Blurry Creatures - EP: 327 Demons in Design with Josh Nadeau

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Artist Josh Nadeau joins Blurry Creatures to explore the intersection of art, beauty, and faith. In a world clouded by confusion and disconnection, Josh argues that beauty might just be the way back to a truly Christian vision of the world. This conversation dives deep into the power of aesthetics, artificial intelligence and the sacred role of the artist, and why beauty still matters. Blurry Con Tickets! https://www.eventcreate.com/e/blurry-con-3-hey-you-guys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We had games, prizes. I mean, we had Rob on stage. He didn't even know the rules to Family Feud, but everyone was laughing, having a great time. People flew into the Death Star. We had a full Star Wars set on stage. I mean, it's really an experience. Yeah, a conference unlike any other, really.

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Welcome back to Blurray Creatures. We're excited today. The coolest part about this podcast is developing relationships and friendships to these people and not just bring it on the next guest saying thank you for coming on our show, but working, collabing, putting stuff out, and developing more than just an episode with our friends. And we've collabed with our guests today, Josh Nadeau, here in town from Canada, the 51st state. Fifty first state, potentially.

We're already getting controversial here on this episode. I like it. But we did some stuff together. We did an exclusive poster and T-shirt, and we love your art, and we kind of became friends over the gram, which happens these days. Welcome to the Blue Creatures Studio. Yeah, thanks for having me. And you're awesome. You were in Sasquatch Country, so we can kick this off.

There are so many fun stories. We were talking pre-roll about Cologne. You're from Colona, BC. Yeah. And I spent a summer there in 06. Yeah. We used to talk about Ogapulte. Hogo, the lake monster, but I actually was joking before him. He's up there. I was on a,

I've told the story before, I think, maybe on the show, maybe not, but I, in 06, I did a, a cross-country tour from B.C. all the way to Newfoundland. Oh, dang. With a band out of Colonna called Cry the Afflicted, a metal, metal core band on solid state records. Awesome dudes, like really awesome dudes, all from Colorado. This is when you're six? 2006. No, yeah, right? Yeah. No, I was a, Out of college, it was right between me going back to grad school. Dude, that's the dream. Yeah.

And it was, it was for like the first, this is what you learned. Naked tell you this. Like, it was the dream at first, but then we spent like three, four, five days in a van with a bunch of smelly dudes. Like the, uh, it's also a nightmare. The romanticism of going on tour and wears off fast. It's like if you want to do something, be an intern for a little while. And actually, if you're, if you still want to do it after you're done with your internship,

it's meant to be. You dig it. But what's crazy is like those small Canadian towns back in the day were awesome. Yeah. Kind of like small American towns. I remember we do road trips, and you could go to like a small diner. You could go to a small diner, you could hang out, and you could like, you just meet someone at the bar, they'd have you over for dinner, play pool with them all night.

It was unreal. Now that's like, that feels gone. Yeah. Yeah. But you are in Sasquatch country, and we ask everyone with your thoughts on Bigfoot. And then we're going to talk about mind control today. And you brought some notes. You brought the heat.

But before we get to that, if you haven't, if you're not familiar with jobs, Sword and Pencil. Yes, sort of pencil. So you're an artist and you have a brand new book out. Also true. Room for Good Things to Run Wild about how ordinary people become everyday saints. We're going to talk about that, I'm sure. But that was all in my mind.

It was in your mind. Yeah. I thought I said it, but I didn't say it. I'm mind controlled, Luke, to read your mind. It's in your mind. That's crazy. It's like a Zoom Leonard. It's in the computer.

Yesterday we did an episode about telepathy from, and here we are today talking about mind control. Yeah, let's go. It's, it just, that's how it, goes on blurry creatures. This is like weird theme. Even when we don't try to stay on topic, it seems to happen naturally. But we're excited. I'm in the water. Hop in. Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen the big guy up there? He's up in Canada. Yeah. So we, um, no. There are tons of stories. I've seen tons of other stuff. So I was trying to think through how to even answer this question. Because I got into the Bigfoot stuff before like a long time ago. And so I remember,

being like hearing stories from people will be like hey is that you know that like you can hear the footage of the guys that sound like they're talking japanese oh yeah the samurai talk yeah the same right yeah so that was like that was breaking when i was young getting into big foot and i was like hey i don't know if i buy into bigfoot but that was before all the gen 6 nephileem worldview stuff so old me was like yeah i don't think bigfoot's real is this the original stuff or some some canadian reporting this is the o g stuff this is the samurai Have you heard that? Sierra sounds.

Yeah, Sierra Sound. We had the guy on the show. We had Rodmorehead on the show. Did you guys actually? Yeah, early, early on, like first ten episodes. And we put it in the intro, and people still this, they don't know what it is. They're like, what is that weird voice in the intro of your podcast? I'm like, it's Bigfoot.

It's Bigfoot. Talking. Right. Keep going. And so we, since then, I did my master's in theology, and I remember doing, like, Old Testament biblical theology, working through Gen 6, chatting with my prof being like, hey, give me the lowdown. Because as a kid, you read Genesis 6, and you're like,

did angels have sex if humans? Like you're in Sunday school, the poor teacher. Like her jean dress is like, oh. So they got married? Her jean dress. Yeah, did they have sex before married? Of course in Canada, she's wearing a jean dress. Yeah, I do.

All denim. And so, like, I remember my prof being like, hey, there's three modes of interpreting this. It's like the godly line of Seth. It's mytho, heroes, tyrants of old. Or it's, divine beings having some hanky-panky. And the only other way that's constructed in the Hebrew Bible is divine beings.

So I was like, okay, I have to rejig everything I think. And I haven't really thought through the Bigfoot question with it because it's a tough, it was easy for me when I was learning that to say, yeah, it could be Thor, could be the gods of Olympus, they could be Nephilim, even like the new pyramid stuff with like all the pillars. You guys see that thing? All the pillars underneath. Yeah. And the cubes underneath the pillars.

Totally. So, like, I have a buddy who's Eastern Orthodox, and he's like, yeah, in some of our Deutero canonical books, we have, like, Titans mentioned. So this could just be Gen 6. Titans help build the pyramids. Like, just not off the table. That feels totally normal because it's, like, ancient.

You can kind of conceptualize it. But then doing that same thing and putting on Bigfoot, you know what I mean? It's been a different struggle. But I've had tons of, like, little blurry. I like it. I like it. I think yeah, I think it just gets more complex as time goes on, especially in the show. You know, each topic goes into forks in the road and goes three or four different ways.

And there's really no easy answers here. I think we try to find better answers and give people context. It's like yesterday talking about the telepathy tapes, just trying to get a more Christian perspective on this phenomena. These kids are mind reading. How does that make sense as Christians? and I think that it's exploded into 1,000 avenues, and it's cool to, you know, we hear about like, you know, deep state programs, the CIA is doing these things. And it's like, well, what is this, why does God allow these things? Are they hacking the human body?

Is this a new thing or it's an ancient thing? And you go back and you kind of reread some of the Old Testament. You realize, no, they've been tinkering with this technology since day one. And it really isn't that hard. and it hasn't gone away. I think a lot of these things are just underground, but they used to be out in the open. And I think that obviously in those dynasties

building things like the pyramids, it was this sort of knowledge that everyone had and it's been lost. And like the Lord of the Rings, some things that shouldn't have been forgotten were, and now we're kind of rediscovering it again. And so anyway, I think that when it comes to some of these topics,

you know, like the JFK files just got dumped. Yeah, totally. And we're starting to be like, okay, it's coming back into the conversation. It's not conspiracy theory anymore. And these, you know, weather manipulation, mind reading. It's possible. Yeah, like there's this vibe. So G.K. Chesterton wrote a book called Orthodoxy.

And in it he talks about, he has like this little side thing where like, hey, we trust the little old lady when she tells us stories about a landlord. But why don't we trust her when she tells a story? stories about ghosts? Or why do we listen to the guy who tells us stories about his politician, but we don't listen to him about his ghost stories? And he's like, there's one of two reasons. Number one is we don't respect the individual. We think, hey, they're too lowly for me to respect their position. Or number two, we don't buy into ghosts. And from Chesterton's perspective, he's like, if you're a Christian, you have to honor the human, right? Why would the little lady

lie about the ghost and not the landlord or the politician and not the ghost, or you have to buy into like a non-supernatural world. But he's like, the Christian doesn't have the luxury of doing either those things. You have to honor the people in their stories, which you guys do. And then you have to be like, hey, this isn't just like materialism. This isn't just like a naturalistic, what you see is what you get universe. And then the doors are weirdly wide open. And nowadays, I think one of the reasons you all this stuff blow up. Like you just see people tinkering with a kind of transcendence that's like counterfeit or forbidden and kind of like an opening of Pandora's box. I live in the West Coast, right? It's like LSD, it's crystals, it's new age stuff. They want a religious thing to buy into.

And like they scratch an itch and you just don't know what comes out of that hole. And so I think that's one of the reasons that things seem to be bursting up. Yeah. in the modern time. I think we've talked about the show, Josh. I think part of this sort of new phenomenon is that like the West, the ideas of what we call the West is relatively new as far as history is concerned. Yeah. And it is really the only time in history that humans have given themselves,

what I believe, the luxury, if you will, to not believe in anything. Totally. Because there isn't a paradigm that exists before the, you know, for the 17, hunters before Descartes and the like the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment period and all these things where people were, people always believed in something. Yeah.

Right. And I think the pendulum swung to, you know, to atheism. We've talked to the show about how atheism is dying. Like, we're on the other side now where the pendulum swinging back and people are believing in almost anything. And this is kind of what we, our conversations in the last few days too, is that people are, want to be like agnosticly spiritual, if you will. right?

Like, they want to believe in something because they've either had an experience or they have this innate feeling maybe we all do that we're not. Yeah, aliens and everything else exists, but Jesus, nah. Yeah, like, we've done this weird thing. That's how they kind of... We spent, like, the past 300, 400 years being like, yeah, there's nothing but the human mind and what you can see in measure. And now in the modern world, we're like, yeah, it's not supernatural, but like, we're

creating artificial intelligence, so non-human thinking, or people are open to tons of non-Christian religious ideas. So I do a lot of like theological stuff and philosophical stuff. I don't think we're in like a post-Christian age. I think we're back in a pre-Christian age. It's like paganism out there. When I go to the bookstores in the West Coast, it's like witchcraft for your four-year-olds. Yeah, it's like how to do like the alchemic circles for pre-teens. And you know, it's like how to do like the alchemy circles for preteens and you're like what the hell is going literally what the hell is going on it's going full circle right totally and so when I think of like what it looks like to um what's the right way of saying it to like share the truth in a pre-Christian era you can't just assume people understand

what we're talking about we have the same language this sort of feels like it's just St. Patrick's day like St. Patrick evangelizing the druids we're like we're not playing the same game anymore This is like, witches, mages. It's a totally different game. So, like, I have tons of friends who do the whole, like, psychedelic religion. I want to know a little bit about Jesus as a guru. I want to read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I want to do LSD.

I want to blast off and see, like, the structure of the universe, man. Now everything's love. And I'm like, yeah, no. I've gone down that path. It's a really bad one. Well, that's the thing. It's the idea, like, there's this whole, Christ's consciousness movement right now.

Totally. Which is really just putting Jesus to the peripheral and this idea that you sort of elevate, which is really Eastern religion anyway. It's becoming more towards nirvana, right? This idea that we elevate our consciousness. But those ideas, I think, are growing because it doesn't require anything of you. Yeah. But also, like, Christianity has sort of been neutered the last hundred years in terms of the

spiritual implications. You know, a lot of people will post verses from Bibles in like the 1800s to talk about the giants and the Nephilim and stuff. And then somewhere along the line, we kind of shifted away from that in seminaries and we didn't teach that. And we brought on guys like Heiser who were like, dude, I got two classes on Angels and Demons when I went to seminary. I didn't get any. Yeah, it's not a part of the conversation in the last hundred years or so. But it kind of was at one point. And now people are coming back to, we do believe a spiritual story.

There are, the New Age rips off Christianity, you know, and what, so where's the line? Where's the balance there between the two? Well, it's like the tale is oldest time. So you have, I remember being in seminary and you'd interact with these people who it felt like they're trying to make it in like the marketplace of ideas. And it's really hard to be taken seriously by anyone who's got some clout in the secular domain. If you're like, yeah, I believe in demons and angels. And so like you saw, so part of it started in, the Reformation, and this is no shade at the Reformation, there was like a lot of things that the Magisterial, and then the late reformers were doing to disprove Catholicism. So they wanted to like demystify some of the religion, remove some of the miracles because those were the Catholic Church's claims to authority. But with the enlightenment and the rise of rationalism, all you ended up having, like Christianity slowly became a byproduct of its culture. It was just like, here's our rationalistic ideas, the little bit of Jesus sprinkled on top oh you asked me about the angels and demons you can do like a mental assent hat tip at the door but

we don't really talk about it um i was chatting with a friend of mine just the other day we ended talking about all this weird charismatic supernatural stuff that's happened in my life and i was joking on the podcast being like this is not normally the kind of conversation i have part of me feels like this insecurity of being like do i need to share my bona fide so everyone knows that i'm not just like the crazy dude from down the street but i was like if you read the early church fathers, they have this idea that every evil thing brings from demonic sources. They have a very supernatural view of the universe. And it's this weird, modern expression of Christianity that does want to suppress it.

Because when you go out and you pray for a meal or you do a thing, everything is that spiritual warfare. Right. Right. So like, it's just a different mindset to be in. And it's like, it's really hard to be taken. I go to the climbing gym. everyone's cool with their spirituality. It's a humble break.

All right, okay. Right. Sorry, I don't know if you guys noticed. These corded forearms of mine. Yeah, I think that's the hard part about our shows that like, you know, we post stuff that sort of frustrates all these communities. Like the ancient aliens crowd, we posted that, that recent pyramid video, and there's a bunch of hate on that one.

And then there's Christians who are like, what is this? And we sort of are in the middle of that conversation. And I always want to tell these people who are, you know, hell-bent on the idea that aliens-seated humanity, I'm like, who's keeping us around here? Who's protecting us? Why do we still have the right? Why are we still going about ourselves? If these are intelligent beings way beyond us, why are we still here? Something loves the human race and is protecting its right to be here. And I think that's the part of the conversation that nobody really wants to have, you know, when they get into the weird topics. It's like, who loves? humans and who's protecting us, you know? Totally. I just, people kick the can back because it, like you guys are saying, it absolves the responsibility. It's way easier to be like, if you're like, hey, who created us? There's metaphysical questions that have to go with that. Like, how do you create like a personal universe and all these other things? You need a personal, in some respect,

creator. Yeah. But it's easier to be like, oh yeah, we don't worry about that. The aliens did it and be like, okay, so like, that's enough for you? Yeah. Right? You just kick the can back. a bit, like, who created the aliens? There's another group of aliens that ceded them, and they're just, like, all the way down. And why did they care? Yeah, I mean, like, you know? I saw this meme the other day that was talking about, like... You were in the right place, memes all the way.

Like, uh, Cthulhu or whatever. And they're like, hey, where did they come up with this idea that humans could just, like, make a special circle and summon Cthulhu? And a guy was like, imagine you wake up in the morning, you walk out in your kitchen, and there's a circle of ants, and they're chanting your name. You'd be like, okay. what's going on? And if they're like, hey, we really need you to kill this neighboring thing, you'd be like, yeah, okay, whatever, I'll squish that ant hill, no big deal, you do it.

And they're like, wow, Josh Luke. You guys are awesome. And so part of it was like this humanizing thing of like, hey, like, why do they care? It could just be interest. I understand the people who think ancient aliens or this is all like, you're plugged in the Matrix or like Descartes, like the demon is playing something for your mind. and you don't actually exist. Yeah.

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Hilton for the stay. So some of it gets really philosophical, but I think the major reason is people use it as like a smoke screen for responsibility. Yeah. It's like all of this. stuff is deeply personal. Anyone who's in any of this stuff, ancient aliens, even like, like Tartaria or flatter stuff, everything that exists in the broadest spectrum of the blurry world

is questions about meaning, identity, who am I, what's my purpose? That's why people get into it. Like if Bigfoot's real, right, when I was a kid trying to figure it out, watching even like Joe Rogan questions everything, doing the whole thing, going on for him. as being like, that guy really fine Bigfoot pheromones? Does he go into the woods and like douse himself with it? Right. Like, does that girl mate with Bigfoot all the stories be like, they're still trying to do this. I love that you just went to the end of the wild of Bigfoot theories and stories.

Oh yeah. Pheromones, mating. Well, like, but then you're like, what does that lady want? She wants to be loved and accepted by a community. And she's like, okay, so like, I've got the key in. You know what I mean? Well, I think a lot of what you're saying, too, is the ancient alien. thing is fascinating. We've talked about it a bunch on the show is that it just, what it does

is provides an answer that feels palatable to people without any responsibility. Yeah. Right. So then you can say, okay, I don't have to believe in God and Jesus because that requires something of me. Totally. The gospel is very specific it requires. It requires that we die to ourselves, that we give ourselves over, that we admit that we are inadequate, that we are unable to save ourselves, right? And the other, the exact antithesis of that is, is really the message of culture. Like, love yourself. You're the most important. Like, take care of yourself first, right? It's self-care, self-love, and whatever is your truth is the truth, right? These are all antithesis to the biblical worldview, but that is still allowable and you can go, well, okay, then I can explain the pyramids

and sort of our origin story if it was just aliens. It just buck the responsibility. Yeah, yeah. And then like all the, like, the ancient alien stuff is like, sounds bad, but if anyone has like enough of an education around, like the art stuff for me matters. So like I do a lot of religious inspired art, like ancient iconography and people be like, oh, these are UFOs. We're like, no, those are just angels. That's just how people drew angels back in the day. Or like, oh, this is a hybrid. And you can ask other questions of like, is it just symbolic or is it a symbolic representation of like also hybrids? But primarily from the artist's perspective, they're telegraphing theological ideas, metaphysical ideas. They don't really think angels are like burning balls of fire

like circles with the face in the middle. It's just a way of telegraphing a certain idea. Right. It's the idea of all these eyes is more than likely the idea of a watcher, right? This idea that they're watching, not necessarily like the... It's not a physiological description, right? It could be. I mean, we can leave ourselves open to that. Right, exactly. It could be, but the primary meaning is not that. If that makes sense. I think there's a way to have these conversations and stay, kind of stay on the rails. Like, it goes in a weird direction,

but it stays on the rails. And we were talking yesterday about this idea that people think that angels just shapeshift into whatever they want and sort of take human form. And it's kind of like, well, you're giving God-like qualities to like a created being, right?

So my argument always to that is, if you believe the Genesis' story, and we've proven there's a lot of evidence suggest that that's how you should read that story five years into this podcast that angels and humans like you said did a guy hanky-panky why is their DNA different than ours then you know what I'm saying like yeah their DNA and our DNA create these genetic anomalies that they grow to be these these beasts yeah and and some of them are like hercules and some of them are like the ogres under the cave in the cave you know like

And it's just a strange story. But ultimately there's this genetic, they are a physical creature with a DNA, with a, there's something. In the resting state, they are a creature. And that, when we think about spiritual stuff, we just kind of apply this ethereal, spiritual realm. Nothing is physical.

They're not doing anything. There's no UFOs. They're just, it's all, it's all spirits. Well, and to capitalize on your point, just explain that to people listening, like, if you think that angels just take a form, if the poof thing become a human, then how is their DNA then maintain?

Because DNA is a physical aspect, right? So DNA is a building block of a physical, alive being. So if you're just, if you're just becoming corporal, how are you then passing angelic DNA and not human DNA if you're becoming a, if you're sort of taking the form of a human? These are the things that go, okay, now there's a paradox. We have to, we have to. Yeah.

And maybe just the original explanation makes sense. like in the stuff that gets crazy is like so for the original people they don't know about DNA so they just read it and they're like okay this is sort of what happened in genesis one divine breath dust overlap of divine and human like in and corpse and material made humans right and you have other ancient near eastern creation myths where it was the same like marduk kills tiamat napsu rips them open the blood of the gods brinkles down hits the dust of the earth and makes humanity so it's always this mingling of divine and material dust to make... Like the earth.

Right. And then you think of the incarnation. How did the virgin birth happen, right? And we'd be like, if you get into some of the scientific questions, it gets tricky. Like, it is a puzzle. It is a paradox. But the themes and the ideas of it, the ideas of Genesis 6 are just like the early sabotage campaigns against humanity.

It's like invasion of the body snatchers. We need bodies. embodiment is like one of the key themes of understanding who we are as humans, who Christ is in the incarnation, what the life our lives currently are and what the life to come is supposed to be. The DNA question is tough because it's asking a question that scripture doesn't answer and like in the sense of you could almost say who cares. Like the DNA, something happened.

Like Jesus, what DNA does God have DNA? I think this is the difference though, right? Is that you have like an angelic thing, which is not God. And we've done episodes on miracles, right? Which miracles is God intervene in the natural in a way that is super above natural. It's miraculous, right? And that is a God movement.

Now, there are, I think there are levels of power. You can get in a really interesting conversation about this because you look at like the magicians in Egypt with Moses. They're able to do some of these things to a point, right? And then they can't. And then God sort of supersedes and the snake eats the snakes. It's this idea that there is a certain amount of power. In the same way, sub-Saharan Africa or South America, Central America, you go see a witch doctor and people get healed.

Totally. Right? But there's always a limitation to that. And I think that's where you go, okay, there's a bit of power over here that's very much, there's a line that's limited. And God supersedes that completely. And so I think there is a, then there's this whole area where we don't necessarily need science because God just intervenes. in the same way God intervenes and nukes cancer in people's, and regrows limbs and raises people from the dead.

Totally. Right? I've had miracles. Yeah, I've seen them, personally seen them. I've had them happen in my family. I've seen crazy things that just defy science. So to that point, yes, I think there's a... Yeah, it's interesting. We're made a little lower than the angels,

and we talk about that. So there is something there where they have greater abilities. Like the Catholics have like a different... demonology than a lot of Protestants do, but they're like, the demons can apprehend anything that can be naturally known in a moment. So, like, you can conceive of this idea that they could just naturally know everything about DNA that we still don't know. So fabricating some false DNA as, like, a stand-in for the genuine article that God made is, like, far for the course, for, like, counterfeit. But we talk about that as the recurrence of the giants, right?

Like the totally yesterday and we were sort of off of camera we were hanging with, we're hanging at lunch and talking to Joe and Franco who we had on all the stuff. And we were talking about, oh, there's this really interesting line of thought when it comes to the reoccurrence of giants, right?

Because as Gen 6 says that there were in those days, you know, there were Nephlam in the land those days and thereafter. And then we have, of course, examples of giants after the flood. So Glythe and his four brothers, King Agabashon. You have these giant figures, the tribes, all the aites that were in the promised land, right? So how does that happen?

And there's a really interesting train of thought about the idea of splicing DNA from... Yeah, so it's like the idea would be post-flood giants are genetically modified humans, and pre-flood giants are offspring, actual pure hybrids, the offspring of the watchers. Two different parents. Yeah. Yeah, see, it's very interesting. And what's crazy is, like, those ideas, like take like the like the alchemist idea of like the homunculus which is like creating life from

nothing right it's the same paradigm right you have tons of occultic stories like Crowleanism stuff of as there words that we can't say on here do you guys have like okay so like any satanic ritual abuse stuff we've us all right episodes okay yeah well I do know but it does like squash the YouTube algorithm when you talk about it that's for sure yeah but we'll get the high So 17 people are going to watch this episode now. I've just noticed. But so much of like the, you can go read ancient traditional church sources that talk about like things happening in the Old Testament were very clearly ritualistic ideas of, so when you

have like the king representing the God for the nation and then giving birth, it was the same protocol. It was the same like cultic protocol of like find the virgin, blood sacrifice. traumatic whatever give birth to a god because it was a power grab right and so like it's the same like you're saying it's the same stuff since the beginning um and like you guys have tons of those episodes there's a book i was going to read for this but it was like a bit of a doozy called cult and ritual abuse and the over these people were like secular they're secular psychologists and they did psychotherapy with tons of people who had like multiple personality disorder and demon possession.

And they realized over the course of doing all of these treatments that there's like an overlap of like say 14 markers between that show multiple personality disorder and people who are demon possessed of like 13 of the 14. Wow. And so these people just tell all these stories. And what you'd have is say in a treatment facility, you'd have pretend the three of us are in a treatment facility. You'd have, pretend the three of us are in a treatment facility and we all have altars. So like I have a Steve, you have a John, you have a Billy. Our altars may have never met each other, but we could be in the room or like Steve could ask the person who's doing the treatment, why were you with Billy and John? And so like there's this idea that they're saying is like, is there like some other realm that the altars are existing

in, paying attention, watching? Like how are the altars knowing who I'm interacting with? That's a whole, man, that's a crazy whole hand-a-werns. And so, like, these people are like, they're not believers, they're not Christians. They're just writing things down that they're experiencing, and it becomes, so many of these people have, like, cultic abuse situations within certain domains, and then some of them separately were demon-possessed. Right. That's interesting conversation because I know that, like, biblically speaking, you know,

Christ goes to the tombs and the demonic of the tombs has a legion of demons, right? So there's this idea of numerous. I don't even know how many was it up. Doorhouse. Yeah, and a Roman legion was a thousand, right? So you're talking like that many demons is fascinating because in the context of multiples, you go, like you said, how much of this is demon possession

and how many these are coming to the surface and how much of it is a fragmentation of personality? Because I know that that also exists, these things are real. Like when we talk to people who have been through ritual abuse, they will often create this other space, so they can disconnect. They can dissociate so they don't have to deal with the trauma, right?

So the other thing also happens, but 13 to 14 is really interesting. And there's like some demons that are more strong, stronger than others. Yeah. Because that were more strong. Very strong like animal. Yeah, cave and strong. But it's crazy because like I was, I just finished that Tom O'Neill book of a couple months ago. You were talking about this, yeah, yeah.

And there's all the M.K. Ultra stuff and like the mind control stuff. Like you're saying, all the fragmentation. You have this like completely secular, desupernaturalized idea of what mind control would look like. And it is fragmentation, trauma-based, hypnosis, diodes, Pavlovian, the whole thing. Let's get to this. This is what we initially, we've been wandering. I love this because it's very organic conversation. But we have a new design.

We collabed again. So we have a kingdom collaboration. It was our first known with Josh. So that is literally out of revelation is the kingdom's fighting. The new project that we've been working on is this design will put up, which is on mind control. And this is what we want to talk about today. We've talked about sort of the MK Ultra, the idea of programming and controlling folks. It's a really timely conversation in a lot of ways.

And those are some sweet glasses. Those are some really sweet glasses, yeah. Dude, right? Like the future of AI and humans merging. But we're in the midst now of like the release of JFK files, which implicates strongly implicates the CIA and Central Intelligence, as well as Israeli intelligence. And you have these things that are converging on this one event. And then, I mean, this is something that is Jack Ruby. Yes. But these are all things that were, that most people would like you to believe

were turned off. These were experiments the CIA did, just like even like remote viewing. We did on a couple episodes in remote viewing. That these things were, they were tried and they were disbanded and turned off, right? In the same way that Homeland, when Bush activated the homeland stuff, it was to keep us from another 9-11. They didn't turn it off when they prevented the next 9-11.

They keep these programs running. Well, so these things are like, and this isn't conspiracy stuff. So when I drew the design, which was a ton of fun, I was like, hey, I should just refresh my mind on a few of the things I read.

Because, like, you guys know when you're consuming quote unquote conspiracy stuff. Some of it's in one year at the other if you're not taking notes. You're like, I don't remember that name. I don't remember that program. I don't remember that project. So I went back and I re-listened to Aldous Huxley's 1962 Berkeley address. Aldous Huxley is a guy who wrote Brave New World.

He was in the elite circles of that time. His brother wrote, brother Julian wrote a book on, I can't remember, doesn't matter. So in this address, he talks about like the coming and ultimate revolution, the final revolution. So his original idea is that all the earlier revolutions, which led to control and subservience and overthrow, would all culminate in this coming post-human technological revolution where all of the ends that the quote-unquote elite want. And it's not just necessarily one cabal, but like a smattering of elite with converging interests would all come to fruition. Interesting.

So in this address, he goes through everything. And so, like, after I listened, I was like, oh, oh, oh, we should do the whole MK Ultra thing because all of those things tie in as well. And so, like, I wrote notes because the address is like, is so intense in the sense of, like, if I miss a thing, it's going to be. Let's get into it. So, like, one of the things that he talks about is the effects of, you know, the effects of technology on society would bring about this post-human revolution, which is the Brave New

New World idea of transhumanism. So in Brave New World, I don't if you guys have read it, the way that humans are created, some of them are cloned. So within the certain jurisdictions, there's like a place where the savages live, and those are the real humans. Yeah. But in the place, the quartered off places, every human is cloned. They're created in a lab. And they go through a system of medical injections, test tube shakes, technological revolutions to put them into a caste system of where they'll be. And Huxley is saying in this address that, like, listen, if the idea is subservience, you have Orwell's idea of jackboots on necks, subservience, or you could make people subservient through pleasure. You could give them soma is the drug and the thing in Huxley's book,

Brave New World. But the idea is that the technology is, that they were creating that he saw back then, and we are way farther down the line now, would allow people to act upon the mind body of their fellow man in a deeply transformative way. So his idea was like the technologies we're creating can affect your mind and affect your body that we can predetermine and pre-create you

to slot into society of where we want you. And down the road in the same lecture, he talks about how a demagogue wants like an army of NPC people. A mass, a majority of NPCs who have bought into, I don't want to get ahead of myself because the speech is wild. To allow them to do whatever they want. So if you have 60% of the population who's just a mind-controlled group of NPCs, whether it's like diodes on their brain or brainwashing devices.

Explain NPCs for listeners. Yeah, I know what you mean. Non-playable characters. So just like people who are like, no thoughts, no feelings, except that which is pre-programmed for them. Bingo. And you have like that Schwarz-Gabel machine.

Do you guys know about the Schwarzschildegel machine? No about Schmitz-Gabell. What's Schmitz-Ga-N-L? Oh, yeah. With Chris Farley, but not Schmitz-Gabell machine is like some... Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I do. Yeah.

That's the meme that goes when Chris Farley takes off his sunglasses at the pool party. It goes. Everyone sends that. Whoa. Everyone knows what that is. Back to NPCs. That's the highbrow, lowbrow content we hear. Oh, I love it.

That's what I'm here. We're the lowbrow on this side. We're the Americans bringing in like the bad joke. Yeah, okay, don't think that all Canadians are like some highbrow. Oh, you guys are. You just quite. It's the accent. We're so close to Britain.

Very apologetic. I just love like when you were talking about Bigfoot. I was like, he's Canadian. He was like, I was just thinking about Bigfoot and how he's about. And I was like, there it is. Oh, yeah. It's just like the remnants of. our British overlords. Keep going. So like Schvitz-Gable machine was just like the stuff that

help pre-programmed people. So like you Pavlov's idea of like the rats, push the button, get the stuff. But we carry them around in our pockets. I just about to say. It sounds very much like what we're, we're not tethered to the technology to our phones. We're tethered to algorithms. I mean, you look at the crazy things that like even go through my mind is when you look up, your phone get how many times you picked it up and the time between it. And you realize like, dude, this has become a thing that's now habitual. Like there's, you know, at my church, our pastor, I go to Church of the City here in Franklin, our pastor Darren Whitehead wrote a book about a 40-day fast.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's amazing. I've done it. It's amazing to take a fast like that. This is going to be a bit of an aside, but to take a fast from your phone. And this is really going to be, I mean, I know it's going to be relevant to this conversation, and then realize how often you feel.

your brain is used to that drug. Like how often you feel the time that would be silence or time for thinking or contemplating or reading or what are these things that we should be doing that actually grows intellectually with just boom. And it's boom to the algorithm. It's boom to the things that,

and it's pleasure. This is the thing. Just as Huckley says, it's dopamine drops. Totally. And we're addicted to it. It's all counterfeit. And then from Huxley's perspective,

these are technologies that you can, get the masses to buy into to like love a servitude. So like there is the whole like the whole meme of like the like the hard man, soft man, hard time, soft times, soft times thing. But part of it is just this reality of like if people are so numbed. So in Brave New World, people just get high on soma,

which is just a drug. And it stops them from revolting. And the point of the book, one of the things that's crazy is I re-skim the book, but inside the main city, you're not allowed to read Shakespeare. All art has been removed. Architecture has just become like the tall skinnies,

soulless, mindless things. And Huxley's telegraphing this idea, like where a culture's art and architecture goes, you can tell their values. But art does this disruptive thing. I love art for many reasons. Like getting to be an artist is like a dream job, obviously. Yeah.

But art does these things that race. that raises your mind up out of monotony and into the transcendent, and you can't read Shakespeare in some sense or see beautiful cathedrals or beautiful places and remain subservient. So Huxley's idea was like, listen, if we make things ugly, so Dostoevsky's idea of beauty will save the world is actually a way deeper cut.

He wrote it way before Huxi gave the address. But Huxley knew if you make things ugly, people have nothing to live for. I mean, this is not strange, this is a lot about what you wrote about in your book. Totally. I mean,

from an artist's perspective is why I like having this conversation with an artist is that it is the removal. I mean, we could go a million ways talking about AI and everything else is happening now too, but like the idea that you can remove

these things that are beautiful and part of the things attached to what's beautiful is freedom. Well, we were talking about before this show started, you were walking through the basement looking at all the 80s stuff and you're like, man,

this stuff was burned into our minds and I think that's because it was one of the last generations before what you're describing happened where you saw a McDonald's building in the 80s. It was like this just colorful explosion and you knew and now you can drive down the street and you don't see anything nothing stands out. You're like, oh, that was a McDonald's we just drove by. You know, you used to be able to see things a mile away. Yeah, it's like the beigeification of the entire world. Everyone on neon too in the 80s.

Come on. And there was a lot of great. There was great films. There was great art. It was like, And then now it's sort of moved into this, like you said, we're just doing the beige and we're just smearing it on everything. Totally. And it's like, so. Of course we're biased for the 80s, but you know what they're like levels of why those things happen. Part of it is like focus groups say this is what's like you don't want to offend anyone because anyone's a potential like customer. So if you say something with neon or with what you stand for, you might lose a customer, which is losing profit. So if we just make everything gray, it won't offend anyone. But really, at a deep subconscious level, it offends every single person because it's disgusting. Yeah.

But then I think, and it's crazy because, like, you don't, this isn't conspiratorial. Like, you can read Brave New World, you can read Huxley, and they've done, this is part of some plan for some sort of subservience so that a group of elite people rise to the top. And they know, so for example, like Huxley talks about, like, what are some of these technologies? he talks about Pavlov and Skinner. And so like all the behavioral psychologists, and he talks a little bit about who funds them, and that you can do these traumatic things,

these drug-induced things, these electrochemical things to trigger the brain. Which is MK Ultra, right? So he's like proto-MK Ultra stuff. Tabistock. 1953, 1953 is officially MK Ultra, right? And the way they did this is they, they would use

psychoactive drugs like LSD that's the first thing electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse and torture.

Totally. We're always to bypass people's sensors to control, right? This is the mind control thing. It's creating drones. And I think it's interesting at the time we're having

this conversation, we just mentioned this beginning, but JFK stuff has been declassified. And I use quotes for that because I don't think we got everything of course not. The conspiracy there's to me. is we're not getting at all.

But would you not think, though, like, guys, that, like, if it's coming out that our own intelligence agency, CIA is heavily implicated in the death of a sitting president, that that would, you would hope and think that might trigger some sort of, at least a revolution. But look, it's the same thing to me as with these, the alien disclosure thing is going on. We're having these mainstream conversations, and no one seems to care.

Everyone's into their, into their world, into their phone, into this. And Pavlov is the phone. Totally. Dude, the dinging, the dinging, vibrating, the notifications. It's all like deep conditioning techniques. And so like Huxley says in the speech, you can condition someone to love their subservience.

So like the MK Ultra stuff is wild. Yeah. So like Jolly West, how much do you guys know about the MK Ultra stuff? So I just reread chaos and then re-exposed to, and a very deep level. So Jolly West, one of the MK Ultra doctors. He worked under Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb is the MK Ultra guy.

He's like the LSD mind control assassin, like potentially, it's not a hard and fast line, but like, hey, are we building an army of serial killers, mind control assassins, brainwashed people to do what we want? Jolly West met with Jack Ruby the day for 48 hours before his trial and Jolly West developed in Oklahoma. He's the hypnosis LSD guy. He had developed all these de-brainwashing techniques. He had the Korean War. And in the Korean War, you had these Americans who were captured and they admitted to doing some kind of chemical warfare to Korean crops. And our intelligence or your guys' intelligence agencies, Western intelligence agencies said that they were brainwashed. They get the guys back. Jolly West gets at them for a little while.

And he says he's an expert through hypnosis, through sleep deprivation, all these other things, of being able to de-imprint brainwashing and re-imprint reality. But everyone was like, hey, dude, what you probably did was like broke them psychologically, told to share whatever you wanted. So Jolly West gets his hands on Jack Ruby, gets him for 48 hours, before he testifies and psychologically breaks the guy. So Jack Ruby, the guy who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, connections to the mob.

The whole thing around all the JFK stuff goes from being a totally normal guy to having a psychological, like such a significant psychological break that there are recordings and there are people on record being like, Jack Ruby was hiding under table, screaming, saying that he could hear the screams of Jewish children,

and they're burning. And on the stand, he just rambled the whole time. So Jolly West was like the hip-no guy, but you have like, so the, um, one of the things that Huxley mentioned in his speech was just beyond even those kind, like those brainwashing techniques are crazy. And all the programs that they did around, like MK Ultra, Project Phoenix and Bluebird and Monarch and all that stuff.

But Huxley says this stuff where he's like, um, he references, fire and brimstone revivalist preachers. And he's like, if you face people with life and death, a religious impulse, meaning and identity, you can do the same thing. And when people ask about like,

why is politics so religious? It is right. Why is everything I'm doing so cultic and religious? Be like, well, listen, part of it is just to create subservient group of people. And what you said earlier in A is so true. There is a true version of everything, which is like a true religion,

a true quote unquote cultic observance of what is good and true and beautiful. And then there's a corruption and an inversion and an exploitation. And like a Christian idea is that humans will reign with Christ. We're brothers, sisters, stewards of the universe, co-heirs of everything. That's what the Genesis narrative is about. And the demonic inversion of it is you'll be our indentured slaves forever. We'll steal your bodies. We'll leverage you to create our own.

utopia, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But that utopia, I've never really thought about design being a mechanism for mind control. You know, and you think about it as everything sort of slowly loses the Garden of Eden vibe. I mean, think about the original environment we were created to thrive in. Yeah. Was this overwhelming, beautiful paradise of billions of species. and in that design, we had true freedom. Totally.

And so when you take away all that design, you slowly morph into control. And I didn't really, I've never really thought about the idea of art design being sort of a slow path to being ultimately controlled. So there are these like transcendental ideas from like Christian metaphysics, which is like truth, goodness, and beauty. And so these are like ontological. So they find their source in God. So like, why are things true? Truth finds its source in God. Goodness finds its source in God.

Beauty finds its source in God. But there are philosophers who say that we have a psychological experience of them. So what we do primarily is we experience beauty. That leads us into virtue and goodness, which leads us into truth, which ultimately leads us into being in God. If you remove the beauty, you remove the most psychological embodied hook to bring people up the ladder into, so like, you can even think about stuff of like the removal of creation. Right?

Like without wisely, I'm not like a, like a chain myself to a tree kind of guy. But when you have like rampant destruction for mindless profits of creation, you're like, yeah, what you're doing is you're removing spaces I need to go into to experience beauty. Why does everyone say they feel close to God in nature? I was going to say, because it's beautiful. Like a sunset. I mean, I used to be a surf. when I lived in San Diego.

I spent seven years there. I producer Dan's from San Diego. We talk about surfing quite a lot. I could tell by the hair. Yeah, but there's something that's like very religious or spiritual. Even people who aren't Christians will say that about being in the water or experiencing the sunset. There's a point break quote somewhere in there. Surfing's a source man.

Swear to God. Serving's a source man. I am an FBI agent. This also goes with the conversation. No, but to that point, though, this is. there is this, when you stand in something that, stand in front of something or there's something so beautiful, there is this connection then with not only feeling small, and maybe it's a small part of this grand thing, but this idea, there's this gigantic, you know, unimaginable,

unmeasurable God that's created this, right? Creation's not sterile. Totally. So, like, creation says something. Yeah. So, like, what you want to do, like, you have to think about it. So like one of the themes in the book is beauty as apologetic. Your book?

My book, yes. Okay, yeah, all right. One of the things. Yeah, not Huxley's book. Well, well, yeah, by implicate. We're saying it different ways. He's saying, hey, we're, so the savages, they have sex and they dance and whatever. It's a totally different vibe.

But in my book, I think we're past the time of trying to reason people into the truth. How many of us have grown up in the church, you know the truth, and you still live a life you don't want to live? I think there's this like silent majority of people who live a very mediocre Christian life. They are like maybe not the deconstruction folk, maybe not like the really popular carrying my big Bible around everywhere I go, just like a mediocre life. And I think most people in the world actually live in that mediocre space of like, I'm not who I want to be. I'm not the husband, the dad, the friend, the girlfriend, the single, whatever.

I'm not who I want to be. And they don't know the pathway. and I think beauty is the way back in to a real Christian world. So when I go back to that idea of like, hey, I think we're in a pre-Christian pagan world, I think beauty is the stuff that gets people in the door. You show them, like, you show them, people don't tear down churches.

Where do people travel in the world? They want to go see cathedrals. They want to go see paintings. Even my art I've experienced on Instagram is like just a gateway for people to be like, what is going on with what you're doing here. year. Right, you do a lot of orthodox, like ancient Orthodox type of art, which is also interesting that there's been the Orthodox Church itself since 2020 has had a massive boom,

which I think is part of what we were talking about. This is an aside I'm not going to go down this path very far, but like the idea that people are now swinging back to more traditional, more, as Nathan, like more guide rails when it comes to the faith, right? Well, when everything's, you know, like beige and then you see something in color, you're like, oh, what's that? Totally. Or when like everything's open and up for grabs, like nothing is. Like Chesterton says, like, some people's minds are so open, their brains fall out. That's like our modern world.

So you think the way that we, this is back to the conversation, you think the way that we break the programming and- I think we need to like, yeah, the way to break the programming is to like capture people's hearts. You have to make them fall in love again. I don't think people love anything for real. I don't know if you guys have felt this, but as things have become garbage and beige and mediocre,

I don't love going places the way I used to love going places. So my wife and I, for example, we decided when we bought our place, spent as much money as we could to make it as beautiful as possible. And when people come in, I've sold stuff on Facebook marketplace, and people have just instinctively come down, sat on our couch, we've made them a coffee and it's just instinct because beauty does this welcoming inviting thing. I think the church and us as Christians, if we can capture people's hearts again,

so I don't think we need like syllogisms to go fight the druids. I think what we need is like a better ancient flame, right? Like, oh yeah, you have a druid flame. We have like the eternal flame that created the universe. We have a flame that burns forever, hotter than the sun. And so the journey that I went on in the book of like, say, becoming an everyday saint, which I think is like, hey, resist the thing, is this one of beauty, like experiencing and falling in love with a Christ who is the source of beauty. And if you trust that beauty leads you further up into goodness and virtue and further into truth, you're aces.

But right now, I think what you have is that to go back to even the kingdom versus kingdom, I think you have this ugly, horrifying, disembodying, disenchanting reality. Right? So we think demon stuff always has to be. So I had this experience when I was a teenager. I worked at a camp. You didn't. Oh, of course.

Like a summer camp? Yeah, of course. If you're a Christian, you have to work at a camp. So this guy. There's a lot of camp stories on this. Yeah. So like I did maintenance and I would build the campfire every night. And so one night I would have like a few five gallon pay.

put out the fire, go to bed. I get on my walkie-talkie at like two in the morning. The camp director's like, the fire's blazing. Like, why didn't you put it out? And I was like, yeah. So the way it was I had to like run from my side of the camp all the way past the girls' side, boys and girls are split, over the hill and field.

You took a little longer to get through the girls. Yeah, I'd be like, what's going on? It's a fire over here. It took, yeah. It was 30 minutes. Is that a fireman outside? Yeah, exactly. Just making sure the ladies are all right.

Just, just be... Yeah, for my publisher's sake, I'm not a peeping Tom, these are all jokes. And so, like, when I get over the hill and I can see there's like, we had this like pagoda style, so like cedar pillars, whatever, and all these benches in a semicircle around,

the fire was blazing, like huge. Yeah. And I could see, like, what looked like little wispy shadows passing through. I was like, okay, I'm like 15 or 16 at the time. I'm like, I go to the side of this field and I walk up the tree line to get closer and then I feel when I'm up there

like hey I can see three things around the fire and so I was like I have to there's this is like the weird logic of like a 15 year old you're like I have to do what the camp director said and put it out but there's also like three shadowy figures around the fire there yeah so like I get

I'm in the tree line and I start like army crawling towards the thing I can't see what's going on because of like the tiered system of these wooden benches. And when I get close to where the fire pit is, when I peek up, the fire's gone. Just embers. Wow. And I was like, okay, so I like, there's a hose of the bucket. What?

And I just book it back. And so we think, the reason I brought that up is we think demonic stuff always has to be spooky, crazy, flames. shadows. But I think a lot of demonic stuff that exists in our modern time is like gray IKEA floors, walls, beige. I think it's the mediocrity. Yeah. Right?

Like if you want to ruin a group of people, make them a four to ten. You know what I mean? What you describe is kind of how I feel when people describe their abduction stories. They're always on a sterile, like, just like metallic table or in like a, just like a ship or a craft that has no, there's like no signs that this thing is, is designed from any kind of love, beauty, or any of that stuff. It's like you're in a medical office.

And I think that's the hard part is it feels like a bad hospital, you know, and we all get shoved into these buildings sometimes, government buildings, and we just feel like the life has been drained from us. You know what I mean? So many people are miserable because they walk into a government building for work every day. Because it's just concrete box. And you're like, dude, if it was just a little bit better design, you might be have happy

employees. Totally. It's so weird how human beings are so responsive to our environment. And that's why I feel like the description of Eden is so important in this conversation. Because that was the original and where we're going seems to be this. And I think a lot of people, they debate if the end times are happening. We always think it's the end. times. We're not getting worse. We're getting better. And I'm like, well, what are all the

signs? I mean, we're merging into a hive mind where everyone thinks the same. Everyone does the same. Everyone designs the same thing. What you're describing is Christians who all bring a different flavor, a different flare, you know? It's very human. And what's crazy is that like, so in the book, it started off, I worked at a bank. And it was like fluorescent, drain the life. And I was suicidal. and I was an alcoholic. I hated it. I despised it. And in it, yeah.

Suicide. I'm just like. But it's one of those like, you took a hard turn on me that. I thought it was like. But it's one of those complete soul-sucking, hey, your nine to five turns to six to six, to six, seven to seven.

We demand everything from you. Yeah, yeah. And so like I ended up quitting that job. I did tons of crazy stuff. My wife and I end up in Ireland and we were backpacking through. I love Ireland. I love Ireland.

I'm Irish, too. I'm Irish, too. You can. Right? So I remember going to pubs. No. Hey, when we would go to pubs, there would be guys who have like... He just keeps going.

There would be a guy who would have like a Guinness that just, he would drink and it would never empty. And he'd be like, you have to be careful for fairies. Oh, do the fairy folk? Wait, was he drinking and it never emptied? He would keep drinking and it would just never empty. Okay, that's the whole story in itself. The dude was like tweeted out. Yeah.

He was the iconic stereotype of an old Irish name. I love it. I love it. He was in Dublin, right? No, the Guinness tastes great over there. Oh, it's best. My first Guinness was unreal. But it's warm, by the way.

They do a great job. You don't have to have it warm. That's like people say that. You don't have to. I like it cold. I like a cold. Dude, St. Andrew's Gate. I mean, that's like the, anyway, this is a big assignment.

So like when we were in Ireland, we went, we found these ruins when we were driving. And one of the churches, it was this place called Hoor Abbey, H-O-R-E-A-Bee. Yeah. It was all in ruins. And when we walked through. Yeah, I know. When we walk through, it's all ruins. It's sunset.

Sunbeams are cutting through. And I went and researched it after, but they built it with this idea of like an architecture of light, where everything about what you see on your normal human gaze constantly draws your attention upwards. From an architectural perspective. What is that Bible that the Irish produced that has all the drawings in it? You know what I'm talking about? The book of, the book of Kells? The Book of Kells.

The book of Kells. Yeah, sorry, I had to do that. The library is epic, dude. So, I mean, they took the Bible and they made it into a piece of art. Yeah. And it's famous. The Irish have the magic. And the funny thing is, the first time I was in Ireland, I came from a ferry from Scotland.

Very two different places. You came on a ferry. A ferry, you say? A ferry over the water, you know? Because we were on tour. We played one show in Dublin. But the juxtaposition, I was like, I fell in love. I couldn't understand anything the Scottish were saying.

And then I fell in love with every person who talked to me in Ireland. Oh, yeah. It was so different. It was like, I love this place. They have a magic in their voice. I'm super Irish, so. With the Book of Kells. I wanted to do an episode on the Book of Kels because I was like,

you guys should. There's something interesting here. But anyway, it's the architecture of light. Yeah, so the architecture of light, it's that same thing about beauty. So like, I think when I say, and I don't want to overstate it, Das Soyevsky being like, beauty will save the world. Solzhenitsyn when he gave like his address, he was talking about how like, again, beauty, if you lose truth and goodness in the modern world,

So if like you take, like, Jacques Derr does idea of postmodernism, you remove truth, like truth is all relative, same with ideas of virtue. You can lose those things. And even if you lose those things and beauty exists, it casts enough light on the world that you don't lose sight of Christianity. I think beauty is like the last, so like when you think about movies that have just, everything is not beautiful anymore. Right.

And that's why I think you have this movement towards. arts and the artists. It's why I think those old churches are never empty. It's why I think when, even in Huxley's Brave New World, we remove those things because they confront you with something way bigger than you can naturally, rationally, scientifically explain. They do soul work. Beauty does soul work. And for the quote unquote elite, they treat the human as like a biochemical machine. So you think like the Brave New World, it's going to be this like, like army of human beings, they're actually human,

still clinging and holding on to the beauty versus this like cling on group of hybrid. Yeah, like I think if things keep going the way they go and not to use like breakaway civilization as like the, right? Send those guys to Mars. We'll stay here. Right. I think if things keep going the way they go,

the idea will be like, listen, you defect, right? So say there can be any sort of reason why people would not, I think AI should be rejected completely and utterly, personally. You can read what the creators of AI say where they're like, yeah, God doesn't exist yet. We're creating him.

We're creating it. So I don't think it's a neutral tech personally. I think people can choose to reject what they want to reject and they can live a revolution. So in Brave New World, you have the revolution, which is the off-site savages. and they're not necessarily good in the book. They have like orgies and everyone, I don't want to spoil the book, but it's pretty old. They're hedons.

Right? So, yeah, there is a hedonism that exists. But I think for Christians, Christianity is always the counterculture because it's kingdom. And so, like, when you have these ideas of a modern world that wants to disembody, disengage, make human subservient,

honor a completely different value hierarchy and virtue hierarchy. Christianity arises and says, all humans are equal. You are your body, right? Like God, Christ, Athanasius has this quote where he's like, when Christ, the word, entered human capacities, it's like a king entering a small town. That small town is elevated because of the beauty of the king who entered. So the incarnation was always part of the plan.

I believe. God became man so that we could learn like, oh, our bodies are valuable. This stands in the face of like what you were saying earlier, Luke, of like nirvana, disembodiment, the goal is to be detached from the material world. And to basically be nothing. Totally. It's to sort of just reach this time where you disappear. Yeah.

And I think our churches are like, they, that's the theme in the book, like, are very functionally Gnostic. They have this thing that we are more spirit than body, the way to, fix you is to like do a few spiritual things and they forget that your body reveals your soul and you can teach your soul with your body. I think this was I was thinking about earlier our discussion was like the church in and of itself has always been counterculture. The early church was completely upstream counterculture. And I think we're at a time now where we need to be reminded the church needs to be engaged in culture but counter. Like the message of Christ of Christ

is radically counterculture. It's radically different than the rest of the world. And I think in some ways, a lot of the Western Church has desperately tried to fit in instead of towing the line and continuing on. And I think that's to the detriment of, you know, the things we've been talking about, to the detriment of people,

that the church isn't radically, for the most part, I don't want a broad brush it, but isn't radically running upstream, swimming upstream, running upstream, whatever it is, you know? I'm sorry to pop in, not to like, talk about my book too much, but I think what we're trying to do is like save the world using the tools of the world. Oh, we need another Christian celebrity. So like one of the purposes of the book is like ordinary people becoming everyday saints. The revolution I see is like, you know that whole

like super cliche analogy? Like if every snowflake didn't think it was important, it didn't leave the heavens above. We would never have like a white, but beautiful white Christmas. Right? A white Christmas. And so like I think that like there's a real beauty in people just embracing their whole. ordinary mundane lives because when they do that they realize that they're doing Christ's work like Lewis calls it like campaigns of sabotage but it's local right you can be a single mom and you can take care of your kids and that's like divine embodied kingdom work you don't need a platform you don't need to be on a podcast you don't need to be an artist you don't need to do anything you can be a truck driver a single mom you can be a baker it doesn't matter that's the

revolution that's the humanness that our enemy wants to get rid of that the elites want to get rid of you know how powerful gathering around the table and having an embodied conversation and a hug is that pushes back the kingdom or raising your kids of hell can't stand against that yeah being a present parent being engaged with your family these are the this funny thing is that we you're right culture will tell us that we all need to develop some sort of celebrity or chase that and have a voice and a platform be a movie god Right, yeah, yeah, which in and of itself, God gifts people. Nothing against that, but I think the pursuit of that makes a lot of people unhappy

with the things they are meant to steward. Yeah. You know, and I think that's where humility has to come in. And we talk about this, we beat this drum all the time, but like I think a posture of humility and understanding that God has me here and to do well here. And then like to quote a verse, not think of yourself more highly than you want, right? Like, to who much is given, much is required. And so I hate the idea of fame and clout

Because I know the things that go with it Sure And so I think these ideas of like holy ordinary normal lives If we capture that as like even in the drawing To put like to resist the control It's to just embrace an identity and a calling And that is like we think Oh man you know what I have to unearth all the secrets of like

What happened to Jack Ruby Because of Jolly West in that back room Or Sidney Gottlieb or what whatever it is, like psychic driving, but like really what you can do, like, I think beauty is the resistance. Beauty helps you see clearly. And anyways. No, I love it. This is a great conversation because I think, you know, all the topics we discuss sometimes form sort of like these arcs in our show.

Like this episode ties in with this one. And I've never really thought about, you know, people being harder to control. when we're all sort of this different color, it's different flavor. It's not that we abandoned the creator who created us and we become, you know, enlightening our own little weird way.

Because I think the New Age co-ops a lot of these ideas, you know, one of my favorite places where I was camp counselors in Santa Cruz. And it's a lot of these ideas of let's get back to nature and let's be one with... At Mount Herman.

Yeah. That's the name of the camp. No way. But there was something I loved about that area. Like it was art driven. There was one-of-a-kind houses. It was the redwoods meets the ocean. And there was no place like it.

But there was this whole hippie culture vibe there too. Also fabricated by the CIA. For real. Yes. The book. Yeah, the book we were just talking about. But I think, though, like we're moving away from everyone's got to be the same. I think it's so we can be mind-controlled. It's if you actually show up, you know, and you're the crazy guys where, you know, at church.

Yeah. And you're just a different character, a different flavor. It kind of brings more excitement into the building. And then church doesn't become this like factory. We do the worship. We do the thing. We pump it out. We have the lights.

We have the, you know what I'm saying? Churches are kind of, there's no creativity in the church. It's the same exact thing every where you go. Well, like, and I agree with you. So, like, the idea of, like, beauty and image, like, humans being made in God's image and being a reflection of his infinite personality, we should expect infinite expressions of the beauty of God. But, like, to go back to the conspiratorial stuff, like, there are literal papers talking

about certain movements in big evangelicalism being co-opted. And just be, like, same in Catholic Church. FBI and CIA infiltrated. Not because like, hey, we can co-opt religion, but because there are people in here who are suggestible that we could manipulate. It's all the same handshakes that happen for whatever big NGOs, whatever.

It's the same thing. I don't think we think that the aesthetic around us prepares our mind for a message. Totally. And what you're saying is it does. It totally does. The aesthetic around you is all right. preaching to you already. Right? It's all right not just preparing you for goodness and truth,

but it's also like it's preaching a sermon to you. So when like the Psalms say the heavens proclaim the glory of God and all this is like his signature of how beautiful he is, that's the sermon. Yeah. You would say that it creates room for things around wild. I would say that. Let's go. And I think that's, you know, not to go back to the 80s, but in this, there was this genre, there was this era where it's just like some dude with a neon jacket it's it's the uh juicy fruit commercial he's skiing off the back you know what i mean it's just like this it was just this everything is kind of its owned thing and it was a colorful world back then and the design was all over the place i just felt like when we grew up it was a magical era of like the end and now like you say it's sad to see

are kids not connecting to the artists who create stuff. It's kind of like kids don't have this nostalgia because nothing of value and substance is actually being created that their heart is latching onto that gives them their own personality, their own desires, their own interests. All the kids are just the same. They're all just like numbed playing Fortnite. Yeah. You know, and it's like, what are we becoming as a human, Totally. A human race. It's back to the mind control, right?

They don't get a sit on green transformer boxes and watch the sunset. So we just watch Fight Club with like my youngest sister-in-law and her boyfriend on the 25th anniversary. And it impacted my, whatever, my sister-in-law's boyfriend deeply because he's like, listen, I felt all the same stuff. But I live in a disembodied brain rot world now. So I don't have all these other, like when Fight Club came out in 99, or 2000, whenever it came out. I also don't have the luxury of, like, sitting down face to face with someone.

When this is done, I go on my phone, and I just get brain-rodded for an hour or two before I go to bed. Like, it's deeper, too. Like, not only do I think we experience one of the last real moments before some of, like, the technological revolution came in,

I think that the disenfranchisement and discontentment that people are experiencing now cuts way deeper. So we're not even fighting the same battle, right? Like, they're like, drones. Anyways. No, so, do I love this, man. I feel like this is a conversation

we could have around a campfire with a cigar and we should. Yeah, we should. What kind of campfire? One that stays on. Spooky. Yeah, one that keeps burning. Canadian campfire.

Josh, thanks so much for coming and joining us. Dude, tell everybody about where they can find your book, about your book, where they can engage you online because you've got a, you've got to. A few things going on, in addition to our new design, we'll be dropping with this episode coming out. You can get it in the show notes. Yeah, get it. Yeah, so my name is Josh Nadeau.

I wrote a book called Room for Good Things to Run Wild, How Ordinary People Become Everyday Saints. It's kind of about, and that's not really what we talked about today. The idea of the book is like a spiritual formation through the lens of beauty. And then I'm an artist. You can follow me at Sword and Pencil, and then I write a substack called Everyday Saints. Love it, dude. And he's a famous pickleball player. But he also rides Ogapogo in his, in his fair time.

The sea monster of Lake Okinawagia. He's done a deep dive on the pheromone attraction of Bigfoot as well. Oh, trust. I know a lot of them. He dabs himself with maple syrup and spends time in the forest. I love it, dude. I think a lot of what you say resonates with us and kind of the beginning and the origins of blurry creatures of kind of taking, let's take some biblical stuff, mix it with Bigfoot,

and sort of the church formula, that doesn't work, right? You don't take Bigfoot theological topics and smash those things together, but the band guy and me, the guy that loved interesting things was like, no, these things go together. And let's smash them together. We thought 10 people would listen to this podcast,

you know, two of our friends and our parents. And our parents, yeah. And it's become a thing, and I think there's this, awesome. There's this energy there of, of you can do, and you can put things together, and that's the beauty.

is taking two things that shouldn't be together and maybe see if they do and not to get too weird about it but I loved the way that it kind of took off and became its own thing when I sort of turned the voice off of it has to be like a prophecy Bible

podcast you know and we have to do it this certain way and there's a formula I was like no I know there's no formula let's smash it let's throw some some 80s colors on this thing you guys are killing it like I don't want to gas you up too much but like please don't

killing it. Thanks. We're just having fun. We're just having fun. I think that there's such an amazing space for artists, especially in this climate. So encourage you. I think you continue to do art

and also through your art really present the gospel. And these messages of beauty, I think, is invaluable in a space where everything is becoming synthesized and digitized. The process has changed. Outcomes of change.

Your point, I think it's all important that we circle back to remembering the things that matter and remembering that we're placed in the place we're at for a reason. And things as maybe we overlook and don't even think about as simple as beauty can be paradigm changing, paradigm shifting. If we take that and realize it's a reflection of our creator, it's a reflection of the ultimate creator, the ultimate artist, right?

And we all want that. Yeah, sword and pencil. Yeah. Our pal Josh, dude, thanks for making. Yeah, check him out on Instagram. You got tons of. great designs there on Instagram and yeah just hopefully my heart was was shared in there that it's just like you know follow you know follow that voice inside he says let's

let's create something let's try to make something beautiful I think that's an important part of being a human being and not and resisting the the carbon copy version of our self of our churches of our conversations of our parenting styles let's let's let's let's let's move into the creative creativity that god has given all of us and be ordinary saints yeah come on i love that love it thanks for coming in thanks guys truly an honor to hang out awesome let's do it out bye i'm out bye