted the Catholic Chaplaincy

of the University of Oxford and reached out to them and I wanted to and I basically I contacted the Catholic chaplaincy of the University of Oxford and reached out to them and I sent an email which I wish I still had it, but I basically said something like, I want to become a Catholic, how do I become a Catholic? And they replied and said, well you should start the RCIA. And so I started attending weekly sessions of the RCIA and being trained by the Jesuits at the time actually and again I knew nothing about the Catholic Church so I just was like give it all to me give it you know whatever it whatever can happen and and that was kind of the first step well that was beginning I guess the end of the beginning you know know, and, and it was, so did you have Protestant friends at the time? Yeah.

And did you engage with them? Yeah, I did. Argue with them or did you just sort of drift apart into more Catholic circles? Yeah, we drift. I mean, really it was a drift, you know, like there was a, there was a drift. I mean, Oxford's a funny place in that regard because you're kind of thrust into the middle of so many different groups of denominations. Like, you know, I was taking classes with Anglo Catholics and with, you know, people who went to St. Ebbs, which is a really strong evangelical church in Oxford, and St. Aldates, which is the charismatic one. And, you know, I was kind of being thrust

into classes with all of these different people. And there's a kind of great transition period in that time when you were still finding friends. And many of my friends at that time were Anglicans who actually also ended up becoming Catholics. So there were about three or four of us who went over to Rome at the time. And it was almost a hallmark. I mean, it kind of, it was like, here's one we did earlier.

You know, here's another guy who's becoming a Catholic. And so there were quite a few of those who started coming over to Rome. And yeah, I took instruction for a year and then I became, and it helped that I was doing theology. So I mean, I was studying theology as an undergrad. And they that obviously was answering quite a few of my questions anyway, because my specialty was the church, kind of patristic period, early church,

you know, kind of medieval medieval period. And I wanted to do a bit on the Eastern Church as well. So I did a module on Byzantine church history and early Syriac Christianity, which linked him very well with the patristic period. And that was just fantastic because, you know, here was what little research I'd done already had been, was now just being complemented by this overwhelming body of thought from Tertullian to Origen to St. Ignatius, you know, to all these early church fathers who were writing about the real presence and baptism being crucial

and all the kind of doctrinal points that I had really never engaged with and suddenly, and I think as Cardinal Newman said, to study history is to become a Catholic, right? That was the point where it was just, I was like, this makes so much more sense to me. Or at least is, yeah, the nuance I suppose, at least is to cease to be Protestant.

I remember I did a deep dive into the teachings on the Eucharist and when that started to, different opinions and when they started to form. And I just, I was shocked at just how solid the patristic evidence is on the Eucharist, not to mention the biblical evidence I did a debate with Cameron Batuzzi, which is online somewhere on YouTube and my thought to him was like listen like you Maybe you don't have to become Catholic given what we're about to discuss

But you cannot you cannot hold to this sort of Baptist view of the Eucharist I mean, obviously there are many different views of the Eucharist within Protestantism. Maybe you can adopt one of them, maybe you have to become Orthodox, but you've got to give up this merely symbolic Baptist view. So did you get confirmed in Oxford? Yeah, confirmed in 2009 by the Bishop of Oxford. So how did you, presumably you said you knew Candice for 17 days before you proposed to her? I presume you were were you a faithful Catholic at this point? No, not really. I mean, I kind of at that point, after I became

confirmed, I, I sort of I guess to some extent, I was kind of intellectually exhausted by the whole process. There was also a There was also a, there was no doubt that it was, it was like controversial, I would say, in my family. Like, I mean, you know, I didn't tell my parents about it. I didn't tell my parents about being confirmed. You know, I was very frightened about doing that. And, you know, I kind of, I mean, my, one of my sisters is a missionary. You know, she kind of, it's a one of my sisters is a missionary. It's a big part of my family's life. She's a big part of that. I mean, my father is very well known in the UK for his outwardly strong proposition

of evangelical conservatism. And he talks about it frequently in his political life and his business life. He doesn't really give business talks about business, he gives business talks about Christianity, that's kind of what he's known for. That's interesting, that you would come to faith, get confirmed after this long intellectual study.

I would think you'd just be like basking in the sunshine of like Catholic fellowship and the sacraments. How long did that last until you started to drift away? I guess I kind of, once I finished I kind of was like okay now I'm there. You know I've crossed the Tiber, I'm done. You know I don't need to worry about this anymore. Were you still attending Holy Mass? Yeah very infrequently. It actually became less frequent after I became confirmed, which was strange. And then I really I just drifted off into the world. I started leading a very worldly life. I went into the city of London in finance. I went into investment

banking. I went into the hedge fund world. That world is not a spiritual world. It's a world which is run and operated by... The love of mammon.% you know and and I actually remember my first interview in investment banking it was quite funny like that that the he was a very senior banker who was in bed who is interviewing me and he He said to me he was like so he was American He was like so you studied theology, and I was like and I was like yeah, that's right. He was like great well from from God to Mammon.

And then I was like, okay. And he was like, you know, back to the real world kind of thing. And he and I actually got on very, very well, but it was just, that interview always stuck with me because, you know. He was right. Yeah, it was.

I mean, that was exactly what it was, you know. And I guess my dad who had been in finance in the UK, very successful financial career, had almost distinguished his financial career from other people's by being this active Christian in business. And he had made a hallmark of his life by being a Christian in business.

I mean, he went to church very frequently, you know, often three times a week. You know, he would lead a Bible study, two Bible studies a week, you know, all this. And for him it was everything. But I kind of thought that, I guess by this point, I was both frightened of exposing myself as a Catholic by this point, which made me more reticent to kind of say anything about it. I just was like, okay, you know what? I'm just done with all of this.

And it was almost too exhausting to do it. You know, it was just like, I was too frightened of the reaction, of the ridicule. You know, I didn't have the courage that I should have had. And so I drifted off into the world and started leading a worldly life and all that that entailed as a young man in London

And then really it was you know what I talked about earlier was that was yeah, this is the two road thing You're talking about earlier. Yeah, I went to my first confession You know and I was just like it was one of those okay. Yeah first confession in England No, this was actually in the states by this point. Okay, how did that go? Yeah, it was- What exactly did you confess? I'm sorry. I'll just, give it to me right now.

I mean, it was one of those confessions where, you know, you walk in and it was like, bless me Father, for I have sinned, it's been X number of years. Buckle up. Yeah, since my last confession. And I think the priest, he was an elderly priest on the other side of the confessional was just. He kind of took a breath.

Yeah, he was like, sharp inhalation. And actually, I mean, he was, you know, and I said, listen, I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, I mean, I didn't say that exact words, but I said something like that because I just, so throughout this time of drifting away from the faith and engaging, I mean, you sort of alluded to it by saying the sorts of things a young man in London may fall into. So I, I'm presuming you're talking about relationships. Yeah,

that's what I think. So were you never then tempted to, uh, redefine your Christianity to be able to include your fornication? Because that's the coward's way out, it seems to me, but it's the way that seems most convenient. It's like, well, if I want to remain Christian and I wish to fornicate and engage in all these things, then this I'm not Catholic

or I'm a special type of Catholic or I'm- Oh yeah, 100%. But you never- No, I did that the whole time. Oh, you did do that. then this I'm not Catholic or I'm a special type of Catholic or I'm... Oh yeah, 100%. But you never... No, I did that the whole time. Oh, you did do that. I mean, I totally rewrote Christianity to fit my worldview.

Interesting. To the point that did you ever want to kind of stop being Catholic and maybe join the Anglicans? I mean, I just kind of, I would accept whatever was necessary for me to feel good about myself. Yeah. Right, with no intellectual challenge, challenging of that.

Right. And so I just kind of, I was fully on board with redefining Christianity. And in my, in the back of my head, you know, I mean, it's pathetic now. And I, and I kind of look back on it with such disgust, but you know, in the back of my head, I, I was basically saying, well, you know, I was resurrecting the Protestant argument that like justification by faith alone. And in the back of my head I was like, well, I still believe that Christ was the son of God. So therefore I'm good enough. And I was kind of like, well, that's all I need. So I was kind of back in the ways of my early years

where I was kind of justifying myself through, I wasn't attending church, I wasn't attending Holy Mass, I wasn't going to confession, I would, you know. Do you want a lighter? I have a lighter over here. Here Thursday, you wanna pass him one? For those who are watching, we have two men behind the cameras,

oh, you come here, just in case, and they're trying to light cigars with unsuccessful yeah yeah but you know and actually that first and still to this day I find the sacraments of reconciliation to be like one of the I mean I would that was another thing again in my mind another doctrinal point because Paul writes about confession and he says confess your sins to one another. Like I found that to be hugely powerful and I still to this day like you know Saint Joseph Maria talks about this as well where he talks about like he I think he describes it in one of his in one of his books that he like loved confession. I mean, he bounded into confession with eternal joy,

because he wanted to have this reconciliation. And I kind of, I remember going to this first confession and just feeling this, I mean, it was overwhelming. It was just the power of confession is so tatemic. It's like, it crushes you, because you just feel this relief and you, I mean I was just like, what am I doing? What am I, the light's kind of-

It's like you get sobered up. Yeah. You're like, what was I doing? I mean like, what have I just done? Yeah. Like what have I done? I have lived a life which the Lord is totally unhappy about but he still loves me and his mercy is greater

than my worst sin and his mercy rolls on for generation to generation And there's a passage in the Psalms. It's like the steadfast love of the Lord is renewed every morning Yes, and as far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our transgressions from us that's right and and I just felt like good is that let's just pause and bask in that for a moment. Isn't that wonderful? How good is that? Let's just pause and bask in that for a moment. Isn't that wonderful? Therese of Lisieux, who I'm fond of quoting and since we just celebrated her feast day, compared the most grievous

sins of the most grievous sinner to a drop of water flicked into the raging furnace of God's mercy. I mean just breathe everybody who's watching. know if you're if you're a woman watching And you've had an abortion if you're a man living in a homosexual lifestyle You know if you've committed murder or patricide or you had multiple abortions All of that the most shameful the most criminal things we've done Drop of water God's mercy ragingick it in, get to confession. Yeah, you're not that special. Your sins will not extinguish his mercy. Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to God, glory to Christ. I mean, and that was just something I remember, that emotion of just power and also just I was so afraid to go to confession. I just I was so...

You were that one time or? Yeah that first time. I mean I was just I was so frightened. I mean I was just like I didn't even know what I'm doing. I remember the confession I had given before that and then I you know it had been years ago and then I went to this first and I was just was just shaking when I went into the convent. Were you married at this point? No, this was before we were married. Before you met? No, before we were married.

Married, sorry. So what was it like, if you don't mind, if this isn't too personal, what was it like about to marry a woman who, from my understanding, I don't know, she wasn't a Christian or isn't a Christian. She's a believer. She was raised as a... Again, you don't have to get into anything. No, it's fine.

I'm not trying to. We talk about faith the whole time. Was that problematic then? Like looking at marriage and now having this renewed Catholic faith? Yeah, I mean, it was kind of an interesting... Yeah, I mean, it was something which I had to really start to grapple with at this point. You know, it was kind of like asking myself all these questions, like what do I do about

this now? What do I do about this elephant that has just come back into my room? How will we raise our children? Exactly. A lot of people are in this situation. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, so Candice and I talked about it and, you know, she agreed that raising our children Catholic was

was something that she was on board with and she herself you know has read many Catholic books and she's attended mass with me she's never received of course but she she's come with me before and and that's you know and I so how did you where did you get married we got married we actually got married under an Anglican priest because I don't think my parents would have accepted a Catholic wedding. And so we then had the marriage radically sonated by the church. And so that made it acceptable in the eyes of the church.

So that made it acceptable in the eyes of the church. And that was kind of perceived as somewhat of a compromise, I guess, between most of my parents' beliefs, my parents' friends. And at the time also, it wasn't just that I was trying to compromise. It was also that I was only just rediscovering my faith, right? the faith that had been from for many years so important it had been everything to me and Then I suddenly was rediscovering this faith So I was I also wasn't kind of I wasn't pushing a Catholic service because at this time I was I was sure kind of rediscovering what I was going through and and you know

It wasn't as important to me at that point as it was gonna become you know and then suddenly it kind of went through this exponential like growth explosion where I just was like what like you know kind of when you start asking yourself the questions then it just becomes everything and and then that fire ignited within me and then I was just like the Lord is with me yeah it's like okay was there was there a fear that you would drift away the way you did when you were confirmed or was this a different experience?

No, it was different. It was different at this point. I mean, in some ways it's, and it's never turned off. So am I thinking kind of like in your teenage years or when you were a boy, there was this love and heart relationship with our Lord if you want, became very intellectual, drifted away. It sounds like the second time it was like the heart our Lord if you want became very intellectual drifted away It sounds like the second time it was like the heart and head if you want. Yeah came together

Yeah, there was a yeah, I was it was it was the heart of it was the heart of mercy You know, it was the heart of Christ which he it was the praise God the heart on fire, you know And and and that was suddenly I just like, you know, I've had more Just emotional moments. I guess just sitting like I get hit by these I mean, I was saying to Candice the other day like she's driving somewhere I was driving back from Mass actually and and I just got kind of Smashed in the face by this vision of the first time that I'm gonna meet Christ You know and that the beatific vision of the kind of angelic court with billions of people praising his name.

I just got kind of, you know, I was just driving along and suddenly there's this great vision in my mind's eye. And it was just a sense of overwhelming joy. And, you know, for me, that was that was one of the biggest things was just this kind of sense of fulfillment that the church suddenly offered to me. It was like all of this striving, all of this meaningless like existence that we have this search for recognition, the search for remembrance, the search for legacy, the search for wealth, the search for material possessions. All of these things became completely meaningless to me overnight. And suddenly I was just like, I just wanna give it all away. I just wanna grow his message and his church in this world. That was just what I felt. And that's still kind of what I,

that is to this day what I feel. I just wanna help grow his church. I wanna help build it. I want to help resurrect it where it's died. And I just, that's what I feel called. There's a simplicity that comes with Christianity that makes our life so much more beautiful. Something I've been thinking about more and more,

it's like this bud about to blossom. I don't know how to fully articulate it yet, but when I'm not in Christ, or if I'm seeking the approval of the world, let's say, then I'm literally seeking the approval of everybody who matters to me, whether it's someone watching on YouTube or my wife or her family or my family or you or whoever.

It's like, wait, I would need the approval of every person. But when I'm in the Lord and I'm seeking his approval, it's really me and him. It's so much more simple. It's like he's everything. And I really just have to say, be merciful to me a sinner. And then of course, if I've harmed somebody or if I've embarrassed somebody, then I need to reconcile, but it's all out of love for him.

Life's just so much more simple. It's sort of me, him, his will. Whereas apart from Christ, it's trying to seek the approval of everybody around me that matters to me and following their will to some degree trying to seek the approval of everybody around me that matters to me and Following their will to some degree in order to try to achieve my will in some utilitarian sense It gives you great courage I think to recognize that you're trying to seek his will because suddenly it becomes so much more important Yeah, right

And I mean that was in some ways like it there was you had someone on the show a while back I forget who it was might have been been Sister Miriam James but she was a woman she was talking about I think there was a somebody who walked in and and kissed the ring you were talking about kissing the ring of the bishop and the priest and somebody kissed the ring and they said oh don't do that and he said it's not about you yeah this is about Christ amen yeah just want to shout that out one of the things I love in the Eastern Church is it's customary to kiss not just the bishop's hand, but the priest's hand.

And I said to a newly ordained priest, like, what's that like? And he said something very interesting, but very accurate. He says, I need to grow in humility in order to accept it, which sounds counterintuitive. You would think it's not an act of humility, but of course it is, because this isn't about you, Father. Please letuitive. You would think it's not an act of humility, but of course it is, because this isn't about you, Father.

Please let us kiss your hand. It's not about you, that's the point. Yeah. And that was kind of then what I, and that's still where I am to this day in terms of my intellectual grappling with confession, which is that it's like, it's not about me. I mean, it's about my relationship with God.

He already knows what sins I've committed. He wants the broken and contrite spirit to feel that sense of... I mean I feel such guilt, such shame, but when I go to confession it's cleansing. It's that great cleansing experience. And you know I've kind of talked about this. This is kind of one of the overlaps that I think the modern world really needs from the Catholic. I mean, I think the modern world needs all of the Catholic Church, but like one of the issues we have with social media, for example is like the lack of grace and the lack of mercy and I've said this before in in conferences like I spoke at a event down in Miami and

conferences, like I spoke at an event down in Miami and I said, we need grace and mercy. The idea that somehow you can put something online and then that you can never change your opinion is just absolute garbage. What are you talking about? Of course you can change your opinion. People change. You think that what I was putting out in 2006 on Facebook is still what I think to this day? I mean, what kind of idiocy is that to think that people's belief system never evolves or changes or develops It's just nonsense. Yeah, and we can pin them down on the one thing that they yeah

You know and everyone makes stupid mistakes Am I right in thinking Candice has spoken openly about like a blatant act of racism that took place when she was a teenager Yeah, but I wrote about it in her book. But one of the things I loved about what she said was how much grace she extended to these people who were actually blatantly racist. Not the fake kind of racist that the left likes to propagate, but the actual sin of racism. And that she said, yeah, like, you stupid kid

who hasn't done stupid things, like, I forgive him. I just thought, wow, what a woman. Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, that's, I just thought wow what a woman. Yeah, I mean that's I mean that's I mean You know kids say stupid stuff. I mean, it's just obviously like I mean I'm so glad Instagram didn't exist when I was Yeah, and I mean like you know I oh my gosh just poor kids. I'm so glad my kids will never have Instagram Yeah, yeah, I mean and and and there have been politicians in the UK like have Instagram. Yeah, yeah I mean and and and there have been politicians in the UK like again I'm bringing him up even though I don't particularly think the guy was any kind of example to live by but Tony Blair famously said if social

media had existed when I was a child I wouldn't be Prime Minister. Yeah. And it's just and it's so true because now we're putting this impossible standard up. And what's interesting is it's almost like there's never been a time when it is so easy to get your thoughts across to so many people so instantaneously. It seems that precisely now is when we need grace. I mean, 30, 40 years ago, if I'm writing a book, presumably I've put thought into this thing, it's gone through an editing process, it's then been published. Maybe that's something to be canceled over.

But to click record and say stuff that comes to my mind in a long form conversation or something else, and it's like no, we need to absolutely eliminate him. Where is this coming from? It's coming from an impossible standard, right? Well really, I mean, that's a great question. Where is it coming from? Fundamentally it's coming from the nonsense that the group think nonsense

that happens when you put, you know, like classes of people against each other. Right. That's that you're always seeking to cancel the next person for the alleged like political for their alleged failings in political thought. Right. So as a result, like you, the circle gets ever smaller and smaller. You know, you have to continue to be like, you know, it's not just enough to support feminism. Now you have to support transgenderism. And in fact, you can't be a feminist without support.

You can't be a feminist without also supporting the transgender movement. This ever increasing, like, this ever decreasing circle size of people who are allowed to think in the right way just means that by virtue of that you're going to continue to cancel people left, right, and center. But why does it have to escalate like that?

Why can't it just stand still? Because the more insane the thought gets, you know, the more radical and insane the thought gets, it's like the more how it's, it's, I guess, I guess it's a constant Is it something like a sort of severing from reality and then a drifting? Well, it's like a, it's a constant, I mean, I guess it's a constant kind of circle of like, who's the most oppressed?

It's the oppression Olympics, right? So like, how can you become more and more and more oppressed? You have to find that group, which is more and more and more pilloried, like, or perceived to be pilloried or, you know, marginalized within within society and then you have to like highlight that group as the as the group which is the group that everyone needs to identify with and if you don't identify with it then you're going to get cancelled right so it's it's the constant quest for oppression right I

guess that would probably be where I see it is coming from right like people people are not oppressed anymore. Like if you live in America, you live in the most free society and the freest country on the planet. And so you're inventing oppression because you want to excuse poor life choices. Well, I mean, individuals can be oppressed.

Well, of course they can. I mean, you know, well, yes, they can. Individuals across the whole world are oppressed. Are you suffering from oppression in America in 2022? You mean in a systematic group way? Exactly, in like a systematic, for example, you know, if you are individual, like if you're gay in America, there are laws designed to protect you

from being marginalized by employers. These laws exist. So what oppression is even an entire month to celebrate it. Absolutely. Yeah. And so like what, how are you being oppressed? You know, like how are you being systematically oppressed How are you being systematically oppressed? Pretty much every corporation, every major corporation

has identified with your section of society. As you say, we have an entire month to do it. Every corporation seems to bend over backwards to cater to whichever group it is that is now allegedly exclaiming oppression. So there's very few groups that are actually oppressed within American society. You know, by contrast, if you're a Christian in Saudi Arabia or you're a Christian in the Middle East, good luck trying to build a church, you know, like Cardinal Zen.

I mean, it's just, you know, there is genuine examples of oppression all over the world, where groups are being oppressed and tortured and killed and locked up for their political and religious beliefs. America is not a country where that is happening. But this invention of the system of oppression, this invention of this oppression narrative, is critical to the advancement

of the left's goals, which is, you know, a portrayal that there are like two groups which oppose each other, whether it be big, short, fat, thin, you know, whatever it might be, black versus white. All of this narrative of systematic oppression or violence of one group towards the other is critical to the left making you believe that there are other parts of society that want you to fail, right? And as a result you should put your faith in government, which is the ultimate arbiter of truth, right? So remove God, certainly from the equation, put your faith in government, the government will guarantee your safety as a marginalized oppressed group.

This is the kind of the root of a lot of the left's narrative. Bishop Barron talked about this the other day when he talked about Foucault. And he talks about this when he said, you know, like Foucault's thought has influenced, and this is also what Jordan Peterson has argued. And I think that there's some truth to it, although to what extent one can say that it's just a direct stem from Foucault's thought. I don't know Foucault's thought well enough to know whether or not it is accurate, but working upon the assumption that those minds have

done their homework, you know, there is probably some truth to it. But also there is, it goes deeper than that, it's a Marx, it's an Engelian style of thought, you know, this is what was written in the Communist Manifesto that the bourgeoisie were the opponents, were the inevitable and fatal opponents of the proletariat. And now really what you've just done is you've evolved that kind of language to cater to whether it be black versus white, or tall versus short, or rich versus poor, or whatever it might be.

The necessary construct of power groups within society is critical to understanding that the government must step in. So this is, and that's where we are now. that the government must step in, right? So this is, and that's where we are now. Yeah, this idea that if objective truth doesn't exist, then what are we doing when we're communicating? And then communicating becomes an act of manipulation.

It's not me conveying something true to you that your mind can grasp and submit to. It's me trying to make you do the thing I want you to do. And so that's when speech becomes violence. Which in itself is a nonsense term. Speech cannot be violent. Why? Because it can hurt your feelings,

it can make you feel bad. It can cause depression perhaps. It can. And speech is powerful. But actions define, actions have to be the logical outcome of speech, right? So if actions become violent, one can say, well, your speech is inciting violence. But speech itself cannot be violent. As soon as you've crossed that Rubicon, you start to move into the world that social media is in right now, which is this

Subjective arbitrary decisions as to what can and cannot be said right and at some point there therefore you are having to call like if speech is violence then somebody has to regulate speech and Then who regulates speech and this is where every this is where every totalitarian government in the world gets to right? So like, you know your speech is kind of coming after the government in one form or another, so we're going to shut you down. You're perceived to be an enemy of the national interest, and so therefore we're going to shut you down. And this is what the left is doing now with their allies in big tech, which is exactly where we've got to. They know, they've suddenly started drawing

these arbitrary subjective lines as to who can say what and what can be said. And then of course at that point, you've kind of already lost because you're gonna get canceled at some point. You're just gonna get kicked off social media platforms. You're gonna be relegated to having to fight against a system, a Kafka-esque nightmare where you

cannot understand the bureaucracy that has relegated you to being cancelled. This is what I mean, that the circle gets ever smaller. You've already seen this on social media. You've seen people on both the left and the right who have expressed opinions about whether it be vaccines or whether it be healthcare or whether it be racism or transgenderism whatever it might be all of these people have started to be cancelled right and so there are people on the left who have been cancelled there are people on the right who have been cancelled Naomi Klein you know she wrote the shock doctrine talking about

like how free market capitalism has effectively been hoisted onto the Western world, you know She's a big anti-capitalist. She's also vehemently anti-vaccine She was you know, she was an advisor to Clinton's government. She was kicked off Twitter she was banned permanently from Twitter You know, obviously on the right there's plenty of examples of people who have been kicked off And and that means that the social media businesses have effectively crossed that line. They have now started to believe that speech is violence and therefore we must shut it down and we must control what speech can be said. And so you're already in that like paradigm

reality where people are gonna, you know, you're gonna force people offline and this is the very frightening thing. This is actually the most frightening thing in the left or the kind of authoritarian big tech don't understand this and this is what frightens me the most is because when you when you push people offline when you push people into into into the world where they they feel like they can't say what they want to say, it becomes the the dark place from which bad ideas germinate, right? And that is like really terrifying because then those bad ideas never get to see a good idea. And the only way you can defeat a bad

idea is by showing it a good idea. Because if you just leave it to grow in the darkness, you know, dark things grow in the darkness. And so you then end up with this horrible world where, and I mean, you've kind of seen it in Germany, right? I mean, this is something which I've talked about before, which is like, in Germany, Holocaust denial is illegal. Which is nonsense. Why should the denial of an historical event be illegal? Now, of course, one could argue what there are lots of reasons in Germany why this is the case, you know, because of the because of the sensitivity of the topic in the past. But as a result, you now have

a huge section of German society that doesn't believe the Holocaust ever happened. Right. So you've got millions of people in Germany who deny the Holocaust because Holocaust denial is illegal. And and so this is and and And explain to me how you think that happens. So they're getting sort of shut out of public discourse and then they're communicating with each other? Why is it that this thing is, how is it growing if the methods to communicate this false idea,

namely the Holocaust never happened, denied them? So, I mean, this is the inflection point between totalitarian governments and actual repression of people, right? We live, I'm going to kind of try and break it out into like a triangle or like three different sides of the argument. So basically, we live in a Western, we live in the West, which allegedly makes this appeal to free speech as an organization. We haven't yet got to the point where people are literally being put in camps

and taken away like the Chinese Muslim population, right? Because we have said the wrong thing. We haven't got there yet, right? Now, you know, I would say there was a strong, like there was a strong push towards people who did not get the vaccine to kind of be put into something which resembled something. And it was not, it was not a pleasant, it was not pleasant to witness. We haven't yet got to the point where people are being taken away and put

in camps. So, but what you have got on the flip side is you have got the totalitarian control of the mediums of communication. So you've already got the totalitarian control of mediums of communication in the form of big tech. You haven't yet got the government taking people away and you have got illegal speech, right? You've got like take the Holocaust in our thing, right? You've got this illegal speech, you've got the means, you've got the control of communication, but you haven't got the kind of, in theory, the three normally move hand in hand, totalitarian control, illegal speech, death, right? Like camps, right? So you haven't got this third party, which means that people are still able to think what they want to think. And this is always where totalitarian

governments fall down, because at the end of the day, you can only hoist a lie onto people for so long before like the innate, before God breaks through, or before the innate before God breaks through, or before the innate freedom of the human mind knows that something is wrong. I mean, this is like every story about the decline of the Soviet Union talks about this basically. It was just nonsense, like making people believe fiction just the whole time. Like, we have to meet this quota. You know, I've read plenty of books about the last 10 years of the Soviet Union. It's always ridiculous. They're kind of entertaining if it wasn't, I mean, they will be entertaining stories

if they weren't so sad in some ways, because, you know, millions of people were dying of hunger and starvation, where these guys, these regional officials would just be set arbitrary quotas by the Kremlin. And then, you know, they would just invent the numbers and they'd just say, yeah, we've made 48,000 tons of wheat this year when they'd only made like three, right? And so the Kremlin would be like, great, we've got 48,000 tons of wheat coming from, you know, the, you know, the oblast of wherever. And then of course, nothing would, nothing like that would come. And then, you know, people would be short rationed and then they would die of hunger over the winter. Right?

And this, this was happening the whole time. So to go back to the original point, you've got this system now, but again, the Soviet Union, the Soviet totalitarian governments had absolute control. They had the means to execute people. They controlled illegal speech and they had the control of the mediums of communication. We do not have that final point. That third side of the triangle. And so as a result, you have people who are being kicked off forums online by controlled media. You have illegal things, like in the UK this is happening as well. The police are turning up at people's houses to ask them why they're tweeting about transgender.

That's not happening. Yep. That happens quite frequently now in the UK. But you don't have this kind of end goal. What are you seeing here in the States? You've mentioned Germany with Holocaust and oil Transgender talk police show up. Yeah, what's the states? so the big differentiated between the states and the rest of the world and this is you know, one thing that I Pray it never changes hate speech laws, right? The very time hate speech is a nonsense. The very terminology of that is complete falsity.

Because it comes back to this idea that speech can be violent, which is a nonsense. You have to have the ability to speak freely. If you do not have the ability to speak freely, you will never get public discourse. You will always live in fear of speech repression. And so the UK, the US does not have hate speech laws. But people will push back against that maybe and say, I'm not sure what you mean, I want

to but I don't fully understand because speech can be hateful, can't it? Yeah, but you have to be able to offend people with your speech. I mean, speech is naturally offensive. I don't like you. Your hair looks funny. Your beard is stupid. Your jacket looks... I don't think any of these things. Yeah, make that into a clip out of content. I don't like you. But the point being is that, okay, so none of those were really that offensive, but let's just say I don't like you because you're white.

Right. Okay. Well, so now have I crossed the line? Like, I don't like you because you're straight. How do we cross? Where does the line get drawn? Right. And so speech, again, it comes back to this whole point.

You have to have free speech. If you don't have free speech, somebody is setting the rules that where that free speech lines. Right. I mean, this is one thing about Parler, right? It's like, you know, I've never made an editorial decision about the content on our platform. Never once have I made a decision, right?

Because in my mind and the mind of all the management of the business, it's like the sliding scale is so far up here. You know, we have community guidelines. Every platform has to have community guidelines. We don't allow pornography. We don't allow financial doxing. We don't allow, you know, like,

like gore, you know, or excessive violence, right? But the amount of content on the platform that actually violates those rules is tiny, right? There's plenty of stuff we do allow that you would never get away with on Twitter, right? I mean, people go on there the whole time and post, you know, I mean, I get a selection of it and it's pretty disgusting stuff, but like, they're allowed to say it. There's no law stopping them from saying it. And this is the point. If you start to regulate that and start to say, okay, you cannot say this, then where are those people going to

go? That's yeah, that's what I want to get to. They're going to go offline. They're going to, they're going to find other mediums of communication. You haven't yet got that place where you're taking them away to camps and trying to re-indoctrinate them. So they're gonna find other mediums of communication,

other methodologies of communication. They're gonna go into the dark places of the internet and they're gonna inculcate themselves unchallenged with a set of beliefs that you do not want them to be. Ah, yes. That's actually why I fear the most for, for like, you know, I fear for Europe because Europe has a bad history with extremism and, and like Dominic Cummings, who I'm going to tangent here,

but Dominic Cummings was one of the political advisors on the Brexit campaign. And he has a checkered reputation, let's put it like that. But one of the things that he said, which I really think is the most interesting thing, is that you cannot, like, you need to hear the music basically, and you need to listen to what the music is saying. And the reason he was big pro-Brexit was because he was like, we need to give the people this voice. They are desperate to express themselves. And not just another general election

of meaningless politicians on the soapbox, but a genuine political expression of how they want their country to be ruled, right? Because if we keep shutting them down and jamming them into the face of the globalists, then you're gonna end up with a revolution that is going to be far, far, far uglier than a quiet revolution of 17.4 million people voting to leave a transnational economic bloc.

And that revolution that's going to come in 20 years' time is going to be blood, and it's going to be violent, and it's going to be blood and it's going to be violent and it's going to be painful. Right. And you're kind of like, you know, I mean, again, you're seeing this in Europe already. Like what's happened in Sweden? You know, like you thankfully, the Swedish people are now voting to express their discontent with the way the ruling government has, has, has allowed. They, they, you know, the Swedish Democrats are now the one of the largest parties.

They have taken a very strong opinion about the integration of one million economic migrants and alleged refugees from North Africa and Syria into a population of 13 million. And you're taking a million people out of a population of 13 million people. You're obviously going to get societal disconnects. Right. I mean, there's a huge differentiator between the cultural and religious beliefs of people from transcontinental, you know, like thousands of miles away and Sweden, which is, you know, relatively placid Nordic country in the north of in the north of Europe with a climate which is essentially different from the one that these people are coming from.

And what have you got now? It's now bog standard for grenades to be going off in Malmo, which is a southern city of Sweden. It's now very, you know, like it has one of the highest rape incidences in the whole of Europe now, Sweden. I mean, these are the kind of cultural problems that you will get if you just go, you know what, we're not gonna have this debate and we're just gonna shut it down.

And so that, and then in the long run, this is where I'm going with this point, you will get this very, you will get a backlash which you cannot control, and that is gonna be the most violent, and that's gonna be the danger point. And that's gonna be the danger point. And that's what's scary. That's why you need free expression.

Because if you shut people down for so long, eventually they will take to the streets in a way that you cannot control, right? Or that you cannot, it's not even about control. It's about allowing for people to say what they really think. So then how do you have community guidelines and it not be shutting people down? You slide the scale as much to one way as you can.

That's what we've done. So let's talk about Parlo. Let's kind of. Can I use the restroom first? Oh, yeah, sure. We'll take a break, and then we'll come back to talk about Parlo. Too much coffee. Yeah

See you nodding go pick I want this I want this break to be as short as possible It's the darker, darker places. And this relation that's happening is every one of you has shut the thing down. All the people who have that vision were made important. And that's the next stop. We're about to shut it down. And they shut down the board. So you can see what's happening.

And that's the next step. I'm going to send you a copy of the previous video. So So So so So So So So So So So Alright, so just to remind everybody who's watching right now, we are in Chesterton and Co. Cigars. This is a company that me and some mates started here in Steubenville, Ohio. And this Friday is our grand opening. I know not everybody can fly to Ohio, but we're gonna have several thousand people on this main street, just outside those doors

for Oktoberfest here in Steubenville. We have a street party every month during the summer and spring and autumn. I love that. And so it's gonna be we're gonna be celebrating Oktoberfest and yeah we're really really pumped. And you've brought some cigars. I did. Which we will smoke at some point but we didn't want to begin with them because... It's more like once the flow of

conversation has been established and then we use into them. But you can tell can't you? There is a difference. You've heard me say this that the conversation usually begins an hour in yeah That's right. It's just it's an awkward thing like this is you want to get to know each other and then kind of like figure out Where you're going where the conversation is moving and not just that there's the wreck There's the realization that there are people behind Screens and keyboards who are watching this all around the world. It's very strange. Normally. I'm one of them Yeah, yeah, like you're over a thousand people watching right now imagine if it's a thousand people just sitting out there guys so bizarre. Yeah, it's a weird

Unnatural experience that takes yeah, it takes a while until you get to forget about it and get into a conversation I love your show. I really do. I think it's it's a you know coming back to that conversation before we broke It was like it's it's a conversation that these are conversations that people need, you know, like long form content Everything's a sound bite these days and it's so tiresome because it's it's yeah It you know, like the Twitter character limit is kind of the Twitter character limit is responsible for the cheapening of public discourse right because you can't express yourself in a long form format, right and you know, one of the reasons I love your show is because Like first of all you have guests on who are very outside the traditional sphere.

It's not just the Fox News speaker circuit, or CNN speaker circuit for that matter. It's much more like it's theological heavyweights, which for me is fascinating. And I love that because that was what I was immersed in from many years. But then also you have conversations. First, you recognize your own need for grace. Like you're very good at this, Matt. One of the ways in which you like you talk about yourself. I mean, like the number of times that I've heard you say

you're a coward is like ridiculous. I mean, there was a series of episodes where I think you mentioned it every show. I just found that really interesting because a self-recognition of one's own weakness is such a powerful statement. The people you have on are equally recognizing their own weakness and their own need for savior. Their need for salvation, that is a result of the fact that these people have a have a living relationship with with the Lord our God you know and that's like I don't think you get to that point of humility until you have that relationship because like you recognize your own need for forgiveness you

recognize your own need for salvation hmm no thank you you. When did you hear about pints? Let's turn this into a show about pints. When did you first hear about it? You know, the YouTube algorithm. Which knows you better than you know you. Yeah, pretty much. It's kind of terrifying. I mean, I just came across it one day.

I think you were doing some interview on like church history or something and I have watched quite a few videos on Church history on YouTube and it was like you made like this and then it was like pints with a coin us And then I thought the name was funny. Yeah pints with a coin us. That's right. I was just like well Like that's quite an unusual name in vino Veritas. That's the whole yeah Well pints is unusual like Americans don't really understand the concept of a pint, whereas British, it's like, you've got a pint. Pint is synonymous with glass of beer. Yeah, exactly.

It's just a, it's kind of a, you know, it's like the hand in hand recognition of this thing. So I was like, oh, that's kind of unusual pints. Aquinas, I was like, okay, there's a lot going on here. There's a lot to unpack just in the name, you know? And so then I became interested in, and then I've watched pretty much every video I've ever done. It's awkward, because like, I was so excited to kind of meet you and get to know you and then I'm aware as I'm sharing

Things with you like I have really long podcasts. You probably already know this Just stop me if I've already said it But now one of my favorite things to do and was in the past is just chatting with people in pubs Yeah, I love that. I I love I don't love the drunkenness I don't like people being drunk or any, that's obviously a sin and I wouldn't encourage it. But to be, but there is something about someone who's had one too many and the truth starts to come out.

Like they want to tell you that their daughter hates them and they don't know why, or they can't stop looking at porn and, you know, they've never really told anybody. I just love that honesty that you can get to sometimes. I find that to be, and that kind of comes back to what we were saying earlier, like, it's just one of the things that,

at the hallmark of our faith, you know, is that confession, the sacrament of confession, just brings such brutal honesty with it. And you can't escape your own sin. You know, and this is kind of one of the things that, like I would say that the Protestant church has got really badly wrong. It's just, like there's a malformed theology of,

I don't want to say grace, because that's not quite actually what I'm looking for, but it's like a malformed theology of penance really is kind of where I would say that the Protestant church has gone badly wrong. Because there is no face-to-face confession. There is no, there is a vague requirement that effectively you confess your sins in prayer to God, but like we all know that left to ourselves our own ego is going to like dodge that

bullet as many times as it can, right? There's so much about Catholicism that is just so suited to our human nature. Yeah. You know, like I've spoken to Protestants who say that they began to understand the intercession of the saints when their wife died, say, and they would find themselves walking about the house talking to their deceased loved one. And I suppose you could look at that and say, well, these are all sort of fallen human issues that have worked their way into the church and have thereby perverted it, or you could say that maybe it fits our human nature like a glove as it

were and so yeah, to sit before another human being and to bare your soul. Like, you're not there to celebrate what you've done well. You're there to say what you're most ashamed about. It's almost like if the church didn't have that, we'd have to invent it somehow. Or how do you live without the Blessed Mother? It seems like again that would have to be something we'd have to come up with because it seems so natural. There is something so beautiful about Catholicism. Yeah, I mean there absolutely is and I mean that was another thing we spoke about Mary earlier as well and I just think that that's something which like It's a huge aspect of Marian theology that I don't think is

The the Protestant Church or my experience of the Protestant Church is that it has a has a poorly defined theology of Not so much the body, but it I would argue that that is quite poorly defined by the Protestant Church but also I would say that the theology of, and I'm going to tread on a landmine here in terms of modern-day words, but gender. And what I mean by that is that there really isn't like, if you're a woman in the Protestant Church, there's no, there's no, I mean, there's Christ, right? But there's no like vision for womanhood. The vision for womanhood is really Paul's letters, wives submit to your husbands, right? And of course that's theologically accurate, but it's more that there's like who is the great heroine who is the great?

Female figure in the process that there isn't one right there. They don't have the Saints. So there's no Sinteres revabala. There's no Sinteres. There's you there's no there's there's no Joan of Arc. There's nothing right And then there's no Mary in theology. So in turn there's There's no one to look to in the Bible. I mean, Ruth is about as good as he gets. Ruth and Esther are about as good as it gets. And so I think this, I mean, and here I'm just kind of pontificating on my own opinions, but what a better

thing to do, pontificate on my own opinions. That's what the whole point of the show is, people pontificating. But I think one of the things is that like our culture, our Western, like post-Protestant secular culture has kind of, you know, like all things with a poorly formed basis, you know, it's now kind of malformed totally into just a generational issue with the theology of gender. And as a result, we don't have very well defined ideas of what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman in modern day society, because we have this kind of hangover of the Protestant past, which has these poorly formed theologies. When you look at the Catholic Church's teachings, you have this unbelievably beautiful figure of Mary,

who is filled with grace, you know, and she's such a perfect, I mean, the first person of the Church, you know, she's just this wonderful character who... English Protestant poet William Wordsworth called her our tainted nature's solitary boast. That's a beautiful way of describing it, yeah. That's beautiful, that's a very glorious way of putting it.

And that for me also changed the way that I perceived women. You know, when I became a Catholic, it was like, that theology started to affect the way that I viewed womanhood. Not that I had any experience of womanhood, but I just, I could see it clearer in my mind's eye, in my own theological understanding. And also then of course, you know, it's complementarity.

It works then in turn with the theology of womanhood complements the theology of what it means to be a man, right? And that synthesis is so much more clearly defined, you know, by the Catholic Church and the bringing together of those two relationships And the bringing together of those two relationships, the bringing together of those two bodies is so much clearer in Catholic thought than it is in modern day Protestant thought, which I find to be intellectually shallow

with regards to this. So that was something also where I was drawn to it. It was like, wow, this is a very powerful theology that I have never been exposed to before. You know, I know we have a lot of Protestant listeners. Some are considering Catholicism, some aren't. I was in Iowa last week, and I was just at a restaurant, and someone said, hey, are you Pines with a Quinas?

No, I'm Matt Fradd, and I run a show, yeah. And, but he was a Protestant listener. And, uh, so I guess, I, I, I guess I'm cognizant of how they might be hearing this discussion. It was not the polemical. It's that no one is longing to be part of a group that they feel continually bashes or demeans them, which isn't what I hope is coming across here. Cause one of the things I love about converts to Catholicism such as yourself from Protestantism is that you can all speak for yourself, but Protestant converts to Catholicism often speak with tremendous affection for how they were raised and gratitude for the formation that

they had and deep respect for the faithful Protestants they know. I mean that's certainly true in my case. One of my dear, my best friends. How gross is it that you can see my socks? I shouldn't have pointed it out. Yeah, let chat decide. You what? On the socks? Yeah, good. Okay well I'll just flatten them for people if it's making people throw up. I've been on the clothes since then. You what? We don't spend a lot of time on the wall. On the socks? Yeah, good. We've been peaking on the clothes since right here. OK, well I'll just flatten them for people if it's making people throw up.

Yeah, my best friend's mom converted and then became Protestant. But she loves Jesus Christ, and she would spend like an hour in the Word every morning. And there's just so much I can learn as a Catholic from her. And I know certain Protestants who I suppose I would say are far more Catholic than many Catholics that I know. So as I say, okay being political,

okay saying I would like you to become Catholic. But I also know the experience of Protestants who are listening. Well, I know what it's like as a Catholic who tries to benefit from say an Orthodox podcast, which I get a great deal from. And you just like, why do they keep talking about us? Like what just, you know, why do you get ready? Well, I mean, for me it's because it was such a defining feature of my life,

you know, and that's, and that's right. And that's why I was just, it was everything I knew, you know, it was, it was, you've had process and ministers on your show who have converted and you know, I've heard them talk about it quite a bit as well but it for me it was I wouldn't have become a Catholic without the upbringing that I had you know there's no doubt about it I mean I was I was I was deeply immersed in faith and my my parents are deeply faithful wonderful fantastic loving Christian people. And many of them, many Protestants I know still to this day, like occupy that space where they do.

I mean, there are things that the Protestant Church has absolutely got right. I mean, like evangelization, you know, like, I mean, talk about, talk about like an overt approach to evangelization. Like we, we as Catholics need to learn from there. From, I I mean the missions which went on at schools, at universities, like you know they did a campus crusade in England many years ago, like after I left Oxford, but it was you know it was spearheaded by evangelical churches who were just like we need to get people to hear the good news of Christ. You know, and like, you know, I wish that, like, I found Catholics who

were, you know, as like fiery in terms of their mission to evangelization. You know, and a knowledge of the Scriptures. I mean, that is incredible, you know, like I was immersed in the Scriptures from a very young age, you know, I mean, I was, we'd spend every morning reading part of the Scriptures and, you know, like I was immersed in the scriptures from a very young age, you know I mean I was we'd spend every morning reading part of the scriptures and You know what that entailed was, you know, a deep knowledge of the Lord in in in Holy Scripture Peter Peter craved has a line when a maniac is at the door feuding brothers reconcile and we began talking about the maniac of leftism Yeah, and Yeah, it seems that we've got to be willing to take allies where we can find them and band together to fight against this nonsense and insanity that's being pressed on us from every side.

A hundred percent. And I mean, you're finding that in society to this day. A belief in God is central, or a belief in God and Christ is central to the idea of having to conserve anything at all. Why are you a conservative if you don't believe in God? I'm sure there are plenty of atheists out there who will start to probably be like, well, because of this and because of that. And I'm like, yeah, there are economic reasons why it's sensible to hold fiscal conservative positions, of course. Yep. You know, and I'm sure there's like, one can argue the basis of, if you want to say that economics is the basis for the rationality of all social and governmental decisions that you make,

you can try and do that. But it becomes a very reductionist argument very, very quickly, and it becomes very utilitarian very, very quickly. So you need to be aspiring to conserve something cultural and deeper than just pure numbers, right? Like, why is it an issue that like, why is abortion an issue? Why is family breakdown an issue? Yes There are good economic reasons why you can try and justify that but Like the concept of the family unit is not just an economic reductionist model It shouldn't just be that it should be much deeper than that. It has a spiritual plane upon which it operates So if you're truly a conservative and you're saying okay, well, I support the family So if you're truly a conservative and you're saying, okay, well, I support the family, you Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox alike, all of these, all of these groups will draw

from the same inspiration. The family is a God given unit, which is blessed by him and is the perfect vehicle in which to raise children and have a fruitful life. My dad always jokes. I mean, he said this line to me many, many times over the years, which is being a Christian is a massively unfair advantage. And I think that that's really very true because when you start to break it down, you have a free gift of grace, which is extended to you through the hands of Christ Jesus, and you have

which is extended to you through the hands of Christ Jesus. And you have all the blessings that entails. Not to say your life's gonna be perfect when you're a Christian, of course not. We're still fallen, we're still sinners, we still make mistakes. And the world is fallen and makes mistakes. But fundamentally, you have the core unit of your life, you have that center unit of your life. You have that center unit of your life has been put into right format, right?

Which is that God and not you are the center. All right. Thanks, Thursday. While you're being handed food, the chat was very supportive of you airing out and being as comfortable as you are. And also now everyone's asking for pants with Aquinas socks. Everyone's like, please, please God, don't take your pants off. Well, that's just for our local support.

That's just for our locals. Join me on locals for a- Pantless Tuesdays. Before we talk about Parla and what happened and what's going on today, I wanna mention one of our sponsors, Hallow, H-A-L-L-O-W, Halo is the best prayer and meditation app on the web for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Halo.com slash, would you remind me? Put, did you put the, could you do me a favor, put the link in there.

I think it's Halo.com slash Matt. When you sign up. Matt Fradd. Is it Matt Fradd? How do you know? Is it really? Why do I, every time I forget it. I think it's hello.com. What's it?

Matt Fradd. Some of the other sponsors are slash Matt. I think this one's. Check it out and just remind me here. They've got everything from, it'll help you meditate, help you pray the rosary. I'm happy to give Helloow a complimentary shout out.

Do it. It's brilliant. You use it? Yeah, I think it's one of the best, it's one of the best apps I've ever come across. It really, really is. It really is. I mean, I-

All right, let's listen to Scott Hahn's sleep story from Romans, ready? Good evening, and welcome to tonight's Bible story. My name is dr. Scott Hahn In that you can be listening to that it's like a deeply melodic voice he's got it. Yes a ton of sleep stories meditations They have wonderful. It sounds like a BBC presenter from the night. Yeah. Yeah. Good evening. Yeah. Yeah That's why we got to smoke three cigars a day and we'll eventually get there. That's right, or a pipe permanent. They've got kids stories you can listen to

that I play for my kids at night. The Tale of St. Nick is one of them. Christmas story. Go check them out. Did you check it out? Is it hello.com? It's all at hello.com. Matt, you can get your three month trial.

You can get a lot of stuff too if it's not paid too. You wanna just try it? Yeah If you wanna just try it. Yeah, you can just try it out, but make sure you, when you do wanna sign up, go to hello.com slash Matt. That's right, hello.com slash Matt. The link is in the description. I was wrong.

You were wrong. I was wrong too, I thought you were right. And when you sign up, you'll get three months for free, so you can try it out. But make sure you sign up over there, cause that way, Hello will like me more and keep paying me to talk about them. 100%.

Yeah. That's right. And the day they stop, I'm starting my own meditation. Yeah, just gonna be me in socks. Yeah, I don't know No, I promise I won't do that. But anyway, hello good. It's a beautiful app. I mean, it's it's very well designed Beautiful interface. I was like stunned when I came across it So I came across it in the early days, like four years ago or something. And it was great then, and it's just increasingly got amazing since. Parla, you're the CEO of Parla.

For my sins. What happened in the beginning with Parla? Cause it felt like, I can't wait to get, I'm sure you know this story just as well as anybody else on the planet. Cause it was like, we kept getting told, well, if you don't like all the cancellations, if you don't like the whole left leaning platform, start your own. And then Parler showed up and then it was canceled by Amazon, Google and Apple.

Tell us about how that happened. Yeah. Or are you so bored of talking about it that you just want to listen to the sleep story? Let's just play Scott Hannigan. So yeah, Parla was founded in 2018 and it was pitched as a free speech alternative to big techs, you know, kind of monopoly on social media. And it was founded by one guy called John Meats

and a woman called Rebecca Mercer. And it had some moderate, I would say it had slow pickup in the beginning. You know, for 2018 and 2019 it was kind of a handful of people who were using the platform as a free speech alternative. Its direct competition was Twitter. You know, that was that, that was going after the microblogging style of content. Not video content, not kind of Facebook style groups, but really just that kind of microblogging style of interaction. In 2020,

you had this kind of triple whammy of national and global events which triggered this huge exodus of people out of traditional social media because of censorship. So you had first of all the Black Lives Matter George Floyd riots. Well, first of all, sorry, you had COVID, right? And so questioning the COVID narrative, right, became like a huge censorship opportunity for tech giants. Then you had the Black Lives Matter content, which, you know, again, was a huge censorship opportunity. And then you had the election. So you had these three kind of seismic global events,

which just meant that so many people got shut down on social media. I mean, my wife was fact checked to the nth degree on Facebook and all this kind of stuff. I'm surprised that she hasn't been canceled or wasn't after that. Yeah. She did a video on George Floyd.

Yeah, got 163 million views. It was crazy. Yeah, where she tore the George Floyd narrative to pieces. Wow. And- I'm so surprised she didn't get banned for that. Yeah, where she told her where she told the George Floyd narrative to pieces. Wow. And so surprised she didn't get banned for that. Yeah. I mean, it was kind of, I mean, legitimate death threats for that. Oh, crazy. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was it was it was not fun. I mean, it was I know these people say they get death threats. And sometimes I wonder, you know, how so there's you get one guy who called you and said something something mean and then you say you got death threats to make yourself

seem like a hero, but no, you actually got. Yeah, so I would divide the category of like threats against high profile figures into a couple of buckets. There's kind of like the generic death threat that you get, like I want to kill you online, which is, you know, pretty much. Part of the cool. Yeah, like is you know pretty much par for the cool yeah like you know 15% of the comments which are online and you know you just kind of like you brush those off because most people never bother executing or

following through executing nice then you then you then you get then you get the kind of next evolution of that which is people who do start to plan to follow through. They normally get picked up by law enforcement pretty quickly. So we got calls from law enforcement talking about actual, what they call clear and present threats, like real threats, people they've identified, individuals who are, you know, clearly a danger to us or to my family. And then you get the third bucket, which is

kind of the mentally challenged, like the deranged, who normally with them, it's kind of gone into a stage of like, they believe a narrative that they have constructed in their own mind about the person that they are threatening and that narrative is normally something totally fantastical. Like there was one guy, you know, he believed that he was in a relationship with Candice, you know, like he perceived that everything she said was directed at him, you know,

it was kind of completely nuts. And normally those people are like the people that I get most nervous about. Right. Because that's just kind of like the unpredictable, you know, like, I mean, there was a woman who set up a GoFundMe to kill Candace Ernst. Right. And, you know, she was trying to buy weapons and plane tickets to. How much money did she raise before? Hopefully it was banned. It was like 11k. I say hopefully. And of course, and then, you know,

whoever's donating to that campaign in turn is like, well, you obviously- That is unbelievable. Like you want to really get rid of cancer. So, you know, the FBI picked that up pretty quickly and there are the law enforcement who got involved. We now live in Nashville, you know, and we have a very good relationship with the local.

What's your exact address? Yeah, sure. It is. The local people. What's your exact address? Yeah, sure. It is. What's your address? Yeah, you first. So, you know, that was kind of like something which, you know, we just became very aware of. What does that do to you?

What does that do? Like how do you wake up, drink your coffee and hang out with your kids when stuff like that's going on? That's next-level I feel like a lot of people in social media complain when someone's a little mean to them But they probably have no idea what that is actually like. I mean, you know, I I I get nervous for my children I think that's really what I get. No, I get very scared about that You know, that's kind of it's quite trying sometimes I mean most the

time because I'm very you know when when when Candice and I first met her career was still in that kind of evolutionary phase you know it wasn't quite where it is now which is kind of like you know turning up with the Kanye West's fashion show in Paris wearing a white lives matter t-shirt you know it's just like it wasn't there so in turn her andshirt, you know, it's just like, it wasn't there. So in turn, her and I have, you know, evolved together with regards to like a, I would say what's described as like the threat matrix, right? And so the threat matrix in turn has evolved over that time.

And we've obviously had to ratchet security in turn. I feel very comfortable now with the security that we have. We have a full-time security operation. It's not just personnel. They monitor online for threats. They scan the dark web. They pull data from a lot of different sources. They're in regular contact with law enforcement.

We have our finger on the pulse of the security threat profile against us. We have an incredibly advanced security system at our house which covers everything from infrared to motion sensor to high security doors to shadow proof glass to full time residential offices, like all of this kind of stuff. How many times a year do you just wanna quit this and recede into the background well it's funny

because you went hunting in Namibia and I spent in my business career I spent a lot of time in sub-saharan Africa like Zambia Africa you know that part of the those parts of the world and I've long had an affinity with Namibia and just the remoteness of it. So because you don't have like, it's the 186th least populated country on earth. And so you can just, you know, we could just go there and none of this would exist.

Yeah. Nobody would have a clue who Candice is. Nobody would have a clue who I am. It doesn't make any difference. You know, it's just like, you're just at peace with nature and a God, you know, and that's it. But it's probably at times like's just like you're just at peace with nature and a God, you know, and that's it But it's probably at times like that that you're reminded that you believe the Lord has called you to something

Yeah, I mean and that is something shia Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a dangerous thing for stepping out your front door You know and it's kind of that's where we are now in our life a little bit. It's it's That comes back to that that paths lay before my feet. Like you know I think that the Lord has called us, called Candice, she is definitely called to something. You know like I mean even if she retired tomorrow she would have been called to what she had achieved, what she has achieved now. I mean she is she is the most incredible woman I've ever met in my life.

Honestly, if she had invited me to go with Kanye to Paris, I would have asked you to do this solo. I would not have hung out here for you. I would have loved to have heard that. Well, actually, I didn't ask you. But okay, you began by saying we had these events like COVID and Black Lives Matter that's led to this. That's right, yeah.

So, you know, that 2020 was the year that like Parler suddenly, it kind of was the, you know, the golden child of the free speech movement at that point. And people flocked to the platform, particularly in the aftermath of the election. And the fact that people, you know, thought that the election was stolen. And so that narrative became like an over... I mean, it went from a platform with under a million accounts to 11.3 million accounts signing up in the space of two months. How many of them were fake?

They were pretty much all real. I mean, we had a total, we have it still to this day, we have about 16 million registered accounts. 16? Yep, 16. I purged in August of last year 250,000 bots that we identified on the platform. Bots are very easy to spot by the way. This is one of the reasons.

Because they always have ridiculous email addresses. It's always like it's just yeah ridiculous email address you know. I mean people have ridiculous email addresses. They do but like normally the domain name is the giveaway right so it's not like mat at you know whatever it is. It's like I hate the Jews at gmail.com. That's it it's normally gmail at I hate the Jews.com. It's something very predictable like that or there's a lot of like fake Chinese domains which also get registered and so this is why I say that Twitter is just lying to its investors because like there's if they really wanted to clean them out they could 100% clean them out. They know where they are right. I mean Katy Perry one of the most followed accounts on Twitter, has 108 million followers,

but her pinned tweet has like 3,000 retweets. I mean, it's just nonsense. Are you saying these people just signed up once and then disappeared? Well, that means they're not a real account. This is the point. You're actually a fake account. You're a bot account. Hence the reason Elon's got this big dispute with them right now in Delaware Chance Recourt. So then what happened was on January the, obviously January the 6th,

there was, you know, this big protest in DC and then the whole country went nuts and we're still dealing with the fallout of that right now. And Parler falsely was scapegoated as the platform upon which the whole of January 6 troubles was hoisted. Why falsely? Because every analysis done in the aftermath demonstrated that Parler was not the platform used to host the majority of content around planning for January the 6th. Do they know what was? Facebook. Right. Every study has proved this.

Every study has proved that Facebook was the overwhelming platform that the majority of January the 6th was planned on. In fact, Parler was not just a minority, it was a significant minority. But it was a threat. Its growth at that point was a threat. To suddenly go from a nothing platform to having 16 million accounts in a very very short space of time

To being perceived as like a free speech challenger to the hegemony of the global tech oligarchs Was was like oligopoly was like a it was you can't have this we have to shut it down right and so Content violations like content moderation was cited as the reason despite the fact that we, there had been all the concerns around content moderation had either been addressed or were no different to other platforms that operate in the space, Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.

And so the platform was de-platformed by not just Amazon, Google, Apple, but about 19 other service providers. And Niall Gallagher and the Spectator, the UK Spectator wrote, it was like the most stunning demonstration of big techs power ever to exist. Right.

And it's true because no company had ever been digitally deplatformed in the way that Parler was just booted off into the wilderness. Were you associated with them at the time? No. What was it like for those folks? It was chaos.

I came in rapidly after that. It was kicked off in January the 10th. The former CEO was sacked by the board on January the 29th and I was brought in at the end of February to help restructure the business. And how did y'all get back online? And did Amazon and Google? Yeah, I mean, it was a lengthy process.

So there's several different stages to getting back online. To getting literally just back online, right? You need to find a new hosting provider, which is data centers, servers, private cloud. We've just staged an acquisition in this space. We just bought a big private cloud hosting provider out of California with data center operations as well. Because I now want to be able to take our narrative

and go and pitch this to every other business that I think is gonna get canceled. Like the Catholic world is in the eye of the storm right now. There's no doubt about it, right? I mean, if you're a pro-life, anti-trans organization in America, your days are numbered. Neil, would you put a link to my Rumble account

in the description? I'd like everybody to please go and subscribe over on Rumble and watch these shows over on Rumble, because you were saying to me that the other day, your days are numbered here. You think that's? Yeah, I think you are. I mean that's? Yeah, I think you are. I mean, I would definitely, I think you've got,

at the moment, you're small enough. I mean, you've got a great show. I love it. I watch it every week. But it's under the radar right now. It's under the radar. But when you get big enough, the target will grow on your back, and then you will get deplatformed.

Because you're saying things that defy the narrative. And that, you know, it's just, I mean, I, I will put money on it. You know, if I was a betting man, I would put money on it. But I just, I, every organization is gonna, is, is gonna suffer this, you know, this is the problem right now is that we live in this era of mass cancellation and censorship. Um, and so you're like the trans issue it's gonna get it gets flagged the whole time you know you miss gender people you're gonna get you're gonna get kicked off you you're pro-life the abortion the abortion debate has not yet kind of triggered the switch but as the viewpoints get more extreme on the left, it will become

more of a hot topic issue. I thought that after Biden was elected, that maybe the temperature would decrease and they would the left would feel less threatened and cease coming after us. Yeah. That doesn't seem to be what's taking place. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm struggling to find an appropriate metaphor in my head, but it's like, you know, I don't, Biden was not the Biden was not the cold dose of water on the

raging fire, you know, in my opinion, you know, his track record, you know, is not one of peace and reconciliation. No, in many ways. I would say that. And I didn't think that the temperature would decrease because he was that. I thought the temperature might decrease because they would think we're no longer under threat

from Trump. We have everything. We have big tech. We have the universities. The courts are still outside of it. And so that's obviously what's caused all these issues, particularly around social teaching. But of course what Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh justice Kavanaugh wrote this in his opinion when he was talking about Roe versus Wade is that that this court does not

Have an opinion on abortion. He literally wrote that in his opinion, right? And it's just the blinding ignorance of people who argue this on the other side, you know This court has no opinion on abortion. It's not about abortion. It's about the state's rights versus federal intervention. And this is the whole point. You can still get an abortion in America. I mean, go to New York, they're now going to the opposite extreme.

They're now legalizing infanticide because it's perceived to be under threat. It's like, it's not, it's the federal intervention on states' rights and that is the that is the nexus of the whole debate right and this is that that is what people don't understand. They think somehow the court has an issue, has an opinion on social teaching. You know the court is there to interpret the Constitution and the law. It's not there to issue edicts on social teaching. Anyway, so. Back to Parla.

Yeah. So. It went back online. It got back online. How damaged was it? Oh. How bruised and beaten up and salvageable was it? Yeah, it was.

Or are you still trying to figure that out? A year and 10 months later. No, I mean, it was a very, it was a damaged good. There was absolutely no doubt about that. It was the worst business I've ever seen when I took over because of the chaos. It's, to the non-tech mind or to the non-tech world, it's like, there's startup attitude and

there's a startup mentality which is kind of move fast break things try and get things back on you know just try and change the narrative very quickly this company was a startup but now it required the monstrous restructuring effort that was needed to actually get it into fighting shape. So you were both restructuring a startup which is highly unusual, highly unusual. I can't really think of any other startups of public recognition that have been restructured. There are small startups which go bankrupt the whole time and then they get restructured. This was a startup with

a national brand and profile with a huge footprint in terms of social media presence for us for an early stage company that had zero like zero finances and needed to be restructured in the midst of apps in the midst of carnage raging around it. So that was kind of the environment into which I stepped at the end of February, beginning of March of 2021. And, you know, back when I was working in banking in London, like it was, you know, it was kind of rule of thumb that you would just work ridiculous hours all days of the week. You know, I literally went into the office on Christmas Day and, you know, one of the years I was working there. And I can honestly say that last year was harder in terms of the work than any other year I've ever worked. It was just brutal. And on top of that, we just had our first kid,

we'd moved states, we'd moved, I was still really transitioning my life from moving countries from the UK. You know, there was just, it was a tough year. It was a really tough year and the Lord was gracious and kind and helped sustain us through it. And without him, it would have been really difficult. I just, it would have been really tough to do that

without the Lord, I think. Tell me exactly how Parler is better than Twitter. We don't censor speech. I mean if you want a simple one-liner that's it. You can have free conversations. Would you rather live in a totalitarian society or a free society? That's basically the difference. Twitter is a totalitarian society. But presumably you ban people and you censor certain things. Um, we... As I mentioned earlier, the community guidelines

outrule financial doxing, pornography, gore, violence, but apart from that, the worst you're going to get is a troll filter applied to your... A troll filter. Yeah. So basically if somebody puts... We have a moderation system now which is quite complicated, but I believe serves our users

in the way that they want to be served. So you can go onto Parla and you can put pretty much, you know, with the exception of what I've just outlined in terms of community guidelines of like financial doxing, you can pretty much write speech that you would never be allowed to write on Twitter. And it will get permitted and it will get allowed. But if the moderation system that we have in place detects that your essential aim is just to write offensive terms, so let's just say you drop the n-word several times or you're just using a highly derogatory term over and over and over again, that will then get flagged, it gets sent to a human moderation system and the human will then look at this and say, okay, this person is clearly just trying to troll, right, other people. And it's not providing any like useful dialogue. And then what happens is your

content doesn't get removed and it doesn't get shadow banned, it just we put a splash filter over the top which says like trolling detected and you can still click through and see the content if you wish to do so But it doesn't it doesn't take you down and we I mean, I mean the number of users we've blocked or banned I should say is like Peanuts in handful and those are mostly people who are just putting up pornography, which is kind of like Is that a full-time job just taking down pornography? Oh, yeah. We have we several, we have 30 jurors who sit in a jury system that moderates appeals, so people appeal to us.

And then we have three full-time moderation employees at the business. When I used to work at Covenant Eyes, somebody had to essentially determine whether or not the things that were being flagged as pornography were pornography yeah, and they have a system that sees a Very low resolution. Yeah image of that page so as not to expose these poor people to these images. Yeah, and they were also Free therapy was made available to them weekly

during office hours. I mean, what's that like for your people having to see this disgusting stuff? Yeah, I mean. Someone's gotta do it. Yeah, exactly. I can see why, it's kind of like the police officer who has to determine whether or not something

was child pornography. Nobody wants that police officer exposed to it, but somebody has to do it. Yeah, I mean, we try and put as much through the computer learning system as possible so that the actual exposure to it is de minimis, to humanise. You know, one of the moderation girls, I've walked past her desk a few times and I've seen things that I know that she's having to view. And I mean, it's just,

I mean, I guess to some extent it's just, they're used to it. There's a kind of professionalism about it. They get on with it. They crack on. It's done well. It's done sensibly and just, they get on with it. It's a tough, I mean, it's a tough job.

I mean, how, I presume you don't want to be seen as a right leaning platform. Presumably you wish to be open to everybody who cares about free speech. How are you seeking to make that known? Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's something that I constantly, you know, battle against, which is just that, well, you're just maga light, you're just Trump light,

you're conservative light. And, you know, in some ways, there's a couple of answers to this. One of which is like, we've always, our influencer programs, which we try and attract influencers onto the platform through, we reach out to both left and right. You know, and I've always, and there's actually,

there's even an evolution of that concept, which is that, comes back to what we said earlier, as that concentric circle of opinions, which is, which is politically acceptable to the left gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, you know, I will only agree with you if I'm a black, trans, disabled, lesbian, gendered, whatever, like, you know, it's just that that circle gets so small that at the end of the day, it's like, there's only like five people in it, right, you know, and so eventually, what that means is that, like, everyone's gonna get five people in it, right? You know, and so eventually what that means is that like everyone's going to get

cancelled, right? So this is what I joke about the whole time. I'm like, listen, they're going to come for you one day. Like it's just, it's, it's, it's going to happen because that circle is getting ever smaller. Um, you know, like, so if that purse, first of all, like I kind of make that pitch to the left. I'm like, listen, you're going to get, you're probably going to get canceled by your own team one day. You may just not see it yet. You may be willfully ignorant of it yet. You may as well start an account. Exactly.

You've got longed. Yeah, exactly. What's the harm, right? We did events on Capitol Hill where we tried to encourage congresspeople to come and I invited everyone. I was like left and right. AOC, come along. Let's get you on Parla. I like to kind of make the pitch that parlor would be as appealing in Franco's Spain as it would be in Soviet Russia. It's kind of like whatever side of the political aisle you fall on, there's a view for free speech

in both societies. There's a need for it. Other than free speech, why should somebody choose parlor over Twitter? Is it better in other ways? Because one of the things I hate about Twitter is how it forces you to truncate your message. Well, yeah, we have a 1000 character limit instead of 240. And obviously, Twitter's only went up to 240 after it was at 120 for a very long time. I mean, in terms of product features

and upgrades, I mean, one of the things that I often talk about, and this is now like moving strongly this conversation into the tech sphere, but I think that when Parler was founded in 2018, the free speech as a business model business idea was very new, and now there's a lot of players in this space. That's like, there's a Gab, there's Truth Social, there's Getter, you know, there's all these other platforms competing for this space.

But one of the hallmarks of all of these platforms to some extent is that they're trying to win a battle that I think has already been lost, which is that if you look at Twitter and Facebook, they've got 16 years and Facebook is a $500 billion business, market capitalization business. Twitter is a 500 billion dollar business, market capitalization business. Twitter is a, okay, it's much smaller, it's a 45 billion dollar market capitalization business

but they've got huge cash reserves and massive development teams. Twitter employs 6,000 people, I employ 100. You know, it's just like Facebook is multi, you know, it's like they have a map in Facebook's office Where they they change the color code of each country as it falls to the like the dominant the march of the inevitable Facebook Empire Right, like as more people in that country like when the majority of that population of that country is is on Facebook The color the color map of that country changes, right? It's like the margin game of what's that game called like risk risk Yeah, exactly. It's just say it is a bit like a game of, what's that game called? Like Risk.

Risk. Yeah, exactly. It's just like, it is a bit like that, you know? And so conservatives as a whole, like the free speech minded people, because I don't want to use the term conservative when you're talking about the platform neutrality, but we're trying to win a battle for this space, which is like, you know, we're going to be this big, you're gonna be like less than 1% in this empire of totalitarian tech, right?

So instead of trying to win the battles that we've already lost of yesteryear, like we need to kind of focus on the next fight, right? And so my opinion here, and you know, this is something which like a lot of people haven't yet kind of embraced, or I guess it's still on the fringe, but the next battle is gonna be in the blockchain space. It's gonna be in the blockchain space, in crypto.

What is that? Crypto, right. And so you're already seeing this happen, right? It's just that people aren't aware of it yet. Web3 as it's called, which is the embrace of crypto, the embrace of the blockchain, like blockchain central platforms, crypto it's called, which is the embrace of crypto, the embrace of the blockchain, like blockchain central platforms, crypto centered platforms, are already starting to centralize. And like Web3 is supposed to be this great project for decentralization of the internet.

And in turn, what's happening is like the move of the platforms is becoming increasingly centralized, right? So like, there are these Leviathan companies now emerging out of the platforms is becoming increasingly centralized. So there are these Leviathan companies now emerging out of the Web 3 space, which are centralizing all of this data, which is exactly what happened in Web 2. So we all freely went to Facebook. Nobody gave Facebook the crown upon the Caesar's throne. It became the default platform. In the same way, there are platforms already becoming the default platforms of the web three movement.

So in my opinion, the next movement needs to be like of these free speech platforms, and this is what we're doing at Parler, like we're making a big product move into the crypto space, right? Because I want to make sure that we not just have free speech now, but have free speech in 20 years, have free speech in the generation to come. And the next generation is gonna be blockchain, crypto. It's just inevitable, right? Because there is so much movement into that space

by technology right now. And of course then, you know, people say, well, crypto markets, it's all just a big scam. It's clearly not, you know, I mean, there are obviously, like every nascent industry, there is clearly a scamming element to it. There's clearly a grifting element to it. And much of that has been exposed with the price of Bitcoin and all the major cryptocurrencies collapsing this year. But in general, markets do that the whole time. Market's correct. That is what happens in markets. In fact, it's actually a necessary process that that happens.

happens in markets. In fact, it's actually a necessary process that that happens. And what you do is you flush out the weak movers as creative destruction. This is the Austrian School of Economics in practice. You get a lot of these weaker players leaving the space, and then you get a much more solid foundation upon which a more prosperous crypto economy can be built.

And so that's the next generation of the tech world. That's the next generation of where social media is going. So in the long run, I wanna make Parler a very friendly, crypto friendly, like what I'm nicknaming like a decentralized social, crypto social. That's kind of what we need in the next generation because that's the fight of five years time. So are you that concerned right now about convincing people

why they should be on Parla instead of Getter or Gab? Like what's the difference between Parla, Getter and Gab? Yeah, there isn't really, there isn't a huge difference. Right, I mean, I would argue that Getter, so I mean, you know, taking a fairly easy shot across the bowels of my competitors. So Getter is controlled by my uncle, Miles Kwok, and he is a quote unquote dissident Chinese billionaire.

And, you know, one of the things that I say is, I'm never quite sure how you can be a distant Chinese billionaire, given the fact that he's the only one. And I think that the ties, and Getter used to be a distant Chinese billionaire given the fact that he's the only one. And I think that the ties and Geta used to be a Chinese language app, right? This is not well known by many people. And so as a result, there is like a historical legacy that that company has with mainland China, which I think probably as a free speech platform, I would be very cautious about. probably as a free speech platform I would be very cautious about. And it's also well known that Geta censors viewpoints which don't correspond

with Miles Quokk's. Or at least this is in my opinion this is where this is something that has been raised many times by a lot of people that I've spoken to that Geta and this has also been nationally circulated in the press as well that Geta has shut down accounts which criticize Miles Quok. So it's kind of free speech for some, but kind of free speech for me, but not for the kind of thing. There's a degree to which you're allowed to speak freely until you say something against the owner of the platform. Truth, you know, I think that that has had its own. Yeah, tell us about this. Yeah. Truth. Truth social.

Truth is. What is it? Sounds terrible. Are you on truth social? Truth social. So this is Trump's thing? Yeah, that's just right. I know nothing about it except those words that I just spoke. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. Truth is, you know, in many ways was supposed to be Trump's return to social media, which it kind of is. I mean that's really what it is. And so, you know, as a result, he's picked up a lot of users from the domestic, like the US market who

miss his voice in the national conversation, right? And so that's kind of the hallmark characteristic of that. I'm not sure of its international appeal, if I'm honest. Like, if you're a European politician, why would you want to be on Truth Social? Because that inevitably means you have to carry the baggage of explaining why you're on Truth Social, right? So I think that Truth Social's main user base is probably gonna be the US domestic market.

It's probably going to be US consumers who miss Trump's voice. But I think its international appeal is perhaps a little bit more limited than something like Parler's is, which we're supposed to be, we are viewpoint neutral. We should have as much appeal in Nigeria and Iran as we would do in We actually have quite a large number of Iranian accounts. We actually have quite a large number of Saudi accounts We you know, it's it's it's appealing overseas as much as it is appealing in the domestic market, right? So, you know, I would say that like Those two platforms. I mean like gab is an interesting one Let me just say about gab that people seem to be as enthusiastic as Gab

as the orthobros are as enthusiastic of orthodoxy. Like I can't tell you how many comments we get, become orthodox. Well, okay, but like sure, but that's not a great argument. It's just a statement. And when I said, we're gonna have, you know, you want to discuss Parler in part, get Gab, there's a lot of people

who are very it up about gab Yeah, why is gab so fantastic Andrew tour but? What was that? Andrew is the CEO is he Catholic? Is he I thought he was just Christian. I'm not actually sure what is I? Heard he was Catholic. I could be right I in the comment section will let us know What? I could be right. I also don't. People in the comments section will let us know. What's the name? What?

Gab. Yeah. Is it two Bs or one? No, it's one B. One B. Yeah. I'll say this about Gab. I have a lot of respect for Gab.

The reason I have a lot of respect for Gab is because we engaged with the, like, to resurrect Parla, we went through the nightmare of getting cloud hosting back up, and then we had to negotiate with the app stores. We had to do all of this. And I think that Gab just basically stuck two fingers up to the whole tech system and was just like, we're never gonna get back on.

We don't wanna be on an app store, because that would imply that we have to do some content moderation. So they just kind of gave two fingers up to the whole tech world. And as a result, you know, like, they just do their thing. You know, and I kind of respect that. So you can't download a gab app?

No, you can't, yeah. Because you can't get it through the app stores because they refuse to engage with any kind of moderation. Right? And I'm paraphrasing here and people will fact check me and say, well, they do have content moderation. And I'm sure they do. I don't use the platform, but.

What's that? Is that the only? Yeah. So what's that? What do you say? Pornography. Right. Yeah.

That's good. So I mean, they, you know, like, as I say, I kind of, I respect their unwillingness to engage with the, with, with anything to do with like the tech world. I mean, personally, that's, you know, that's obviously a decision I haven't taken. You know, I think that we, I think that to change, to change the narrative, we need to be in the narrative to some extent, like we need to be in the conversation.

I don't think we can just exist. Like, yeah, over here in this own world and just expect to have productive debates. Like, I think we can just exist. Silo ourselves off. Yeah, over here in this own world and just expect to have productive debates. I think we should engage with the app stores. I've been asked this question before in conferences. What do you think is the next boundary which we need to overcome in the tech world? And my answer is always the mobile phone.

We need a new phone. We need a new phone which is not controlled by Apple and Google. Like this is the, this is the kind of the next, like. And I'm sure there's a gazillion of people trying right now. Yeah, I mean, so Eric Prince has done this thing called Unplugged Phone. He was the founder of Blackwater,

which is a well-known private security company. You know, he's doing this phone called Unplugged. There was a guy called Eric Finman who did a Freedom phone, which had some moderate success. I mean, there are people trying to do it, but it's like what you actually need to do, and this is getting pretty technical now, but like the operating system, the OS that you operate on is really the... The reason that Apple and Google have such a monopoly or duopoly on this whole process is because they operate the operating systems. So Android, like can you name me an operating system which is not iOS or Android?

No. Exactly. So like Linux is one, right? And then there's various Chinese ones, which I don't think are necessarily going to be any better than Apple and Google. In fact, probably 10 times worse. But like there are a few operating systems, but they are really clunky. Like I've tried, I have done a pretty deep dive in this area and like I bought weird, wonderful phones, which nobody's ever heard of and like tested operating systems across the board and tried to find which ones are the best ones. And it's like a convenience is the ultimate utility. We always come back to Apple and Google

because they're the best. And that's the reason they're the best because these are multi-trillion dollar businesses which have invested a fortune in developing operating systems that we all love and enjoy. And not only that, but if you have AirPods, if you have an iMac, if you have whatever, it just syncs. It's just so easy and that's the whole point.

But this comes back to, and this is Pines with Aquinas, so I want to link it to spirituality. Convenience is actually, can be an enemy. The broad, open, wide path leads to destruction. The narrow, wide path leads to destruction. The narrow hard path leads to salvation. And like we as a culture which feels threatened by the rise of progressive values need to start taking that narrow path. And we need to start making decisions

that are uncomfortable for us to make. What does that look like? Give us a couple. It means deleting Facebook. It means deleting WhatsApp. It means deleting Instagram. It means deleting all these things. Unless you have a platform big enough

where your message is changing the narrative, you need to like, Pull out. You need to delete Gmail. You need to delete everything, which is, which, which. What do you use? I use ProtonMail use proton mail is that good it's an encrypted email so like ask yourself this why can email be free

because I'm the product correct right you are the product right and if you're using Gmail you're you're using I should I'm I know I'm gonna do all this and then regret it in a week but let's let's go but like this is this but this is what I mean you we need to start making you think I should get off Twitter Instagram and Facebook like I I mean Yeah, I mean, you know I Start with Twitter Twitter is a Twitter come to a parlay like who cares about Twitter anymore I mean, it's just such over on with so while we're talking about Twitter at the time of filming Elon Musk which I'm interested

to hear your thoughts on that whole situation, but he has recently said that his original offer is back on the table, the Twitter stock is up 12% and has been halted. Wow. So thoughts on that whole thing. What do you think? Wow. Maybe, I don't know. I bet that's not good for you.

You have any insight into his motivations. I bet that's not good for him. Allegedly has something to do with his, you know, being free speech or something like that is what I've heard is part of the acquisition idea. Yeah, he wants to turn Twitter into a free speech platform, right? And this is like Jack Dorsey when he found a Twitter said we want to be the free speech wing

of the free speech party, right? Which is so ironic given the content censorship that happens on Twitter, right? And I mean, now Parler's business, Parler is now a much bigger company than just the social media asset, as I was saying to you yesterday. We've now, we completed this acquisition.

We have these large, we have a very large data center operation. We're probably gonna do another acquisition in this space. You know, we have these large, we have a very large data center operation. We're probably going to do another acquisition in this space. You know, we're doing, we have a big crypto operation now. Yeah. I mean, the social media and this kind of comes back to the point. Like I believe there is a value in the social media asset of Parlo. Absolutely. And I believe that we can still fight a fight which has not yet been fought, which is this crypto fight.

But there's also all these other competitors out there and congratulations to them and well done on people taking the initiative to grow a business which is combating a desperate societal need. Right. So, you know, whether Elon, I mean, I raised some points at the beginning of the Elon Twitter kind of debacle, which I think are very relevant. First of all, which is that the bot issue is a real issue, and there is a huge issue on Twitter with bots. And so he has to deal with that. The second thing is that there's a culture shift. Twitter is like the Twitter is the Twitter is the vanguard flag waiver of the woke brigade right it's just it's like it's where all the leftists hang out right i mean they all love Twitter and the reason being is because it never senses them and it only senses their opponents right i mean like the number of conservatives who have been given strikes and barred

and banned and kicked off, most famously, the President of the United States of America. Like, how much more evidence do you need? Right? And so the reason that the woke brigade loved Twitter is because it... Hillary Clinton staffers went to work at Twitter. I mean, it was... It's kind of well known that they are... I mean, Facebook is nowhere near as bad as Twitter in terms of censorship. Yes it has a censorship problem but it's nowhere near as bad as Twitter. And anyway so if Elon does buy Twitter, like commendable that he's taking upon himself and staking his own cash to try and

resurrect this entire platform, he's basically gonna have to fire all 6,000 employees right and start again because it's just like every employee who works there, Jack Dorsey said this in congressional testimony, why does your platform have a bias on the left? And he said the reason being is because we hire from California and the majority of people in California are on the left, right, and it's like a self-fulfilling cycle of vice, you're based in California, the people you hire are woke, the people they in turn appeal to are woke people, the people they look to hire are woke people.

Cool. That's all right, you can leave it. The viewpoints they put out are woke. All the cards align right and all of those things combine with each other to produce a very very woke business and this is why the supreme court has in turn issued an opinion Clarence Thomas wrote justice Thomas wrote this opinion which he said that section 230 which is the shield behind which these tech companies sit in terms of their differentiation between a platform and a publisher.

The shield that they bear is only worthy of bearing if they can demonstrate that over time they haven't exercised consistent subjective opinions. And Twitter, I don't know anybody on the left or the right. Some of the best respected tech journalists in the world have said to me in private Twitter is clearly a publisher. It's not a platform. It clearly is making subjective decisions right and that's the truth and so that as a result you end up with this like I don't understand how they're still shielded by this board based immunity that they're that they're allowed to pledge.

So if if Elon does get Twitter, would you be kind of like disappointed in the short term but excited in the long run? Well, I think the damage it would presumably do to parlor as soon as people heard I mean, I feel like a hot second got back on Twitter. I feel like the damage I mean like we saw some we saw a lot of people create you know like conservatives as a whole saw a lot of people create accounts after Elon announced so I feel like the damage I feel like what damage has already been done is done right so the people who

still use Parler like you know the the hundreds of thousands of monthly active users we have you know are very they kind of love the platform for just the fact that it's a different corner of the internet. We poll our users pretty consistently and we find that lots of people just enjoy it because it is different. They don't want to be on Twitter. In the long run, what do I think it has?

In the long run, I think that it's very good for society if a major tech platform like the healing of society needs to take place the healing of society needs to it can't take place under the current leadership of the tech titans right because the current leadership of the tech titans has no like they're not interested in free speech they're not interested in free speech. They're not interested in this debate, right? So I think it's a good thing for society. What it means for our business, you know, as I said, we, we, I saw the writing was on this wall a long time ago. So that's why I've

diversified the portfolio of, and really my focus now and has been for some time is growing the platform in terms of hosting and data centers operation that we focus on to this day. Neil, I have a Parler account. I think it's parler.com slash Matt Fradd. Would you mind looking that up and putting that in the description if people are on Parler? I guess that's the other thing that's difficult, right? Is to kind of convince people, here's another thing you should join.

It just sounds so exhausting. Well, back in the day it was... But if you're retreating from one and then, you know, expending energy in another, that's probably... Well, back in the day it was, here's the only one. And now it's like, here's another one, right? Because another is like five platforms. There's Miwi, Cloud Hub, Minds, all these other platforms. Has there been any attempt to try to bring together things

like Gab and Parler? Not really, no. I mean, not from an M&A perspective, not from a merchant acquisition perspective. We haven't really engaged in that conversation with any of our competitors. But I'm sure it's, I mean, like Locals, which I know you're on, which is slightly different

to what we do, you know, it's not microblogging, it's more like long form deep dive content. Yeah. You know, that was bought by Rumble, which obviously is now a publicly traded company. So that was, when Rumble bought Locals, I thought, this is it, we're off. Like now the big sector roll-up consolidation is gonna

take place and then nothing happened so you know I think everyone's just trying to make it on their own maybe this news will elicit something like that I don't know I mean we'll see what happens. Let's take a break come back light up a cigar okay and keep chatting. Great. So So So So So So So So So So I'm going to go to the beach. Thank you. you you you Alright, we're back. Alright. Okay. You want to talk about what this cigar is or should we not mention it? I'm going to keep it private.

Okay. The Trinidad Lopez. What? It's the Trinidad Lopez is what this is. Talk to me. It's a great, wonderful, wonderful cigar. You're gonna love it. It's quite mild, I would say. It's got a good flavor to it, but it's also not... Will we get banned from saying where it's from? I don't know. Let's not say that's just not say let's keep it let's keep it under wraps this is this is a is this a butane yeah this is ah glory to Jesus Christ when did you start smoking cigars um probably when I was about 19 actually

yeah that's kind of how did you get into but I didn't really get into them for How old were you when you first got into the business? Um, probably when I was about 19 actually. Really? How did you get into them? But I didn't really get into them for the first time. I mean nobody enjoys a cigar. At 19. Like, nobody enjoys it. It's like something you do because you think it makes you look cool. Yeah. And you're just like, I don't really understand what I'm doing with this thing, but I'm gonna do it anyway. And then the first time you have a cigar you inevitably have a

Mind numbingly bad head head rush. That's what happened to me Yeah, and then you probably throw up so I I started with pipes because I was living in Ireland at the time There's a lot of old men who smoked pipes. I thought it looked cool They got the great just be careful. That's really close to that And then we got that great Peterson's pipe store in Dublin. If you've ever seen it. I never been to Dublin. They got some just really nice pipes. So that's how I got into it that way.

I just looked cooler, I guess. Yeah. And then, why is that funny? But then my father-in-law smokes cigars and I just liked the idea of it. So I would sit with him and smoke them and I don't think I ever enjoyed them really. I liked the idea of it more than I enjoyed it.

It was like Dostoevsky until I loved Dostoevsky. But I remember the one time I went from pipes to cigars, my wife was out with the kids and she was for an overnight somewhere. So I thought, yeah, I'll get a cigar, a bit of scotch and I smoked it like I smoked a pipe because I mean in order to keep a pipe lit you've got to breathe quite... Yeah you have to pull the pipe pretty hard. And I got really sick. Yeah. All of a sudden it felt like the back of my legs were sweating. Oh yeah. And it felt that way because they were. Yeah I thought, I don't want to question my body.

Like I presume it knows what it's doing, but I can't for the life of me imagine how this is helping. And I nearly threw up, it was awful. So my dad, he tells these incredible stories about trading in the city of London in the 70s and the 80s when smoking was just half the course like everybody smoked right and and and not just it not just everybody smoked but like the whole institution of the financial district was set up to accommodate smoking

right like every restaurant was smoking there were like there was a trading ring um like one of the open outcry trading rings which are really all gone now but this trading ring, like one of the open outcry trading rings, which are really all gone now. But this trading ring used to have this giant copper bowl in the middle where people used to flick their cigarettes and cigar butts into this copper bowl in the middle of the trading ring during the open trading sessions. And my dad, I've never seen him smoke a cigar. He gave up smoking. And I asked him about it once and it was kind of a fascinating it was like I mean I felt sick him telling me how he gave up smoking which I said yeah I was like how did you give up and he was like well you know I went through stronger forms of tobacco to make myself

hate it right oh and so I was like okay walk me through that so he went from cigarettes where he was smoking like you know a pack a day or two packs a day or whatever to Cigarillos, which are the kind of like there are more like a they look a little bit like a smaller cigar. Yeah, right and Then he went to cigars And so I said to him I was like, well, you know How many cigars were you smoking a day? And he was like, well, I was, at the end, I was smoking five cigars a day. For how long?

For like three years. That's so impressive. And I was like, and I was like, I was just like, this is incredible. And then I said, I was like, well, you know, just thank goodness you weren't inhaling them. And he was like, oh no, no. He was inhaling cigars?

He was like, I was inhaling five cigars a day. Right? And he lived to be a hundred and fourteen. Yeah, he's 78 years old and he ran a marathon, you know, he's never stopped. But it was just like, my word, I mean, the concept of that, the head rush that one would experience would just be brutal.

I mean, just brutal. And he did that in order to give them up? Yeah, because then- And he tried it for three years? Like after three years smoking five cigars a day, come up with a new tactic. This isn't working. It's not working.

He smokes seven a day. Yeah, that's right. Well, I think he started off on like one and two, and then my mom also complained about how bad he smelled the whole time. Let's talk about objections to tobacco smoking. Before we do, what's the, so I guess I don't understand. So he just smoked more and more so that he would hate it

Yeah, yeah, so basically like He smoked like I want to hate alcohol, so I'm gonna get drunk every night that'll work He smoked more and more and more and more until it became like so he just he hated everything about it He had the constant smell The head rushes that he was getting I I do not see how that would work. No, neither do I really. This is like a terrible way to quit smoking. Having never done it, I can't vouch for it,

but apparently it worked. What did your mom go through during those years? Five cigars. This will take us what, an hour? Yeah. Hour and a half? Yeah, this is a good cigar, an hour probably. So, I mean, but it was also, as I said, like this

accommodation of the whole smoking culture, like he smoked cigars at his desk in the office. Right. And you sat there with a cigar in his mouth in the office. Right. And so as a result, like you can see why it would be so much easier to do that. Right. Because if you don't have to like go outside or, you know, accommodate for no smoking zones, you can just sit there and just chain smoke, right? Which is what he did basically. Which is what you can now do in Steubenville, Ohio

by coming to Chesterton's, although we weren't allowed people to smoke cigarettes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, someone came in, even if you roll your own, someone came in the other day because we're doing a soft launch before Friday with the big launch. Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette? No, you can't do that. Yeah

Wise move cigarette smoke smells disgusting. Whereas cigar smoke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah point of it It's a much more refined smoke. Yeah, and it's leaf. Yeah, it is these are my leafy greens. Yeah, it's good for me It's one of your fiber day. What's that? It's one of your fiber day like in Britain That's right about five a day, you know, you have five leaves of green vegetables. Okay, so here's a question for you. Yeah, what's the question? So we were talking about this before the show. When you moved to the United States,

like what are the things that as an Australian, I mean, I find it fascinating that you're an Australian living in Steubenville, Ohio, right? Like it's just kind of, you know, it's not, and you're a devout Catholic, and you're involved in, like, this whole show, I just find fascinating. It was kind of one of the things that drew me into it. But, as a member of the Anglosphere, there are certain things that, like, I just, when I moved over here, I found them totally bizarre. And now I'm interested in what they were for you. Well, I moved to Houston, Texas, which is a whole other.

So I think the things that struck me was, there's a number of things that struck me. I'll try to rattle them off real quick. How big the portion sizes were of food. How nice waitresses were. And then I realized that you tip them we don't tip in Australia yeah I think they're trying to bring it in but it's it's kind of weird hey what if you just paid me more even though you've had no history of

ever doing that no I don't I don't want to do that at all so is that and I remember he's just shocked everyone was so nice there's the ego capitalism there was no incentive for people to be nice in Australia. Just buy the frigging thing. How big cars were. I also noticed that in America, you either had like really new cars or like really old cars.

Whereas in Australia, it felt like everyone was kind of driving a middle of the range kind of car. Right. Which probably says a lot about Australia. Right. The kind of classless middle of the range kind of car. Right. Which probably says a lot about Australia. Right. The kind of classless society. Or, allegedly. I remember the fact that mail came six days a week,

depressed me. Interesting. Like not five days, but six days. Interesting. I remember my boss asking me what day I'd like to take off, and that depressed me. Oh, prescription drug commercials are illegal in Australia. And so watching those things was so weird.

Yeah, same in the UK. You know, like those, like erectile dysfunction meds, like Viagra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanna be like Superman? Like yeah, sounds awesome. And all these happy images. and then the different voice comes in and rattles off the things that you may or may not get. Rectal bleeding, suicidal thoughts and

while they're saying the most horrendous things people are skipping on a beach. Yeah, it's like... It's so confusing. That was weird. Terms and conditions apply. None of these products may actually affect your erectile dysfunction. Exactly. It's like all these really quick fire rapid lines. Okay, you'll find this very interesting. So in Australia, cricket obviously is a massive sport. We've got to talk about this.

We will, as it is in England. Now, Aussie rules football, I'm told, was invented to keep the cricket players fit in winter. So it's sort of like Gaelic football, a little bit more violent. This is what I've been told as well. And it takes place on a cricket pitch, on a cricket oval. Right? So growing up in South Australia, the two main sports are cricket and Aussie rules football, both of which are played on an oval. Because of that, you would, if you're at school, say, like, let's go sit

out on the oval. Like oval just became synonymous with large patch of glass where games are played Yeah, so I was in Houston with my wife and we were Dating at the time and I was we were walking back to her apartment or something and I said look there's some fella out there On the oval she said the what said the oval and it occurred to me that you don't refer to large Patches of grass as ovals because none of your sports take place on an oval. That's a very specific. Yeah. That was really interesting.

That's an interesting one. What about you? Arugula. What is that? Oh, the herb? Yeah, because it's rocket in England. Ah, what about all the different words we say differently? Yeah, like cilantro.

That also completely baffled me. It actually took me a while to figure out exactly what cilantro was. And then, I mean, like. Don't trust it. Yeah. It's also funny. What's another word for cilantro?

Coriander. Oh, right. Yeah. So it's one of these, like, herbs where you just find a lot. I mean, I know all the kind of weird, like, there were a lot of Americanisms which it just took me a while to adjust to. Now I speak both. I can interchange freely. There were a lot of Americanisms which it just took me a while to adjust to.

Now I speak both. I can interchange freely. But there were a lot, like the portion size, that's a great one. Again, just the size of everything. America's just big. It's just big, big trucks, big houses, big everything. Everything is big. It's just in England it's like ten times worse. I mean

Australia 23 million people living in a landmass, you know, roughly comparable to the continental US. Yeah, exactly You know, so it's just they've got a lot of space over there, you know, there's just lots of space Okay, admittedly a lot of it is desert But yeah, there's a huge amount of space to do things if you want to same with the US England You've got like 65 million people living in a country half the size of France, right? And, you know, roughly the same size as like, you know, the North, the Northeast, not even the same size as the Northeast, like much smaller than the Northeast. You know, I forget the comparisons,

like half the size of Alabama. Anyway, so, you know, you've got, you've got this, everything squished in England, you know. Everything is just squished and- Small, even the fridges, you know, you come here, the fridges are massive. Cereal boxes are huge. Yeah, I know. And now when I go back to England, I'm like, wow, this is so small. Why are they so small?

It's tiny. Losers. This is like ridiculous. What is this portion size? What is this, a meal for an ad? The other thing that's funny is in Australia, we call trucks utes. Yeah. And we call, if you refer to a truck, it's one of those ones with a freight truck, like

a Mack truck or something. We call them utes and y'all call them trucks and now I see why because your utility trucks or your utes are ute. And then there were also other things like... Oh, their chocolate sucks. Yeah, American chocolate sucks. Yeah, American chocolate does. American chocolate is awful.

It's terrible, that's true, that's very true. Sorry. But one of the interesting things that definitely the British in me finds interesting is that, and I'm generalizing here, so forgive me for my mass generalization here, but there were a lot of Americans who sort of still had like had the belief, for example, that George III was deciding the fate of America, right? And in general, like they Americans had this view of kind of the monarchy, like we ridded

ourselves of the king, right? And I just was kind of like, hang on a sec, you don't actually think that George III had any actual power, do you? Because he wasn't, he was a constitutional monarch for hundreds of years, right? This is the point, the monarchy had already become a constitutional monarchy by this point. And so there's a kind of not a great sense of like,

what the English parliament, the English government ruled the 13 colonies. It was not the, yes, the English government, ruled the 13 colonies. It was not the, yes, in nominal figurehead status in the same way that the King of England now is the head of state of England. But he has no power, right? And this is the whole point. Like Liz Truss just slapped down Charles

attending some climate summit, right? Because she's like, I don't want you going to a climate summit and telling people what you think because it's not what you're supposed to do anymore. In the same way that like William Pitt, the younger, told George III what to think and what to do, right? And so there was this kind of general conception that somehow the monarchs of England

still exerted some power, right? And I'm like, no, this is why we had a civil war. England had a civil war which actually claimed as a percentage of the population, far more lives than had a civil war. England had a civil war which actually claimed, as a percentage of the population, far more lives than the American civil war claimed. Seven to eight percent of the English population was wiped out in the English civil war. Massive battles, and eventually it culminated

in obviously the execution of Charles I. We literally chopped off the head of the king, and we had a Commonwealth, the Republic of England for 12 years, the Commonwealth of England for 12 years, the Commonwealth of England for 12 years until the monarchy was restored, right? Because people hated the Commonwealth so much and they hated the Commonwealth so much.

So that sense of perception of history is just something that I've come across quite a bit. Kind of interesting. Yeah. There was about two hours in the middle of a night during the Biden, yeah, Biden and Trump sort of back and forth, we weren't sure who was gonna be president, where I considered moving back to Australia.

Really? Remember just things just felt so unbelievably turbulent. Yeah, I know. I mean, there was that time where there was like this uptick in preachers who were saying the end of the world is coming and then a bunch of Catholics jumping on that bandwagon and it's kind of understandable, it felt that way. Yeah.

So it was. Yeah, we do live. But I am glad I live here. Yeah, same. I mean. I'm applying for citizenship right now, actually. Are you really? Yeah, I'm intending to do that.

I have a green card currently. I mean, it's applying for citizenship right now, actually. Are you really? Yeah, I'm intending to do that. I have a green card currently. I mean, it's, I love America. I mean, I think America is, there are some things, there are times when I'm just, a message as a candidacy, I'm just like, I absolutely love this country. Like, I love it. I love what it stands for. Like, it gets me emotional.

Like, I have a deep seated love for the freedom that this country cherishes so much. You know, and it's just like, you can't find that free expression. Like, it's kind of funny because, you know, operating in the political circles that we kind of move in, like I go to a lot of these conferences, and there's always these kind of like slightly wacky, you know, like people who come dressed up as Abraham Lincoln and you know, wearing the like, it's like the MAGA hat on top of the MAGA hat on top of the MAGA hat, you know, and I'm just like, and I kind of, I just, in my heart of hearts, I love these people, because they, they're so brazen in their, like, they just, they're just like this is who I am and I'm gonna embrace it You know, and it's just and they don't care and I love that because in England everyone's so kind of Gotta be reserved and you know and and that's and this is kind of why I actually didn't really Blend or mesh very well with British politics was because I was far too Brazen in my opinions.

Like, I remember this MP, member of parliament in Britain, once gave me a book and it was just called War. And he was like, this is for you because this is how you think. He was like, you just think about the fight. And I'm like, and this was kind of many years ago now, but it was funny that he gave this to me because I just thought that is kind of a little bit who I was At the time, you know, it was in the midst of the brexit turmoil Which was similar to the kind of Trump turmoil over here

But then when you come over here, you just find this political culture, which just embraces exactly who it People embrace themselves. They embrace the country that they love it. They they embrace the kind of the Second Amendment They embrace all the amendments. They embrace the freedom that this country has brought. You know, this is one of the reasons like they don't have hate speech laws over here because it's nonsense, you know, and like they embrace the freedom of speech, right? And it's written into the Constitution. It's literally written as the First Amendment. And so there's times when I just think, wow, like, I just love this country, you know, it's just it is given so much to the world. What would the world be like without America? It would be a terrible place.

It would be a dark place, a much darker place than it is right now. The America is still that that like country that so many people aspire to be, you know, in the same way that the church is the beacon on the hill. Like this is what I was saying to you yesterday. Like for me, when I came into the church, I just was like overwhelmed with joy. You know, it was just C.S. Lewis talks about when he became a Christian. And I love that mentality that he kind of he describes it when he became a Christian. He was like, there was nobody who didn't want to become a Christian more than me.

You know, he was like dragged kicking and screaming. And for me, it was kind of almost the exact paradigm opposite. Like I came into the church and I felt overwhelmed with just this kind of joy and love for the church that I had kind of aspired to, of course, then went back into the world. And, you know, I lost that love. But in the same way that I think the church is that beacon on the hill, which which stands as the great testament to truth um and is and is the bride of christ America is like the country that still has that Uniqueness to it that no other country in the world has people get nervous when americans start talking like this

Because americans do tend to talk about their country with a religious fervor that other countries don't understand, which sounds alien and not just dramatic, but over the top. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there is a... But I think because it's given so much to the world, right? And this is an American, and America has never really suffered like what I would describe as like a global defeat, right? It's never really suffered. It's never suffered a crisis of consciousness, right? In the same way that Britain, pretty much every country in the world has suffered a crisis of consciousness. One could argue, well, you know, Vietnam was like a crisis of consciousness a little bit. But, you know, it didn't shake America's like unchallenged global hegemony, right? And

to that extent, you know, I think like what's happening now in American politics is shaking that the corruption which is internal is drawing attention to the corruption of the American political cycle and that is shaking America's belief in itself. The hyper-polarization of American politics is displaying to the world the deep divisions in the American national psyche right now. You know there's a huge, there has never been a time this country has been so polarized and it's kind of it's kind of frightening Well, I mean one of the things that's good about polarization is that at least more than one group is speaking

Yeah, because in Australia It feels like you don't have a personality or a group that has the power and influence to mobilize a significant contingent of the population in the way that whether you agree with them or don't agree with them, Fox News, Daily Wire, and these others do. Like people really feel like they have a champion, that they have a voice. Whereas in Australia, it feels like every single news outlet,

except Sky News, who from what I can tell, talk a great deal about American politics. They do, yeah. Maybe they talk about Australian politics as well. I don't follow them. I like what I can tell, talk a great deal about American politics. They do, yeah. Maybe they talk about Australian politics as well. I don't follow them. I like what I've seen there, but yeah, just people are quickly dismissed as crazy if they don't fall in step with the sheet of music

that all of the news outlets are singing from, as it were. Is it like that in England? Yeah, very much so. So while the polarization feels and maybe is, it definitely is at times, very chaotic and scary. It's like, well, at least there's a clash of ideas happening whereas in Australia, those who would seek to oppose the COVID lockdowns

were just written off as idiots. Yeah, I know. When I spoke to my folks, I was like, wow, we are from different countries Yeah, cuz my parents bless them Would speak of the covert? lockdowns and vaccine mandates

They would speak about the country the way Children speak of their parents. They would say They're doing what's best for us, you know, yeah, or they just, even little things like, you know, COVID shut down all these businesses. I'm like, oh my gosh, like we've both drunk the Kool-Aid here perhaps because I would never speak of the government with that kind of reverence. I know. And that was the same in the UK now, the national,

and like Hayek, Hayek and the Road to Serfdom, his famous book, which talks about, I mean really it was kind of an interesting book to study in some ways because it was never written to be the seminal work that it became. He never intended for it to be, it was actually kind of a side project for him in many ways. And then it became like this huge book which attracted global publicity. And one of the things which he writes in that book is that it takes, it's never kind of like, very rarely does a national psyche change by revolution. Like it's the drip, drip, drip, drip of evolutionary thought, which changes national psyche. And like, I would say that that's happened in Britain.

Like Britain has lost touch with its own freedom. And so it's just moving slowly towards an ever increasingly authoritarian state. You know, like you are seeing in real time, you know, people like getting cut down online, arrested by the police for misgendering people in conversations on social media, you know, hate speech laws which are becoming ever more stringent. You know, Britain's just lost touch with its own freedom. It just doesn't, you know, my generation in Britain doesn't view freedom of speech as an important requisite for a functioning democracy. It just doesn't.

I would imagine if you polled Americans, freedom of speech wouldn't necessarily be prized among those who are say 30 years old and young. Yeah, they've done some polls on this and terrifyingly, like it's not a majority yet, it's still a minority, but it's a ever increasing minority of people who view freedom of speech as less important than, you know, like safe spaces as it were. Where do you see this going? I mean, you're not a prophet, maybe you are,

I'm not a prophet nor am the son of a prophet, but if you were to sort of speculate one possible outcome, where do you see this going in the United States? Yeah it's a I mean that is you know it's it's something that kind of keeps me up at night you know like what future does our society hold? Like where are we going? And I mean this comes back to the spiritual life. This comes back to the divine life, you know, because it's like, I think that if you just take a pretty bleak view of there is no God, there is no salvation, there is no, you know, there is no eternal life, then you could just hopelessly write off society and say, well, we're all

doomed. You know, it's just the end of the world is nigh. But if you believe that God is sovereign and if you believe that God is benevolent and benign, or you know, omnipotent, omniscient, and his hand guides the whole of creation, then one will be able to say, he is working out his will for society through these tribulations and turbulence.

And I think in many ways, like I'm very hopeful as a person, which is kind of counterintuitive to being British because British people are generally terribly pessimistic about everything and complain, mainly about the weather and about the grayness of the clouds. But I would actually say like through all of this his will is being worked out, through all of this his will is being worked out through all of this you know the church will find her way and in some ways like this is kind of counterintuitive but like you the night is always darkest before the dawn you kind of need the the times of deep darkness to show the world what the world is on the brink of so that it can

be pulled back from that brink right and I kind of think we're there now or at least maybe I'm wrong and maybe I you know maybe we've got another 10 years of terrible you know like social upheaval to go through before we can get there but you know that for example the whole transgender debate you know I think that there's a I think that there is a Rubicon now which is being crossed. Like, most of society, as American society, is kind of like, okay, gay marriage, you know, happy days, like, you know, love is love, kind of thing, somewhat meaningless platitudes. You know, but they're kind of, they were okay with it.

But now it's like, now you're butchering our children. Now you're butchering our children now. You're butchering children now You're like mutilating children to do to achieve your socially engineered goals You know, this is not acceptable and like and you know I mean, I always love it when they kind of love it when they attack the church, right because it's like You're attacking an institution which is promoting peace and charity and love and faith and hope right so how dark do you have to be to attack that institution I mean I saw the other day like I kind of I kind of find these guys pretty entertaining the satanic temples of America sued the

Supreme Court's decision on Roe versus Wade saying that abortion was a moral right right And I always think it's pretty entertaining when the Satanic temple does anything because it's like how dark do you have to be that the Satanic, like how far down the rabbit hole of desperation do you have to be that the Satanic temple is coming out and attacking you, you know? So it's, I think we're getting to that stage now where we're reaching a kind of a precipice from which we will pull back. Right. So, but what we do need, you know, you need a healing leader, you need a healing president to some extent,

you need like reconciliation in the party space. And then there are some people that I just think like, you've got to let them be them and they're going to demonstrate the worst of themselves to the rest of society and that will turn other people off. I think there are some people out there who are just so far down the progressive rabbit hole now that I'm not sure whether they want to even engage in civil discourse anymore. But let them be them. Just let them continue because most, again, it comes back to that free speech idea like most people are not going to aspire to that kind of they're not going to aspire to mutilating children it's just not what they aspire to so if you let these people talk about doing this it will inherently turn other people off. I hope so.

Yeah it will drive them back to us. Yeah the fear is coming to love the prison coming to love the restrictions and championing them and not even seeing yourself oppressed. That's scary. Yeah. Yeah, who do you do you think DeSantis will run and win? I'm I don't know right now. I mean, I think it's a very difficult. Like, I think is there any Catholic at this point in history who can say, no, still with the Democrats? Felt like for a while we were holding onto that.

Yeah. And certainly if you live in a district where you've got two Democrats running, you might have to choose one over the other, but the Democratic Party as a whole seems so antithetical to what we want as Christians. I love the way Jimmy Akin put it when I asked him who he was voting for last time. He said, I'm going to just vote for who I think hates me less.

I thought that's a pretty low bar, but I like it. It's kind of weird. I mean, you know, it's what I would say about party politics in America right now is that it's depressingly uniform, which is that You know For example, I think there are some there are some candidates Running on Democrat tickets who when I look at them as individuals I'm like you have all the hallmarks of being a great person, you know, like you've expressed solidarity with the poor

You've promoted social vision, which I like I don't solidarity with the poor, you've promoted social vision, which I don't agree with your economic positions, but I agree with a lot of the social ideas that you come out with. They don't take a position on, some of them are pro-life rather than pro-choice. But then you look at their voting record, and it's just that depressing uniformity.

As soon as they get into the House of Reps, they fall in line with the Democrat Party and vote for the most nonsensical pieces of legislation that I've ever seen come out of any House. In this very state, in fact, in Ohio, you've got two candidates running for Senate, JD Vance and Tim Ryan. I think it's Tim Ryan, I could have got his first name wrong, I'm pretty sure his surname is Ryan. And you know, JD, the reason JD Vance is ahead in the polls is because even though Ryan is saying the right things and saying, you know, like, I stand with the blue collar workers of the state, then JD

just says, well, look at your voting record. You know, like you voted for every piece of nonsensical lunacy coming out of the most progressive elements of this party. So how can you say on one, and that's kind of the point. Like they all just fall into line when they get there. You know, and like that's a symptom of conservative versus liberal mindsets in many ways.

Like the conservative mindset, conservatives generally believe that the individual should exercise their own rational thought pattern to reach a conclusion, which in turn means that many different thought patterns emerge, because by virtue of just being an individual, conservatives don't always just agree. That's kind of the point.

They all disagree with each other. I've seen plenty of debates on the right amongst conservatives who fundamentally disagree with a lot of things. Like I was telling you about this backstage live the other night, which the Daily Wire did where, you know, like there were differences in opinions in how to treat the problem of pornography. You know, that's a virtue of a free thinking mind. The left's mindset tends to be more collectivist. It tends to be like, okay, we must all fall in line and vote with the state, right? And so as a result, you get far more people

just falling into line and voting according to like the collective group think, right? And that's what's depressing about that, you know? You gotta tell us what it was like having lunch with Donald Trump, if you're allowed, and how that even came about. Because I have never had lunch with Donald Trump. Yeah, he was, I mean, Trump is exactly what you get on the tin. He's exactly the same. How did it even happen? So I mean, Candice was doing quite a lot of work at that time with the White House. And you know, I think that it was kind of seen as like a thank you for everything you've

done in some ways. So you got an invite? Yeah, an invite. And we had lunch with him. And he was just, he's hilarious. I mean, you know, he really is a very funny guy. He's funnier offline, I would say, than he is online. I think he turns himself down a little bit online, which is kind of remarkable when you think about it.

But he is very, very funny guy. You know, he was going through the impeachment ringer at the time, the first impeachment ringer at the time. And he was lambasting the mainstream media's coverage through the impeachment ringer at the time, the first impeachment ringer at the time. And you know, he was lambasting the mainstream media's coverage of him, which is pretty standard, I guess. But you know, he was just very funny. And he's a great, I mean, he really is just, he's exactly what he says. And there's so there's so many politicians you meet who are different, different people, like they're two different personalities, they're the jackal and the hide, you know, and you can see it the whole

time. Interesting. And he is just, nope, he's exactly the same, you know, like behind closed doors as he is in the televisions. And, you know, like you can tell when he's giving a speech when he's reading from the teleprompter because he follows his lines and then he'll his like he follows his lines and then he'll and then he'll suddenly cut and go to like his off-the-cuff remarks that's what there's always a funny yeah right because like those are the those he is funny I remember my mates funny John

Henry and myself that's who I went hunting with him and I were at his folks cabin up in Georgia and we were looking for something to watch and we watched you know the first five minutes of four different movies and then we watched like seven minutes of The Office and then we were like you know, the first five minutes of four different movies and then we watched like seven minutes of The Office and then we're like, you know, let's just watch like Trump videos on YouTube. There's like funny bits and he was funnier and more entertaining. And his one line is hilarious. I mean that like during the campaign trail when he was when Hillary Clinton like said, you know Yeah, how awful would it be if someone with the temperament of Donald Trump was in charge of law enforcement and before anyone can like mic drop moment, he's like, yeah, because

you'd be in jail. You know, it's just, it's, it's just so, it was so good. Like, it's just funny. And it's just like quick off the mark. And it shows you to be, to have a sense of humor, one has to be intelligent. Right. And this is something that I always baffled that. Like, how could people call him an idiot? You the guy is a billionaire you know who's made a success story of his life he's beat Hillary Clinton yeah who became president the United States when 98 percent of the entire mainstream press and media were stacked against him and every civil institution in America didn't want him to win right I mean it's just and he actually talks about that you know I think I don't know whether he's talked about it in public, but like,

he was always pretty funny about it. He's like, everybody who basically said I could never win is now trying to give me advice. And I'm like, why would I take your advice? You basically, you wrote me off. You, you all wrote me off as somebody who could win. So that was kind of pretty entertaining, but he, he's just a really funny guy. I mean, he really is. Do you think he's going to run again for president, and do you think he should?

I think I'm going to give a politician's answer to that question, which is not an answer. So I think that- This is how I've noticed that every kind of political pundit that gets asked a question on Fox News or CNN, they always begin their answer with this. Ready? Here it goes. Look. Look, listen. Listen. Look. It's like, here's a strong word with an answer that's incoherent and soft. But

I began with look. Have you ever seen the film The Campaign? No. It's pretty funny. It's like this Will Ferrell comedy movie which came out in 2012 and I would describe it as somewhat prophetic because pretty much, like so many of the policies and viewpoints of that film then became reality. the 14th district of North Carolina, there is no 14th district. They just made the 14th district of North Carolina for this election cycle. And like one of the policy points is scrapping daylight saving time. The Senate has now voted to scrap daylight saving time. There's a campaign slogan for one of the campaigns in this film, which is bring your broom because it's a mess. Right. And of course that has strong resonation with drain the swamp yeah right and it's just it's just quite funny

like there's a scene in it where Will Ferrell gives an answer which is absolutely the worst answer you've ever I mean it's not an answer there's no possible answer to the question and it's just such a perfect politicians and then Zach Galifianakis who plays his opponent in this film, you know,

gives another answer, which somehow makes it seem like he's answered the question by basically just saying to the other person, look, look, pretty much like Cam Brady just gave the old DC dip and twirl, right, which is like he just danced around the question. And then he proceeds to give an answer, which dances completely around the question as well. So it is quite funny, like politicians have an expert way of doing that. In answer to your question to Trump, I think he's made it clear that he's probably going to run, you know, that's, that's, that's probably true. Um, you know, do I think he should? I mean, I liked, I'd like to think that he is thinking that he should do this

if it's the best thing for the country, you know, and I'm always nervous when politicians use their own ego as justification. You know, and I just think it's like, where are we in the cycle now? Is this ego or is it the best thing for America? You know, I don't know. America? You know, I don't know. Will Ferrell. I like his movies, but there's so much junk in him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's very little. What are you what is your opinion about? Like, are you a film watcher? Are you like beginning to be more and more? I think I've probably have ADD if

that exists. Right. And find myself bored over almost every movie I've ever watched and have quit almost every movie I've ever watched. Really? Interesting. Yeah, like this I enjoy. I could do this for another three hours.

Sitting and watching a movie, I like the idea of it and then I turn it on and I get bored and I stop. But there are certain movies I've been watching lately that I've actually really, really enjoyed. Like what? There's a movie called, and maybe you look it up or you know it, Three Billboards Out of Something-Something Missouri.

Oh. The movie was outside of Missouri. I think that's the best movie I have watched in a very long time. I've never seen it. Yeah, you should. That's an X, I watched that with my wife and I just, I was stunned at how good it was

Cohen brothers or one of the guns It was one of the Coen's I think look it up. Yeah. Yeah, I'll look it up. You're still wrong Well, yeah that and also I've been watching like I never watched Hitchcock movies until about a year ago Okay, isn't that unbelievable never saw a McDonough, okay, so it's not Cohen. Yeah I'll never question you again, but um silence Yeah, so the first Hitchcock movie I watched was last year was it called That was good

I really liked that one, but I like the one where that strangling happens and they bury him in, not bury him, they put him in that, what do you call it? Coffin? They have a dinner party on top of the bloody thing. Who's that? Hello Cameron. Hi.

Okay, what is that movie called? Is it called The Rope? You're like, I don't know, you've given me no context. How could I possibly? What are those big, like a chest? They kill this guy at the beginning, they put him in a chest, and then they serve a dinner party on that chest.

You came in once and we watched it together. And basically the whole film is one continuous shot. Occasionally, like two or three times it breaks but very seamlessly like it Someone's back kind of comes past the camera and it's but it's it's brilliant You should watch I think it's Hitchcock, which is wait until dark. Oh It is I may have seen it. It's one of the most frightening. Is this the blind lady? Yeah, I love that basement. It's all one shot. That's right. And it's just, and there's a scene at the end without giving it away. If you haven't watched it, go and watch it. Brace yourself.

You know, it's, it's, I just remember this. It was like terrifying. I mean, it is terrifying and it's a great, I think it's Hitchcock. Yeah, it is Hitchcock and it's a great film. I mean, just beautiful film. Yeah, that was excellent. I love that. So you're an old movie person. You're like an older movie. Well.

Have you seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy? I love that. Yeah. Just to fact check, I guess, it's called Rope. Rope, okay, good. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Yeah, yeah.

I was telling him that I don't, I'm talking to my wife and everybody who's watching. I was telling him I don't really like movies. to my wife now everybody who's watching I was telling him I don't really like movies. I get bored with them I'm very good at convincing that sums me up Yeah, yeah Yeah, I'm quite a big movie person. What's your several favorite movies? Well, I the Lord of the Rings trilogy was for was for. Have you watched any of the Amazon Lord of the Rings?

I watched. I haven't and I'm choosing not to. Yeah, I was like, yeah, I watched the first couple of episodes the reason being because So every review that I read when it came out was universally appalling, right? It was like one star Yeah, didn't they turn off the reviews on Amazon? They did, that's right, yeah. The dialogue, I mean. Not a good sign. And then I had some friends in London who messaged me

being like, oh, it's actually pretty good. And their opinion kind of counts, like means something to me. Like I trust their opinion on films. So I was like, oh, well, I'm like, okay, now I feel like I have to give this a shot. Right? And then I watched it and it was appalling. How so?

Oh, just like, I would say on so many others. So it's really, it's kind of difficult to describe, but you know when you watch the Lord of the Rings, the trilogy, there's a realness to it. Like the graphics, I mean, I was, I was really obsessed with those films when they came out. Didn't look like a video game. I went to New Zealand. Like I, I dragged my mum and dad to New Zealand, to 2004.

We went to Hobbiton. We went to places. They filmed Mordor, like all of this kind of stuff, because I just loved it so much. And I thought it was gorgeous and beautiful. And then in learning more about how they made the motion picture, you then learned about all this technological revolution that they put film cinematography through. They created this engine called Unreal Engine, which was how they designed the orcs in the battle, like the Uruk-i for the Battle of Helm's Deep.

Instead of getting 10,000 extras, they had to get, they did this computer engine. It was kind of fascinating. And then the first, it was kind of a funny story because when they made the film, and I'm gonna get this wrong, but this is the essence of what they were saying is that the engine was so smart that the Uruk-I distinguished that they were gonna lose

the battle and so started to run away, like long before the end of the battle, right? And so they had to reconfigure the artificial intelligence to make it so that they couldn't run away, right? Because they were like, these people are not acting rationally, they're driven by fear and desperation, and they're ruled by Saruman and all this kind of stuff.

And, but when you watch the film now, this is true to this day, you know, you don't get the impression of this kind of like, like what I call is like cosmic screenplay, like this kind of weird computer graphics, you know, gaming engine type screenplay, you get like, it feels very real. Like I look at the scenes of them riding the horses

into battle and- You're saying the trilogy? The trilogy, right. When you watch the Rings of Power, it all feels CGI, like everything feels CGI. There's just no, you don't feel like anything's real. The dialogue is also appalling, like it's just appalling. And of course then it's overlaid with all this woke nonsense. I did not know that there was a black

transgender Muslim abortion Dr. Elf that I don't... that was weird. That was like a curve ball for me. Yeah. I mean, this is the point, like every single woke stereotype is fulfilled. Is that right? Now I haven't watched it and I'm never going to. So you tell me. It's just like nonsense of like, you know, I mean, okay,

you can argue, well, listen, it's a fantasy world. So why does it matter? I'm like, yeah, okay. You know, but, but you have to draw people in to try and make them believe that this could be real. When you just insert every, you know, the rainbow nation under the Sun you know into kind of into into Lothlorien you're like this is making sense. Yeah and you know you're being preached at that's what's annoying. Yeah like if

it happened naturally fine yeah but you know that there's a quota that they're trying to fill. Yeah exactly it's like what happened like are you saying that the Lord of the Rings which which is set, you know, if you watch the films after you've watched the Rings of Power, you suddenly think that somehow these ethnic, you know, homogenous groups became like what happened in the intervening two millennia? Did all the elves suddenly become white? You know, it's just like, it's this kind of weird, like it's just, it's, you know, that it's being ran down your throat in terms of the woke corporatism. And that's just really tiresome and boring. Um,

and of course it's the reason that woke films and woke like productions are doing really badly right now. Um, and then you get something like Top Gun Maverick, which is shamelessly self promoting of America. Um, you know, and it's like, never watched it, but I heard it was excellent. It's great. I mean, it's great. It's just a fun. It's It's a fun movie. It's what movies are there to do there pure escapism They're designed to let the mind relax and that's exactly what it's there for and that's exactly what it does, you know and it's just it's nice that you don't even have to like Get drawn into any kind of woke BS, which is being stuck in as a sub narrative. This one ring, is it doing well?

Is it, how do we, how do we from the outside gauge whether or not it is? I don't know. I mean, it's, it's also a slightly unusual thing. So Amazon is a multi-trillion dollar business which can afford to blow $850 million on the production of a single series. If it fails, it will do them literally zero harm. Is that right? Right, because they're just so rich

that they don't even care, right? Netflix, all the other streaming services are under massive pressure right now. Like Netflix is down, I wanna say 70% in the last year. Because of Amazon. Because people are not interested in it. Yeah. There's a variety of factors. Because of Amazon. Because people are not interested in it. There's a variety of factors.

One of the reasons being everyone canceled their subscription after COVID, right? Because it was like everyone signed up for COVID and then everyone canceled after COVID. So you get all these people who just sign up. And then the office left. So it's like, why would I have it anymore? Is there any reason?

I don't know. Why would I have it? And then there's also now a plethora of like, alternative streaming services, which have just cropped up, right? So like, everyone's got a streaming service now, like Peacock, Hulu, you know, daily wire plus, like every everybody's got their own kind of plus, you know, ESPN plus CNN tried, CNN tried invested 300 million and it crashed. You

know, it was a complete failure. So, you know, it's like, not enough airports to subscribe. Exactly. you know, it's like. Not enough airports to subscribe. Exactly. So yeah, that's so funny you say that. Is it, why? I've said this before. I'm like, I wonder what CNN's real viewership would be if every hotel and airport turned them off.

I wonder though, if the success of Maverick and the potential failure of the ring of power, that's what it's called right? Yeah, rings of power. So proud I didn't know that. Is gonna just wake up a kind of capitalist machine to start creating what we want to see again or if it's just not gonna learn the lesson and continue to tank? I think, I think like the parallel economy is now, you know, for years it was, there's a kind of unwritten, there's a, forget what the name of the law is it was there's a kind of unwritten there's a forget what the name of the law is but there's some kind of like mythical economic law or

actually it's a political philosophical philosophical law which basically says that if an institution doesn't start out avowedly conservative it will eventually become left right and that's kind of what's happened with all like this is what happens this is what's happened with Disney you know and Disney is now is any sensible parent ever gonna let their children watch a Disney movie again without thoroughly vetting it first? Yeah. It's done. I'm so bored of Star Wars. I can't even tell you. Yeah I was a huge Star Wars fan when I grew up you know it was like formative films in my early years.

It was like The Return of the Jedi. You know, it was just a huge, it was an awesome film and everyone loved it. And now of course it's like overrun with woke nonsense. And this is the thing, like I think as these institutions move, like Netflix is already taking actions to stop It's alright

They scrapped like I think it's really funny like Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, you know signed up to do this big Netflix series, but Who wants to watch anything Meghan Markle produces like why on earth would you want to watch that? No offense to her? I wish her well, but no, not me. It's going to be mind-numbingly dull and basically preaching her own story of victimhood all over again, right? Which nobody's interested in. Nobody thinks you're a victim. You're literally a princess.

It's just like, it's complete nonsense. You're literally. And not in the way that Trump is literally Hitler. Yeah. No, you're literally a princess in the way a princess is a princess. Yeah, you're literally a princess in the way a princess is a princess. That's literally a princess. And so, you know, they've started canceling all of these woke series that they signed up to do.

You know, that these series that they agreed to do at the height of the pandemic, when their stock price was, you stock price was astronomical suddenly seem far less economical and sensible to do now that their stock price is like collapsed and their profit margins are shrinking and they've got all these competitors out there. So they're going to be because ultimately like this is the great thing about capitalism is that it's consumer driven. So this is why I was saying earlier like delete Gmail, delete these. I'm going to delete Gmail. Delete these. I'm gonna do it, man.

Delete, yeah, yeah. But does this proton mail thing that you're talking about, does that have a calendar? Yeah, it does, yeah, yeah. Does it have Google Docs? No, it doesn't. Weird. Yeah.

Yeah. Is that what you use? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, again, like you pay for it, right? But that comes back to the point, which was like, you have to pay for these things. Like, why would you, I mean, it's a bit like- If you're not paying for it, you're the product.

Exactly, I mean, it was kind of funny. Like, I commended you yesterday. In my mind, I commended you. And now I'm gonna give you the verbal commendation. But you said, I want to pay for the Daily Wire, because I actually want to support that organization. It's like, I agree. Like, I want to pay for the Daily Wire because I actually want to support that organization. It's like, I agree. Like I want, we should want-

This was after you offered me and Scott Hahn free subscriptions. Like no, I can- This is what I was like, I'm sure I can find a way to get you a free subscription. Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry, I don't know if I should have announced that. Oh no, it's fine, all right.

Because you've been telling everybody that you've met, that you'll give them a free subscription. Free subscriptions to the Daily Wire. But yeah, no, it's like, I absolutely wanna pay. Yeah, and that's the point. We do, that's what I said, I don't want a free subscription. No, but the point, that's the point. Like you actually defeated me.

Like you intellectually defeated me very quickly there, which is that I want to support organizations which value what I stand up for. And this is what I mean by the parallel economy. So the parallel economy is now emerging and all of these massive corporate institutions which subscribed to the wokist ideology, you know, which have now bent over backwards to accommodate all of these variety of like progressive ideals are now being punished, right? And now they've left themselves vulnerable

to being like attacked openly by companies which is being started with the view to- I really wanna know what conversation took place at Harry's razors the day after Daily Wire released their razor. Jeremy's razors. Do they have any sense of how that affected them? I actually don't know.

I know that I know that It was like an incredible success in terms of a product line launch. I mean I have it I have a beard and I have it Yeah, I think so. I'll shave soon and I'll use it. Yeah, but I mean like It's it's great to see you know that that kind of stuff is great to see because it shows we can win in the cultural space and it shows that what we're fighting for has mass participation. Like people want these products.

It's not just a case of like, let's sell something that nobody wants. We actually want to sell things that people want and we can do it just as well and better. I love how they put it in the advert. Like stop giving your money to people who hate you and give it to me instead. Yeah, exactly.

I don't hate, I don't love you, but I don't wish you any specific harm or something to that effect. Yeah, I mean, and that's, and that's why you've got all these companies cropping up now. Like that's why you've got glorify cropping up, which is banking, you know, for like conservatives.

You've got- All right, so just real quick, get rid of Gmail. Yeah. Quit Twitter. What else? I mean you probably tell me you quit a lot of things but like realistically what else should I be doing? WhatsApp. Why WhatsApp? Because it's owned by Facebook and it's compromised. It's owned by Facebook? Yeah. Who's owned by Meta? Who's owned by? Signal. Signal? Yeah. Signal is a great alternative. Signal is a great alternative.

Signal is a really interesting, I would say, test case. It's kind of a really interesting business case because it was invented by this guy called Moxie Mullins-Spike, who's one of the world's preeminent cryptographers. And he was, I mean, I don't know the exact story because I'm not him and I don't know the kind of corporate narrative, but he gave Signal to the Signal Foundation, which is a 501c3 not-for-profit. And the reason he did that was because he was in the same way that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, when he invented the World Wide Web, made it naturally decentralized rather than centralizing it in one place.

Moxie gave signal to a not-for-profit so that it would never be run and then sold in the same way that WhatsApp was sold for $19 billion to Facebook, right? When WhatsApp was sold, it had like seven employees and it was sold for $19 billion, right? And Signal, you know, has mass market participation now. I use it the whole time. I know loads of people who use it the whole time. And it's, you know, you don't have to worry about it being sold to the highest bidder because it's run by a nonprofit, right? And you can donate to

the Signal Foundation, which I do. And again, because I want to support that organization, because I want to support that cause, because I believe in encrypted communications, private communication should be kept private, you should be allowed to speak freely on your phone. Like the digital device now has become a listening device. And this is the problem,

it's not even a listening device. It's a data collection agency. You're just giving away your information for free. This is the irony of social media. In 100 years time, or in 1,000 years time, when they look back and they're like, how did this technologically, beautifully advanced society with philosophy and the great writings of the ancient

world and how did it end up in serfdom it's like we freely gave away in control of our lives because of convenience to technology right and that's going to be the answer they give because it's like we just hand over this information like why do you feel the need to put a picture of your lunch on social media why does I want interaction with other humans. I want affirmation. You want, that's the key word, affirmation. You want the affirmation that it provides.

And in some ways this like, pines with Aquinas, making it spiritual. It's the religious replacement. It's the faith-based replacement that our society so desperately craves. And this is why social media will always leave you feeling hollow. Because you need, in some ways like you need, I said this to Candice before, and like we've

talked about this quite a lot, like you need a healthy offline life to have a healthy online life. You can't just have in isolation. You can't have one without the other. There's a reason that depression and anxiety are on the rise amongst young people. It's because they're not fully formed individuals who are not approaching social media from the perspective of like,

I have a full formation in faith or I have a full formation in like philosophy and experience and you know, I am a fully formed person. Instead they're approaching it as like, this is the vehicle through which I will receive the philosophical and necessary affirmation that my my ego craves. Yeah. Right. And so they get end up in these terrible places where when social media rejects them they end up you know committing suicide because

they're not because they they suffer on the back end of this diatribe of indignation. So you were on Facebook I presume. Did you quit it and how how did that happen? when did it happen 2015 and what was the final straw for you? um I Was asking myself the question that why I was getting out of bed every morning and being angry I Was I was angry before I even got out of bed, and I was just like why am I doing this to myself? I was like why am I why was that because of arguments you were getting in?

Or things you were seeing? Just because the, yeah, things that I was seeing. I was never a real big Facebook poster. Like, I never posted a lot on Facebook. I never posted, you know, I never kind of uploaded my thoughts. I just used it as a forum to download news, really, in many ways.

But it was annoying me. I mean, it was just, it was seeing endless amounts of drivel in terms of. That's how I feel about Daily Wire. What you see endless amounts of drivel. I do on their blogs these days. It feels like they're just catering to our basis desires at this point.

Really? Yeah. It's interesting. I enjoy listening to Matt. I enjoy listening to Ben sometimes. I like your wife a lot. But I'm starting to see that on their blogs. If you go to dailywire.com,'s it's a lot of it's becoming drip I think it's just it makes sense it's like this is what people want to click on and yeah we'll

go there right now we'll see maybe I'm wrong yeah I must confess I don't read their blog so I don't know well yeah speaking of things that make you angry I mean yeah political news will do that yeah and that's but so but comes back to the point. You have to have a healthy offline life to have a healthy online life. You know, you can't produce them in isolation. And actually, this was something that Daily Wire Backstage Live was talking about when it talked about, when they had this debate on pornography, it was like, well, okay, so in the instance that you go and sit in a room and watch two people having sex, is that somehow different to watching pornography?

Because no. Like, we constantly, as conservatives, argue that, like, the online realm should also be a reflection of who we are, like, offline. Not that actions from one world should necessarily cross over into the other. Like, that's one of the reasons they censor people on the left, is because they're like, Trump said this offline, so we're gonna shut him down online. But it's more that you have to say, can you really isolate the person that you are online?

Why is it acceptable to go online and say, death to Candace Owens? Why is that acceptable? But suddenly, if you said that in the street and you just shouted it out walking down the street, death to Candace Owens, people would think you're nuts. Or they'd take cover or they'd seek to protect her. Exactly, but on the online world, this is totally fine.

Why is this totally fine? Because we've divorced the reality that online life is the same as online. And this is like why the church, why a fully formed faith is just like it's so needed in this world right now because Not enough people have that on like have a spiritual life which is formed and

Cogent and coherent here's what I mean on daily wire. Here's an article the great British baking show judge recalls drowning a bag of kittens as a child Sweet. Thanks daily wire The Great British Baking Show judge recalls drowning a bag of kittens as a child. Sweet, thanks Daily Wire. Carl Lagerfeld? Lagerfeld? Carl Lagerfeld. He invented you. Called distinctly hateful to specifically fat women, yeah, whatever. Work, left wing, tech, elitist, Babylon B, email, provider, abruptly terminate service.

All right, that's interesting. I guess that's probably the thread there. That's the needle they're continually trying to thread, right? They want to make a difference. They want to change culture. At the same time, in order to do that, they're going to need you clicking on things

that you want to click on. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, in general, I would say that. I mean, I'm the same. I'm not different. in general, I would say that. I mean, I'm the same. I'm not different. I mean, I tell Neil Wright to take out clips of these long conversations that seem most interesting to people.

Yeah. Well, I mean, but that comes back to the conversation about like, gab, for example. Do we think that we can influence culture by sitting outside it? In some ways, there's a biblical reference here. Christ called us to go and make disciples of all peoples, not to just go and, I mean,

not just go, like I obviously think there's a beauty and there's a place, absolutely, and I, you know, incredible commendations to those who go and seek the monastic life, but we're also called to make disciples of all peoples and to go out and evangelize the whole world, like as a result, do we just sit in an ivory tower and hope that people come to us? No. Like the mission, the great missions, I mean, the martyrs that have been made through mission are just incredible when you look back at history, you know, starting with the apostles, right? Starting with St. Peter. Up to the North American martyrs.

Yeah. And I mean, to this day, you know, Christians are martyred in the Middle East consistently and You know that is done because of that missionary spirit that is that is taught when I asked Matt Walsh Something to the effect of why he won't quit Twitter He said he wants to continually use their platform against them. Yeah, like why would he stop doing that? Yeah, that was a good answer Yeah, and there's and there's a logic doing that? Yeah. That was a good answer. Yeah. And there's, and there's a logic to that. Like engage.

This is why I say, and you know, I mean the, uh, the person who has the great analytical mind will have realized that something I said earlier, you know, contains a subjective element in it, which of course makes it a very dangerous argument. But I said, you know, you should quit all these things unless your platform is big enough. Yeah. And it's like, well, who decides if your platform is big enough? I'll get, you know, like I have a thousand people. I don't know. It's big enough.

You know, and so, you know, I don't have a perfect solution for this. Yeah, there is no perfect solution for it. You know, there is like to what extent I would say that Candice has 100. I would say that you as well, like many of the commentators out there have changed the discourse in a very positive fashion. Like you can't always predict how influential your program is going to be, but like Matt for example and Michael and yourself and Candice, like all of these commentators have changed the discourse in positive ways and as a result like you could definitely argue well like listen I need

this platform because I'm changing, I'm changing culture. Like, you know, I mean, I think about, I love the fact that you didn't quit YouTube because otherwise I wouldn't have found you, right? And so, you know, like as a result, you know, and I really enjoy, and what I said about your show is true. Like, I think that this long form format with people who sit outside of the normal political sphere, like priests, monks, you know, great thinkers.

Like this is more of what the world needs. We need more like in-depth long-form discussion about the spiritual life because the spiritual life is the only thing that's going to heal the online life. Well, I mean my life in August was so much more interesting than it is now that I'm back online, because I joke, I say it facetiously, but I mean it. It sounds like an obvious point, but I learned it at a deeper level, let's say, that the world didn't need me to know what Biden did

or didn't say or tried to say and failed at or what Pope Francis recently said. It turned out the world was just fine with me not knowing and me just praying with my wife and going to mass and being with my kids. And it's this idea of this, you've heard of the circle of influence versus the circle of concern.

And the more concern you put into that, into the circle of influence, the more that grows. But when you're concerning yourself with things that you have literally no control over. Well, and that comes back, why did I leave Facebook? For that reason. It was concerning me with things that I had zero control over and making me angry about it. And it was just net, it wasn't positive for my mental health. Like it was just, it was negative.

And I didn't need it. It was a distraction. And so you know, that's kind of why I got rid of it all because I just thought, I don't know why I'm doing this. Why am I doing this to myself? You know, and that's kind of like, Candice did this analysis recently. Well, there was it wasn't heard in the analysis, but she talked about it on her show, which was youths which were thinking that they were becoming trans youths. And actually doctors who were seeing the children at an early stage in this progression of thought, removed their phones. And they removed their social media. And nearly I mean, I, I

think it was every single time, although again, I don't know that for a fact, but I think it was from what I mean, I think it was every single time, although again, I don't know that for a fact, but I think it was, from what I understood, it was every single time they did this, the youth ended up saying, I don't know what happened to me. I was in some kind of psychosis. For sure. Yeah.

Are you so glad that our kids don't have social media? Yeah. Why the hell would we inflict that on them? And you know, like the great irony, I mean I mean like the great irony is that the tech titans who are sending their kids to schools in California are sending them to schools Which have no technology like what do you what do you make of the fact that the people? Leaders of the industry are sending their children to schools without any technology Why do they why are they doing that because they know the damage that their own institutions are doing on society. Right? And so that should make you ask questions if nothing else. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad we live here with other families who are on the same page. It

would be a lot more difficult. Our kids are with 50 kids right now in the park doing a nature study. That's beautiful. They're walking around with magnifying glass and binoculars. Yeah, so for those who may not be able to hear that, my wife just said that our kids are with 50 other homeschooled kids here in Steubenville running around a park doing a nature study with magnifying glasses and binoculars. So freaking cool.

Homeschooling is so great. It's so much easier than you think, don't you think? I think we've learned over time that, I mean, I know you do the bulk of it, so I shouldn't be sitting here saying that, but like in that we had a lot of stress going into it, like if we don't get this right, we're gonna screw up our kids.

It's like, no, just, gosh, I mean, how many times has like, like I think you took Peter to Holy Mass one weekday and he found an injured bird and sat with it. That's so much cooler than anything you would do all day at a public or most Catholic schools. Yeah. Or our daughters yesterday. I drove, I was driving home and my son and daughter were walking down the road. My my my son was carrying a chicken and

my daughter was carrying a cooler with and my daughter was carrying a cooler with a kitten wrapped up in a blanket. Homeschooling. Do you know how much more well-rounded my children will be than if I had have sent them to some stupid soul-crushing school? Yeah. The offline life.

My daughter, doing backflips on the trampoline, just being bored. And I'll be honest, I think there was a time where I heard parents touting homeschool when I didn't think we could do it. And I felt threatened by that and I felt judged by that. And so I'm trying to find a way to say it without making anybody feel bad.

Because I understand that there are good Catholic schools and there can be good reasons to send your kids to school of course. Like I understand all that. But I guess what I'm trying to say, or at least maybe I don't need to say it It's I don't try to state it to anybody. It's just something I'm learning is that life can be easier than it currently is it's not like you know, it's difficult send your kid to school and Also tell them that they can't have a smartphone like your kid will be a social leper by the time he or she is eight.

Yeah. Like, but life could be easier. Like you could move to a rust belt town like Steubenville or wherever else and buy a house for the price of a VCR and and homeschool your kids where they won't feel like freaks because there's other beautiful wild families. You could, it's just easier. Doesn't have to be that hard. You're the best at homeschooling

when you pay someone else to do it. Yes, my wife has also said that she's good at homeschooling when she pays somebody else to do it. So we'll hire college students to come and help, but we'll, and they do different. It's just, life can be easier. It's the same thing with giving up your phone. I think this is the question I like to ask

when I give up technology and encourage people to reconsider it is, what level of inconvenience am I willing to embrace to live a more peaceful life? That's the line. And that's the same question that I asked earlier. How long before we start to choose the narrow, harder path? The path to hell is open, wide and easy.

Like, and when we lead, I mean, you know, if Christ, like for freedom, I have set you free. You know, it's like, what does that mean? Like we were slaves to sin. What does that mean? Like what does it actually mean? You know, when you sit down and really analyze what that statement means, we were slaves to sin

because sin is enslaving. It captures your soul. You know, like I think of those years between like that those confessions, right? And the sin that I lived in in that life, like it was, it seemed easy and it seemed like it just, it was a very easy, convenient, selfish existence. And yet by the end of it, I was more dead spiritually than I'd ever been with like, that's why I say, Lord, show me the path before my feet, because I just, I knew that was not the life.

And that's like where humanity ends up when the God is I, right? Yeah, maybe one way to think of it, I'm just trying to think here is You know one promises freedom and gives enslavement Yeah, one appears to be enslaving but offers freedom like my burden is light come to me You are weary and burdened. I will give you rest you will find peace for your souls Rest and peace is available on the narrow path. Yeah, and it's not on the broad path

I mean, Bishop Barron actually said this like a couple of weeks ago in his Sunday sermon was like, there was a 30 second, there was a 30 second clip in the middle of his Sunday sermon. I just, I replayed it like five times because I just thought it was so powerful. It was like, this is the beauty of the divine life

We get given it by God and then we give it away and then he gives us more and again I'm paraphrasing here, but that was the essence of what he was saying Yeah And I just replayed it again and again and again and again because for me that has been the truth Which has just hit me over and over and over again that like glory be to God because He is like, when I didn't want it, he gave it to me

and then I gave it away. And then he's given me more, you know, and he's like, he blesses and he blesses and he blesses and he's good to his people. I mean, this is the thing like coming back, like the synthesis of storylines where my dad said, you know, like being a Christian is an unfair advantage. It really is.

Like it's such an unfair advantage because you just get blessed with the divine life. You get blessed with this life where he gives and he gives you so much. And like it doesn't seem like he's giving you so much. But he but when you take to be king of this world, you know, like the Bible talks about it, I mean, Christ talks about it. He's like, you know, those who seek to preserve their life will lose it and those who seek to lose their life will keep it, right? One thing I think of continually

is how the pleasures of this world, in light of my, let's say, increasing union with Christ, they appear like as charmless as neon lights at sunrise. Yeah. Like at night they attract you. Yeah. But as the Sun begins to rise, you ever been downtown all night at 6 a.m.? I've done this like a few times. No, not now, but you know, it's just like they lose their cheer. There's nothing attractive about them anymore. And I think to myself, if Christ hadn't have come to me, I would be not in trouble with the law, let's say.

I wouldn't be a bad citizen in some obvious sense. I'd just be bored out of my mind. I'd probably have a kid or two out of wedlock with living with someone. Maybe at this point I'd tie the knot because of social convention. And I'd be walking around wondering what the hell it's all about.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's absolutely right. I mean, the shallowness of the life. And I mean, that's that again, it comes back to social media. Like why do you need to be fully formed as an individual? Because to be thrust into a world? Where you're speaking with hundreds of millions of people in an online forum

You're gonna suffer the slings and arrows of a fallen world over and over again in microcosm Relentlessly, you know, you're gonna be attacked for positions that you believe and hold I want to offer a question to everybody who's watching right now that you believe in hold? I wanna offer a question to everybody who's watching right now. If I make the decision to quit Twitter, I would like it to benefit other people as well. And I think it will benefit them if I get off Twitter,

just because I wouldn't be, no, I don't think. But I wonder how many watching right now would be willing to quit Twitter if I did. Like if I did a stream, and once we reached 100 people, like it'll be a little exodus, well I'll go over to Parler. Or no, we'll just get off entirely, right? We'll get off Twitter. How many of you watching right now in the live chat

would quit Twitter if that was the rule? Once I get 100 people, I'll deactivate it publicly. Let us know in the live chat or if you're watching this after the show, tell us in the comments below. What would have to happen for you to be willing to get off Twitter? Because there's always a good reason to stay but here's the thing ever since I've got on Locals which I just love, matfrad.locals.com I ask everyone to go check that out. Not only

is it a much more pleasurable social kind of experience, what's cool about locales is that you have to, you can access the content we put on locals, but you have to pay to engage. So if I do a live stream in the morning, I do most mornings, anybody can watch it. But if you want to comment, you have to be financially invested in, 10 bucks a month or something like that. And so what that does is it eliminates trolls. Yeah. And people try to give each other the benefit of the doubt because they're part of this community that's intentional.

And so even when people are saying things that others disagree with, or even when they're saying like overtly un-Catholic things because they're just trying to figure out this Catholic thing, people tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. And it's really elevated the discourse.

I love it so much. But yeah, I kinda wanna ask people that. What would have to happen for you to get off Twitter because even though I've got a significantly less amount of people that follow me on locals, it gets way more reach than when I post on Twitter. Yeah. Like what, 58,000 people would follow me on Twitter or something, right?

20,000 might be bots. I don't know. Yeah, but I Post something it might get a few retweets or something. Yeah, why am I why are we doing this? Yeah, it's like this. It's almost like My wife gets a little upset with me sometimes because I I hate Technology, I mean it's ironic, but I'm frustrated by it so often. Yeah, you're not the only one. So if we're sitting together and we're trying to chat and her phone bings, I'm like, turn it off or I'll physically turn it around on her, right? Maybe that's my stuff conflicting

with, you know, I got to be more patient as well. But, you know, the times that that and she's really good on her phone I don't want to give the wrong impression that she's kind of addicted to her phone or something like that but she'll say well I just need to do this thing right or I'll say that too let's use myself as an example I just need to quickly check this I just need to I just need to get back like there's always a good reason that's why you're doing it is because you perceive it to be a good reason it's just that the reasons you check your phone 8,000 times a day are interfering with your life. And so I'd love to hear people in the comments section

tell me why you think it's a good idea to be on Twitter. There's always a good reason you could offer. I think one of the things people will say to me is, like, you can do good on Twitter. Like you can proclaim the gospel on Twitter. Like if we did a mass exodusodus who would be there to do it? I'm not convinced by that argument. Well that comes back to the point about the fact that, you know, what, that comes back

to the kind of totalitarian control, right? And so, you know, what hope do you have for a platform which fundamentally at the end of the day is controlled and subject to very restrictive covenants in what you can say, right? And that becomes an issue because at that point, like this is why I say everyone's on borrowed time. Because like you're all, you know, everyone's living on borrowed time.

I mean, you've just seen the number of, so here's the thing, like the conservative side of the debate has decided that transgenderism is the hill upon which they will die. Finally. Right. There are so many hills behind us that we should have died on.

Yeah, there are mountains, which we should have thrown our swords down on. And some conservatives did, and you know, they suffered the consequence of that. But the transgender debate is the one which appears to be this hill upon which they will all die. And so as a result, the banning is getting worse and it's getting more aggressive and it's getting faster. And as a result, like, you know, it's only a matter of time before everyone is banned. If you have an opinion about transgenderism, which defies the narrative, you're going to get banned.

So like, what is the point on being on Twitter? There isn't one right now. You know, there's only one, like, Candice says the same thing. She's like, it's boring. Twitter is fundamentally boring because they keep banning all the other conservatives so there's just no one to talk to anymore.

Or to the person who says, but what if you could reach that one soul? Then I could say something in reply, which is sort of an argument at absurdum. Okay, well, you should be on every single social media platform then. Yeah. Because there's always the possibility that you could

reach that once all. So why aren't you on all of them? Yeah. Don't you love Jesus? Don't you think we're called to proclaim the gospel? Yeah. What about the line in the gospel where Christ says that the place will happen, we should just leave

and shake the cross from it. Say that again. The line in the gospel? Yeah. If Christ says, if they won't have you in a town... There you go, that's a good point, that's a great. Yeah, for those who can't hear, Thursday's saying, if that line in the gospel where our Lord says, if you go to a place and they don't accept you,

shake the dust from your sandals. Yeah, it would be better if that town... And there's someone being like, but what if that is the one person? Yeah, it would be better if that town had never been thought of, I think. Because I think the other cool thing about me getting off Twitter is

if I can encourage 100 people to get off Twitter with me, that's 100 better lives I've just improved. We have to vote with our, fundamentally, it comes back to the rise of woke corporates, you have to vote with your pocketbook and your online life is part of your pocketbook. So you need to say, okay, I'm not gonna, I've decided that I'm not gonna watch Disney anymore

because I don't agree with that corporate institution. I'm not gonna sign up to Twitter because I don't agree with that corporate institution. All of these companies are, you're kind of buying into the whole, I'm trying to, the next big one in my life is Amazon. Like I want to cut Amazon from my life. Good for you. And so like I have people who work at Parla who are like fanatical about not buying things from Amazon. Yeah. Because they're just like

well we need to get we need to stop using Amazon every time. Meet people in Meet New Pauldy. Do you shop on Amazon? Or do you know an aisle yourself? I don't shop on Amazon anymore. I still have access to my parents' private video code. They're just not going to get rid of it. Alright, I have some questions. I asked my folks, is it alright? Go for it. On Locals, what they would like to ask George Farmer. Oh dear, here we go. I don't know what they're asking. I haven't seen these.

So is it okay if we just? Dive in. Think of this as a lightning round because we have like 30 people here. Okay. We should, this is Weave88. We should call these long form discussions, Matt Suckers, another guest into talking

about Lord of the Rings. I was wondering how long we've been going for. Okay. Four and a half hours. That's it? Wow. Gosh. Joey asks, there's some great hair going on here.

LOL delete Gmail as it's on YouTube, but I love that you're using their platform against them. Yes, Proton Mail has a calendar. Signal is a great app. Don't have Twitter, it's like a thousand points this person's trying to wrap up into a comment, appreciate it. Emma says, is it possible for a Catholic who uses social media and follows politics

to keep interior peace? If so, how? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think she's hitting the nail on the head, which is that it comes back to that online life, offline life. You know, like if you're a fully formed individual who has a great relationship with the Lord, who, you know, is fully formed in the interior life,

or at least is trying to become fully formed in the interior life, can you have a healthy engagement with online, the online world? I think yes, you can, right? I just think the majority of people are not like that. The majority of people don't have that fully formed offline life. They are seeking through social media the affirmation that they so desire, that the human ego desperately

craves. They're not seeking affirmation in the Lord, they're not seeking affirmation in God, they're not seeking affirmation in the church, they're seeking affirmation from posting pictures of themselves wearing very few clothes on clothes you know on a beach in you know the Bahamas well great but that doesn't really that's not gonna that's not gonna build you up as a person on your deathbed you're not gonna think wow I really wish I'd posted more pictures of myself on a beach in the Bahamas. Yeah exactly you know you're gonna think I wish I had a living and breathing relationship with the Lord my God Neil would you let me know if you get any super chats and just read them out if we do

Colin Carr says what are your thoughts on the dumb phone anti social media digital minimalism movement? I've grown to believe that it's impossible for any social media app by its very nature to not be predatory and dangerous curious about your thoughts on this predatory and dangerous curious about your thoughts on this? Two questions there. Yeah. So the, the latter about social media and the first about the dumb phone. So there I'm kind of fascinated by the dumb phone movement a little bit. I haven't kind of wrapped my head around it fully. Um, you know, I think that there's a strong, like there's a really good reason to seek it out, which is that people are just increasingly turned off by the amount of technological intrusion in our life.

I think the dumb phone is a very, I mean, I, I'm, if I didn't, you know, if I didn't run a social media company, I definitely, I definitely am of the opinion that not tomorrow, but at some point in the future, I am, I am migrating my life towards that outcome. Right. I would like to be in a position where I don't have to have a smartphone. I would actually prefer a dumb phone. That's kind of where I'm going. I can see it in my own mind's eye.

I can see that that's where I'm ending up. I hate the intrusion of the phone. And what you just said about conversations with your wife, what you turned over, I hate that about myself. When I'm constantly being pinged by people and bothered by people. It's just, it drives me nuts. It means that like my peace is disturbed.

My inner peace is disturbed. Do I think that it's possible for any social media business to kind of be non-predatory? Yeah, I think it is. I think like, shameless self-promotion here. I don't think that Parler is a predatory platform. We kind of pride ourselves on not being. I want to be a free speech platform which allows people

to express themselves freely. I don't view my users as a means to an end. I view the free speech of the world as like the end, right? And so providing that platform tries to allow them to get to that end. Right. Jacob asks, George, I have seen you at my Latin Mass parish in Nashville and just really wanted to ask what got you into the Tridentine Mass. Hopefully the church will be rebuilt soon and have beautiful liturgy and a very beautiful church. The Latin Mass, yeah, I mean, I do go to Latin Mass.

I love the traditional mass. I really find it just so beautiful. And for me, there's a couple of things that really draws me to it. So just to be clear, I also go to another sort of because it's difficult to find Latin Mass every day. And one of the things that really draws me to the Latin Mass is the sense of apostolic continuation, which is that there are parts of the Roman canon, there are parts of the Latin Mass service which have effectively remained unchanged for centuries, for like almost thousands of years. And I love that apostolic continuation. For me, that was a big part of my conversion, was the knowledge that through the Pope of

Rome, one has the continuous unbroken line of Peter's successes from Christ, that uniform single thread of apostolic continuation, which runs from the apostles all the way through to now. The Latin Mass is also a part of that, and I really love it for that reason. I also think, and this is something that, you know, I'm not sure whether most people agree with me on this, but that doesn't matter. you know I think that there's an element of like the Tower of Babel in the post Vatican II world where like I went I was in Hungary earlier this year in Budapest and I went to mass at a church in Hungary and I thought it was gonna be Latin mass and it was actually in Hungarian and I didn't

understand a word of it now That's not to say that if I turned up without my missile I would have been able to understand everything in Latin my Latin is not good enough to do that But there's an element that I know when I walk into a church Which is practicing the Latin mass anywhere in the world that I'm getting the same service anywhere in the world So in some ways we the Latin mass unifies and brings together a church which is now divided by thousands of languages. Yeah. Flavory S says, I know he is not his wife.

That's good. But I would like to know how he responds to the, would you mind me asking this question? I'm sure you're getting tired some answering questions about your wife, but how he, I would like to know how he responds, okay, to the criticism that she is a grifter when she calls the celebration of the end of slavery lame. I don't know what they're referring to. Maybe you can fill us in. Juneteenth. Um, what's that? Maybe something like that. I,

I, I would need to speak to people. This word grifter, talk about grifter. So Candice and I actually had a joke, which was like when we first got together, you know, the number one comment underneath, like the trolling comment underneath most of our posts was like, grifter's gotta grift. You know, that was like, grifter's gotta grift. And we just- What is grift? I think I know what it means.

It kind of means like- Drifting along with that, which is popular. Oh, no, no, no, it's more like, it's like financially scamming people, right? And so it kind of means like a... Drifting along with that, which is popular. Oh, no, no, no. It's more like, it's like financially scamming people. Ah, okay. Right, and so it kind of means like you're just grifting. Like you're just basically... There's a bunch of lefty Catholics

who've been calling me a grifter of like... Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, interesting. So basically it means that you've kind of sunk into the whole of like doing things just because it's making you money. Yeah. Right, I guess. Is how I would describe it.

Well, I would say like, you know, my response to the kind of grifting comment is like, my wife, you know, came from nothing. She's a highly entrepreneurial woman who's built, you know, a platform for herself by taking incredibly courageous and bold statements in a world that lacks courage. She has balls bigger than most senior politicians. She says things that the world is thinking, but the world is, but politicians are too afraid to say. Like, you know, there were very few people

who challenged the COVID narrative at the early days, and she was one of them. And like, there were very few people who challenged the vaccine narrative at the beginning, and she was one of them. And like there are very few people who challenge the vaccine narrative at the beginning and she was one of them. She calls out BS whenever she sees it and as a result I don't think, you know, if she was grifting, you know, I'd like to think, you know, I'm a fallen human being like everybody else but I'd like to think that I have the intellectual honesty to call that out from her and you know there have been times she and I have disagreed on policy points, of course we do, do like we're humans but I also think that she she has done things and she's made statements and she's been courageous where so many other people have not been. There's probably a lot of jealousy of those who look at your

wife and see how successful she is and it would be much more convenient for them if she was a quote-unquote grifter than someone who speaks her mind and people who are willing to pay to listen to her on daily Y plus that sort of thing. for them if she was a quote unquote grifter than someone who speaks her mind and people who are willing to pay to listen to her on daily Y plus that sort of thing. Yeah. I mean, you get two schools. You get the jealous school and you get the people who actually want to make the world a better place.

You know, and I mean, she tells the story about Dr. Ben Carson, you know, former secretary of housing and urban development under the Trump administration. And like, Dr. Carson is one of the nicest men I've ever met in my life. I mean, he's just so sweet. I mean, he's so gentle. His demeanor is like a gentle soul. And, you know, the first time he met Candace, like there were a lot of conservatives out there who were like, you know, yeah, kind of attacked her from her own side, you know, talked about how she was just a grifter and all this kind of stuff. And when we met Dr. Carson, I remember him just being like,

Candice, I just, I love you. I just don't know how you've been able to do what you've been able to do. Like, I've spent my entire life trying to convince the black community that they don't need to be signed up to a political belief system, which has oppressed them for 60 years. And I've never had any success. And now in six months or in two years, you've been able to turn around an entire narrative and actually completely transform the way black America views itself. And like you see more and more black conservatives coming out now, which

is just fantastic. And like kudos to them. And you know, like, BlackSit, you know, has has been a huge movement, part of that movement in terms of promoting like a breaking of the chains with regards to the end of slavery. Like, I don't know that exact comment, so I'm going to have to kind of take a rain check on that question. I don't know exactly what that's referring to. Um, you know, I think her viewpoint is that black America swapped out, like, no slavery for, like, government slavery in the 60s when they, when, like, the Big

Society Act was signed into law and welfareism became the, like, predominant method, methodology that, like, black America became enslaved to the government again, but just kind of didn't realize it. So you know I'm paraphrasing there and I don't know the exact specifics of that particular quote but that's kind of the general direction of her narrative around that. Heidi says should Catholics and other Christians be involved in developing and or testing artificial intelligence so that there is representation of our

views or should we stay away from its development entirely? Ooh, Heidi, great question. Listen, I think that I'm gonna come back to that earlier point that I made. I think Catholics need to be involved in every aspect of world life. Like I think we need to get involved in... I don't believe in just sitting apart and saying, we're gonna wash our hands of this and just let it be what it is. I think we need to be involved. I think we need to have our viewpoints made.

Like the fallacy of the argument that somehow people can't take their personal life into the political life, I find very entertaining. You know, like this is one of the things about religion in the UK is that when you enter UK politics, you're somehow basically told that, okay, that's great, now your faith has to stay at the door. It's like, what a lunatic argument.

Like why, of course it's not gonna stay at the door. Why would it stay at the door? Like everyone carries their personal subjective life into their business and professional and political life. That's just what they do, right? I mean, like we're formed as individuals to think about issues because we've been formed in certain ways. Like I, as a Catholic, obviously think about things in certain ways

because I'm a Catholic. Right. So like in the same way, I would say that there are aspects of, um, like national secular life where it will be difficult for a Catholic to have a like I don't you know you've you said to me yesterday like you've talked to more people about porn than you know almost any other person on the planet and you know like I think it would be difficult for a Catholic to work in the pornography industry you know like and and and realistically think that they could change that for better right but I at

the same time think that like artificial intelligence is going to be a huge part of the future of this world. Yeah. So it would be good to have Catholics in that who want to influence it for the better. For those who are watching who are in interfaith marriages, like if you don't mind me asking, like how has that been, you know, maybe praying with your wife or seeking to share your faith with your wife who does not yet share it. And yeah, you know, what's that balance between trying to share this,

something that's the most important thing in your life with the most important person in your life, but at the same time wanting to respect their freedom and not turn them off by being so maybe enthusiastic or pushy. We had a super chat about that too. Did you? Okay, thanks super chat.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a passage in one in one Peter which talks about share your faith with gentleness and respect and You know like what stands out in my life as the best example of Christian ministry, it's it's the lived example It's not the do as I do but don't do as I you know do as I it's the do as I do and I'm gonna tell you what I think but I'm also you're also gonna do what I what I'm living't do as I, you know, do as I, it's the do as I do. And I'm going to tell you what I think, but I'm also, you're also going to do what I, what I'm living my life by, right? The actions that I'm professing are lived out in reality. Like, I think it's the most powerful for anyone who's in an interfaith marriage

is that the most powerful witness you can provide is the life you lead. Right? So a life of holiness, a life called to holiness, a life which is marked by like a sacramental profession. You know, I attend Mass almost every day, you know, like I try and get up in the morning, I spend some time with the Lord, I pray, I read the Bible, I normally read a snippet from a Christian author. You know, I try and say, grace before meals. I want to raise our, I mean, we're going to raise our children as Catholic.

You know, I think, and then I think also, like, the purity of the faith is a really important witness, because there's the witness that I can lead as a Christian and as a Catholic in my home. And then there's the witness that the church itself provides, which is that, and this is why I fight for church purity and teaching and doctrine, which is so important because one of the things that has destroyed the Church of England, for example, is that the homily you're going to get from your service on Sunday is basically the same as any left-wing newspaper editorial, right? We can't just say, okay, we've got to adopt the latest trend as the trend which we're going to preach on. Nothing will destroy the Church faster than just an adoption of whatever the cultural

conversation is right now. We need to remain consistent and hold on to the eternal truths that have been made known to us. And that is why it's so important that we don't get caught up with adopting whatever the latest nonsense is in terms of church teaching. And that's why the synodal way in Germany is so dangerous because it brings to light the idea that church doctrine can change because cultural times have changed. So we as Catholics used to fight for the soundness of church doctrine and we need to lead by example

through lived holiness in our own lives. Did you watch the documentary, The Social Dilemma? No. Okay, well, I won't ask you about it. I will ask you about Matt Walsh's excellent documentary What is a Woman? What did you think about it? And do you think it's going to significantly change that the discussion, the trans discussion in this country and elsewhere? I think it has done already. I think so too. I think it's it's it's it was almost in some ways like a

I think it's it's it's it's it was almost in some ways like a Seminal moment in the debate. I was am I right in thinking that that documentary Did better for the daily wire than the three or whatever amount of movies they've put out I I don't know the numbers of the time I have but I imagine so I mean it was like It was huge. I mean it was it was it was huge. Huge. It was just huge. These people, wonderful people, huge people. But he shattered, I think, the narrative that this was like an industry which was just what they describe as gender reaffirming, right, which is just a leftist, you know, word salad to basically cover what their actions are. And of course, his interviews with so many

were just... Like you couldn't pay actors to seem that stupid on camera. You really couldn't. They wouldn't be that believable in their stupidity. God bless them and Lord convert them and yeah I don't mean to attack any of those individuals but they they were just they clearly like what did that one professor say to Matt that language of truth, rejective truth? Well it's the same, it's the Pontius Pilate, it's the Quod Des Veritas, you know it's like what is what is truth you know it comes back to the same argument like One of the great things about the gospel is that ecclesiasties, nothing is new under the sun.

There's Pontius Pilate saying, what is truth at the trial of Christ? And here we are, 2000 years later, and we've got exactly the same questions. What is truth? The devil has taken many forms, but his form is always deceit. You know, like, it always is the same lies and deceit which come out at the end of the day.

And so that's where we are right now. You know, we are just in that same spiral of lies. And ultimately, like, this is why I say, look at the promises of the left. Like, this is why I believe that, I that I think Christianity is either left or right I don't think Christianity should be above that you know it's it is above that it's the eternal truth of God it's neither it shouldn't be political but you know the way that we're the way that it's seeing now like what are the promises of the left right now if you're an environment if you're obsessed environmentalism, you won't have children for the sake of the

planet. You won't fly anywhere. You won't see your family. You naturally shut down your family life or your potential to create children and fulfill the beatific vision by celebrating the fact that you're only going to have one kid or something like that. Then you don't want to travel because you don't want to pollute the environment, so you don't go and see family. If you're signed up to feminism, you don't have children

because you won't get married, because you don't believe that men and women have any difference, so why should you bother? If you sign up to the transgender debate, you're willing to mutilate yourself. It's a never-ending cascade of lies and deceit, which end up with human misery. Yep. Well put. Well put. Any other super chats or things we should respond to? We had a super chat just now from Redemption's Reach that says, there's another group that hates the other, and then says,

Candice, George, Matt, Neil, etc. For being brave enough to speak the truth, they subconsciously wish they could. Some people are just afraid to do the same. As such, they persecute the truth teller, which I guess isn't really a question. I had kind of a question for George. So it seems to me that social media platforms have all these kind of general guidelines and rules, like don't defraud people, no pornography on these. So I think that in the fallen nature of humanity,

if you give people these kinds of social media platforms, it seems like the truth doesn't always rise to the top naturally, and the rhetoric of the technology sometimes overpowers, I guess the classic example against freedom of speech is what if there was a news agency that just put out false stuff all the time, and then it somehow became immensely popular do you think that that like something like that couldn't happen because it seems like

yeah I don't know what are your thoughts on that I'm like the algorithm of what what's being shown what gets interactions what makes things show up in people's feeds doesn't always seem to naturally coincide with people want the truth and are you know drawn towards what edifies them. So my answer to that is something we were discussing yesterday which is that the whole model of capitalism is based on the idea that we as rational human beings can make rational choices right that's that's pretty much how every economic model is built like The simplistic view of this would be what I was saying to you earlier.

If Kroger raises their prices and Walmart doesn't, then people will naturally defect from Kroger to Walmart because they're going to get the same product at a cheaper price, right? That is the rational basis upon which our economic system is built. Now, one could argue humans make irrational decisions the whole time, so therefore it's a false idea that we upon which our economic system is built. Now, one could argue humans make irrational decisions the whole time, so therefore it's a false idea that we should base rationality. But if we are to give the individual any responsibility

in the decision making in their own life, then we need to allow for freedom of choice. What does that mean in answer to your question? It means that people should be able, people need to discern the truth, right? Like Reagan famously said, trust, but verify. It wasn't actually Reagan who said that, it was the KGB. And the irony being is that we should trust, but verify.

Don't just believe everything you read. Go off and do your own research. You could say, OK, well, that takes time. But yes. But again, this comes back to like the hard path, right? It's not if if you're just spoon fed information and you have no discernment or critical thinking to discern what is truth, then you you're in a very dangerous position before you even get online. That's my point, right? Your offline life needs to be fully formed. You need to be able to have discerning faculties to be able to make rational decisions. Like in the same way that if you were irrational,

you will continue to shop at Kroger and eventually you would end up poorer because of it, in the same scenario that I just outlined. You should make rational decisions based on what you know about news organizations, based on research you've made yourself. Like we live in a highly connected world, those decisions are easier to make

because there's more information, but it also requires more discernment to find out what is the correct information right and again like it also comes back to how you formed your worldview like are you a fully formed human being in the offline life or are you just getting onto social media because you think like you know I really want to see like you know I want to see pictures of scantily clad women okay well then you know I really want to see Like you know I want to see pictures of scantily clad women okay? Well, then you know like maybe your offline life is not fully formed yet. You know It's a great answer. Thank you. Where are we at? How long we've been going for?

Seven minutes away from five hours. Oh my gosh take that Seamus cocklin Wow Seamus bad luck Yeah, and Trent horn yeah and she was Seamus Coughlin. Wow. Seamus, bad luck. Yeah. And Trent Horn. Yeah. Seamus beat Trent. Yeah, he did. That's right. Now you've beat Seamus. Yeah.

And it's felt like a breeze, by the way. Really has. I mean, I... I was going to finish this cigar, I presume. Well, I finished mine. Oh, look at you. But you haven't finished yours. You know, I was afraid I'd smoke it too quickly.

And then... No, it's... And then we'd be in trouble. Yeah. No one wants to see me go green and throw up. Well, maybe they do, cause it's the algorithm. Now that will make some great content. Yeah.

What's that? Content voice. Content what? Content, more content. Content. I wanna let people know, if they go over to matphrad.locals.com and become a supporter,

we just released a six part teaching series from Dr. Ed Faizer on Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways. It's very good. And if you go to matphred.locals.com and sign up right now, you get access to that immediately, as well as we have a quarterly newspaper that we send to you free of charge

once you become a support annual supporter. You don't even have to pay shipping. We will ship that to you, even if you live in Namibia or New Zealand. And we're pretty excited about these. The reason we created the newspaper was so that people could leave their phone in their drawer, go sit in the sunshine or on their deck

and have a smoke or a drink and just more calmly read deep edifying thoughts. And so we're currently in the process of printing or a drink and just more calmly read deep edifying thoughts. And so we're currently in the process of printing our second newspaper for full, which I think will be shipping out, I'd say within about three weeks. So you still have time if you go to matfrad.locals.com,

become a supporter, and then there's a pinned post at the top of Locals that invites you to give us your address. That's the only way we can then make sure that you receive one of these newspapers. Isn't that cool? That's great. Who would have thought I'd have a newspaper?

I love it, I love it. I still read a paper newspaper. Do you? What do you read? I read the Wall Street Journal on the weekends. Menu for the business. I think it's pretty good business coverage, I'd say. You wanted to talk about cricket.

Oh, well, like, how many more hours do you wanna go? I mean, a test match is five days. Would you miss it? I love, I don't like sport, but I love cricket. So I guess I love sport. I don't enjoy- What do you love about it? What do I love about cricket? There's so many things I love sport. I don't enjoy- What do you love about it? What do I love about cricket?

There's so many things I love about cricket. As you mentioned, people may not be aware, but traditionally a cricket match will last for five days. So what is it, like 9 a.m. to four, five p.m.? It's normally 11 a.m. to six p.m. 11 a.m. to six p.m. They stop for tea. Someone comes out with a cart, sandwiches.m. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. they stop for tea someone comes out with a

cart sandwiches it's so good so it's just a leisurely game that's always exciting it's probably similar to baseball I mean crickets the father of baseball really so cricket certainly better than baseball obviously but in that like every bowl is exciting right so there's this, it's like, it's not continually exciting because that would get fatiguing. But like here comes another bowl and like, here we go. Here we go, that's a six, here we go, he's out. Here we go, nothing.

It's that I really like that a lot. And I just like the culture around it. Like if Australia are playing England test match, you know for the next five days, your people are talking about this. And because it's such a slow game, you can go to work, come home, and not much has gone on.

Like two people got out, or five people got out, and now it's this or whatever. I really, really enjoy it. What about you? What do you like about it? Yeah, I think you hit a lot of the nails right there. I mean, it's a wonderfully strategic sport, which is like, it almost seems impossible that it could be strategic over five days, but actually it's highly, highly, highly exciting.

The development, the weather aspect, which is always fun. Like you've got, you know, it's just a, it's a beautifully balanced sport in many ways. And you're quite right. It's like it's it hasn't yet. Well, the 2020 style of the game has definitely, you know, moved cricket more towards the kind of like instant gratification. Like, yeah, how can we very disappointed? How can we get as many people in there as possible?

But I like the Indian subcontinent, which is the biggest watcher of Cricket and has the biggest league, you know It's obviously that kind of consumer demand for that But the test match series like the test test test match cycle is just it's wonderful I mean every match in England is sold out. It's hugely popular Tell them about the ashes series and the origins of that the ashes hugely popular. Tell them about the Ashes series and the origins of that. The Ashes. Have you heard me talk about that? No I haven't actually. So my understanding is, and you correct me since we have the Australian and the

Englishman here, is that when England first lost to Australia to those bloody convict colony, that bloody convict colony, they took the stumps and burnt them and put them in an urn and said cricket is dead. That's right. And now there's this. Suck it England, and then what happened? And by the way, how many minutes till five hours?

Cause I've got something I want people to type into the comments. Two minutes. If you watched this five hour show, I want you to write suck it England. No, don't write that no what should we have no right suck it England into the comments so we know how many people actually stuck around for five hours this is a horror if you could

watch this this is a horror and then type George Farmer sucks no no just just English suck it England suck it comma, exclamation mark, if you want. This is ridiculous. Or what else could they do? This is horribly biased, glory be to God. No, but you're right, the Ashes series became this hallmark series between England and Australia. And now every four years.

Every year, is it every two or every three? There's the Ashes series. I thought it was four, might be wrong. No, no, no, you're probably right. And they play for a replica of the urn, that's the trophy. Yeah, that's right they play for a replica of the urn. That's the truth Yeah, that's right. Come on. That's the greatest thing. I mean to understand how important this is the body line series of

Forget what year it was but the body line series which was part of the ashes Became a diplomatic crisis between England and Australia like ambassadors I wasn't aware were called to respective heads of state because like the way that the body line was this style of bowling from fast bowlers where basically deliberately targeted the body of the batsman rather than like aiming for the bat, which is now by the way, a very common tactic. Obviously that's like part of the game. But when it was first developed, it was considered to be like this great travesty in terms of how like people perceived it. And so like ambassadors were called,

you know, like the Australian Prime Minister was outraged that England would deploy this tactic of body line bowling and all this kind of stuff. So it was just, it's like, it's a great sport. I mean, it's just a beautiful sport. Like more people, I've always found this funny. I said this yesterday. It's one of the most watched sports in the world. It's like the second most watched sport in the world after soccer, right? Because, um, because the whole of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, all of these countries watch it. And it's just so popular. Yeah. I changed my mind. We shouldn't say soccer England. You should never say something like that. I apologize. But hey, I think in five hours a now Like in five hours of filming I do think that was the worst thing I said. Yeah, that's pretty impressive Yeah, and type instead Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy Do we have many people who watch for the whole five hours?

But I have been watching They're like, well, I'm not going to know what myself is doing. It's incredible. But I have been watching. One person said their butt hurts from sitting for so long. It's amazing. There you go. The cultural crossover that no one knew they needed. Map for our George Farmer.

There you go. I love it. It's been the past five hours, so. Wow. Congratulations. Thank you, my friend. And to you. Fantastic.

This is really enjoyable. It's nice to get to know you. Yeah, likewise. It's been a pleasure. Glad you exist. Glad you're doing what you're doing. Thanks. This is really enjoyable. It's nice to get to know you. Yeah, likewise. It's been a pleasure. Glad you exist. Glad you're doing what you're doing. Thanks, man. You too.

I love Pines with a coin. I'm just going to say that. Thank you. It's just awesome. Thank you so much. I am so honored to be able to do this. I really enjoy sitting down with wonderful folks and chatting. It's just such a joy for me.

And continue to seek, like, if I can offer you a word of encouragement. Please. Continue to seek out those people whose voices don't get heard. Like, I just love that about your show. I think that, like, you know, the sisters, the fathers, the priests, the monastics

that you have on this show just offer, like, a richness and depth that, like, it's just, it's wonderful, I feel nourished by it like I feel like it it fills my soul because you meet these godly people like I was kind of and I was sort of embarrassed when you asked me because I'm like I have nothing to offer you know like I'm just not why would I be interesting like oh well how do we get in touch I don't understand how this happened then through Michael Knowles I think yeah he emailed me and said you wanted to get in touch and then what happened did I just say come on, we're sure?

Yeah, pretty much, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Anyway. Getting to the bottom of the barrel now. Give us your best joke. Oh, jeez. No, that's, uh. I want to hear your American accent, too.

Well, there's lots of different American accents. But like. Choose one. You got the southern accent, keep it deep south. Boars, good old Boars from Tennessee, or deep south, that's about as good as mine. I like that, I like that little whistle you got there. Yeah, I mean, it's quite funny living in Tennessee,

it's just like not somewhere I ever thought that I would live. You know, when I was growing up, it was just like Nashville seemed as alien to me as Timbuktu, and now that I live there, I just love it. And I can't imagine living anywhere else. Like I can't imagine living outside of Tennessee at pretty much all the rest of my life.

And there's other states now that I've also fallen in love with like the mountain states. I just think are absolutely gorgeous. And as I said, this country is just beautiful. I've never been to Alaska. I wanna go to Alaska. This is my first time to Ohio. You ever been to Dollywood?

No, I haven't been to Dollywood. Isn't that in Tennessee? Yeah, that is. Just down the road from here. Oh, I love Dollywood. I've been there three times with the kids. Oh wow. Absolutely love it. I hate theme parks. I would never want to go to Disney. I can't imagine. No, I've never been to Disney. People I respect enjoy going. I'm not saying it's... But I just could not.

But there's something about Dollywood that is exciting but also spacious and peaceful. They don't play top 20 hits. They play more country. She's done some incredible things with her. I mean, like one of the funny things, when our daughter was born earlier this year,

there was a knock on the door in the hospital. And it was like these women offering free Dolly Parton books and I sort of dismissed them out of hand. And then somebody afterwards was like, no, they're really good. Like you should actually read them because they're all about family and all about promoting growth. And I was like, oh, well, that's that's that fills me with encouragement that free books in the hospital are being offered out, which are like encouraging

for family growth and stuff like that. So. Yep. OK, to accents, Tennessee. encouraging for family growth and stuff like that. Yep, okay, to accents, Tennessee. Oh, best joke. Here's, I'm afraid I won't say this joke very well, but let's give it a shot. There's this grieving widow standing at her dead husband's funeral. And that's it, no.

And next to her is the dead man's best friend right and they're both there at the funeral and she says to him would you mind saying something you know and so he approaches the ambo and just says one word plethora and then he sits down and she says, thanks, that means a lot. That's very good. Might be my favorite joke. That's very good. What about yours?

I don't really have any good jokes. I used to know all the jokes, but I've forgotten most of them now. I mean, I'm sure I could rustle up a couple, but now I now I seem to Occupy the you know kind of quite lonely space of dad jokes. Oh, yeah, it's good. It's a good world Yeah, here's one. Sometimes I bring my knees into my chest and lean forward That's just how I roll nice. Yeah, nice. Yeah, welcome. Yeah there was a picture of a farmer standing in a wheat field the other day and this guy and there was the the joke was like this guy isn't just standing in a cornfield he's outstanding in his field. Just terrible terrible jokes like awful jokes. But when you're in the mood for a bad joke. Yeah there's not sometimes it really hits the

spot. It does. It's quite funny. Yeah all right well better take you back to the airport. Yeah. God bless. Thanks everybody for being here. So Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, that's how we know you've watched five hours. Yeah. Beautiful.