Pints With Aquinas - Writing Fiction, Overcoming Depression, and Ben Shapiro Becoming Christian (Andrew Klavan)

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Andrew Klavan is a bestselling author, screenwriter, and cultural commentator known for his incisive insights and engaging storytelling. With a career spanning decades, he has penned numerous novels, many of which have been adapted into films. Klavan's work often explores themes of morality and identity, blending suspense with sharp social commentary. As a frequent contributor to various media outlets, he brings a unique perspective to contemporary issues, making him a compelling voice in today’s discourse. Join Andrew as he dives into thought-provoking conversations and unpacks the complexities of modern life on his podcast. Show Sponsors: Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/matt Strive 21: https://strive21.com/matt Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd   @AndrewKlavan  Andrew's New Book: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com/products/a-woman-underground  

Hey guys, it takes a lot of money to keep this podcast going. Please consider supporting us at matfrad.locals.com. When you become an annual supporter, we will send you a free Pints with Aquinas Beerstein. Just pay shipping. You'll get access to our long form episodes one week before they hit YouTube. You'll also get to interact with me on my exclusive stream for my supporters over at matfrad.locals.com. Thanks. I do think, yeah, Christ is the only name under heaven by which men will be saved. At the name of Jesus every knee will bend and bend should become Christian. That reminded me of Wayne's World. Do you remember?

Do you ever watch Wayne's World? Yes. Yeah. How old were you when Wayne's World. Do you remember? Do you ever watch Wayne's world? How old were you when Wayne's world came out? Oh my God. I think I was 120. Yeah. I just rewatched that movie again. Um, you know, you watch a movie that has value from when you're a child has nostalgic vibes and you rewatch it. You go, that's just not a good movie. This one was excellent. Very quick. And then I watched The Thing recently.

The second one. Kurt Russell. Yeah, that's the remake. Yes. It's an old one with the guy who was in Gunsmoke is in the original. And but the second one is terrifying. That's what I remember. Yeah, it was terrifying. Excellent. Was the first one any good? You know, it actually was kind of spooky. It didn't have the special effects and all that, but it's still, the first one he could you know it actually was kind of spooky It didn't have the special effects and all that but it's still the still the idea is spooky Yeah, I've been watching those old horror movies with my children. You know like the I don't know What's that thing under the water? What that was the creature from the black? Yeah? Yeah, well done. Yeah, those sorts of movies

Who watch I grew up those I have the monster models like in the I don't know if you ever read Salem's lot by Stephen King They've heard of it. The little boy has the shelves with all the muscle models. That was me So I was just I love those movies. And one thing you probably don't know about me is I write Mediocre horror stories and your daughter actually edited them for for publishing and did a great job. She's an amazing job She's amazing. Please take my crap and make it a bit more coherent. Where do you publish it? Oh, it was self-published. No one would publish my horror stories. They're not good enough. But I really enjoy horror. I really enjoy fiction. Well, I'm a ghost story fanatic. I don't like, I don't really like gore. And I hate boo scares because anybody can, you know, your three-year-old can jump out behind a door and terrorize you, you know. But I love eerie, a door and terrorize you. You know, but, but I love, uh, eerie,

spooky stories and ghost stories. Especially this time of year. Oh yes. Yeah. I think what I like about horror stories, just like you said, is not the gore, not the jump scares. It's the strangeness. Yes. That's what the uncanny. Yeah. It's, it's that you see something out of the corner of your eye and that means everything is different than you thought It was I shared this with a friend of mine Peter craves who was on the show recently I got this idea for a horror story. I think I'm stealing the concept from someone else

So forgive me if I did but it's something like this a man hears a scream From upstairs and his child's bedroom so he runs upstairs and she's on the bed terrified and she says daddy There's something under my bed. And so to put her fears aside He looks under the bed and there is his daughter saying daddy. there's something under my bed. And so to put her fears aside, he looks under the bed and there is his daughter saying, daddy, there's someone above my bed. That's terrifying. That's good.

Yeah, that's the whole story too. I think it was King, Stephen King, who said that there's a fine line between horror and comedy. Ah, interesting. Even if he didn't say that, I think there's something to that. There is something to that.

Because it is the strange, the unexpected and all that stuff. Yeah, like it. Having a clown talk to you from the sewer. I know, I know. My favorite ghost story is a guy who dreams every day, he goes to sleep every day and he dreams that he is visiting a house. Just as he gets to the house, the door opens and this rather spooky butler comes out and then he wakes up.

And it starts to make it so he can't go to sleep and he's just exhausted and the doctor says, you ought to take a break. So he decides he's gonna leave town, he leaves town, he's driving and he sees the house. And so he parks and he gets out and he walks to the door and the door opens and there's the spooky butler and the guy says, there's something about this house

and the butler says, it's haunted. And the man says, haunted by something about this house, and the butler says it's haunted. And the man says, haunted? By whom? He says, by you. That's it. Okay. Yeah. What does that mean?

I know, you just have to live with that for the rest of your life. Thank you for that. Have you ever thought about writing a ghost story then? I wrote a book, possibly one of the least successful books I ever wrote, and possibly one of the best, called The Uncanny. And what The Uncanny is, is I also rewrote it as a play,

and I personally think the play is better, but it's a series of ghost stories going from about 1200, written in 1200, until the present, until a modern horror movie that actually is telling a true, something true that happened, an uncanny thing that happened. Interesting. And it's about this guy trying to find out what is the truth behind these stories because he's dying and he's looking for some sense that life continues.

That is, I'm going to get that book. Yeah. And the... The uncanny. The play was produced in Ohio in a town, I'm trying to remember the name of the town, a little theater. Yeah, it wasn't Stephenville, but it was produced and it did well. It was a packed house for about a week and it was great. That must be so edifying. It's great. I love the theater. Now I mean I need people to know this because if I were you I would introduce myself like this to every single person I met even if I hadn't met them.

Even that wasn't the first time we were meeting. All right. So Claven is the author of such internationally bestselling crimes crime novels as true crime film by Clint Eastwood. Don't say a word film starring Michael Douglas And it goes on. That's remarkable. I know I've been, I've been a fortunate guy. You've been trying to tell Ben how important you were for years now. He's not getting that. No, he never listens to me. What was that like when they got picked up and you knew that Clint Eastwood was

going to be? It was very funny because it was bought that that was the novel. True crime was, was a really big hit and it was bought for a lot of money. And so it made the news, it was in the news. And it was sold to the movies before it was sold to the publisher, the manuscript was sold to the movies.

And I'm trying to remember which company it was, but I can't, but anyway, I was living in England, and I flew to Hollywood to meet with the people who had bought it, and I walked in the door, and they'd had it for about six months, and they said, look, we can't crack this story. So we're sorry to tell you, we're not making this movie. That's the norm, that's the norm

with most things that get bought. And so I wasn't shattered or anything like that. I was sorry, I said, oh, it's too bad, but the rights will come back to me. And I got back to England two days later, and I got a call from my agent, and he said, the rights will come back to me. And I got back to England two days later and I got a call from my agent and he said Clint Eastwood is making the movie. And I laughed. I said, sure. You know, I believe it when I see it. And he said, no, no, you don't understand when Clint Eastwood says he's making the movie,

he's making the movie. And they went into production almost instantaneously. So it was kind of a shock. And unfortunately it was not one of Clint's best movies. It did not come out. It was his fault, not yours. It was his fault. Well, it was a problem, you know, even then,

I was not a very political person at the time, but I did see political correctness and thought it was ridiculous. And so the story of true crime is that a white man is on death row. And at the very last minute, a reporter, who's an absolute jerk,

realizes the guy might be innocent. And the reason he's the only person who can see it is because you have to be a bit of a racist to be able to see that this white man. So they changed it in the movie and they made him a black man, which made the film didn't make any sense. So it was a shame. I mean, even though it had many good things,

and the other thing was Eastwood, great iconic movie maker, he was too old for the part. The guy was a womanizer, the star. Why does Eastwood do this? I just watched his recent movie where he falls in love with some gorgeous Buxom Hispanic woman. I'm like, dude, you're 95. Yeah, but he doesn't know that because gorgeous buxom

Hispanic women will sleep with him. Okay. Because he's a movie star, yeah. And he thinks it's him, you know. Yeah. So I was sitting in the back of the theater and the first scene with this guy is he's making out with like a 30 year old woman.

And I could see the women's shoulders in the audience rise up around their ears. And I thought, we're cooked. And we it didn't didn't do well at all. Mm-hmm. That's a bummer. It's still really cool Yeah, it was cool and nice. It was fun to meet him and it was like, you know Oh, how long you been writing fiction for ever forever since I was a kid I must have been about 13 when I decided that's what I wanted to do Yeah, I want to thank you for sending me a new book a woman underground Which releases what I'd the October 15th, but you can pre-order it right this minute great, right? We'll put links below so people can get it I never read books growing up because why would I I had VHS, you know

It's like why would you eat fruit when you have chips in the cupboard? I don't understand it wasn't until my conversion when I I was 17 that I started to develop a desire to read. My first desire to read fiction, I think it was like, it came from pride. I wanted to be the kind of person who liked Dostoevsky. So I tried and failed, and I tried, and then accidentally fell completely head over heels in love with him.

So that was really my, believe it or not, one of my first tastes of fiction. So I'm like 25. I had read little books before, but nothing like that. So what's difficult is to go from the greats to then reading anybody else. Yes. But then I started to try to read, okay, I'm going to try to read modern authors and not be like stuck up or something like that. So occasionally what I'll do is, you know, it's nice to read like a simple book, or go to the beach or something, and you want to read modern authors and not be like stuck up or something like that. So occasionally what I'll do is it's nice to read like a simple book or go to the

beach or something and you want to read something. So I've been reading James Patterson and other people and they're good authors, but you are so much better. Isn't that true or no? It is true. Yeah. No, I'm the best at this in the business. Well, you might not be the best, but it's definitely true that you're better than Patterson, right? Well, I wouldn't, I don't want to. Would you think that most people who read you and him doing something different? I mean, I started, okay, let me, let me read a

paragraph because I want people to see what a good writer you are. I, I, I drew around this because I'm just not used to reading modern fiction and I feel moved. All right. So for those at home, there's two fellas walking down a street, their names are Winter and Roger. Listen to this. The air was cool and perfumed with fresh greenery. Winter and Roger moved leisurely along the sidewalk together, the big shambling hulk of Roger towering over Winter's smaller, more controlled figure. They passed under overhanging burr oaks. The scent of the trees was damp and woody. The fresh acorns crunched beneath their feet. There was almost no traffic here, though they could hear the rush of cars

in the distance. There were no streetlights, only the lights from houses. They were both shrouded in shadow as they walked." That's beautiful. Oh, thank you. Right? I started out to do something different than what a lot of these other guys are doing, which by the way, I totally respect. I mean, I too wanna sit in the beach with my toes in the sand and a book in hand, as they say. And so I totally respect what they're doing.

But I did start out, and Dostoevsky had a lot to do with it. I mean, Dostoevsky, The Crime and Punishment was the turning point of my life. I read it when I was 19 years old, and it set the course of my life so completely that when I became a Christian many, many years later, I went back and reread it and realized,

oh, it had mapped out the course of my thinking over the next 25 years. And it was so important at that moment because I was in university at Berkeley, a very, very left-wing university, and the first real wind of relativistic critical theory was rising up. Professors were coming in and saying,

you know, we're here to teach literature, but we all know it's nonsense, that sort of thing, and attacking the very thing they're supposed to love. And the idea of relative, that morality was relative, the truth was relative, that truth was all subjective. And you read the murder scene in Crime and Punishment, and you think, no, no, there is no world. If you landed on a planet where it was right

to murder a retarded woman with an axe, you would be on the planet of evil. And if everybody thought it was good, it would still be evil. And so that was a real turning point, because at that point, I could never again really believe in the complete subjectivity of reality. And so I set out to be that kind of novelist

and found that my gift was to write thrillers and mystery stories. That's what I had grown up reading. That's what I really knew how to do. That was what I understood. And so I was kind of in despair about it. I thought like, I don't know how I can, I see more than I can fit into

a story that has such a high level structure. And then one day I read The Woman in White, which if you've never read it is the greatest. It's one of the great Victorian novels. There are some people, written by Wilkie Collins who was very good friends with Charles Dickens and there's some people who believe that Dickens rewrote it because it's so good. But it's a great thriller, but it's also a very profound book. And I thought, okay, now I see how that's done. Now if I can translate that into the American thriller, which is much more condensed and much swifter and uses much terser language, then I will have done something.

And so that's what I set out to do. And I think at times I've actually accomplished it. And so I don't compare myself to guys who weren't doing that. You know, I mean, I think that's good of you. That's good of you. It's actually just a good idea just to be humble, even when you don't feel it, at least to ape it. Not saying you're doing that, but it's good just to ape it

until it catches up. That's a good point. Yeah, and I also noticed that a lot of these modern authors write very, very short chapters. Yes. Like two pages each for people who are used to reading Twitter. And so your books aren't like that.

No, I mean, I try, and especially, this is probably my valedictory. This is probably the last set of books I'm gonna write, and I've never written a series before, and I'm hoping this will be about 10 books. And so I'm looking at it as a work. I'm not looking at it as each book has to be the whole thing. And that's making a big difference.

So for those at home, this is a Cameron winter, what do you call it? Mystery. Um, so you have, what is this the ninth or the 10th? This is the fourth. Sorry. Okay. Forgive me. The fourth book in the series. Why did you decide to do a series at all? Yeah. Well, it's the one thing I've never done. And I have done, most of my books are, I'll call them experimental because I was always trying to put more and more into them. And so I would, when I would finish, the book would be done. And I would think, why would I, I've written a,

I wrote a couple of trilogies, but that was it. So this book during COVID, it was kind of a, I don't know if you wanna hear this whole story. All right, so when everything shut down during COVID, all my speeches got canceled, my travel got canceled, and for a writer, that's bliss. I was here, I'm crazy about my wife, I'm locked in a house with my wife, this is great. But I had this book I wanted to write about romantic poetry and how it had changed

the way I read the gospels. And I didn't even know how to tell anybody about this book. I tried to explain it to people and I thought, I'm gonna have to write this and publish it myself because it's so weird. It's so weird to say that reading secular poetry enlightened me on how to read the gospels better. So I thought, I'm just going to sit down and write it because I'm stuck in this house and

you know, what am I going to do? So I sat down and wrote it and it was bliss. I was in a state of bliss. It was unbelievable. I felt like, I felt like, you know, those, those lasers that they use on guns and the movies with, I felt like God had shot this laser through and I was standing on that spot where I was supposed to be. And I couldn't even pray anymore because my prayers had gone silent

because I had nothing to ask for or say. I just had to do this job and it was bliss. And I'm writing this thing and I got a call from my friend Otto Pensler, who is the guy who runs Mysterious shop, books, press, mysterious press. And he is pretty well widely acknowledged to be the greatest crime editor of his generation, which is really the last generation.

He's now in his eighties. And he was locked in his house and he called me up and he said, you know, I wanna do a Christmas novella. Would you be interested in doing that? And I had had a Christmas story stuck in my head for 30 years that I could not figure out. I couldn't, I had the ending of it and sort of the beginning, but I couldn't figure out the whole middle of it. So I said, let me get back to you. If I can figure this story. It's been haunting me for 30 years. So I went out and I got this one little idea that cracked the story and I called them up and I said, yeah, let's do it. It'll be fun.

And so I finished this book about the romantic poets and was going to publish it myself and I thought there's one editor who might actually read it at least. I sent it in he bought it and I was like absolutely gobsmacked. I was just completely you know thrown off. And now I start writing this book and it's also bliss. It's bliss on a different level. It's just, I'm having the best time of my life, you know? And it's really, if I say so myself, it's coming out great. I mean, it's just coming. Like I knew when I handed it to Otto,

who's never said a nice word to me in his life, we have a very, very New York relationship. We've never say anything nice to one another, but he's a great friend, and he really has supported me in good times and bad. And he thinks it's a classic. So I hand in this book book and I said to him, this character is the first character I've ever written

that I think could carry 10 books. And I'd like to write those books. And so he let me do them and they've all done extraordinarily well, I think. And so it's been a joy, it's been a joy. And the other book about the romantic poets. I swear, I was gonna publish it myself. I sent it to one editor, he bought it.

He took me out for a drink and made it clear to me, he's a very elegant man, he didn't say this directly, he made it clear to me, we're not selling any copies of this, but it's worth publishing. And it came out, it was a best seller. Really? Yeah, it was just like a great, I had the best COVID of anybody. Yeah. This is the best plague I've ever been in. Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful.

The other thing is obviously you're incredibly funny as your intro. Sorry, am I being too nice to you? Yes. Do you want to make fun of you being bald or something? Would that help? But I'm going to be there soon. But I just love that you're able to kind of weave throughout this book, beautiful imagery, complex characters. They're not two dimensional characters, for example, and I won't give anything away. But when you're introduced to this feminist character early on, you know, you think, oh, Claven daily wise meeting a feminist, he's going to make her look terrible. And she actually turns out to be this kind of beautiful, loving woman, and I love it but here's the funny bit right so winter chats with this little boy who's playing Mario and winter's not familiar with games and so

he says Mario a Italian fellow is he what's he up to here he's a plumber he's going to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser the evil turtle aha an Italian plumber jumping on fanged mushrooms to rescue a princess from an evil turtle one of us has been taking too many hallucinogens my lad I certainly hope An Italian plumber jumping on fanged mushrooms to rescue a princess from an evil turtle. One of us has been taking too many hallucinogens, my lad. I certainly hope it's you." Yeah, so that's strewn throughout and it's really appreciated. But no, but the moral complexity of characters I think is so important because I think it

was Flannery O'Connor who said that that's a trap that a lot of people fall into is that they end up having their characters be the mouthpiece for their particular worldview and you end up feeling preached at. Why is that not good and how do you avoid that? Well I think, you know, it's a real problem especially with Christians. You know, you find you have come upon this wonderful truth and the truth gives you joy and the truth makes sense, really does make sense of a world that's full of horror and evil. And you wanna spread the word, and so you wanna tell people this wonderful truth,

but that actually doesn't represent what the world is like. It doesn't represent what the world is like, that everything is solved. The thing that attracted me to Christianity is it's a tragic religion. It's a tragic, the thing that attracted me to Christianity is it's a tragic religion. It's a religion that says if the greatest good we know came to earth, we'd kill it. We would kill it.

All of society, every aspect of society, political, religious, the guy on the street, they would all get together and kill it. His best friends would run away. That's not like a happy, smiley story, right? And so one of the things that Flannery O'Connor does that's so wonderful, she maintains the grit and awfulness of life and somehow out of that,

that out of that comes God, which is the religion. That is much more to the point. So when I wrote, the book that I started with is a Christmas book, and so Otto said to book that I started with is a Christmas book. And so, you know, Otto said to me, it has to be a Christmas book. You can't just make it a, you know, but if people have caught on to this, it's a, it's a Christmas book with a lot of good Christmas feeling in it. But if you read it closely, it's not a happy, you know, time story. And I purposely made Cameron Winter an unbeliever so that he could react

to believers, because there are many Christian people in these books, but he is not a believer, and so he can react to them in an honest way and say, yeah, this person is still corrupt no matter what he believes in, or this is a decent person and would be a decent, whatever he thinks. And it is since, they call it faith for a reason, it's not knowledge. We have taken a tremendous chance. We have taken a tremendous risk with our lives in believing what we believe, because it's gonna make us, it's gonna cost us money,

it's gonna cost us friends, it's gonna cost us popularity in the world. And in order to do that, you have to really believe something that is not right in front of your eyes and we could be wrong, you know, we could be wrong. And you wanna write that world, because that's the world we're living in, and it's very, very hard to do.

I mean, as far as I'm concerned, for instance, I'm a huge C.S. Lewis fan, but I hate his fiction, except for one book, Well, actually two books, but I hate the Narnia books because he sets up a great situation and then the lion shows up and solves everything. And that's not my experience of the world. I mean, and so I'm very careful about it. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. We live in a chaotic, messy world where our relationships are messy. We can't make ourselves do the things we wish we could make ourselves do.

We are a contradiction to ourselves. We're frustrated a lot of the time. So I think a book like this that can kind of help you enter a world that's like that, but somehow says it's okay, don't despair, but doesn't solve it for you. That's much more like my reality. Yeah. Something like that or no? Yes. I mean, I think you want it to be, you know, life is full of suffering and anxiety and all the things that we go through. And I think it's really not Catholics, it's evangelicals who brought this idea that somehow you're always supposed to have this big smile on your face because you've been saved. I go to these movies, there's one of them, I shouldn't say this because some of my friends

are in these movies, but I think it's God is not dead and they're trying to convince this atheist to believe. And he believes and then instantaneously- There's a two dimensional figure there. He gets hit by a car and everybody goes, well thank God he was saved. And I thought, could we call his widow first? Before we thank God that he was hit by a car?

Can we shed a tear and call, you know, just for a moment can we feel some grief and confusion? Yeah, I understand the desire for things like that, especially when Christians feel beat down by Protestants, by atheists. You know, I feel like that was maybe on the cusp of that new atheist sort of revolution that has died out now.

But I feel like it was a way to sort of help Christians not feel like the loser in class. Yeah, no, yeah, that was a terrible movie. That's funny. You have people in that movie, so you can't, people you know. Yeah, yeah. I love how you also, there's a fella in the book

who wants to commit adultery. And the way you had him justify it was so beautiful. Because it's something like everyone understands, right? Like I'm going to say this and everyone's going to misunderstand it and hate me, but I wouldn't trust a man who's been married for longer than five minutes who says, of course I understand the desire to leave everything and destroy my life. Of course I understand that. And the person who's like, I couldn't,

I don't even know what you're talking about. What the hell is wrong with you? It's like, you know, I understand it. And I have, like we all have, disordered passions that are pulling us in all sorts of directions that promise paradise, but will only leave us alone and angry and frustrated. And you really don't know yourself until you realize

you would throw away everything that's dear to you and everything you believe for basically 20 minutes. Yeah, because I'm an idiot. Yeah, exactly. And that's kind of what's beautiful about being a Christian. It's like, that's a good argument for original sin. Like, I know what an idiot I am. Right. And it's such a relief. See, if you listen to the way people talk, I really believe that, I don't want to overstate it, but somewhere between 65 and 85 percent of the words that come out of people's mouths are about what a good person they are. Is that right?

If you listen to them, you know, like I'm not the kind of guy who will do the nice sort of thing. Oh, sure. Sure. And once, once, yeah. But you're a Christian. Oh, no, no, I am the kind of guy who would be the wayward. You're free.

You're free. You don't have to waste all those words, you know. In fact, one of the nice things about growing in self-knowledge Is that no matter what my enemies say against me it pales in comparison to the truth I and my wife already know about me exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it gives you sense of humor. It's like, yeah Yeah, that's good. Well, that's wonderful. And I hope the book does really well for you Do you think that if I mean, I suppose the answer is going to be obviously yes But I want to know why. If you weren't a conservative political commentator, even just a conservative author seen as such,

do you think your books right now would be doing significantly better than they currently are? Ha, that's a funny question because in one sense- You might get in him another espresso. Thank you. Thank you. In one sense, they're doing better than they ever have. I mean, all of these books have been on, all of the winter books have been on the bestseller list of the times will not

I'll take one to let's be honest. Sorry. They won't be on the news I don't put on but USA Today which actually counts the number of books They're just straight up who's selling more, you know So they've been on each one has been on that list and that's because I have the show and I reach out to the listeners Of my podcast at the daily wire and I say, you know, I have the show and I reach out to the listeners of my podcast at the Daily Wire and I say, you know, please buy this book and they find out, oh, he actually does this for a living.

So it's not just some guy, some conservative guy saying buy my book. I'm actually a writer who does a podcast. I'm not a podcaster who has written a book, you know? And so they've caught on. So in some ways it's been really positive. However, my attitudes have cost me big time. And I started out I was, every book I wrote was nominated for an Edgar Award or some other award. I

won two of them. I won, you know, I was, they were all nominated for that. And then when I realized I was a conservative, I wrote a book called Empire of Lies. And Empire of Lies is about the war and terror, and it's about a conservative Christian who has led a very dissolute life. And he left this dissolute, sexually promiscuous, sadomasochistic world that he was in and became a Christian. And he's now a family man and all this stuff. And he gets pulled back into his past. And watching television, he starts to realize that there's an Islamist terrorist attack being planned.

Just watching television where they're ignoring it. And I wrote this book, and I seriously, I put the last period on it, and I walked into the bathroom and I looked in the mirror and I said, do you realize you're never going to win an award again and can you live with that because writers like to be loved We want our books to be appreciated and loved and I thought you know, I can I can live with this. I mean and I've never won an award again. I don't think I've ever been nominated. No, I think I've been nominated once or twice obscurely and

I think I've been nominated once or twice, obscurely. And my books went from getting rave reviews in almost every major place to getting no reviews. And the one review Empire of Lies got, which was an AP review, so it appeared in several places, called me a right-wing crackpot. So I can't remember if that was the exact phrase. It was something like that. And so that was a big blow, you know. And

it ended my Hollywood career. I was writing screenplays too and making a bundle of it, like a time in my life. And that just dried up once I became an open conservative. So it has hurt me in that sense, but I always was off beat. My books always were off beat and I would try different things and sometimes I failed. You know, I didn't do what most guys in my field do, which is write a series. That's the most lucrative thing you can do because if people like the series, they'll keep coming back.

And so, I don't know, I had this moment when True Crime came out, the Clint Eastwood film. And I was standing in Times Square in New York. and my name was on the billboard in Times Square and I didn't care. And I looked up at it and I realized I didn't care. I thought that's not what I was working for. I was not working to be the most popular guy in the room. I was working to do something different with the form and say something deeper with the form and I rejiggered my career To do that and it took me a long time to get back to the point where I was selling for a while I was selling you know

Two thousand five thousand books each time and it took me a long time to get back to this place where I'm now a respectable You know having respectable sales I'm betting that some of my books will be read after I'm gone Okay, and I think that that's his is green. I'm brown. Thank you. Thank you And I can't know that but you know, no, they will be yeah They will be yeah. Well you I don't know your story very well Forgive me, but were you married at the time when you looked in the mirror and said, all right Are you are you okay with this? Yes

So did you did you talk to your wife about this? How did she feel about the fact that you might get drastically less popular? My wife, I have a remarkable marriage. I don't think it's unique, but it's close. I mean, we've been married, we've been together 50 years. We've had one fight. I'm crazy about her. I mean,

like she's probably at home, like, you know, tying sheets together, hoping to escape from the house. But like, but I, but as far as I'm concerned, she's thrilled. Yeah, exactly. I, I I'm nuts about her. I mean, it has been a passionate love affair for, for 50 years, which is not the norm. I mean, it's not the normal thing. She has seen me go from a, uh, liberal Jew to being a conservative Christian and somehow she has made all of that work. Rolled with the punches. Yes. Yeah. And she's a wonderful, I mean, everybody loves her. She's like the nicest human being on earth. Like, she made one mistake. That's the way it goes. But so, yeah, she has been there through all the stupid decisions I've made.

When I became lippy about my politics and my income went from high six and seven figures to nothing in the course of months, she did sort of come in and say, you know, we are gonna have to sell the house. And I was like, really? You know, she said, yeah. You know, you blew up your career. And I was like, okay, you know, and that's what we have to do. And she's been incredibly patient about it.

I mean, like any other hundred women would just rip my head off. But, you know, she, my favorite story about my wife, computers had just become a thing, home computers had just become a thing, and I'm writing with a pen and then typing my books on a, like a typewriter, which takes months, so I'm writing and then the typing takes

weeks and weeks and weeks. And I go, I'm working to support us, I'm working as a news writer in a radio station. And the'm working to support us, I'm working as a news writer in a radio station. And the guy comes in and says, you can't work on a typewriter here, everything is done on a computer. I said, I don't know how to use a computer. So he said, well, I'll show you, it'll take me an hour.

So he showed me how to use a computer. I left the radio station, I went to a computer store and spent literally every dime we had, which was $1,200 to buy a IBM ripoff. And I come home and my wife comes home and I'm ripping open the chocolate box. And she says, what have you done? And I said, I spent all our money, but don't worry, this thing is going to make it back for us.

And she said, okay. You know, if you ask me why I love my wife, that's why I love my wife. And it did. I mean, it was like it was a revolution. I mean, suddenly I could write books and they were just as good. And half the time, a quarter of the time, and. They did revolutionize my career, but that's that's my wife. So like, that's beautiful.

My wife is very cleric and we we fight. Yeah, by fight, I don't mean necessarily that it gets nasty, but like, yeah, we, we, we come into conflict, but um, very similar story. I had a full time job and I wanted to take this podcast full time. But if I were to do that, we would be making $35,000 a year with our four children and no health insurance. And she went, let's do it. So she's crazy. Yeah. So you won the lottery of life.

Well, you know, it's nice is like, you know, there might be more selfish times where I think to myself, yeah, does she see like, I'm really pulling my weight here? Like I'm bringing money in for the family. Does she appreciate this enough? But what I've realized is, well, she didn't care when we had no money. She didn't disrespect me. We had no money and she's not overly concerned that we have more money now. Yeah. You know, that's beautiful. That is a beautiful thing.

But yeah, do it. Not everybody has that. I know. Sometimes I feel like marriage is like, we have this thing in Australia called the lucky draw, where you have these wrapped up presents, you don't know what they are, and you give a dollar and you just put your hand in

and then you unwrap it, and then you know what you've got. Sometimes I'm afraid that marriage is a bit like that. Like, you don't know what you got until like five years in. I know, I know. Is that too cynical to say? I mean, I'm not. I mean, I can't help but feel there's the hand of God in it. I don't think like, I mean, I was I was nuts when I was young.

I mean, seriously nuts, like so that I had to be saved from my insanity. And I picked her up hitchhiking, you know. Oh, wow. And I wasn't driving a car. She was hitchhiking. And I thought, like, oh, my God, my car's parked up the street. There's this beautiful girl sitting with her thumb out. Are you serious? So you saw her?

Yeah. You went and got your car to pick her up. And she was like, fashion model, beautiful. And she had, I thought, there's a girl, a beautiful woman who wants to be picked up. I haven't encountered this before. And she- What happened?

Tell me about it. So I got in the car, it was parked up in a friend's house, it was in Berkeley, and it was a jalopy, it was a Dodge Dart, I think it was built in 1872, you know, and it never started on the first try, it never did, and I turned the key, and it just exploded into life, and I came out and I realized I'm on a one-way grid in a residential area, and I drove around at 50 miles an hour.

And I still, to this day, every time I tell this story, I have this visceral image of this old lady who stepped out in front of the street, in front of my car, and I swirled around. I was like, get the other guy. So I ran over and I went. I ran over. And I leaned out and I said, going my way, my dear,

you know, casually. And she literally got in the car and I thought, I'm done, that's it. She is the girl, she got in the car. And I think she said something like, sharp short, which means nice car. I thought, yeah, no, this is, and the fact that I was right, and when I was so crazy and so, this is, and the fact that I was right

and when I was so crazy and so, you know, I wasn't right about anything else, it just makes me feel there's some kind of, you know, some people, and I don't know why I got that and other people didn't, probably because I needed it and maybe other people don't know it, I don't know. I also think sometimes, we obviously, this is cliche maybe, we have this romanticized view of marriage

We don't realize that marriage is meant to bring out imperfections to the surface so that we can deal with them Yes, and so when this woman turns out not to be God who will fulfill all of my desires Yeah, I decide that well She wasn't the one I gotta go find another person who looks like God and it doesn't work So it's like yeah, your only option is a sinner, a wretched woman. Yes. And the fact that she can put up with you, you should be thanking God. I know. Cause if you leave her, you're going to marry the same girl over. Right. Yeah. And have the same exact problem. It's so boring.

And then you realize it's you, which is really bad. And then by that time, yeah, I've known people in my life. There's a fella, I grew up with this shit, this woman, friend of mine, her father abandoned the family, went to Bali. It was public knowledge that he was with prostitution, things like this. He came back very obese. He had bleach blonde hair, though he was a dark Italian man,

shell necklace, lived in like governmental housing. And God bless him, you know, I'd be worse if it weren't for the grace of God. And I mean that. However, I think of that, I think, it's just not worth it. Like, don't follow the shiny objects because they will lead you to be a fat man with a shell necklace and no respect. Just destroy your life. Gosh. But at the time, you don't realize that when the sirens beckon. Yeah, I could have made a million mistakes. I mean, there's so many mistakes I could have made.

I don't understand it. I mean, there's a lot in my life I don't understand, that people who grew up in a very similar milieu to me went in very, very different ways. And why I came out of it, you know, with God, which has been the joy of my life. It's just been the, as you say, it's like this path to self-knowledge and growth, you know.

I'm 150 years old, I'm still growing in this, you know, kind of amazing adolescent way, you know, and it's just, and I don't know why that happened to me. You seem very grateful. You seem like a grateful man. I'm so grateful. I mean, like, embarrassingly. Have you had to cultivate that, or did it just sort of arise within you naturally? It was like, you know, I was just, my son said the other day, you get, God will give

you everything you want, but you won't recognize it. And I think after a while I looked around and I thought everything I touch turns to crap and everything I leave to God just goes great. I quit, I'm quitting my own life. I'm quitting. I'm quitting. And it's like, I'm done being my own human being. And at that point, yeah, gratitude flooded me.

And I was, I mean, I was so crazy. I'm not joking about this. I had- Tell me how crazy you were. Well, I was suicidal crazy. I know I was- I'm sorry. You know, I was about 28 and I cracked up.

And I had had a difficult upbringing in a lot of ways. And my life was going nowhere. I had a daughter and I had had a difficult upbringing in a lot of ways and my life was going nowhere. I had a daughter and I was literally, I had a daughter I loved that was still crazy about my wife and I'm sitting in a room thinking they'll be better off without me. When you come from that and basically what happened was I found a psychiatrist and he cured me, which makes me the only person

that I ever happened to. And it was such a miraculous cure. And when it was over, I didn't believe in the things that we had talked about. Like he was kind of a neo-Freudian. And so I had all these neo-Freudian insights and I felt better. And then I realized it was all crap.

All those insights were crap. They weren't true at all. And I realized it was all crap. All those insights were crap. They weren't true at all. And I realized it was this kind of love that I had for this man, for this mentor, the only mentor I've ever had. And then I started thinking, now I've got this wife who sat down next to me in a car and I knew that was love.

And I had already figured out that there had to be a God, but I couldn't believe in him because I was so crippled. I thought it would just be a crutch, right? That's why would you, and when you've been through that, and I don't know why that happened to me, you know? And so when you've been through that, it's hard not to be grateful.

You know, I genuinely believe it was a miracle. You know, a miracle of healing. I mean, how do you go from sitting in a room thinking, I know exactly how I'm gonna kill myself, I know what I'm gonna do, I know when I'm gonna do it, to being the obviously hilarious person you're talking to today, and now you're this person who just is like so happy to be here.

How do you do that in the course of a year or two years? So. And did this come upon you in your 20s or was this, did you struggle with depression as a teenager? I struggled with that. Yes, with depression. It was kind of, it would kind of circle around. Sometimes it would be better when I met my wife, it was, I was in good shape. That's why that worked, you know, but then it would come back and it would get tighter and tighter and tighter and the periods between would get smaller and smaller. And I was delusional. You know, that was the other thing. Like I started to realise that my version of reality was not reality, you know.

And what was your version of reality? What was your version of reality? I thought that the, well first of all I thought that I was, I got to a point as I was descending into madness where I got very grandiose. I had the sense of myself as being this kind of seer of genius, you know. Roskolnikov. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I noticed a lot in crazy people. You know crazy people are always calling me out and saying I've written a book on how to live, you know, it's like, yeah, I'm living in my mother's basement.

I'm hooked on tranquilizers, but this is my book on how to live. And I think like, I don't want to read your book on how to live. And I got like that. I got very grandiose. My writing, which, you know, you read it, it's clear. It's like, you know, my writing became unreadable even to me. So, and I just sort of began to think that I was some kind of higher level being, it was nuts. It was scary, you know, and trading that with like, I think I'll kill myself because I'm so unhappy. Yeah. And then did that, was that a recurring thought or did it kind of come to a climax and that's when you decided, I know how I'll do it and where I'll do it? Reilly- It got worse and worse. One day I had a really bad day and it's a great story really.

Sometimes when I tell it I break up because it's like I'm back there. I was sitting in a room by myself and I was listening to a Mets game, the baseball players, and I was sitting there thinking, I do not know how to live. I don't know how to go on living. And there was a player on the Mets named Gary Carter, who was an evangelical Christian, great player, a great, great catcher.

And he was always talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and it would go right up my spine. It was like somebody had dropped a caterpillar down my shirt. So like he'd say, you know, how did you, how did you, you know, get that great hit? Well, Jesus blessed me with his one, you know, stop saying that. And I was sitting in a room by myself contemplating suicide on the radios on playing this ball game and the game ends and during the game Carter had hit a game winning single and he had beat the throw to first base

and he famously had bad knees because he was a catcher so he was squatting all the time and the lady came up to him and I'm listening to this in the background and said how did you manage to beat that throat at first base when your legs are in so much pain? And if Carter had said, well, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, it would have gone right past me. But what he said was, sometimes you have to play in pain.

And I thought, that's the answer. How do you live? That's the answer. And I can do that because I am a hard character. I can do that because I am a hard character. I can do that, you know and What bothers me about it when I look back at it is I was weeks away From a sort of revelation that freed me from this depression forever And I wish I if I could go back and slap that kid in the face for things It killed himself if you did that so I'm glad you can't go back in time and do that

I'm so grateful that you're sharing this because I mean one of the beautiful things about fiction to me is when I read it and it helps me feel less alone. Yes, that's what that's my goal. That's your story. What you're doing right now is helping people feel less alone. So thank you for being willing to share such an intimate part of your life. Well, my whole goal in life is that at three o'clock in the morning you can reach out for one of my books and think oh somebody else has lived, you know, in the same world that I've lived in.

You know, yeah. I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. I use it, my family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided

prayers, meditations, and music, including Mylofi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better, it helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Do you think that there's a growing interest in fiction?

Do you think the medium by which we consume it is the thing that's changing? What's the future of fiction and why should people read it, I suppose? Yeah. I mean, I think that in the arts, the arts are like the spirit. It goes where it will. You know, so like you'll have a period where the novel is the biggest thing, since sliced bread and all the talent will go in

because artists work for love. And then we had the century where the movies were the big thing. And then for a couple of years, television was the big thing. And right now, our culture is very stagnant. And I think it has to do with godlessness and wokeness. I think we've lost the plot of what we were talking about, which is why I've started writing

nonfiction critical works showing how even works that aren't about God are in fact about God. You know, that's just the only subject there is in a way, you know. And I think that fiction is now where, say, theater is. Theater is not something everybody goes to. They go to see Phantom of the Opera, some big musical, and yet some of the best works I've seen are works of the theater. And fiction is the same way.

When I started out, one of the reasons I started out is because the novelists were the stars of the art world. Even though the movies were a bigger deal, if you were Hemingway, if you were Faulkner, it was like being Madonna, you only had one name, he's Hemingway, you know, you don't have to know, he's not Bob Hemingway, you know, it's... And so that's kind of the kind of writer I wanted to be, and that world is gone.

The, you know, novels have fallen off the page in terms of that. Still great novels being written, just like there's still great theater being written. And so it's just not the central, in the central place it used to be. I think what's coming is this three-dimensional stuff. You put the mask on and you'll be immersed in it. It's so cool. It's terrifying. It's terrifying, but I think you can make beautiful things with it. But

still, I think the novel is still the most intimate, reading is still the most intimate way to connect with another soul, I think, who's not with you. There's nothing like reading to link one soul to another, which is kind of what you're trying to do in the arts. You're trying to record the inner experience of life. And so I think that there's just nothing like reading that can replace that. I'm not sure if you've heard of this novella by Dostoevsky. It's called A Gentle Creature.

No, I thought I'd read it. I beg you to read it. So it begins with a man sitting at a chair and in the next room is the body of his dead wife who is just plummeted to her death. And I'm not giving anything away that's in the first page. But the story is him recounting how it came to this. And it broke me. It probably takes about four or five hours to read. But there was parts of it where he tried to do this power play with his wife, right, to make him respect her and this sort of thing.

And he just like he treated her poorly in it. It just broke me. Anyway, um, there's been a couple of times I've read a book and I haven't recognized my face in the mirror afterwards. Cause I was crying. So yes, yes. The road was one of those books. Oh, you know, that's, that's funny. You're not the only person. I know. I really liked that book, but I know other people were just completely destroyed. I was destroyed by it. Cause you know what it was?

It was the element of hope at the end. It's sort of like O'Connor. Like here's a pile of manure and a chute coming out of it. Yes. Right? A seed, a strain of redemption still visible. Yep. Do you know a book like that that you've read?

And I don't know why books do that to me. Because if I watch a movie, maybe I'll get teared up. But I don't tend to cry. There's something. I don't know if it's like the release because I'm done. Like the old man in the sea do that to me, because if I watch a movie, maybe I'll get teared up, but I don't tend to cry. There's something, I don't know if it's like the release because I'm done, like The Old Man on the Sea did that to me as well. Yeah, that's a great book too.

I mean like, yeah, no, I mean so many books. I mean, I've read a lot of books where I've closed them and thought my life has changed, but haven't known why, which is really interesting, you know? Like, crime and punishment was like that. Over time, I realized why I felt that way. But in the moment, I didn't know, in the moment when I remember closing that book

and sort of putting my hands over my face and thinking I'm not the same person I was when I started that book. And that, I don't think that's ever happened with a movie. I love the movies, but I don't think that's ever happened with a film. It's happened with a couple of plays where something has just been deeply rearranged inside you.

And I'm not sure it's kind of, when I write nonfiction now, that's kind of what I'm thinking about. What does that? You know, because I really believe that since God has died in our culture, we don't really understand the arts at all. Everything we're saying about the arts is untrue. All the critical theory is untrue. It's really people pasting their own minor little worldview over the views of these geniuses.

It's pitiful that kids go to school and instead of learning, oh, here's Jane Austin, here's what she saw and here's how she said it. You only have to explain to people what the hard words mean. You don't have to really tell people your ideas because who cares what you think. Right. You're not Jane Austen. Shut up. Yeah. Yeah. I remember in university when this was first coming out, somebody reading The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lur Tenison. Wonderful poem.

There's not the reason why. There's but to do or die. We all know some of the lines from this. And it's this wonderful martial poem of a true story of this Cavalry Brigade charging Russian guns and being blown away, but they won't stop charging, you know because I have such great discipline and a woman stood up and Said why are we reading this?

Why it it you know romanticizes war and military and all this stuff. And I stood up and I was so upset that I couldn't get the words out to say, but half a league, half a league, you can hear the horses, you can hear the horses. I couldn't get across the fact that it's not, the poem is an experience. Art is an experience. It's not an idea. It's not a theory. It's not an experience. It's not an idea.

It's not a theory. It's not a message. It's not like a moral. It's an experience. You're going through something which is another man's vision of life. And that's a beautiful, beautiful thing to happen. I mean, how often does that happen? You know, it's like intellectual sex in some way.

I mean, it's like combining with somebody else. And Tennyson was a great poet because he made it happen. You don't have to agree with him. You don't have to like him. You know, I read lots of great authors who I don't agree with, but I love the experience of being that close to them in their heads. Yeah. When you were an atheist, did you have any arguments for atheism?

And how did you become a Christian? R. Well, this is kind of interesting. I was mostly an agnostic, you know, in the sense that I just thought, who cares? You know, I was a function. N. You can't know, no one can know. I see what people want to know, it makes their life feel more comfortable. R. Yeah, yeah. That whole thing. However, when I had this wonderful experience in therapy with an essentially Freudian-based kind of therapy, he was far more complex than that, but still.

I thought, well, I've just been saved by an atheist therapist with an atheist philosophy. I really must be an atheist. So I started, and remember, I've read Crime and Punishment, so I know that morality is not in fact relative. It may be subjective, it may be something we perceive, but it's still morality. We're perceiving something real. So my subjectivity matches with an objective law. Exactly, exactly. So I'm reading all these atheist philosophers, Nietzsche and all these different guys, and I'm thinking they do not account for this fact that I learned in Crime

and Punishment that there is such a thing as evil. They're not accounting for this fact. And I would read one after another, and I can't even remember all the people, but I read a lot of atheist writing, and I thought this does not make sense to me. And then I read the Marquis de Sade, and I don't know if you've ever read the Marquis de Sade. So this is where we get the word sadism, right?

So he is an 18th century psychotic philosopher who writes sadomasochistic pornography that is philosophy. And his philosophy boiled down to making it very simplistic, but still, there is no God, there is no morality. Life is essentially about power and pleasure. So you might as well rape people to death for your own amusement. And I thought, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. So I didn't know you were going to take that turn.

And I'm out of here. I thought that's hell. That is actually a picture of hell. And so from that moment on, I was turned back the other way. And what I love about that story is you're reading the psychopath, who actually did kill people. I mean, he was in Bastille when the revolution broke out. Here's an evil person professing an evil philosophy, but he was such a good philosopher. He was consistent. He was consistent. That he gave me a choice. I've never been able to be convinced by the atheist who says that there is no objective moral lawgiver, there are no mind independent moral facts, and yet there is something objective about reality. If it has been sort of spun into

us through evolution, fair enough, but now I know that, what's to stop me from acting against it? I'm not subservient to the dictates of evolution. If it's society, well to hell with society. Society is just other people and people don't have any more authority over me when you put them in a collective. So I will act in a way that's maybe conducive to my flourishing and maybe the flourishing of my family because it's within my self-interest, but it might not be. And so maybe I'll choose to act in a way that's brutal. And who are you to tell me I'm wrong?

I've never been able to be convinced by the atheist that I shouldn't think that way. So do you know Jonathan Haidt? I know of him. So I interviewed him and I've read a couple of his books and he's a lovely man and a very intelligent man and he writes evolutionary morality, evolutionary philosophy.

And so I'm interviewing him and I'm plugging his book, which I enjoyed and all this stuff. I just said, I have to ask you this because I have this argument with you in my head, and here you are. And again, there's a very sophisticated, intelligent, and man of goodwill. Okay.

And I said to him him so we evolved eyes because there's such a thing as light and the light we see is not the light there is but it's the light we see we see light when there's light and to a scientist it might look like particles or waves or whatever but for us it's light and that works and so we're actually seeing something real so we involve ears and hearing because there's such a thing as sound. Why did we involve a moral sense? Like, you know, and with all respect to Heidt,

he really couldn't answer the question. I said, if we landed on a planet of Nazis and everybody was a Nazi, they'd still be wrong, right? And he like kind of couldn't come to terms with it. You can listen to his on YouTube, you can hear him kind of fumble the ball and you can hear he knows, you know, he's an honest guy. He could see that he was not quite picking up.

I agree. And then the atheist will try to say something like, well, it has to do with human flourishing then. We should act in a way. But why? But why? Why not cockroach flourishing? Why think human flourishing? Yeah. Right, and why shouldn't it just be me flourishing then we should act in a way. But why, why not cockroach flourishing? Why think human flourishing? Yeah.

Right. And why shouldn't it just be me flourishing? I really like me flourishing. And sometimes when I heard other people, this is, this has not happened. Sometimes if we heard other people, we might feel like we're flourishing. So why not do that? This is the only bloody life I've got. Who the hell are you to tell me to sacrifice anything? Exactly. And like, you know, they have these theories, well, it's the genes are really lit, you know,

but they don't really hold together. And also, nobody believes them. This is the other thing. Like, I always tell people, don't believe what you don't believe. Like you know, if you say like, well, there's a planet in which being Hitler is right, you don't really believe that. No, I can pretend to. It's like moral relativism.

Right. So I can pretend to believe it. If someone cuts me off Right. It's like I can pretend to believe it, but if someone cuts me off in the grocery line, I think they've done something unjust. So do they. Yeah, so don't pretend to believe what you don't believe. I like that. So that, so it's the kind of Lewis's moral argument, may have not, you may not have come across it at Lewis at the time, but it was a moral argument that got you open to believing in God. It was indeed the moral argument. There's no question about it. I mean, other arguments came to me later, but that was the real one. It is interesting to me how the moral argument appeals to modern man in a way that traditional

cosmological arguments or the ontological argument don't. You don't find the moral argument strong in medieval philosophers, right? Like, look at Aquinas' Five Ways, they're all based on the external world and motion. I don't know what that is. I wonder if it's because Descartes screwed us all up and we think the only thing that we can know are those incorrigible thoughts. And so we trust our inner sense more than what we perceive? I'm not sure.

You know, maybe, I don't know the answer to this, but maybe just as a speculation, one of the things that has happened as we let go of our faith is that we try to explain everything inwardly. So everything comes out of our psychology, everything comes out of our sexuality, everything is generated from within. So then when you get to this moral thing and you think, well, as you say, it's not really generated from within

because it can be harmful to us. So maybe that's why it's so appealing. It's where that argument ends. I also think as we do away with God, we don't do away with moral indignation. So maybe it's that. Okay, you've done away with your belief in the external world and how it points to God or something like that. God seems like a fairy tale to you. But the one thing you seem pretty sure about is there are very evil things happening that need to be rectified. Okay, why think that? Yeah, so maybe...

Isn't that where CS Lewis's mere Christianity starts with people saying that's not fair? So did you, you grew up a Jew, were you a practicing? Well, that's a little bit of a complex question. My father, it's very important to my father that we knew the tradition. We went to Hebrew school. We were bar mitzvahed. There was no God in our house. Like nobody ever prayed, nobody ever said,

well, go ask God or anything like that. And so by the time I was 13, I was like, why am I doing this? Why am I speaking Hebrew? I'm an American. Why am I reading this book about these stories? I feel like an American. Why am I, you know, reading this book about these stories? You know, I feel like an idiot. And you know, and I was a total, I grew up in a totally American, Americanized heavily Jewish, but very Americanized town. I mean, my heroes were baseball players

and astronauts and you know, there's nothing about the state of Israel. I remember, I remember my Hebrew school teacher bursting into tears when they won the Six Day War and I thought like, it's a million miles away. It's like, who cares? And so by the time I was 13, I didn't want to be bar mitzvahed. And QX, forgive my ignorance. I've heard that a lot. I don't really know what it is.

Bar mitzvahed. Explain the process. At 13, it's basically you're declaring you are now a full man and part of the faith. So it's an initiation. It's Jewish confirmation. Yeah, you have to memorize a lot of Hebrew and recite it. Memorize a lot of Hebrew. Not memorize, but be able to recite.

Yeah, I have to say I ad-libbed some of my Hebrew, which I guess I was so bad at it. I really didn't want to be there. Oh, so you ended up, so you said you didn't want to do it. Yeah, but my father insisted and I was not, did not have the moral wherewithal to stand up to him. And I grew up in a, I won't call it wealthy, but it was upper class, upper middle class.

And I was loaded with gifts. So for your bar mitzvah, it's like your big birthday. It's like a birthday squared, you know? And I got jewelry and silver and gold and, you know, like war bonds, you know, saving bonds, you know, and like thousands of dollars worth of stuff. And it was the first wealth I ever had, you know, nobody, I never saved anything or anything like that.

And so I put it in this leather jewelry box. And over the course of, all these stories are in my memoir, by the way. I wrote a memoir called The Great Good Thing, which is about my conversion. And I went about six months, I think it was, and I started to think like I lied. I lied.

I got up in front of all these people and I said, I believe in, I'm now part of this religion and I'm not. I don't believe it at all. And I, one day I, my father was a DJ and he woke up early in the morning. So he went to bed very early and the whole house was asleep. You mean radio DJ? Yeah, he was a very,

I didn't know if he even had a club or something. No, no, no, he was a famous New York City DJ. And I got up when everybody was asleep and I took this leather box full of thousands of dollars of jewels and I took it outside, I crept outside and I stuffed it into the garbage because I felt like I had lied.

It was ill-gotten gains. And I thought, I am done with religion. This is the worst thing ever. It just makes me feel like garbage. And that was kind of my stance for many years. So could I liken your sort of Judaism to, let's say, an Irish Catholic who's only Catholic because it's somehow connected to his roots in Ireland. So it was more about your heritage than it had to do with the doctrine.

Yes. And my mother was an absolute atheist. My father, you know, kind of didn't want to get God angry. It is interesting. I mean, I don't kind of didn't want to, didn't want to get God angry. It is interesting. I mean, I don't, I don't know many Jews, but it is interesting that there is this, um, these, these liberal Jews who hold onto the rituals while denying the power. Whereas I feel like Christians, yeah, there's some of that for sure, right? There are Christians who attend mass because it's, but I feel like increasingly it's not a bragging card to say I'm a good Christian. Like, okay, you're a horrible person. The world will say, so it feels like increasingly if you don't believe it, you don't go.

Is that happening in Judaism or is it? No, not that I know of. I mean, I, you know, Ben Shapiro who is a believing Jew, uh, makes this point a lot cause people are always saying, why do Jews always vote for, you know, people who hate them? And he says, because they're not Jews. They're, you know, they're, they're Hebraic in the Hebraic race or whatever. They're Ashkenazi.

I think that's something that Ben and Catholics can share in common then, because we're pretty pissed off with Joe Biden declaring he's a Catholic and moralizing us about the beauty that is abortion while claiming to be a Catholic. Like it's despicable and it's shameful. And yeah, it's a scandal.

And so I feel that and so I suppose Ben feels something similar to those who claim to be Jews while... It is very frustrating to him and I don't blame him. I mean, I think that, you know, it's a real thing that he does. He really does celebrate it and honor God through it. One of the funny things about Ben is if you've ever heard of him, he only, I don't think he does it in public all that much, but when he talks about, there's a Jewish word for it, but I can't remember what it is where you discourse on a portion of the Torah.

He's great at it. He's absolutely fascinated when he does that, you know, and it's like, so it's a real thing in his life. And for me, it wasn't for my father, it was in terms of the fact that he was doing it for the tradition, he believed in the tradition, he believed it was important. He was very obsessed, he'd been in World War II, he was very obsessed with the Holocaust,

very much felt that you had an obligation to stand and exist and persist as a Jew. But he never really passed on any kind of passion of beauty or faith or anything like that. So in the end, you were left with this kind of remnant of something that meant nothing to you. You know, it was more important to me who won the Yankees game than what happened to Moses who was dead, you know. So why didn't you become a Jew then after you came to believe in God? Why Christianity?

Well, it was interesting. I started to read about Christianity because I loved mystery. I loved tough guy mystery novels. That was when I started reading, when I started reading about 15, 14, something like that. I started reading tough guy American mystery novels that really inspired me and I loved them. And they were all kind of based on Arthurian legend. So, you know, Hemingway's great book, The Sun Also Rises is based on the quest for the Holy Grail and, you know, the Maltese Falcon may be the greatest American mystery, you know, it's all quest stories.

And, and of course, Raymond Chandler, who's my favorite, wrote about a knight in Los Angeles. The guy was basically a knight in shining armor in this sleazy trench coat in Los Angeles, a brilliant idea. And so I started to read the Arthurian books and I started to realize that this Christianity stuff was at the center of literature.

Paul William Blake said, the Bible is the great code of art. And I started to realize that at about the age of 15. And I thought, well, I don't really know anything about Christianity, why would I? I knew about Christmas, that was good, you know. So I went out. We had that going for us. Yeah, that was fun.

I went out and I bought a Bible with the New Testament in it because we didn't have one. And I still have it, by the way, it's crumbling around, it's hilarious. And I thought, well, the Christmas story is in Luke, so I know the Christmas story, so I'll read the Gospel according to Luke. This is an absolutely true story, by the way. So I'm 15 years old, I'm in my bedroom, the door is closed. And my father loved to burst in on the bed in my bedroom for reasons that are complex psychologically and I won't go with them. And I'm lying in bed reading the gospel according to Luke and he busts in and he catches me reading the Gospels. I promise it's pornography. Exactly. So help me.

You did not do that. No, but he screamed at me for reading it. He absolutely went berserk. For reading the New Testament? Yes. And he said to me and I said to him, you know, it's literature. I'm reading it because I want to be a writer. All the writers write about this, you know. And he said to me, if you ever convert, I will disown you. I thought, convert? What the hell are you talking about? Maybe he knew me better than I knew myself, you know. But like the fact that I was 15, I have

to be honest with you, it was the 60s. I was sexually active when I was 15. He could have walked in literally with me, a girl. And he would have been less angry. He would have been less angry. I mean, he was angry about that too, but not like this. This was like he was. Why was he so angry?

Because the Christians were the bad guys. The Christians were the anti-Semites and the Christians, you know, burned Jews in the Inquisition, and they led to the Holocaust, and you know, this was, there's a lot of justification for this. There was a lot of Christian anti-Semitism that kept me from becoming a Christian even after I had actually become a Christian. I had to really work it through. Was this inherent in the faith or was this a cancer in the faith? And so that was, but it remained, I realized it was at the center of everything I loved.

I realized Christianity was at the center of everything I loved. And I wrote a novel about Christ, which I lost, which was trying to explain it away, trying to write a naturalist novel where it was all psychological. And I think it was quite a good novel, actually. And after I lost it, I rewrote a shortened version of it,

which is terrible. But the original was actually pretty good. And so it became a kind of center, an organizing principle of my understanding of art, which I think remains valid. I don't think you can actually understand art without reading the Bible or understanding the Bible at some level.

And so that was why when I decided, I couldn't believe while I was crazy because I was in too much pain and I thought that would be weakness, it would be cowardice. Afterwards, when I was actually quite jolly, I thought, well, my logic still holds. You know, my moral logic still holds. So I started to pray and that was revolutionary in my life. How did you pray? I was hilarious. I would just make it up.

I was just like, because I had no template. So like, I would think, I don't know, you know, can you ask for a car? I remember as a Catholic, I wasn't sure if this meant signing in. And so like, I'd sign in at the beginning of the day and I'd sign out at the end. That's great. One of my first prayers was, God, I don't know if you exist. If you don't, I'm talking to myself right now, and that's a little embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as living my life under the illusion of atheism, if you do.

So I'm going to give it a shot, and if you could please help me. I prayed many prayers like that. I would pray things like, I would start to say something that sounded kind of pious, and I would think, look, you know I'm only saying this, so you'll give me the car, you know? Whatever it was. And so, and then after a while, it was very illuminating. I finally said, look, you know all my evil motives, so I'm gonna just stop telling you, let's just accept that,

and we'll talk about everything else. And that was just huge. I mean, so five years went by of prayer like that, and at the end of those five years, I had gone to another level of joy in life. And I always hate to talk about this because it sounds like I was happy all the time, and I wasn't.

Things went bad, things went good. But I was joyful. I loved life. I loved being alive. And the thing that I always compare it to is you go to a movie and a character dies, and you cry, and you sob, character dies and you cry and you sob And you weep and you come out and people say how was the movies great, you know

that was kind of the level at which I was living and And at this point, I'm a screenwriter. So I'm driving a convertible BMW in the hills of Santa Barbara, you know, I'm like just total ass Living the dream, you know and I'm driving and I said to God, well, you have really revolutionized my life. At this point, there was no question that I was talking to myself. I mean, I was getting answers for things that I wouldn't have. Oh, I see. You were talking to God. You knew that. I knew I was talking to somebody. And I thought, like, how do I repay you? How do I thought like, how do I repay you? How do I, like, what am I supposed to do?

And it just instant, instantaneously came into my head, you should be baptized. And it wasn't a voice, but it was like instantaneous. And I was driving my BMW convertible in the hills of Santa Barbara. And I went, you gotta be kidding me. Like out loud, I just said, you gotta be kidding me. Because that was, you know, that was the end of my life.

I was gonna end my Hollywood career, I was gonna end, you know, like I would become unpopular among my friends, my father would disown me, you know. Just thought this is a disaster, you know. And so, and so I argued for five months. You know, God and I had this five month long argument. And I'd read the Bible by then about five times and thought, realized it was great literature

and realized why it was at the center of, but it never occurred to me to believe it. And so at this point I thought, well, now I have to go back and, let me go back and read it as if it were true. That would be a different experience. Like not read it as literature, let me just go back and read it like it's history.

And when I did that, I suddenly thought, oh, I get it. It's history, you know, it actually makes sense. And the gospels especially because I think there's all kinds of different literature in the bible. I think you know, it's not like I'm not one of these guys who say yeah, uh takes everything literally But the but the gospel story strikes me As four accounts of people who saw something. Yes, clearly meant intended to be historical accounts. Yes. And if all those accounts matched up, you'd know they were lying. I mean, if you're a cop and you talk to four people about what they saw,

they'll say the same thing. It's a conspiracy, right? Yeah. But it's very realistic. And that, I thought, okay, I'm a Christian. I'm going to have to get baptized, and it ruined my life. That's what I thought. How did you tell your dad? You know, that's a very sad story. He came out, I thought I'm gonna have to tell him,

because I know it's gonna be in the papers at some point. I'm gonna do an interview. I'm gonna be a Christian, dad, but I promise I'm gonna be a really bad one. Really? Yeah, exactly. So I was living in California, they lived in, my parents lived in New York, and they came out to visit

and I thought I'm going to have to tell them because like I said I'm doing an interview one day and they'll read it in the paper and that would be awful. We were never close, my father and I, we had too much fights between us, but we made a separate peace and we were civilized. He was a great grandparent to my children and so, you know, that was a big deal. And they came over to visit in California and he walked in the door and he said, I have to go home. I'm seeing double.

And I laughed because my father never went on vacation when he didn't have some medical emergency or business emergency. He had to leave early. So the minute he said it, I said, okay, whatever. Whatever, he was like a very neurotic guy. And he went home and he had a brain tumor. And he was dying. And I thought, I can't tell him. I'd just break his heart.

It's not like he's gonna say, oh, I'm a Christian now. It would just break his heart. And so the guy who I wanted to baptize me was a friend of mine who was an Episcopal priest. And that was back when they're still Episcopal priest, and that was back when Episcopalians still believe in God. And so I would go back to New York, and I would train essentially for baptism with this priest, and then I would go visit my father who was dying,

and he died on a holy week that was also Passover week. And it was quite a remarkable experience. I sat, I was there with him for days and then helped arrange the memorial and then got on a plane and went home and went to church on Easter. It was kind of a startling split-screen movie experience. Mason- Wow. Now you've said that you, and I want you to clarify, you've said you don't want Ben to become Jewish or you don't think he needs to become Jewish. No, this is, this is, I, that's what I'm getting to clarify. Yeah. It's awful. It was just an awful experience because I was talking about salvation and why I don't worry about Ben and why I don't nag him or pound on him. Although I did once,

we were once doing one of those backstage things where we were all together and he eats kosher popcorn. I want to know what makes popcorn kosher popcorn. I have no idea. He said to his assistant, is this kosher popcorn? The guy said yes. So we walked out and Ben started eating the popcorn and about a minute later the assistant comes running back and says, no, that's not the kosher popcorn. And I said, well, now that you're not a Jew anymore, I'd like to tell you about Jesus Christ.

I got nowhere. So I was explaining this. And basically, the first part of this was I have no vote on who gets saved and doesn't get saved and I have no judgment about it. It's like, I don't know. And C.S. Lewis said this, he said, we know you have to go through Christ, but we don't know how that works,

and we don't know who it works for and all this. And I said, but in the gospels, there is a story when Jesus says, you come before the king, and he says, you fed me, you gave me water to drink, and so welcome into my kingdom. And the people say, when? When did we give you food? And he says, well, you did it for the least of me. I said, and that indicates to me that there is not our knowledge that saves us, it's Christ's knowledge and Christ's decision that saves us. And I said, and I also believe

that life continues after this mortal life. And I do not believe that somebody on a trajectory to Christ, that your time runs out and it's like, you know, jeopardy or something, and you know, you have to stop. I think that if you're on that trajectory, it's possible that you can continue on that trajectory. And I found, you know, Bible quotes that kind of led me to believe that as well. And I found, you know, Bible quotes that kind of led me to believe that as well. And so what I said was, you know, I see Ben and I see a man on the trajectory to Christ,

and I see a man who serves Christ sometimes without knowing his name. And I said, Jesus told the Samaritan that it's better to know what you worship, but he also told people that the Good Samaritan had been a neighbor when the Jewish priest was not, you know? So it seems to me there's just more going on than guess the name of God and you go to honk. Let me say, so you believe Christ is the Jewish Messiah?

Yes. Right. If Ben was open to becoming a Christian, you'd want him to become a Christian. Yes, absolutely. So it's more like, I'm want him to become Christian. Yes, absolutely. Okay, yeah. So it's more like, I'm not gonna annoy this fella every five minutes of the day. Yeah, and I'm gonna trust him to God because I think he's a good man. And I think that I recognize his God as Jesus.

And if he doesn't, maybe that's not, you know, I just don't think it's a game show. I think this is serious stuff. I think life is serious stuff. And like, you know, I just don't think it's a game show. I think this is serious stuff. I think life is serious stuff. And like, you know, online at the pearly gates are going to be Nazis. I don't think they're going to look at Ben and say, well, you wore a funny hat. You're out. I think I think I agree with some of what you're saying. So let me first say what I agree with and maybe what I don't agree with.

Well, first of all, I think we can get so hung up on doctrinal purity. Yes, that we forget that what Christ spoke a great deal about was loving the poor and forgiving our enemies. And so sometimes, especially if you've been away from the New Testament for a while, you can fall into the trap of making liturgy the greatest thing or, you know, the fact that homosexual marriage may not be marriage, I don't think it is the greatest thing. Whatever the political item of the day is, like transgender ideology, like that becomes the biggest thing. And then you read the scriptures and you just see

Christ telling you to forgive and to love the poor and to clothe the naked and to visit the imprisoned. And you're like, oh gosh, I better get about this. So I agree with that. I also agree that I used to have this tactic, I think Christians do it often and it's kind of annoying, where they try to convert people, but they pretend they're not. And everyone can see right through it, and it's very annoying. So the kind of approach I take right now with, say, my Protestant brothers and sisters,

so like yourself or somebody else, I might say, of course I want you to be Catholic, and I would love to try to talk you into that. That more open approach seems to respect the person more than the sort of covert approach where I'm just dropping books off. But I do think Christ is the only name under heaven by which men will be saved. At the name of Jesus every knee will bend and bend should become Christian. I agree with all three of those statements.

I just think that the mechanics of salvation are beyond our ken, beyond our comment. Like, I don't think you get a vote, you know? I mean, I think, you know, I always say, like, it's not, photographic identification is not gonna help. You have to be, you have to actually die on the cross and be resurrected to be the judge of people.

And if you didn't do that, just let it go. And this other thing about the trajectory of life being longer than life, I think that is the gospel. And so I don't think, again, I think the death is serious business, but I'm not sure that it's like a timer that goes off and your quest is over. You know, I had a friend, an older friend who died

many, many years ago, and he was a lapsed Catholic. He was gonna be a priest, and he had lived a very, you know, kind of raucous life after that, after he was lapsed and all this. And at his funeral, the priest got up and he had lived a very, you know, kind of raucous life after that, after he was last and all this. And at his funeral the priest got up and he said, you know, I think that when you die you see the face of God and if you recognize it you know which direction to go in. And I thought something like that, you know. I mean, I just think we, as you say, too much doctrine saps us of our compassion, our sense of humor, and our friendship for people who are on the right path.

Yeah, it might be the fact that I'm a Catholic and you're not, that we have a slightly disagreement here. It might be greater than slight, but... So Catholics would teach that it is possible that non-Catholics can be saved if they die but are not culpable for their ignorance. But if somebody's culpable for their ignorance or if someone flat out refuses to submit to Christ that they cannot be saved. Yeah. I think I-

Holding that with, sorry to cut you off, holding that with, yeah, salvation is God's business. And we've been told not to judge, but we have been told to evangelize. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I think the most important evangelism is to live your faith with joy. You know, I mean, like I always felt when I was a, when I had little kids, I felt the most important thing is not that I do the right thing, is that I do the right thing and like it. Yeah, that's Aristotle over there.

Yeah, yeah. The virtuous man. I wanted my kids to see that I loved living that, as an honest guy. And even when it cost me things, which it did. I saw the people who did live the other way and I didn't want to be that person and so I you know, I don't know I I just I think it's I think i'm better

For leaving this question to leaving this question to christ. I thought you were like, I I think i'm better than you And you and everyone way better than ben. I know you're a lovely person No, I think I think i'm I'm better for leaving this to Christ. But I mean, sure, fair enough. I think that also if you leave the matter of salvation aside, I think it makes sense to want people to know and love the truth. This is why I was bothered when I was on Shapiro's Sunday special and I'm like, why don't you want me to be a Jew? I want you to want me to be a Jew, Ben. It makes me want you more the fact that you don't want me.

What's wrong with me? Why aren't I good enough? But you know, I kind of think if Ben thinks that he possesses a greater degree of truth about God than I do, which presumably he does because he believes I believe many falsehoods about God, such as him becoming man, dying on a cross, rising, that he should want me to know a greater level of truth

than I currently do. And so I think likewise, we, and I think you've said, of course you do, you're just not gonna be belligerent about it, we want our Jewish brothers and sisters to come to know Christ. Yeah, I also, I do have a faith. Or does that make you uncomfortable? No, no, I mean, it's what I want,

but I also do have this faith, I have to admit. Barry Weiss, you know Barry Weiss you know the free press lovely person she's a lesbian you're married to a woman yeah but but she's a very but she doesn't have purple hair or wear Birkenstock so she's kind of like a different kind of lesbian she said to me do you think I'm damned because I'm a Jew and I said let me put it to you this way. Yes. Yeah, now I said, I think you're driving a Model T Ford when you could be driving a Tesla. But I said, a Model T Ford's a good car. Eventually, eventually, it'll get you there.

I guess I feel that Jesus lived and died a Jew. What he did was complete the Jewish thought that had been going on for thousands of years. You know, he kind of put, said, okay, now you've worked out the theory, here's the reality, you know? And I guess I just have faith that God is not gonna abandon his people.

I just do. You know what I mean? If they truly seek him. And something to that effect. Because I would disagree, I disagree with your analogy about, well, you're in a different car that's not as good as mine, but it'll get you there eventually. Yeah. No, I would still insist that you need to get in this car. And I love you, and I with your analogy about, well, you're in a different car that's not as good as mine, but it'll get you there eventually. No, I would still insist that

you need to get in this car. And I love you. And I know that God is all merciful and he knows your heart and I don't know your heart. And I believe you might say to Barry, or I might say to Barry, look, if you were to take a truth test or something right now, what are those things called? You're not lying when you say you don't believe Christianity. It's not as if someone's presented it to you. You know it's true, but to hell with that, I'm not going to change my life because it would be too difficult. And so I'm not going to judge you. Yeah. I do feel, I have to say we do have a difference here because I do feel that like, this thing about the good Samaritan, about Jesus saying to the Samaritan, the Jews are

in a better place because we know what we worship and you don't. He says to the Samaritan, the Jews are in a better place because we know what we worship and you don't. He says to the Samaritan woman, you know. And then later he tells the parable of the good Samaritan saying, who is your neighbor? It's the Samaritan. Therefore be like the Samaritan. I do feel that there is, I mean, if I met an atheist,

excuse me, who served the poor, forgave his friends, was loving to his... I would actually think he was a Christian but didn't know it. I guess that's what I think. I think that it may be that Ben serves Christ without knowing it. He would be annoyed if I said that probably. But tough luck. It may be the truth.

Yeah. And I wouldn't think he'd be a Christian without knowing it. annoyed if I said that probably. But tough luck, you know, it may be the truth. Yeah, and I wouldn't think he'd be a Christian without knowing it. I suppose I would think he's a better man than me, and yet not yet a Christian. Because I guess I have a very specific definition of a Christian is one who is baptized and then tries to submit himself to the life of Christ. But I mean, we're going back, like with Barry Weiss, we came back to the damnation salvation issue. I'm saying leave that aside and just say we should want people to know the fullness of the truth. Yes. Yeah, you do. I mean, look, look, everything I write, everything I say, everything I do, that's what it's based on. You know, I mean, it's the center of my life

and I trust to that. But it is annoying to have people preach to you. And no, it is. I mean, we all know what that's like. Like when a Mormon comes to the door and pretends he's just there for a conversation, we know he has an ulterior motive. We can respect his passion, but I don't want to talk to you. Thank you. And we don't want to be that to our friends. We want to take a holistic interest in our friends. Like I've had friends who are atheists or Protestants or what have you. And I think I've been able to show them, look, even if you never convert, I hope we can remain friends. Like I I love you, I learn from you, and things like this. And consider that, you know the story I told you about one income is suicide and this Christian

baseball player comes on, and he doesn't say Jesus, he says sometimes you have to play in pain. And I always, what always moves me about this story is not me in that story, what moves me is God saying, this guy's not ready to hear my name, so I'm not going to send that message. That's an incredible act of humility from the King of Heaven, you know? It's the King of Heaven putting aside his crown and just saying, you don't have to know this yet, but you have to know this little thing that you're going to have to take up your cross, you're going to have to play in pain. If God can have that humility, I think the rest of us can have it in space. Yeah. Well, thank you.

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Another point we disagree on and this might be the last point is what is your view of homosexual acts? Well that's a really good question and I have a know, I'm an Anglo-Catholic. I mean, I'm what you guys would call Catholic light, probably, but I'm a very liturgical, Nicene Christian. That is what I believe. You know, this Nicene Creed is my creed. You know, that's where I am. And my favorite theologian who was alive in my time

was Benedict XVI. I mean, I've read- Me too. Oh my God. Wonderful. I wish we had him back. Yeah. The fact that he and John Paul II were in the same building at the same time is going to be one of the great high points of history, I think. So I'm Catholic friendly, let's put it that way. But the reason that I've never become a Roman Catholic, before I get into this, I don't

want to say that some of my best friends are Catholic, almost all of my best friends are Catholic. All through life I've been very close to Catholic people and my theology is as close to Catholicism as it can be. You're even close with scumbag Catholics like Michael Nolz. Exactly. I really crawl in the dirt to be near Catholics. But there is this one thing about Catholicism that makes it sometimes difficult to talk about it, which is that because the theology

comes down from authority, it means that individual Catholics sometimes have to... Feel like they may not be free to follow the evidence where it leads. Yes. And so it means that you're insulting them when you don't believe some doctrine that's important to them. And I hate that, you know, because I'm not. Yeah, no, I wouldn't think that at all. I think this is just a conversation between two good-willed people who are trying to understand what's true.

And I agree that very often it produces more heat than light, but I don't want to do that. So I don't think the church, any church, has yet gotten sexuality itself quite the way that I think Christ gets it. And I think that they get it the way Paul gets it. But Paul's kind of cranky about sexuality in a way that I'm not sure is Christ's view of our bodies. You know, that kind of, it's better to marry than to burn. Yeah, I guess so, but I think it's actually better

to marry than anything, you know? And the church has always had this thing, well, is it better to marry than to be a virgin? Is celibacy better and all that? I don't have any debate about that. I think that marriage is a deeply, wholly beautiful thing that was made from the very beginning. I am a heteronormativist. I believe that we were made to be heterosexual, that we were made to, you know, you don't have to look at our bodies. We're like jigsaw puzzles.

We fit together, you know, and out of to look at our bodies. We're like jigsaw puzzles, we fit together, you know, and out of that fitting together comes life, and all of that seems to me to be the center of humanity. But I also know that, I mean, living my life in the arts, many of my great friends have been gay people. I think that they are born that way. I'm not sure, I think that there's a genetic component to it. This is my personal opinion, I'm not a scientist,

but I think it's carried through the mother and it happens in the womb, because they've never found it in actual gay people, but it recurs in families in ways that have nothing to do with upbringing. So for instance, twins, you can have two identical twins and one of them will be gay and the other one won't be that's very strange Very strange thing so I think it's carried by the mother and occurs in the womb So you're born in this anomalous situation where you are not fit for the normal

Life-giving central physical act of being human and I think that that's a very pain human physical act of being human. And I think that that's a very... Of being human, what is it? The central physical reason for your body is to make more bodies. I mean, that's why we're here. That's why the body is here. It recreates, right? It's like, obviously there's more to our lives than that. But that's what, you know, a person can be born with one leg, but man is a two-legged creature. People are men and women. It's not good for men to be alone. To be together and make more life. That if someone is born with a desire that is opposite that, it's certainly an anomaly

and it may be a disorder. You know, it may be some kind of, you might consider it a handicap. So then the question becomes, what do you do with your life? And I'm not sure that celibacy is the right answer. I understand why people would think it is, but I certainly don't feel like I'm the guy who has to enforce that or tell people about it, you know? I just don't, I feel like,

that each person will work out his salvation and fear and trembling. I know, because my son, who I love more than anything, is gay, and I've asked him this question, and he's like an incredibly honest person, you should talk to him. He's like, yeah. I said, is it, if you leave out the bigotry,

because he comes under terrible, people say terrible things about him, And he's this wonderful human being. That's gotta be hard. It's tough. I do want to show up at each and every door and punch their lights out. Repeatedly. Exactly. But, but you know, I said, if I took all that away and it was just normal and it was just like,

everybody was fine with it. Like the, you know, left wants it to be, would it still be sad? And he said, yeah. He said there's an inherent sadness to it. What's sad about it? That you are excluded from what is the norm of human love and human life, you know? I see despite people's opinion. Yes, forget about it. Yeah. I mean, and I, and I've seen that in every gay person I've ever known,

even the ones who won't admit it. I've seen that sadness. And I guess I just feel like, for me, romantic love is one of the great consolations for life. You know, cause life can be very tragic and very hard, but romantic love is one of its great consolations, and I'm not ready to deprive somebody of it on a doctrine. So I don't know how God is going to deal with a person who is in a loving, faithful, homosexual relationship.

But I have to believe it's gonna be different than he's gonna deal with like Joseph Mengele, you know? Stalin, you know? I cannot believe that the God I know, the God I talk to every day is going to say, well, yes, I feel the same way about your having this anomalous passion that you lived with and is dignified and is loving away as you knew how. I feel the same way about that as you're, you know, butchering children because they

were Jewish. Yeah, certainly there are different sins. I would disagree with you. And he would be my argument. So I would believe that the Bible is the word of God. So when you say Paul's cranky, presumably you don't mean in those instances, he's not teaching truth that ought to be submitted to. I do have a, I just wrote a big essay on how I read the Bible. And I don't want to just... That's okay. Well, let me lay out my argument. So I believe the Bible is the Word of God.

Nowhere in sacred scripture does it speak about homosexual acts in a positive light. Wherever it speaks about it, it condemns it. There is not one early Christian who would take your view, I would say. And I would say that they stand against the grain against that first century Greco-Roman world where homosexual practices were tolerated or maybe even celebrated in certain instances, I'm not sure. The first Christian I can find to try to revise those scripture verses to make them say, well, it's about pederasty

or it's about a power relationship, comes from a Catholic priest in the 1970s. I've actually looked pretty hard. I can't find anyone prior to that who would seek to justify sodomy. And so I would think that's a very good argument against it. And that would be my argument against it. It's not because you said earlier about bringing the church into it. So even without bringing the authority of the church into it, I would say I would say that. I would also say I don't like the words gay and homosexual because it tends to put people in a box.

I prefer I mean people can identify however they wish, you know, they can say to me whatever they are. But I prefer same sex attracted, you know, like someone has same sex attraction. And part of me thinks, all right, whoopty-doo, like it's not us versus them. It's us, all of us deal with perversions in our sexuality. Um, a man might wake up in the middle of the night after having a sexual dream and desire to masturbate. Is that natural?

Well, yeah, it's natural that he should desire to seek sexual pleasure after having been brought to, brought to that. Um, edge, you know? to seek sexual pleasure after having been brought to that edge. And yet, it would be unnatural and wrong for him to masturbate. I think that's my opinion. I think masturbation's unnatural. I think it's also the case that if my wife and I were to marry, and we had consummated the marriage, but then a day after, I get into an accident where I can no longer perform the sexual act, someone might say to her, how can you live alone for the rest of your life? That's not natural.

And I'd say, well, she's still obligated under the law of God to be faithful to me, even if we can never consummate again. So yeah, I'm of the opinion that we really have to make a distinction between those who have same sex attraction and we have to love and be sympathetic to them. I love what you said about the people that you know you've found have been sad and whatever. So I think we have to talk with great gentleness and tenderness to people, not as if they're different to us, but that they're like us. If I get into an aeroplane and I meet a woman who's not my wife and I find myself feeling

strong sexual desire toward her, that's not a sin, but it would be a sin to act upon it. And likewise, I would say if someone has same-sex attraction, even strong same-sex attraction, that's not a sin, but to act upon it would be. So I don't know how you get around that argument unless you say the Bible does teach that sodomitic acts can be noble, or that what Paul and others say about it, they're

just wrong, or by saying, well, we've misinterpreted those verses, we can reinterpret them differently, but then I want to say, how come it took us 1970 years to figure that out, when the gates of hell should not prevail against the church? Yeah, well first of all, you know, my reading of the Bible is different than yours, but it's not so different that I disagree with you. I mean, like, so it's actually irrelevant to this conversation. Let's go there anyway. What'd you say? Let's go there anyway. So how do you read the Bible differently?

Well, I believe, as I said, that the Gospels are true, a true story, that people witnessed and are writing about. And that the four Gospels, even though people have twisted themselves in knots trying to say that they're actually all the same and they all correlate, they don't. There's discrepancies, as I would think there would be, with four different witnesses of the same thing. There's no such thing as four different witnesses saying the same thing. So that makes it a true story.

I think it's written by inspired men, but it's written by men. And they have personalities. And their personalities, like all of our, the only voice to me, it always bothers me when people quote Paul and say it's the word of God. God actually appears and speaks in the Bible.

That's the word of God. Now that doesn't mean that Paul is in error. It means that he has a personality and he sees things in a certain way and there might be other ways to see it. So I see you know Paul is an absolute genius and an inspired genius and you know and a genius who has actually seen the risen Christ in front of him. So it's not like I don't take him seriously, but he also is a kind of choleric guy who's like a little puffed up, you know? And a castrate themselves like that line? Exactly.

It's a hilarious line. And you know, you talk to Michael Knowles and it's like, yeah, they should. So I mean, he says things in this kind of overblown way and all this. However, that's actually irrelevant to this question. I don't think that, it seems to me that when Jesus says it was in the beginning that a man and a woman should come together and become one flesh,

I think that's basically what I believe. But I believe that people are hobbled by this. And I call it same-sex attraction. It's not the same thing because men fall, gay men fall romantically in love with other men. An experience that I've never even come close to. This is what I would, some conservatives say, well, it's a choice. And I think, well, you make it.

Go ahead, let me see. Let me see. You know, I mean, and that to me is, you know, that's what I struggle with. What I say is like, okay, I have all my life, I've wanted to have orgies and, you know, have other women and meet women all the time. Listen, I worked in Hollywood

and I was a successful screenwriter. You know, you had opportunities and believe me, I was not sitting around going like, oh, this is horrible. I was thinking, you know, what I would sell myself is just picture, you know, your children telling them you're moving out and then you go home. But it was, it was a struggle. It really was. And, and so I understand that that attraction is not the same thing as that I have a romantic partner in life, which is to me, you know, the most fulfilling relationship in my life. And I don't know if I can bring myself to say to somebody, you're gay, you can't have that, because I think it's wrong or, you know, I think it's, you know, and I don't know.

You would say that to the man whose wife walks out on him, but they were validly married, presumably. You would say to him, yeah, like you can't commit adultery, you're still married, wouldn't you? Or would you say, no, you can commit adultery because you should walk out on him? So I know, I believe that marriage, I mean, that, is like blowing up your children's planet. I have said this many times, I think like anybody who says, well, the kids will be fine, is talking crap. I mean, like it is the worst thing you can do. And when I talk to young people, I can tell within

five minutes whether the parents are divorced or not, just by the words coming out of their mouth, you know? Like you just know it, it's just a terrible, terrible trauma. So, but, but I know people who got married You just know it, it's just a terrible, terrible trauma. But, but, I know people who got married, and by the time the wedding took place, they knew they were making a mistake. And they got divorced and they got remarried, and they were happy ever after.

You know, that was their marriage. I do think people make mistakes, and I think that mistakes need to be, you know, rectified. It can be rectified. You know, I don't think people should be abused in a marriage. You know, I think... Call me controversial. Yeah, I know. You know, I think if your husband is beating the crap out of you, I don't know. I think... Yeah, so I guess my view on that would be, of course, that if your husband's being the crap out of you, you have a moral obligation to leave.

And that even if you were to get civilly divorced, it's not the state that regulates marriages. In my estimation, it's the church. Well, what would the church say in that case? Well, that you would have to be separated forever. But you can't get married again? No, not if you were married. I mean, Christ says this. If you leave your wife and have sex with another, you commit adultery with her.

So it's just being obedient to the words of Christ. It's a hard bloody rule, but where else are we gonna go? Well, he made the exception for Adultery didn't he well, I think that term can be translated perhaps to mean something more like invalid So I would I would agree like with your friends if they were to get married But perhaps they didn't know what they were consenting to, or perhaps two people go out and get drunk and they get married in Vegas and they wake up not knowing what they've done, we would say, well, you actually haven't been married. So we do have a procedure in the church called annulments, which is not Catholic divorce. It's

a declaration by the church that you're not married. So I do believe that that's possible. But I would condemn adultery and I would condemn, so if my wife left me today, just picked up and left, even though it was so fantastic. Yeah, who could believe her? I would have to live without a wife the rest of my life. And if I were to try to seek out another woman while being married, I would commit adultery with her.

And that's bloody hard. So I agree with you, and I like what you're saying, because I think what you're talking about is the messiness of human life. Right. But abuses don't negate the use, and there are still God's laws that I think we ought to submit to. So I disagree with you on that, on adultery. I also disagree with you. You seem to have a negative view of virginity. Christ talked about eunuchs for the kingdom and said those who can accept should. You have Paul saying something very- He didn't say those who- He said there are those who become eunuchs for the church. Did he not say those who can accept it ought to? Can you look that up,

Josiah? And then, yeah, then the other thing is having Paul obviously speaking I wish you all were like me. Yes. So again, like as a Christian I would look at the Word of God and say I'm subservient to the Word even when I don't fully like it or appreciate Yes, I think you're right. I think I'm a little more freewheeling about this. First of all, I look at the world and I see Creation seems to me far more hilarious and creative and imaginative than church doctrine. God seems to be having a whole hell of a lot more fun than the Pope. I don't know what that means.

Because here's a church doctrine. God exists. Now how is reality more hilarious than that? Well, no, that's a good one. I like that doctrine. So it's only hilarious when you disagree with the doctrine? No, no, no. When I said hilarious, that was a compliment. I was saying that God's creation is just full of life. It's full of this incredible diversity of life. And so you're right about

this. We do disagree in the sense that I'm just really slow to say, you know, I thought you were going to stop there. What's that? I thought you were going to stop there. I could have stopped there. I'm just like, no, but I'm really slow to say like, you have been put in this position. I now get to decide or the church gets to decide what you do with this to live into God.

So, you know, I have a gay son. He is, he is a deep believer in Jesus Christ, he's one of the best exegetes I know. I don't actually, he's pulled some of these moves with saying that he's also an excellent linguist, he's a classicist. Yeah, I've only heard good things about him. Yeah, he's a wonderful person, but I don't always agree with him when he tries to get rid of those things in the Bible.

And I'm not trying to do that at all. I'm just trying to put them in their place. We're talking about the redemption, the salvation of people who are a mess, all of us. And I actually don't believe, I see my entire view of what Christ is saying. One of the least quoted lines in the Bible is my, it happens to be one of my favorites, where Jesus said, I'm telling you this so that the joy that is in me will be in you. And to me, that's a statement of purpose. I'm telling you this so that the joy that is in me will be in you."

And what I see is that everything he says is to that end and that the few times when he speaks, when somebody comes up to him and says, what do I have to do to enter the kingdom of heaven? He recites about six of the commandments. He says, you have to, you know, don't commit adultery Don't do this don't that and then he gets to the positive stuff Which is love God and love your neighbor and that's all everything else So everything else is kind of an obstacle to that anything that's getting in your way

And I guess I feel like in real life in life as it's lived I'm not always sure that you know I'm not always sure that, you know, that for instance, a man finding himself in the situation of being a homosexual, cause I don't agree that it's just same sex attraction. He falls in love with men. This is the hardest part for me to understand. I mean, I don't even like men, you know? No, I mean.

He was friends. Yeah, right. So I mean, he falls in love. I'm not sure that it is an obstacle if he finds love in his life. I'm not sure that's an obstacle to him seeing the kingdom of heaven. Yeah. Yeah, we disagree and that's all right. Yeah.

And I also, by the way, just to add one thing, as a matter of pure politeness, I don't think we should bug people about how they're horrible. We're all so awful. Yeah. Well, it depends. I mean, it really their horrible. We're all so awful. Well, it depends. I mean, it really depends on how you're doing it, too. Like, I think if in the context of friendship, I tell my friend, let's say, that he shouldn't be viewing pornography or committing adultery, I can say tough truths, but in a beautiful way. But I agree that, yeah, pestering people, that's different. Yeah.

But I mean, because you wouldn't, because I agree, like, life is messy. And yet you take a very strong stance when it comes to things like abortion I presume very and you can hear very sad stories. So like what about the woman she gets raped by her uncle Yeah, that's absolutely freaking brutal and I have no idea how to comprehend that and I just want to cry and kick the shit out Of that uncle. That's what I want to do somebody should be killed but not the baby but not the baby because It's always wrong to kill a human being, and abortion kills a human being,

therefore abortion's always wrong. And so I just feel like maybe some of the examples you're giving me are similar to that, and I think a similar response that I would give to the person trying to justify abortion, is like, I know it sounds awful, I know. I know life is messy, and I know God is judge, but, and I, forgive me, I'm not trying to necessarily equate the sin of having your child slaughtered as I am with Sodomy

That's my problem right there And yet the Bible does talk about Sodomy being one of those sins that cries out to heaven and you have Paul saying that they Will not inherit the kingdom of God. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? It seems to me that either I have to give up my understanding of the Authority of Scripture that when authority makes a claim, I must be obedient to it. I either have to give that up or I have to submit to it. And if I submit to it, I have to learn how to understand that. But then if Paul says that if you believe Christians should be circumcised, I wish they should have their balls cut off, basically, do we have to

take that as an actual truth claim as well? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know the answer to that, but thank you for asking. I'll think more about it. I presume no. I mean, Paul is choleric. He's a genius. He's inspired. He's a beloved of Christ, but he's choleric. He's clearly talking colloquially there. And I would have to think about that more. So I don't have a definite answer to you, but I would think, I would say that yeah, if throughout all of sacred scripture you do see references to people cutting their balls off or something, and therefore that was taught as official Christian doctrine for 1900 years, then I would say, well, that's a good reason not to be a Christian, because this is clearly

what they teach. I can't deny that that's what they teach. So too with homosexuality, it's taught consistently in scripture, consistently in church tradition. So I would say that a Christian, I think he has two options if he wishes to believe that men can commit sodomy. And forgive me if that word is, you don't like that word, but I think words, we shouldn't play with words. Then I think that he should either not become a Christian or he should seek to reinterpret

those passages to mean, to show that they mean something other than they do, or he should either not become a Christian, or he should seek to reinterpret those passages to show that they mean something other than they do, or he should maybe take your approach and say, well, these were inspired men, but not everything they said are things that we have to. Well, actually my feeling is somewhat different than this. Auden, the great poet, was a Catholic, and he said, homosexuality is a sin, but it's a sin that I'm going to keep committing.

That was basically what he said. And we all have sins we're going to keep committing, and I think we struggle against them, and sometimes- That's the key, though, right? But sometimes we don't. Yeah, but we're wrong not to. Yeah, but what is, is that the thing that is going to keep us from the joy of Christ 100%?

Yes, yes. Yes, any little pebble in your shoe is gonna is gonna do the note Not little not little pebbles if by that you mean minor sins But let's say I have this constant desire look I was exposed to pornography at the age of eight I grew up on a steady diet of it I choose not to watch movies that contain sex scenes because they affect me negatively. Really smart. I still feel temptations to look at pornography. And I presume that I'm going to go on experiencing that

on and off. I'm not saying it's all the time. I'm not saying it was nearly as strong as it used to be. But I wouldn't be surprised if I experienced that for the rest of my life. And I bloody well better struggle against that. Because I think that just like one can reject Christ and be damned by one's words, I think one can do that through serious sin.

Well I think you know it's funny I wrote a book when I was writing Empire of Lies because it was about this guy who had been involved in the S&M scene and because I didn't know anything about the S&M scene. My editor is absolutely sure that I lived this life. Clayman, you'll understand, Clayman, you understand this. What do you take me for? He keeps saying, you know, yeah, I've done some of that. I haven't. I haven't married for 50 years. But I started to research it, and I got addicted to S&M pornography because I kind of had a

mind meld with this character. And it was awful. It was so degrading. And I just felt bad all the time. And I wrote this book. It was hilarious. The minute I finished the book, it's so degrading. I just felt bad all the time else and I wrote this book It was hilarious the minute I finished the book It went away, you know, I've kind of broke I was I was it was some kind of mind-meld with this invention of mine, you know, I came home

I said to my wife, I'm never writing another novel Responses that's nice to sit down and have your dinner That was like the literal their literal response because I felt like I've been Decimated by this just writing this stupid book. It's a good book. I mean I stand by it but it's like and so I do know that that is incredibly it's incredibly degrading. I mean it's awful. I don't know what it's like to be gay. I have no idea. I don't need to like I don't need to know what it's like to be pregnant to know abortion's wrong. That's different. That's not the same. That's not a good comparison. Isn't it? Why?

No, because you don't have to know what being pregnant is like, because it's not being pregnant that's the sin, right? It's killing the baby. Right. But the woman would explain it and say that you don't know what it's like to be- Yeah, but that's a stupid argument too. But what I'm saying is, I don't know if, like, I've known a lot of gay people, I have known gay people in the old days who kind of lived in secret and they were miserable all the

time. Whereas I see gay men who, you know, are married, quote unquote, because I don't believe that's marriage. Oh, thanks for clarifying that. I didn't realize that. No, no, no. I mean, marriage is, look, marriage, there is a state thing called marriage. And I guess... Playing with the words is annoying. Yeah, I mean, but... Treating a word like it's elastic to then encompass things just destroys the term. There's a sacrament of marriage, and the sacrament of marriage is a man and a woman for life.

That's what I believe. I don't believe that marriage with no fault divorce is marriage. I believe, I believe that, you know, when they have marriage and you can get divorced just by saying, you know, I believe that marriage, I think that there are exceptions, you know, that people would accept that you shouldn't be abused, that you shouldn't be cheated on all the time and all the stuff. And I think that actually, I think that annuls the marriage. I actually believe that you're not married if that's the situation you're in. But it seems like an easy way to get out of marriage, just to commit adultery. But that's not the same thing as somebody who was cheating on you.

Like they go commit adultery so I can get divorced. It's not the same thing. But if you committed adultery, could you just then say, look, I committed adultery. Therefore we're no longer married. No, but I think the other person might say you are perpetually committing adultery. I don't think committing an act of adultery ends a marriage. I think if the other person's not married to you in the sense that he's cheating on you all the time, you're not married, right?

Yeah, no, I disagree. Really? Yeah. You're still married? Yeah, I am still married. Now, I think that if my wife committed serial adultery on me, she'd maybe be on her way to hell that she'd be a disgusting maybe be on her way to hell, that she'd be a disgusting person, that she ought to repent, and I would pray that I would

have the grace to forgive her. But I couldn't go marry someone else and I couldn't go have sexual enjoyment with anybody else. I can't help feeling, I don't believe that Jesus wanted us to make the world a better place because I don't think he thought the world was ever going to be a better place. I don't think that's one of the commands, go out and make the world a better place. I don't think that's it at was ever going to be a better place. I don't think that's one of the commands go out and make the world a better place. I don't think that's it at all. I think it was a question of saving souls. But I think that if we've got a philosophy that's making everybody miserable. Yeah, but I don't know if it is. I would be of

the position that if I were to not pick up my cross and carry it, and in that instance, my wife would be my cross and the situation would be if I were to throw that cross down and I would, okay, I'd thereby, yeah, I'd thereby make my life more miserable even if it wouldn't appear that way in the short term. Well, let me say this. If I had to choose between the Catholic view of sexuality and the view of sexuality prevalent today,

I would choose the Catholic view. But I don't think those are the only choices. I think there's certain compassion on the variety and craziness and stupidity of human existence, I think, is worthwhile. Well, fair enough. I'll just conclude just with this verse, because we said we would find it. So Matthew 19.12, there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs

who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. This is a verse that Origen misunderstood and castrated himself and is therefore not often considered a church father in some circles because of that sin. But clearly he's talking of a sort of spiritual thing. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it. See, now, I always, maybe I misread it. I know that those are the lines, but I thought what he was saying is he was able to understand the saying, should receive it.

It's a hard saying, but you should receive it. Yeah, well, I guess we'll leave that to exegetes. Okay, yeah, yeah. Well, that verse also coincidentally is immediately following the verses on divorce you mentioned in the passage. New verses on what? Divorce that we were discussing,

it follows on the hills of that. Can I ask you how you joined the Daily Wire? Like, what was that we were discussing at colors on the hills of that. Can I ask you how you joined the daily wire? Like what was that experience like and did you think it would be successful? Oh wow. Um, well here, also do you want a cigar or not? I, you know, I'm looking at him. I don't want to lose my voice cause I've, what if you smoked a cigar until you lost your voice and then we quit? All right, good. You are Satan actually. Now I understand. Now I understand why we're-

What do you prefer? I mean, I have more of a light sort of- This was when the light one is little bit- I'll let you, thank you. Go for it. What's that? Oh, do you wanna have a break?

Do you need to go to the bathroom or anything? I'm good. Yeah, we're fine. Thank you, though. What- I'm good. Coffee, do you want a coffee? Uh, if you, yeah, coffee.

Yeah, yeah, cheers. We're still recording. Just before you say something terribly anti-Semitic or something. So, I have a superpower, and I will tell you my superpower. I can't wait to hear it. Because I grew up with a father who was a famous DJ, I have a remarkable skill for identifying broadcasting talent. Thank you. I knew Ben Shapiro just kind of hanging around

the conservative LA scene. Yeah. And. Thanks. And I liked him, you know, he would pop up and he would talk fast and say funny things and I always enjoyed him, you know. But one day I was recording an audio book.

I was recording one of my books for audio. Oh good, I want that. No, you first, but. And so I was not writing as I usually am in the morning. I was driving to the studio and I turned on the radio and Ben's radio show was on and he was on, he had two other co-hosts who were on. And every time he would talk I would think

This guy is great. Yeah, this guy is a radio star and I think I sent him a text I can't remember how I communicated to him. I said I think you are a genuine radio star They should get rid of the other two hosts. Actually. I will if you don't mind. Thank you. I Once told Josiah, you know, maybe he could do makeup for my guests and me. And he said he would quit the moment I asked him to do that. So I'm not sure we're asking him to make us espresso comes. But sorry, continue. What's that? Oh, yeah, I came back from daily wire.

So I went to your compound in Nashville. Oh, yes. And I was so impressed with the whole place. And you know, do you want want your face, your makeup on? I'm like, what? I mean, yes, I probably need it. If you can help this in any way, yes. Yeah, well with me, it's like they bring out a chisel.

But that's when I got back and I said to him, maybe you could do makeup for people. It's like, I will quit. So I don't know how making espressos for us is going. So I was working at a place called PJ TV and it was the Daily Wire before there was the Daily Wire. Yeah. And unfortunately it was badly run and it wasn't, even though I liked the people there, it was all the people that Andrew Breitbart,

I'll thank you, that Andrew Breitbart, I don't know if you know him. I've only heard good things about him. Wonderful crazy man, but like he collected all this conservative talent who were kind of wandering around LA and he brought them all together. And then this place, PJTV, he couldn't pay them because he had no money. PJTV started to pay them, steal us away. And I would say, you know, I said to Breitbart, I hate to do this. He said, no, you know, go where the money is.

You got to take the pay. He was a great, you know, great guy. And so PJTV was a beginning for this place, but I realized it was not being well run, and I took a job with Glenn Beck, who I love, and I loved, but I knew my sense of humor was not gonna work, and for six months I had a good time, but it got me out of PJTV.

And at PJTV I was working with a guy named Bill Whittle, and he was kind of their big name and He and I got to be friends and Bill Whittle had this friend Jeremy Boring and Jeremy Boring would kind of follow Bill around And sort of give him advice and all this stuff and thanks mate and I I couldn't really get Jeremy You know like I thought why why is this guy always around? What does what does he do for a living? You know and You're right Why is this guy always around? What does he do for a living? And... You're right. So one day I was at a conference and Jeremy and Ben came up to me and said,

we love the satires you do for PJTV because I was doing these funny things. Like similar to how you begin your shows now? Yes, they were exactly like that. Dude, they are brilliant. Oh, thank you. How many times have the Babylon Bee tried to get you because you do it better than them and they do it well? They do it well.

I always call them the second funniest people on the internet. I only do it to annoy them. And so I said, yeah, I'd love to do that. He said, we're starting a new thing. It's called Truth Revolt. And it's going to be with the Horowitz Freedom Center, and we're going to do these things. So we started doing them, and we were getting more audience

than the Freedom Center had ever had. You, Jeremy, Ben? Yes. And I would just come in and do these things, and every week they'd fire me. Not Jeremy, the people at the Freedom Center would call up, you have to fire him, he's making all these things. And every week they'd fire me. Not Jeremy, the people at the Freedom Center would call up, you have to fire him, he's making all these jokes. And so Jeremy would call him and say, you're fired again.

And I'd say, okay, I'll see you Thursday. And ultimately they fired us all. And I've never known why exactly, but it was very rancorous and it was unpleasant. And Jeremy called up, so we've all been been fired and he said but listen do me a favor Don't sign on with anybody else because I'm gonna go raise some money and we're gonna redo this as a capitalist enterprise because it was It was a volunteer where this was a funded thing, you know, and he said we're not gonna fund it. We're gonna make money. I said, okay So I was working on a bunch of stuff and I wasn't really paying attention and Jeremy went away and he came back and he said,

I've got the funding but you have to do a podcast. Okay. And I said, to be honest with you, I don't really know if I could do a podcast. He said, yeah, you can do it. He said, it'll be an hour. I said, how about 15 minutes? And he said, well, do 15 minutes and start with 15 minutes

and then see if we can make it long So he had this a pool was lived in LA right and he had a changing house Yep and so we went into his changing house and he had a card table and a microphone and there was this guy Jonathan Hay who was Kind of the engineer and it was me and Ben and this in this pool house with a microphone and Was it is just audio just uh, no we I think we had cameras from the start. We had cameras from the start. And so Ben was doing them.

And then I would come in and do my like 15, 20 minutes or whatever I did. And the only comment Jeremy said was you say too much or stop saying. And I said, how do you do that? He said, just try it. You can do it. And I could. It was fun. Interesting. Well, slowly during too much, so stop saying, uh. And I said, how do you do that? He said, just try it, you can do it. And I could, and it was funny. Interesting. Well, slowly during this period, I started to notice something. I started to notice that this guy, Jeremy Boring,

who was hanging around with everybody, he had had a hand in the success of almost every video enterprise in the conservative movement. So Prager University was a lot of, that was Jeremy. Bill Whittle, who was a big success at PJTV, a lot of that was Jeremy. Everything that happened in conservative video,

he'd been behind it and he never took any money and he never got any credit for it. So I started to think like, hmm, you know, that's kind of interesting. I'm gonna listen to what he says, because I could see, and I could see him do it with Ben. Now, Ben would probably hate me saying this, but Ben was, is an immense talent and obviously a big brain.

But Jeremy kind of made him more personable and he helped with that. And so when Jeremy would give me advice, I would listen to it, because I just thought, okay, I have no idea. I've been living in a room writing books all my life. I have no idea how to do this. So we started doing it.

And because of then mostly, it just took off. I mean, it took off, I think within six months, we were huge. I walked in, and remember, I'm already getting to be like 60. I'm 60 years old, I've been a writer all my life, I've had a successful career as a writer, and I've done well in life.

And then all of a sudden I walk in to a hotel where there's a conservative conference and I am mobbed by 25 year olds like I'm the Beatles, you know, and I laughed I said to Ben I'm like Ringo Starr, you know, you're obviously John McCormick, but I'll take it, I'll be reading it. And I thought this is insane. This is an entirely different life that I purposely never wanted to live. Like I always liked being alone and writing and being a hermit. I said suddenly I'm a personality somebody people recognize me on the street. I'm walking down the street picking my nose and somebody goes are you Andrew Cleven? No, no, that's somebody else. I put a finger on him.

And it was insane. And would you say that was a beautiful thing that you were able to sort of establish yourself, know yourself enough before having that level of fame? Yes, because it never, I was incredibly gratified. No kidding. By people who came up and said, you know, you really helped me. A lot of people said you helped me find God. And I thought, I said, come on, green stamps, right? You know, like not only do you get a tap and you get a to said, you helped me find God, and I thought, I said, come on, green stamps, right? Like not only do you get a tap and you get a toaster.

I mean, no, I was thinking that's a beautiful thing. And people, I'd had fan mail for my books and all this stuff, but this was different. This was people saying you were doing something in my life. But the celebrity part of it never touched me. You asked at the beginning, you know, why are some writers more famous than me? What I'm saying is they're more celebrated than me.

I never cared. Like, it was not my point. Like I said, when I saw that poster in Times Square, didn't mean it, that's not what means something to me. What means something to me is to write beautifully and tell the truth and have that, you reach out for that at three in the morning. That means a lot to me, you know. And suddenly that was happening at a different level and I was getting more feedback about it and that was all very beautiful.

But it was nuts. How wild to write a bunch of books have Clint Eastwood star in one and not yet hit your peak in the sense of popularity? Yes, weird. The whole thing was weird. And I'm, I, you know, I talk about gratitude. I was so grateful that an exciting new thing was happening to me and what I sort of had taken to be the senior, you know, part of my, my life. And it was, you know, created new ways to think about what I was doing. It meant that when I said something, I got instantaneous, you know, like, like just the conversation that we just had,

which I will continue to think about. I love that kind of conversation. Have to smoke cigars with a guy and talk about God and the gospel and you're right or you're wrong. I live for it. And suddenly it was happening at this bigger level so that when I sat down to write something, I'd say, I got a letter from a guy saying that's not right. Maybe I should go and rethink that, you know.

On the other hand, that stuff can drive you around in a circle. How did you deal with the YouTube comment section? Because we know that everyone's always polite in the YouTube comments section. Yes. Well, I My point is if you follow every negative remark or react in the opposite way to every negative remark, you'll find yourself spinning in circles. No, you wait. It's very rare that somebody shows up with an actual considered argument. And I got that because I'm a supporter of Israel and do believe that the Jews remain

God's chosen people and that he has good plans for the Jews and all this stuff, I get the anti-Semites crawling up my nose all the time. You're not really a Christian and you're just a, you know, you're a Jew. You're a Jew. And I think, well, thank you. But, you know, if really technically I'm not, you know, I've been, you know, honored that you would think so. But, um, you know, and so I, I get a lot of that and that's, but again, I'm old enough to not really give a shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I have a wife. She loves me. If I met you, I wouldn't even be interested in you. I wouldn't have dinner with you, much less consider your opinions. You know, you do have people in your life whose opinion matter. What's so funny is you can't, you know, cause if a sniveling little wispy fella came up to you and told you how shit you are,

you might be like, I couldn't give it, why? But then when you're sorting through the YouTube comments, like you don't know whose opinion to take seriously or not. So I think it's better to have a team of people who who you trust to tell you the truth. Like you said, with Jeremy did with Ben and you then to then to take stock in the in the comments section. Yeah, it can drive you crazy. And I think two people that seem not to let the YouTube comments section drive them crazy, would be Rogan and Tucker. Like imagine, I'm sure Tucker has been giving comments like bloody hell, your laugh is terrifying every time.

But he's just, he seems to be himself. Whether you like it or you don't, he's himself. Rogan too, just doesn't seem to care too much. And I really think that would be my advice to new YouTubers, even though occasionally I do dip into the comment section, I'll admit. I'm increasingly trying not to because I'm just afraid that it'll direct me. You end up being like that game pong where you go, oh shit, I shouldn't do that.

Oh, I've got to go back there. You know, the most important thing to me is not to get audience captured. Amen. to me is not to get audience captured. You know? Mm, amen. Yeah. Because, you know, the people I talk to are very political, and they tend to, you know, put their faith in princes, you know? And like, and you know, they love Donald Trump. And I came on after January 6th and said that, you know, that was a stupid thing to do. You know, I really screwed the pooch with that.

And I lost a huge number of people. And some of them are coming back now saying, well, you were right, but you shouldn't have said it anyway. You know, that kind of thing. And I just feel like I'm not, I love my audience. I'm going to tell them the truth. I'm going to tell them what I see. I may be wrong, but I'm going to tell them the truth.

Will Barron Have you struggled not to be audience captured? And how have you struggled with it? And how did you overcome it? Well, I stopped looking at the numbers. It was very painful to me knowing when I went in after January 6, and there was a bit of a delay because I was in a contract negotiation and I was off the air, luckily, on January 6. It was in a contract negotiation and I was off the air, luckily, on January 6th. I knew I was gonna lose a big share of audience and I thought I have to say this because.

I think it. I think it and it's obviously true. It's obvious, because it was not whether the election was stolen. People keep doing this just like they do with whether Shapiro should know Jesus. They keep saying like, you said the election wasn't stolen.

I said, no. I said, you have to prove it in court before it matters whether it was stolen or not. And I said, but we're going to lose Georgia. And if we lose Georgia, we're gonna lose the country. And we lost Georgia because of what Donald Trump did, because he said, don't vote. Don't vote, the system is rigged, so don't vote in Georgia.

And we lost the Senate. And I thought, you know, and so I have to say this and it was tremendously painful and I Knew it would be but I I've lived this way so long. You know, my wife's joke is that my my Goal in life is to alienate every single human being Pretty good pretty good better than I better than I'd hoped well I will say I'd love to get your take on what happened with Stephen Crowder, because

after that all went down, your commentary on that I thought was so charitable. And I saw so many people in the comments section saying things like, the older I get, the more I appreciate Klaver. Yeah, well, I do get that too. Yeah. I mean, I don't, we don't have to dig up stuff about Crowder if you don't want to, but could you talk to us? well, you know Crowder was at PJ TV and I could see he was in

Like I said, my father was a comedian essentially and he I could see him instantly that he had this incredible gift I remember doing one of my I remember doing one of my satirical videos. I wanted to do a Rick Roll, which was that singer. I can't remember his full name, but he sang the song, Never Gonna Give. Yeah, yeah, pressure on.

And they would just patch that on. It would be the end of every commentary. It was called a Rick Roll, you know? So I wanted to do one. So I stood in front of a mirror and tried to get the stupid movements. I just couldn't do it. I thought, okay, I thought, well then the joke is gonna be

that I'm so bad at it that it'll be funny. So I go in and I park my car and I get out of the car and there's Crowder leaving PJTV. And he said, how's it going? I said, great, I gotta go in and do a Rick roll. He turned himself, Rick Astley, I think his name was, he turned himself into that guy in front of my eyes to perfection. And I thought, oh, that's a talent that I don't have.

And he does, you know. And so I always knew he was a really talented guy. He is a very funny guy. I also knew comedians are nuts. My father was a comedian. I will tell you, there's not a single comedian who is not out of his mind. And I say that with affection, you know.

I mean, when I say that, Steven Crowder once did a video where he walked into Muslim bakeries and asked them to bake a cake for a gay wedding. I thought like, God bless this man, but when they can't. What kind of intestinal fortitude must someone have? You have to be insane. Or a lack of common sense to be able to do that. So I love the guy and I always have, but you love a comedian and you're loving a crazy person. Yeah, to be able to do that. So I love the guy and I always have, but you love a comedian and you're loving a crazy person. Yeah, but I thought it was beautiful. I mean he went hard after Daily Wire and I thought he was in the wrong personally. But I thought the way you responded to him as

someone part of the Daily Wire was like super charitable. Yeah, because I love him, I worry about him all the time, but comedians do have this thing where sometimes, you know, one day you're talking to them and they're hilarious and they're funny and they're sweet and they're lovable, and one day you talk to them and you say like, take the gun away from your head. And so I didn't hold it against him.

As I said in my reaction to it, the one thing he did where he recorded a conversation he had with Jeremy, I thought that was, as I called it then, a moral error. I think so still. But you know, I hate the feud stuff. I don't think, I don't really do feuds. There are a couple of people, especially people who have hurt my friends, that I have a hard time ever trusting again. But I don't want to just go on litigating it. I always try to say what I have to say, then I'm done. Well, that's why I thought Shapiro did the right thing. I mean, Crowder, what he did, tell you why, just had to respond. And I'm sure it broke Ben's heart. I'm sure Ben had affection

for Stephen. But to have that happen, he absolutely had to address it. He addressed it strongly and then he seems to have shut up about it. Right. And I thought, especially Jeremy, one of the things about Jeremy is because he's behind the scenes a lot, people don't see the stuff that he does. And he was very much like he had a gripe because he was the one whose phone was recorded. He could have come in and said, go get this guy and don't write. He didn't. He was so terrible. He just kept praising crowd throughout his response. Yeah. And he was honest and he brought it forth and we've kind of lived off that. You know, we live off our honesty. We try.

I always try to tell you exactly what I'm thinking. You know, I never hide anything unless it's personal and it shouldn't be public, you know, but, but I try to tell people what I'm thinking, you know, I never hide anything unless it's personal and it shouldn't be public, you know, but I try to tell people what I'm thinking and what I trust is that six months later, people are going to say, you know, I hated him at the time, but he really did. You think like, what's the alternative? This reminds me of Peterson's line about, he's just learned to be afraid of the right things. Yes. Right. So it's one thing to be afraid that your audience might not like you, but then what do you become? And what you become, that's way more fearful than saying

what you mean, even if you discover later on that you were wrong. But at least you were trying to be honest. I worked in Hollywood for several years. For a couple of years there, I was a really successful screenwriter, and then I started talking politics and the phone shut off like that. And I can't prove that I was blacklisted but that's what it felt like. And you know I always say that I never lost a moment's sleep over it and that's exactly true you know. But it's not true that it was pleasant to have your income vanish, a substantial income vanish is not a pleasant thing. To have to sell your house, to have to tell your wife we gotta move to another place, you know, unpleasant.

But I never thought like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. And the reason I never thought that is because I knew a lot of screenwriters and they were treated like garbage and they never did what I did when I was treated like garbage, which was telling people to get stuffed, you know, or to quit or something. Nobody treated me like garbage

because I wouldn't be treated that way. I would look in their eyes, and they had more films than I did, and they had more money than I did, and I would just look in their eyes and think, not for a second, not for a second would I trade my life for theirs. So like, if I'm telling the truth,

and I'm telling it in a way that is compassionate I'm fine and I'm even fine with being you know, this is the other thing people are so afraid of being wrong Yeah, I come in and say I goofed. I made a mistake Sorry thought that I don't know when I told you that I was a why you would assume that anyway You only have to look at me, you know Well, I mean this is why podcasting has changed so much because, I mean, prior to long form podcasts like this, this is ridiculous. Like, how long have we been going for, Josiah? I actually don't know.

But I mean, prior to this, what? Prior to this, I mean, you'd have five minute sound bites on CNN or some other, and you could hone, you could get your little thing perfect, and then you spit it out. One of the nice things about long form discussions that I've found, and one of my great joys is to interview people I love and respect. And there's no choice. They have to stop with the soundbites and they have to think things through.

And you know, when you think things through on the spot, you're going to say things that you know, now you could have said better that'll happen in this discussion. I'll think back about our little disagreement. I'll be like, gosh, why didn't I say that? You know, I said that wrong. But I think that's why we have to give people the benefit of the doubt. Like if it's an audio book, yeah, fair enough. Nail me to the wall because I had thought that through and that went to an

editor and I should have meant what I said. Right. But in long form discussions, we're having a cigar. Sure. We have a responsibility to try to speak the truth as clearly as we can. But I think one of the reasons we like Podcasting is because it's kind of messy and because people are thinking things through and they aren't always saying it exactly as they would have liked Right. Yeah, you know, it's funny when we were talking you were kind enough to say, you know I I want to bring up this the issue of gay people and I thought I want to go back and look at what I said So I know what I'm defending and I went back and looked and I thought no

I'm gonna stand by that but at the end of the thing it was off the cuff at the end of the what I said so I know what I'm defending. And I went back and looked and I thought, no, I'm going to stand by that. But at the end of the thing, it was off the cuff, at the end of the thing I said, I think that the, it was responding to a letter of somebody who wanted to become Roman Catholic but was gay. And I said, I think the church should change that doctrine and I think they will. And I thought the only thing I wish I hadn't said was that because I'm not a Roman Catholic, I have no business telling the church what they should believe. So right, yeah, there's an example. Yeah, and I just thought I what I wish I said is if you made me the magic pope and

I might you know mitigate things a little bit, but you know And I just thought like but what are you gonna do you're talking off? I mean I write books I Every passage you read in the book. I've gone over at least seven or eight times. I mean, every word until I get it where I want it to be. One of the reasons doing podcasts was like, you know, what? Yeah, it's so different. Oh my God. It's the exact opposite.

Yeah. Are you afraid that AI is going to destroy fiction? Not in the least. I'm not afraid of AI even a little bit. I think, you know, people keep saying that AI will do things better than humans. It doesn't even do what humans do. It doesn't even think.

You know, what AI does is it calculates algorithms. So it can see that the next thing is going to be this. That's not what we do. What we do is like, you know, that felt good, but I don't want to do it because of this. You know, it's like AI isn't doing anything like that. It's like, it's not, it's not making moral decisions with flesh. It's essentially a mechanical sociopath.

You can pretend to be a human being, but it doesn't really care. Only acting on his own behalf. So like anything that it produces, so far I've only seen it produce imitations. I'm going to get it to do an imitation of Andrew Clavin. Yeah, I've tried that once. It wasn't very good. It's it's it's voice was pretty good, but it's writing was. But it's only going to get better.

Yeah, no, it is. That's what's scary. But it's it's not creating anything. And unless you mean unless what you're saying is in the sense that a hundred monkeys sitting in a room for an eternity could write hamlet It might do that. I guess you know all right It All right, here we go I said write me a paragraph of fiction in the style of Andrew Clavin. Let's see what happens

The rain fell in sheets slicking the empty streets of a town You're fired It's scary right he lit a cigarette the flare of the lighter briefly illuminating the gun on the passenger seat The that's good the phone. Yeah, we'll take that the phone call had come at midnight the voice on the other seat. That's good. Yeah, we'll take that. The phone call had come at midnight, the voice on the other end, cool and confident, offering him a job. My fear is that we're naturally lazy, and we want a quick buck,

and so a lot of the fiction that's gonna start pouring forth and being promoted will be written by this. I think the people who are worried about this are the people who write the movies that sound like this. Like in other words, I think that AI could write most of the movies that sound like this. Like in other words, I think that AI could write most of the movies that come out. Yeah.

Right. Who cares? What's your favorite movie? What's my favorite movie? Well, the greatest movie I've ever made is Casablanca. I mean, there's no question about this. She's so beautiful. But I think a movie I love

that is not the greatest movie I've ever made is The Third Man. Have you ever seen that? I'm going to now that you've suggested it Really so good. You know, I'm a I'm a snob and in a bad way I I kind of inherited that idea that whatever came before me isn't worth Considering no I don't think that anymore. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot because of that, right?

So chronological snobbery paps, okay, but I started watching Hitchcock films three years ago. That's when I started. And I couldn't believe how freaking good he is. Shaped my life. That's my whole life. Is it The Rope? Is that the name of the movie? Rope is the one based on Leopold and Loeb.

Bloody hell. I watched that movie and I thought there's never been a better movie. I mean, obviously there has been better. But as far as like his, what is it? What is that genre? Suspense. Suspense.

Like I can't think of anything better. He's amazing. I watched those movies as a kid. Yeah. They set the tone of my narrative. They shaped how I write narrative. And then some of the best ones, I think, rear window and vertigo, I believe, were taken out of commission because there was a problem with his will after he died. some of the best ones, I think, Rear Window and Vertigo, I believe,

were taken out of commission because there was a problem with his will after he died. And so I didn't see them for years and years and years. And then one day they came back, they settled whatever problem it was, and they brought them back into the theater. And Rear Window was at the theater, and one of my brothers said,

let's go see Rear Window in the theater. And I said, okay. And I went back, and by that time, I was already a thriller writer. And I walked out, and we watched the movie movie and we walked out. And I said to my brother, that guy stole a lot from me. It was implanted in my subconscious. I've just written a book that's going to come out next year that I hope you will at least take a look at. How many books do you write?

I write a lot of books. Is this fiction or non-fiction? This is non-fiction. This has been an incredible year. This has been a very hard Is this fiction or non-fiction? This is non-fiction. This has been an incredible year. This has been very hard working here. But it's a book about murder, three murders, and how they worked their way through the arts.

And- And it's non-fiction. It's non-fiction. And Hitchcock appears in it again and again because he so often took real murders and turned them into fiction. And writing about Hitchcock was just a delight because I just love everything he does.

If I give you a copy of my short horror stories, will you pretend to read one? I will actually read one. I'll ask, my sister and I write them together, so I'll send it to you. You know what it is, like we're all whores for attention when we start creating things, so please, please like me. But I do like scary I like scary stories.

I do too. Yeah. You got to write another horror story. I'm glad you wrote that one. I will be buying it a hundred percent and we'll read it, but I need you to write more horror. Cause I mean, it seems like there's no genre so filled with trash as horror, right? And I think that's why it has such a bad name. Cause scaring people is easy. You know? I'm writing messages. Who's your favorite horror writer or a favorite horror?

I'll be honest. It's a, it's a, it's a fella called S his pen name is Soran Narnia and he writes and narrates on a podcast. So he's, he's modern, obviously, uh, called knife point horror. Knife point horror. Okay. And I think he's terrific. Really? called Knifepoint Horror. Knifepoint Horror, okay. And I think he's terrific. Really? I really do, and I would highly recommend that you listen to some of his podcasts.

He's got a beautiful voice. He actually narrates a lot of our sibling horror, is the name of my podcast, and he'll narrate them because there's nothing scary about an Australian. You want a red-blooded American if you want horror, right? Or an Englishman, I think. Yeah, yeah. I've heard that I have to read Turn of the Screw.

I haven't. Yeah. But you know what you should really do? Please. I'm not even sure you shouldn't do this first. There's a great movie of Turn of the Screw. It's one of the two greatest ghost story movies ever made. 1962 is called The Innocence.

But you have to get the old one because they've made Turn of the Screw five times. I'm writing it down. The Innocence, I think it's called the innocence But you have to get the old one because they've remade they made turn a screw in five times down Innocence, I think it's 1962 was with Deborah Carr It was written. It was based on a play, but then it was rewritten by Truman Capote Great writer I wrote in cold blood. He's like, okay and It's great it's it to me it's what a ghost story should be, because there's no shocks, no blood, it's just spooky. And the story is also great.

James, who was one of my favorite writers, but a very complex writer in his later work, which I love, it's almost hard to follow the sentences, he's so complex, but he also was a good ghost story writer. That's turned into a classic. Full of the House of Usher. I can't think of a more beautiful opening to a horror story ever, ever, ever.

It's one of the greatest pieces of writing ever. How do you not read that and go, I give up? Yeah. Well, he was another big influence in my life. I mean, I just, I love that story. The Gia, which is I think a prototype for the fall of the house of Usher, is scarier in a way because it's more basic, but it isn't great like that. I mean, I tend to find that horror works best from a first person perspective.

Huh? It's interesting, right? Like Dracula, Frankenstein, for the house of Usher, a lot of these short stories. And I like horror as a short story, tend to be first person accounts. And this Sorinani who is telling you about, about again knife point horror, they're all first person accounts and I don't know what it is. So I really was terrified by the first part of Dracula. Yes. My wife and I would lay in bed, we found the perfect audio book and we would listen to it. I remember feeling afraid, which is weird for a 40 year old man. That first first bit the epistolary back and forth bored me.

And that's because I'm an idiot. It's not because it's boring, it's my fault, I'm sure. But that first part about him crawling down the wall like an insect. Oh Lord, and the women with the baby. Yeah, terrifying. Absolutely beautiful. It is funny that that crawling down the wall is scary. I can't figure out why it's scary. Yeah, I think it's again when you take something human and you twist it a little bit it's like that slight yeah twist where it's now beast-like. I mean that is that may be like imagine this line in a movie where you go into a dark

house and a man begins to shimmy out from under your bed like a giant insect. Just that language is terrifying. Yeah. I mean, did you ever see The Ring? Yeah, I did see that a while ago. She comes out of the well at the end. I remember being terrified by that. That's a scary movie. Well, do you think that there are certain movies that we shouldn't just be putting into ourselves? Yes.

Where do you draw the line? Okay, so I would not have said that as a young man. As a young man, I wanted to see everything, I wanted to experience everything. 100%, I did too. I watched all of them, unfortunately. And now I've got to a place where I just don't want certain things in my head.

And I'll give you an example of something that was good that I didn't want in my head, because most of the time, like the picture Hereditary, I don't know if you saw that, that's got a very gory scene, it's well done, and the point of it is legitimate, you know? But I just didn't want that in my head. But the one that really got me

was they did a TV show of The Exorcist. Okay. And I didn't like the movie The Exorcist. You didn't? No, it didn't scare me. Really? Oh, I was terrified. Yeah, Catholics, I drive Catholics.

Yeah, right, that's what it is. However, they did a show of it, Catholics. I drive Catholics. Yeah, right. That's what it is. However, they did a show of it and it was really spooky and it wasn't based on people urinating or their faces getting... It was just the image of Satan in it as this kind of sleazy little guy who is almost like a child molester. It was just really, and I watched about three episodes of it and it started to get onto my skin. And I thought, I don't want, you know,

why do I have to walk around? Well that's like that character at the end of crime and punishment, that child molester type folk that was taken out of some additions, I believe of crime and punishment. I'm not sure if you're, maybe I'm wrong on that, but I remember that being very unsettling. But, you know, in a book it's always different, but the images, there were just images I didn't want in my head.

Recently, a few years ago, when I first became an Anglo-Catholic, and I started to get into the mass, and it became, it has become one of the most important things that I do you know and there was a movie that came out on Netflix called Midnight Mass is that what it's called it was a horror movie and I started watching I thought I don't want evil images of the mass in my head yeah even if it's good you know yeah

when I was a kid I watched all of the Freddie Krueger and Jason and things like that. I wish I didn't. Because honestly what I really enjoyed more than that was X-Files. And again, it's the strangeness. Strange. It freaks me out. It's eerie.

I like eerie stories. That's what I like. What does eerie mean? Eerie is this feeling, it's like a little chill up your spine. Dr. Helmut the great detective story writer put out an anthology that he edited of scary stories. And it has this wonderful introduction. I haven't read it in years, but where he just says,

all you're looking for is one moment when things just turn and you get that chill up your spine. And that's what I love. But what is that? Like what produces, so I asked what does eerie mean? And you said, that's the effect. I'm trying to figure out what eerie I asked what does eerie mean and you said that's the effect I'm trying to figure out what eerie means. Does it mean the same thing as strange or does it know is it different chilling? You know, yeah, it's still an effect. I'm trying to figure out what the word means. I'm not trying to be clever

I don't know. Yeah, yeah eerie It's it's like spooky. Oh, yeah spooky eerie. Yeah. No, I get it but I just, I love anything that makes me feel that things are not as they seem and you know. Yeah. And that, if you want to see two great ghost movies, there's The Innocence and the other is The Haunting. What do you want?

Move that computer over to your screen. Oh. All right. But you have to make sure not to see the remake of that too. What's it called? The Haunting. You not to see the remake of that too. What's it called? In the haunting. You have to see this. It's a 1960s, early 1960s and with Julie Harris. And that's also a great ghost story movie. Yeah.

Are you a gamer? I am. I don't have time. I've got a game for you. What are you going to freaking love it? Oh, it's called Pandora Directive. It's a point and click adventure. Okay. It came out around 1996 and it's about a tough guy, a private investigator.

He's laughing cause he's an idiot and I hate him. I love you, I'm joking. There was a, I shouldn't have reacted like that. I was signaling. Clearly you hurt something within me. I think that laugh was, he doesn't really like video games. He only likes what he grew up with. And he's right, it is true. But because you said you liked, what was those, what would you say the great American kind of detective story was? The Maltese Falcon. Yeah. Yeah. So like it's very much in that theme,

but it's set like 30, 40 years in the future. Okay. And there's been a third world war and it has made some people mutants, there's flying cars. I just, I think you'd really like it. The Pandora directive. Okay. Who's that black fella who just died, who's got that beautiful voice? Oh, James Earl Jones. So he actually narrated some of that.

So it was actually a big deal when it came out. Yeah. I mean, I might have played it. I'll have to go and look. Yeah. When you play video games, then is it things from the past or is it modern games that Josiah plays that I cannot for the life of me understand how to play? I like modern games. They have gotten the I see I.

I used to play board games when I saw Pong. It was like the scene in 2001 when the stone, the urstone comes down, I thought, oh my gosh, you know. And so I really followed like that, that evolution. And because I was working hard and trying to make my way in the world, I didn't get to see like every iteration of it. Just every now and again I walk in and say, wow, they've moved to this new place. So recently I have found video games plateaued. And I don't really play, the modern ones were either too long, first of all.

Right, I'm an old man, I have kids, I don't have time to sink a thousand hours into this. I know, I played this game, Final Fantasy something rather, and I didn't even like the Final Fantasy series, but somebody told me this was different. I was enjoying it, and I'm playing it, and playing it, and playing it, and I fought some monster for like an hour

And I thought well that must be the final monster and I looked and I had finished 30% of the game and I thought come on You know stories and but but I will play a modern game. What I really like now are the indie Puzzle type games so games like braid Puzzle you said yeah Yeah. Yeah. Pandora directive. There's puzzles throughout. Yeah. You'll only be able to play it on a PC. The graphics are too poor to play on a modern Mac. Oh really? Yeah. No but Braid and Inside and yeah yeah those are the ones I love now. I think those are the most creative ones. I often think that when I try to play video games I'm

hunting for a feeling that I had when I was 16 that eludes me. That does happen too, because they're not as good. There was something incredibly exciting. Like what about Command and Conquer? Do you ever play that? Or Quake? Yes. Doom? Doom? Yeah, I played all those. Yeah. I remember playing Quake. Do you remember that game?

Yeah, sure. My mate and I would sit down, turn all the lights off and we'd get legitimately terrified. The one that did that to me was Resident Evil 3. The first one that actually, that's the first game that actually had effects that went off, like you'd be walking down a hall and suddenly a door would fly open

and it was like just really frightening. Yeah, keep going. What was just so exciting to me because I love the arts and I love new things and all this stuff, was you played Pong and then you got tired of Pong. So you went off and you lived your life. And then one day you walked into a bar and there were space invaders.

You felt like, oh my God, a new thing, you know? And then Super Mario, which is still the best game ever made, I think this is a Casablanca of games, you know, it's like you can't beat Super Mario. When Super Mario came out, that line you read, that was the way I felt when I first saw Super Mario. I thought, an Italian plumber hunting a princess against evil mushrooms.

What were they smoking? You know, like who even comes up with that idea? And I just love that creativity and the kind of wild hilarity of just, people coming up with crazy ideas. It was great. Men, have you checked out Exodus 90 lately? If you've heard of Exodus 90 before, you're probably thinking of cold showers and Lent, but the Exodus 90 app offers so much more.

It's the number one freedom app to help you become the man you were created to be. I've been following along with the app's daily scriptures, reflections, and disciplines. It's really fantastic. It offers a powerful take on the spiritual life for men today. Download the Exodus 90 app today and join men from around the world for Advent, which starts on December 1st. Experience Advent differently this year by breaking out of the religion of the world. Join the man of Exodus 90 and Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary, who is the spiritual guide for Advent this year on the Exodus 90 app. We will rediscover the hope that God lays out for us in the coming of his son into the

world. Go to Exodus90.com slash Matt to learn more about Advent on the Exodus 90 app. That's Exodus90.com slash Matt to join men from around the world this Advent starting December 1st. Would you mind if we took some questions from our local supporters? No. I'm glad you said that. For those of you who are watching at home, if you would do us a favor and support us

over at mattfrad.locals.com click the link in the description. When you do, you'll get these episodes a week before they hit YouTube. If you become an annual supporter, we can send you a free pines with Aquinas beer stein. You just have to pay shipping. I also do morning exclusive streams for you and you help support the show and have us have great guests like Claven. So matfrad.locals.com. Also, you get to ask our guests questions like this. Paul says, what is your best argument for us listeners to become Daily Wire subscribers? This might be Ben. I'm not sure.

Well, first of all, there's nothing else like us. There's no one else like us. There's no one else where we are creating not just commentary, but culture. And we're doing it, you know, stumblingly, we're making our way forward. But they have, they've completely supported me in promoting my novels, which is for a conservative site to understand that novels matter is revolutionary. Were you shocked when they said, what was your excellent book that novels narrated?

What's that? Oh, The Another Kingdom Children. Yeah, that's brilliant by the way, my sister loves it. Oh, thank you. You'll get to meet her, hopefully. But when you, did you propose that to them? Did they ask it? Were you shocked that they agreed?

I'll tell you what happened. Okay. This is, Jeremy will kill me for telling this story, but it is a funny story. That book came along at a very special point in my life when I had written my conversion memoir and couldn't come up with any novels anymore because I had said everything I had to say in my memoir, you know?

And I couldn't think of it. And I wrote a very bad novel and I was sitting at my table realizing I had written a very bad novel, was going to have to throw out what was over a year's worth of work. And it was horrible. And as I'm sitting there trying to fix it and realizing I can't fix it, this idea came into my mind complete, which has never happened before. I usually get one little sentence and then it comes back. Death came incomplete. And I thought, that can't be right. That can't have just happened. And I thought, I'll write down what I have. And I wrote down the entire outline. I had the entire thing. And so I wrote it, and it was in the fantasy genre, which I'd never written in before,

and I thought if I published this, nobody's gonna buy it because I'm a crime writer, and you know, it won't happen. So I thought, what do I do? And I actually felt that, I hate to sound like an evangelical fundamentalist, but I felt God was telling me to turn it into a podcast. And I said, I had this conversation with God, this is my literal conversation with God,

I'm gonna do this because you're telling me to do it So I have to do it, but it's gonna fail and it's on you. That's what that's When it fails you realize it's not me. So I I went to Jeremy and I said I'm gonna do this thing I'd offer it to you, but you're not gonna want it because it's gonna be filled with you know Sax and it's gonna be in one of my things, it's gonna have language in it and all this stuff. And you're all right.

So I pilfered some of the guys from The Daily Wire and we put together this thing, including Michael Knowles, who came over my house and read it, you know, narrated it. And we put it out and it went to like the top 10 of all podcasts. And Jeremy called me in and said, why didn't you tell me about this? I said, I did.

I came in and he said, no, you didn't. Yes, I did. I came in and told him, you didn't tell me about it. So I said, well, it's only the first of a trilogy. You want the rest of them? Yes, I want the rest of them. Yeah. So then he took it over and it got about 10 times more

because it had the Daily Wire imprimatur. It goes by and he's still complaining about it because he's not really making any money off it. And at that point we were kind of, had to make money off of it. The pandemic hits. He's just gonna be ticked off, this is true story. Pandemic hits and he calls me up in the middle of the lockdown.

And he said, I finally listened to Another Kingdom. That's like one of the best things we ever did. I said, well, thanks a lot. He said, it's brilliant. I said, well, thanks for listening to it. Finally. You didn't listen to it while we were making it. But so that be, but that- Was there any fear that in releasing it as a podcast, you may cut into book sales or didn't do very well as a book. Okay. It did a fine. First time I ever saw that book was on that fella's bedside table. Yeah.

It did fine as a podcast. It's great as a podcast. In fact, it's still, you know, still people find it as an audio book. Knowles also did the audio book and he was great. Um, it's the only good thing he's ever done actually so So but that was so that became part of the Daily Wire Obviously Matt Walsh's had done these incredible Documentaries we've made some movies Jeremy's made Jeremy and his team have made this Show a pin dragon, which I have not seen yet, but it's a major production

so we're doing stuff that nobody else is doing and Conservatives always talk about the culture, but they do not do anything about it and the minute you do It was like they're evangelical saying to Matt Walsh. Well, you lied and so that's not Christian I thought you think there are no Christian spies There are no Christian police detectives who tell a you know a fib to get somebody to confess. You know, it's ridiculous He was doing a work of culture. Yeah. Also, I think he probably had them sign something saying that this was going to be a documentary So in that sense, yeah, he's pretty straightforward. Yeah, I mean, you know, he did it undercover and all it was such a great Documentary, it's great, you know

And it's like and nobody else is doing it and nobody else is doing it the level we're doing it and nobody else is committed To doing it the way we are committed to doing it. We're not doing it once. We're continually doing it and nobody else is doing it at the level we're doing it and nobody else is committed to doing it the way we are committed to doing it. We're not doing it once, we're continually doing it. And even our podcasts, I mean my podcast is a made thing. I can't call it a work of art, but it's a made thing. I write that opening satire, which is one of those satires of some of the hardest work I've done. Is someone collecting them, I hope?

And putting them in a book? They should probably, yeah. satires of some of the hardest collecting them I hope and putting them in a book. Come on. They should. Yeah. But, but you know, those, those are really, those take a long time to write and all. You're just not going to hear that anywhere else. You know, so you should subscribe. You should support us. All right. We got a bunch of questions. So feel free to, no, no, you're fine. But since you probably don't want to speak to me forever, feel free to answer these quickly or not.

Matthew says, I've heard you mentioned several times that you are a licensed pilot. How did you get into aviation and do you still fly? I was afraid of flying when I was a kid and when I went through this kind of miraculous healing the fear disappeared. So I thought, well, now I want to learn to fly a plane, you know, but because I've moved around a lot and I work very hard, it took years and years and years. But the first time I soloed, it was just so exciting that I thought I wanna go through this. When I got to Santa Barbara,

where the weather is always great, I found a female flight instructor. And the difference between a female flight instructor is this. It didn't make you feel terrible. No, no, I loved her. I loved her a lot. She was also a lesbian, as you would think.

She was this little husky little girl. I remember once a piece fell off the plane and she took out a needle nose pliers out of her pants and she said, when a girl takes a needle nose pliers out of her pants, you know you're dealing with a lesbian. She said that. However, she was lesbian though she was, she was still a girl and we're landing the plane

and I reach out and instead of pulling the throttle to slow the plane down, she was still a girl, and we're landing the plane, and I reach out, and instead of pulling the throttle to slow the plane down, I reach for the choke, which would have killed us. It would have literally killed us. If I had pulled the choke out, the plane would have just collapsed, right? And I reach out for the choke, and she gently puts her hand over mine,

and she says, no, no, sweetheart, not that one. And I thought, this is my flight instructor. Because all the rest of them are very macho guys, they just punch you. You know, when you come back to consciousness, I had to kill him. He was gonna hold the choke. No, no, sweetheart.

Yeah. Oh, thanks. I thought this is my, and she got me my license. She brought me through to my license. Let's see. Fiera says, I know that Andrew converted to Christianity, but I don't know if this happened before or after he got married.

And I was wondering if that conversion had an impact effect on his marriage. We've discussed this, but feel free if you want to take another swing at it. Yeah, it had a huge effect. I came, I did not, I tell my wife every thought that goes through my mind, as she will explain to you. Whether she wants to hear it or not. Whether she wants to hear it or not.

Her imitation of me telling her my thoughts before she's had her first cup of tea is actually quite funny. But I didn't tell her about this at all, the struggle that I was in, because it happened so suddenly, it took me totally by surprise. And I thought, you know, I don't want to go through this with her,

I have to do this alone, this is between me and God. So I didn't tell her about it. When I realized I was going to have to be baptized, I kind of sat her down and said, you know, I have to do this. And just like when I spent all our money on a computer, she was like, okay, you know, that's what you have to do. And she was not a believer at that point.

She was one of those people who'd say, I'd like to believe, but I just don't. And I think it had a big effect on my two children. They both became Christians after that. And my wife then had an experience, her mother died and my wife is the kind of person who shows up, you know, when things are bad. She's the person who will show up. And she showed up and her mother virtually died in her arms. And she came back and it was as if an aura were around her. I'd never, she

was like, she was like, she was just a different person. Like every word out of her mouth was like wisdom literature, you know? And she would just say these things and I'm going like, wow, you know, it's incredible. And I was like, and she said, I experienced her leave. And at that point she became a believer.

She said, I saw, you know, there's this guy whose name I forget, a lovely, lovely man who's a molecular biologist, I think. And he says, you know, people cannot tell you when a cell dies what happened. They cannot tell you what the difference is between a dead cell and a living cell. No scientist can tell you what the difference is. They talk as if, oh yes,

we're gonna find the secret of life and how life began. They're not. He said they're not because they do not know. And she saw that occur. She saw that change from life to death and said, you know, she left. I mean, I saw her go. And that changed her. She became a Christian as well. Although she goes to the nice church.

I go to the mean church where they talk about sins and things like that, but she goes to the nice church, which is fine. She's a much nicer person than I am. And so yeah, it had a huge effect. It had a ripple effect, I think, on everybody. And it made it possible. I sort of, you know, until I said, oh yes, this is a thing. I don't think the door was open in some way. As kind of being a husband and father, you kind of have that role. And so it was huge. Yeah. Thank you. Alex says, I've heard that Anglicans, I don't know if you can see yourself

an Anglo Catholic, Anglo Catholic. Well, his question anyway, is I've heard Anglicans also have the rosary. Do you pray the rosary? I don't pray the rosary. I would I will. I'd like to. I'd like to try it. I don't know. Do you have a rosary? I don't. Oh, then I give you one. Oh, yeah. I'll take it. No, this is, this is, that's different. That's a different, a different gift. Yeah. A game show gift. Yeah. I didn't bring it expecting to give

it to you, but you're welcome. Are you sure? Yeah, I want you to have it. Yeah. Wonderful. It's just a beautiful thing to meditate on the life of Christ. It's so lovely to have something physical, physical beings. I have to learn how to do it. I have to say that I started out, I didn't even want to be baptized. I thought that it was kind of like, why should I be baptized? I said the same thing about my marriage, by the way, so I'd never learned. I said, why should I be married? I'm living with this woman. We're obviously here for life and all this stuff. The minute I got married, the minute the ceremony was over, I thought, oh, that was the right thing to do. That was like the smartest thing I ever did. I had the same exact experience like 25 years later with

baptism. I thought, well, I'm committed. Why do I have to do this? It was just to show you I'm an idiot. I never learned anything. And then I was baptized and I thought, oh, I get it now. You know, so, so I'm very into this, I'm very into the mass, and I'll definitely do this. Sure. You know what lo-fi music is? Not really. Well, it's this very peaceful music that people often put on to work too. And I have a channel called Catholic Lo-Fi, and this month we're releasing the Three Mysteries of the Rosary,

Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious. And it's got this very beautiful ambient music playing behind this lovely illustration. So that might be one way to learn how to pray it if you're open to it or want to. Well, Noel's praying it, and if he's not living on the street, something must be going right. Yeah, I want to see his reaction when you walk past praying, and he's holding it. His reaction. Joel Sims says, Clayven advised me to convert to Catholicism when I moved to Hungary. I will always be thankful to him for that. Ask him what it would take for him to cross the Tiber, and if not, does he find orthodoxy more palatable than Catholicism?" Again, if we've addressed these, feel free to... Well, I don't really know anything about orthodoxy. It seems very alien to me. I'm not saying

it's not beautiful, I just don't know that much about it. But it doesn't really speak to me. I'm as close to being a Catholic as you can be with a Catholic, but it doesn't seem, it doesn't really speak to me. I'm as close to being a Catholic as you can be with a cat, but I do have a problem that I can't get around that's even bigger than the sexuality thing, which is that I want the right to disagree, because I think anything else being me would put me in a position of sophistry.

Like if I had to defend things that I don't believe in. No, I don't want you to, I don't want you to, I don't want people to become Catholic and then lie. If they don't believe something, they shouldn't become Catholic. Yes. Oh, look at this. Isn't he lovely? How to recite the Rosary. Oh, what a guy. Thank you very much. Don't tell us we don't proselytize because we do. Thanks, Josiah.

But no, I'm happy to do this. Anthony says, what is your most favorite book that you've written and why? And do you have any advice to aspiring authors on how to publish and write books successfully as a career? Huh. First of all, my advice is get a medical degree so you can make a living.

You don't have a favorite book. They're like your kids. You know, you love each book as it is. I have books that I wish I had back. One of them is The Uncanny because I wish I'd written it the way I wrote the play where I took out... The Uncanny is a thriller with these ghost stories in it and the play is just the ghost stories and the guy trying to figure out with this girl kind of talking about what they mean. I wish I'd written it like that. So I have books that I wish I had back. Although there's a critic who has called The Uncanny one of the greatest novels of the last 25 years of the day. I'm buying it now. I could be totally

wrong about what I just said. Why? What he said? We have a we have a local bookstore here, local Catholic bookstore, and he's telling me to support him instead of the big bad Amazon. He's clearly right. Yeah, of course. Probably won't listen to him. But you saved 20%. Look, Sigmund Freud wrote a book called The Uncanny.

Is that you? Is that your pen name? So where is it? Is it on Amazon anyway? It should be somewhere. Not that I'll get it on Amazon, I promise Josiah. I just want to make sure. Oh yeah, here it is, The Uncanny.

Ooh, yeah, that's a terrifying front cover. Yeah, they did a good, they did a good they did good job, but okay What's the book when people come up to you and say oh, I read this book Are you most happy that they did like oh wow you found that you loved that book I'm so glad no one else does is There is a there is a book the the book I feel that is my most Underrated book if it's not the uncanny because I'm never been sure about the uncanny You know Kenny almost ended my career with such a failure as a book.

So I've never really come to terms with it. Yeah. But I... Dude, it has four and a half stars, 115 reviews on Amazon. Yeah. It can't be that bad. Well, it's over time it has collected those. But if you look, there's still, there'll be, I think if you look through there, you'll

find one. This is the worst book I ever read. There is a book that I feel is one of my most underrated books, which is called The Identity Man. And it's not my best book, but it's maybe my most perfect book. It's a book that where everything works. And I've always liked it a lot

and it didn't really do very well. And it was at that time when my career in Hollywood was beginning to end and we couldn't sell it you know and my agent read it and he was like oh my god we're gonna make so much money off this and then he couldn't sell you shock and I said I think I'm being blacklisted no no no that could never happen so I always felt that one got underserved, you know? And there was a period of my life when I was kind of in exile, when

I sort of wrote some really good books that didn't make it, but they still get, but they still, they now sell. They've now started to sell. There's a couple of them. There's a trilogy called the Bishop and Weiss Trilogy of tough guy detective novels. Somebody once said and Weiss trilogy of tough guy detective novels. Somebody once said this is the only tough guy detective trilogy I ever read

that's about the subject of love. And I thought that's actually what it is about. And so there are a couple that got lost in there that I think are worth finding. Well, I can't let you go before asking you who's going to win this election and why. And let me kind of give you my opinion on politics. I just became a citizen this year. This year, last year.? Last year. Oh, welcome. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. And my philosophy is I'm going to vote for who I think hates me less. And that's Donald Trump. Yeah, that's a good philosophy. I don't revere the fellow. I don't think he's a saint. I just think he

hates me and my friends and what we believe and stand for less. That's right. You're absolutely right. What's your take on this current election? And we're just a few weeks out. Yeah, it's a disturbing election. Okay, well, okay. So Andrew and I just spoke about stuff that had to do with the 2020 election that YouTube will probably take down if we were to play it here. So apologies. But if you want to watch the whole unedited conversation of this interview with Andrew Claven Please go to Matt Fred locals calm you can see it there. I really like you Taste in human I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation great. Yeah, absolutely

You know, I thought when you said how long we were gonna go. I thought oh my god I'm not sure all that's but it's been an absolute joy and anytime No, it's a new time Oh, in a way. Yeah. How long did we go? Josiah? Yeah, we hit three hours. Is this the longest podcast you've ever done? I just I mean, yesterday I did like two hours with Megyn Kelly.

So that's why my voice is going. But yeah, I think so. I mean, I've done those backstages, but I'm not the only person there. What's a joy. God bless you. Thank you. You too. It's been a joy.

It really has.