Pints With Aquinas - AI, Sex Robots & Becoming Human Again (Michael Gormley) | Ep. 592

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Michael (Gomer) Gormley is here to discuss AI’s impact on society and the power of building in-person communities.  Ep. 592 Enjoy these episodes and other exclusive content ad free, one week early with DailyWire+ : https://get.dailywire.com - - - 📚 Resources Mentioned: Michael Gormley: https://www.layevangelist.com Catching Foxes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/catching-foxes/id1024003985 Every Knee Shall Bow: https://app.ascensionpress.com/podcasts/8f60ee88-7f3d-40a2-a877-3fe7f53dbb0e That Man Is You: https://paradisusdei.org/that-man-is-you Theotokos Rosaries: https://dwplus.shop/TheotokosRosaries Truthly 30 Day Free Trial: https://get.truthly.ai/TlbX/MATT30 - - - Today's Sponsors:  Charity Mobile: VISIT HTTPS://CHARITYMOBILE.COM/MATTFRADD  FREE PHONE OFFER WITH CODE: MATTFRADD Hallow: Visit https://hallow.com/mattfradd and get three months free PreBorn: PreBorn offers free ultrasounds, practical support, counseling, diapers, maternity clothes, and real hope. If you’d like to help, go to https://PreBorn.com/Matt or dial #250 and say BABY. Seven Weeks Coffee: Go to https://SevenWeeksCoffee.com/PINTS and subscribe to save 15% forever, plus you’ll receive a free gift. Use promo code PINTS for an extra 10% off your first order, bringing your first order savings to 25%, plus that free gift. Shopify: The only thing standing between you and your own income is getting started. Free trial at https://shopify.com/pints Word on Fire: Heaven in Stone and Glass is in theaters nationwide on September 20th and 23rd. Get your tickets now at https://HeavenInStoneAndGlass.com - - - Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: ⁠⁠https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe⁠⁠ 📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more. - - - 📕 Get my newest book, Jesus Our Refuge, here: https://a.co/d/bDU0xLb 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mattfradd.locals.com/support⁠⁠⁠⁠ - - - 💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas⁠⁠⁠ 🎵 TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas⁠⁠⁠ 📚 PWA Merch – ⁠⁠⁠https://dwplus.shop/MattFraddMerch⁠⁠ 👕 Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com - - - Privacy Policy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dailywire.com/privacy⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There's so much wisdom born at the foot of the bed of someone who is dying that AI can never know. We're experimenting on a generation. We're all guinea pigs in these technological experiments. A hundred years from now, it'll just seem like one ginormous blip. How do we hold on to our humanity? That's the continual argument that you hear from AI companies. If we don't do it, someone else is. And why is that wrong?

You're saying that like it's a... No, no. This is the treadmill that we have put ourselves on. It will say, I'm praying for you, Mike. Do you actually pray? I can't literally pray on my own, but... I absolutely understand. I hate that.

Don't tell me you pray for me. Don't tell me you love me. There's only calculation. I'm terrified to ask this next question. This is good, man. Why is it good? Because it's us. Together again.

Thank you for agreeing to come on. Yeah. This says backstage live on it. See that? That must be the daily wire backstage live ashtray, which I don't think they do anymore. So it's mine. I don't know why they had it in great.

This is the compelling content people. This is why we click ladies and gentlemen, why we click. All right, I want to start with little rebellious things Catholics do at Mass. All right, we were talking about this beforehand. I find it really fun. Yeah. The most obvious, all right, is the, I understand there's no kneeler. And to protest that there is no kneeler, I will kneel down and I dare you to deny me communion.

That's the obvious one. But the one I find more enjoyable is. is when there's a priest giving out Holy Communion and someone else, and especially if that someone else is a woman. Yeah. You see people walking into the next line. I like that a lot. Finally, I like when people kneel before anyone has had the chance to offer them the sign of peace

because they will not participate in this circus. Yeah, I think that's funny. I have definitely coughed in my hand. Really? Um, um, uh, you know, and, yeah, I, this is why I hate the, the sign of peace. Right. I hate where it's at. Like, if it was at the kind of the beginning of mass, I think it'd be a different story.

But there's this point where that's when in high school, it was like, that's where everyone started chit-chatting. But in this, it's like, um, I have to fake caring about people on my face. Like, peace be with. Like, I have to show that, you know, I just, it takes me out of the moment, man. I don't want to do that. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that's fun is when you're walking out of the church and you're walking and then someone turns around to genuflect and you jump out of the way. Yeah, I don't do that. Because what?

Yeah, I don't do that. I bless them. Whenever people genuflect to the tabernacle, I always bless them. That's very. I did that to a stranger at church because I thought it was someone else. And I went like, oh, oh, and I made it awkward for both of them. What's the most embarrassing moment you've ever had in a church? I was an altar server. I was junior, no, senior in high school.

The candles that we used were real candles, but they were metal, they were inserted inside these metal fake candles. So they always looked the same perfect height. And inside was a little spring loaded mechanism that would push the candle up slightly as it burned. I'm standing on either side of our priest. And the candle was kind of broken at the bottom. So you'd got to wedge it in there good and I didn't wedge it in there good enough. And it slightly tilted. And then the spring shot the end.

entire thing, lit candle and all rape past them on seniors' nose. So that was, that was pretty embarrassing. That sounds like a bad invention. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty terrible. Yeah. I was once playing music at Mass in Ireland, and it was

filled with high school students. And to my great- Was it testified to love? To my great shame, I was playing the guitar. So I deserved what I had coming, I suppose. So I'm playing my song, and then I wrap up, and then I sit down on a that wasn't there. And just as my butt should have hit the cushion, I realized. And for whatever reason, my body thought, now's a good time to spin around. And I landed with my guitar on the

marble and the sound because it was amplified. Yeah. That's awesome. My favorite story, I'm not going to say his name because I don't have permission to share this story, but it's one of the greatest stories ever. His wife was supposed to sing the Latin of concluding him. And he didn't know the Latin, but he was going to do the music underneath. His wife got horribly sick beforehand, and this was a big national kind of conference mass. So she said, listen, don't worry, you know the words, ish, just say it and let the audience sing it, and you just kind of mumble along. So he did, and it went perfectly well. Then he got home, and he got all these text messages from his friends who were watching via live stream, and he was the only one that was miced. And so

it's just him going like, Gloria, shmimi, me, me, me, me. You had this huge, I mean, thousands of people at this mass. Oh, that's awesome. That's a great. Shmi, shmimi, shmimi, shm, you know, I think he was like joking in it, too, you know. There's a fellow that you and I know, who I won't say his name on camera, but, you know, we do men's conferences and things like this together. So I may have shared this before, but anyway, they had taken him out to some bad Mexican, you know, where this is going the night before. And then anyway, he had to get up on stage to give his talk.

So he gets up on stage and he's feeling rumblings really bad. And so he's like, all right, wasn't that worship band great? We're going to have him come back on and play us another song. So he ran to the bathroom and had an out-of-body experience in that bathroom. And he tells me that the microphone was all the whole time. And they heard all of it. That'd be funny if he was praying a memorari the whole time. Now, that's happened to me.

I was at a Soonville Youth Conference and I was about to lose it. But the show must go on. Lose it in what sense? In sense that I was about to throw up. Oh. So I go up to them and I had the opening keynote on a Friday night. So I go up to the microphone and usually I'm like walking around and gesticulating wildly. And I was like, not today.

I feel like if I move my arms, I would have thrown up. So I said that I go to the microphone and I'm like, you know, and I just, half the time I'm just staring at the microphone because even the like the lighting and all this stuff just visually was making me a little bit more nauseous yeah i finished my talk i exited stage right in a hurry i walk down the steps and they go oh man that was a great talk you really bit and i go cool and i just went right and walked across the street up the stairs to the hotel and i lost it i mean for hours and hours was it food poison uh probably i mean that's isn't that the standard millennial line that you got food poisoning Because you don't want to be contagious?

Yeah. I'm sure I was just sick with a bug that my kids had. Oh, wow. Yeah, I lost it. My favorite story, though, and this is the last one. This is the, this is, this is, this is, I want him to keep coming. Okay, fair enough. My favorite story, though, was I was at a beautiful event in Michigan.

It was a youth conference, all this stuff. And I had a bunch of things to do, not just, and it was like the emcee and stuff. And I was like, I don't feel well. I needed to take me back to the hotel. So I take me back to the hotel. It's about five minute drive. And while I was waiting for the car, Carter can pick me up.

I had thrown up all over the front of the school that was hosting this. And it had fresh snow was on the ground. So I like painted the side of the building. So I get in the tour. And no one noticed. Even the guy driving me, he didn't notice. So I get there. And I'm like clenching and everything's awful, right?

Yeah. And I'm holding it. And I get into my hotel room and I go on all fours and nothing happens. And I'm like, oh, thank God. And then just a little bit comes out. It's toilet water. Toil the water goes right back into my open mouth. And then I was like,

That's the most gross thing. And then I lost it. So then I shared that story immediately. This is good. This is what the people want. All the Catholics out there are like, where is this behind the seats? Do you have, okay, I was going to ask a question to see if we could relate, but the question is so niche that there's no way you'll say yes. I'll end up feeling alone.

So I'll just say it. It's beautiful. Watermelon for some reason makes me want to throw up sometimes. Yeah, you're alone in that. I know. I'm sorry. So I had some the other night thinking I'm past that. That's ridiculous.

I'm an adult. water mountain you throw off. I must have made that up. But the worst bit is that little bit of saliva that comes into, you're the back of your mouth that says you're about to vomit. Yeah, the vanguard. They're just preparing. That happened to me, but I was able to fight through it. Do you remember a lady, I won't say her last name, but her, she was a speaker at the conference's name Tammy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So do you know the story of her falling off the stage? No, no. She, oh. She had this idea that she, wanted this song to be played, you know, something about like, your love is amazing. I don't know

the exact song. But she said at the very end, I want you just to have a single beam of light directly upon the sun Damio cross, and that's how we'll end it. And so she's singing this song very dramatically, you know, and now it's single light on the cross that's very dark. And she's singing it. And she says, you know, your love is amazing. And then she went, it's amazing. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, fell down the middle. says. See, that's a beauty of youth conferences that people don't really get to know. When you do enough of them, there's always disasters. Just right behind the door waiting to happen. It's awesome. So years ago, a husband and a wife in Lithuania sent me one of their handmade rosaries,

and I was so struck by it, the weight, the quality, the care in every detail. It was seriously the most beautiful rosary I'd ever seen. Now, in collaboration with Theotokos Rosaries, I'm making two of their hand-crafted rosaries available to you over at Dailywire.com slash shop. Italian olive wood, gold, plated brass, micro-braid cord built for a lifetime of prayer. Each one made by hand in Lithuania. These are not just beautiful rosaries. They can be family heirlooms that you would pass down. Use for personal devotion.

You could also give them as a wedding gift, ordination gift, confirmation gift, or for graduation. Now, the first batch sold out right away. So, pre-order yours now at dailywired.com slash shop before the next batch is gone. That's dailywire.com slash shop. What do you think the future of youth conferences are? Because it feels like collectively we've kind of turned a page a little bit. And even if I'm not taking aside here, I just feel like there's less of an appetite for that sort of charismatic, expressive, let's call it praise. But I might be mistaken.

and maybe I'm in a ghetto. No, I think, I don't know, there's always something to be said where you get large groups of people together, especially youth, young adults, whatever, to experience, like, Catholic faith at a dynamic level, right? So I think of the Somerville Youth Conference, it's kind of like, because I'm a speaker for it and whatnot. But one of the things that students say all the time is like, you know, my public school, I'm the only one that really loves Jesus or my youth group, whatever. And then they go and they meet people for, and it's good to get out of your bubble to realize that there's a bigger, Catholic, you know, community that's out there that's real. But when you talk about the spirituality

of conferences, I think the single conferences are interesting because they were always part of the charismatic renewal, this born of the spirit. That's always a part of its art and soul. And I think is an important component of it. But there is this thing where just like there's this line, you should marry your mission, but only date your model. Right. And so the mission is to fill people with the Holy Spirit and get them to realize, like, you know, that our Catholic faith can only be lived through grace and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Born of the Spirit retreats are important in a day where the church is largely unresponsive to the Holy Spirit.

But where the church becomes more responsive to the Holy Spirit, maybe that model falls away. You know, these different models that people use. And in parish ministry, I remember I would sit with people, maybe five people left in a classroom that at one time had 100 people or 50 people or whatever, meeting every week and it was vibrant and it was awesome. And it's like, yeah, and you've had that for 20 years. And now the people that that fed have been fed by that. So they're not coming for that.

And now there are new things. Yeah. And so those new things bring you in. So what got you here won't necessarily take you there. Yeah. An apostolate isn't a failure if it doesn't exist forever. It could exist for a time and that be okay. Yeah, they were like religious orders of nuns.

Well, even things like life nights. Yeah. I don't know if people still do there. Yeah. Yeah, life is still going. But it's clearly not as popular as it once was. Right. And that's okay.

So when you have, when no one's doing youth ministry, youth ministry is new and exciting. Right. Yeah. And then when then that becomes the standard, the new, newness is always attractive. Yeah. Right. This novel new thing. It always sparks, you know, like, oh, what's this going on over there?

Even if you don't like it or agree with it, it's new. And new is a catalyst all on its own. So like strategically launching new initiatives draws people in just because it's new. Maybe this will do it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I mean, think about podcasts right now. I mean, they're hot.

They're all this stuff. Yeah. I've been a part of the podcast train since the beginning of 2006. Yes, yeah. You were one of the OGs. The OGs. You predate pints with Aquinas, catching foxes. Yeah.

Yeah. But I was a fan of it even before we did anything in that space. Yeah. And to find all the normies getting involved in podcasting and stuff, there's this way of like having interviews on Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, it's not enough because it's a five-minute thing that then gets cut down to three. You know, like people want the long form. if they want to know more about that content.

And so what got us here won't take us there is a very difficult principle for people to accept in ministry. Oh, that's really good. What goddess here won't take us there. Yeah. I mean, think about like before the Bible timeline hit parishes, Jeff Kaven's, Ascension Press Bible timeline, before that hit parishes, very few people had a Catholic standard way of going through the whole of the Bible.

Yeah. The Bible timeline being the kind of the main thing. And when at my parish that I used to be involved at San Antonio Padua, we had hundreds and hundreds of people go through that or through the different versions of it where they kind of do it in a day or do it in a few weeks instead of the full year. But then what happens when you hit critical mass is you need more things. And it's not just more things from ascension to produce. It's you need a different type of thing than just a Bible study or something to go out and live your faith. So we have acts retreats.

What happens when people go on these types of retreats and it hits a critical mass? Then what? Well, then you leave the retreat. then what? Well, for us, it was such a blessing at St. Anthony's to get tied into the Colby Prison Retreat Ministry and do prison ministry. That, I mean, that's a thing where, I mean, it is a game changer when you start doing prison ministry. Can you please tell us the time you went in there? You told me about the first talk you gave there. Oh, yeah. It was like a self-deprecating. You were terrified of going in and someone said something as they introduced you.

Oh, yeah. Like, I mean, the whole story of, I didn't want to go at all. because I was terrified. I mean, I'm a chubby little homeschooler theology major. I am soft like a lady in the prisons. And the prison that we were going to is a maximum security Texas state prison. It's a prison for violent offenders. And so I have all these images of prison being from the movies. Like, I don't know anything about prison.

And so the week of Jerry, who is such an awesome guy, Jerry who's kind of running this, spearhead and everything, he goes, he comes to my office. Every time I do an impression of Jerry make him sound like macho man, Randy Savage. He's the most charismatic man you've ever met in your life. He goes, morning brother, how you doing, brother? And he's like, Lord's blessings, peace to you,

and all this stuff. And I'm like, listen, I don't really think I should, you know, like, I'm trying to back out of it. Yes. And he's like. Because what, you were being asked to give a talk? I was asked to just lead a small group and just be present. And if they, I think I had one keynote to give out of the weekend.

Yeah. And the weekend is Thursday, Friday, Saturday. from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. So that's the prison weekend for us. And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, I really don't want to do this. I don't want to go when. And I had all these excuses. So I'm trying to get him to let me out of it. Yes. I'm like, I don't really feel good about it. Like it's just, there's a lot going on in family. And then he said, he goes, oh, don't worry about it. Brother, you'll be fine. And he just leaves. So then the next day he comes and he's stocked him. Oh, no, no. Right at the end of that, I said, okay, look, Jerry, I'm going to be honest with you.

I'm scared. Like, I'll just lay my cards on the day. I'm scared to go. Like, I've never been to a maximum security, but never been to any prison. And he goes, don't worry about a brother. You'll be fine. It'll be great. And he gets up and leaves.

And I'm like, what the heck? So he comes back the next day right after Mass. He goes, hey, brother, don't worry. I told all the inmates how scared you are of them. And I was like, you did not do that. It's the only thing I know is not be a wimp in prison, right? So I'm like, Terry, you did not do. He goes, don't worry about a brother.

He was serious. He was serious. He was serious. 100% serious 100% serious. I tell it. And he said, he goes, you know what they told me? I go what? And he goes, you go back and tell your friend Gomer, which is my nickname.

And I go, Jerry, you could have said someone on the team. There's 40 of us guys going and you have to see. Oh yeah, it's this guy. It's the fat one who can't get away. With the most recognizable name that they're unlikely to forget. It wasn't like Mark. Yeah. Hey, I'm Gomer.

Okay, kids. Yeah. So I go, what? I'm like, Jerry, he goes, just calm down. Listen to what he said. He said, we're a bunch of murderers, gangbangers, and drug dealers. And I'm like, go on. And we need the grace of Christ.

We need the mercy of Christ every bit as much as the people at his parish. And I was like, now I'm afraid and a shame. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I wouldn't expect that answer. I was like, okay, okay. So then Thursday morning rolls around. It's five o'clock.

It's an hour away. I just wake up. I'm late getting ready. I'm like throwing myself. I gun it 80 miles. an hour in a back road, hit a pocket of water, slide off the road, get back on the road. Oh, it's fine, everything's fine.

I pull up, and the guys are already there, and they're in a big circle in front of the gate with all the guys with rifles. You can just hear them, where's going? Who's going? I'm hungry. Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys. So I go in there.

I go up to the guys, our team, and we call the freeworlders. And it sounds like a sci-fi term. But I go up to him, and he goes, Good morning, brother, how are you? And I go, good, I guess I need to sign in. So I sign a paper. And we're outside in the parking lot, right?

And he says, hey, we're going to do a deliverance prayer. Here's a prayer. And I look at it and I unfold. It's really long. And usually deliverance prayers like, like San Michael the Archangel, something like that. And it's really long. And it's very specific. And I go, oh, wow, this is intense.

And he goes, yeah. Turns out the Satanist found out we were coming and they've been cursing us for a week. And I just remember looking at that. And I just go, oh, do not tell my wife. Like, my wife does not want me to be here. Don't tell my wife. So we pray the prayer. We go in.

And the thing that shocked me was how. normal it was. Honestly, like, it shocked me because here's all the men in white. And this is, this is cool. I love this. We make a tunnel and the men come in and we say their full name. And all of us guys who are running the retreat and it's half, uh, free worlders and half inside guys. And so they're running the retreat. Their leaders just like we are. And the guys come in, we say their name and we shake their hand or give them a hug or do some crazy thing. I'm like, Please, guys, stop, please. Please.

I can't keep up. Why didn't the shake works? Yeah, yeah. Give them a hug if you want, if they want. I like this. Yeah. What is that? Here we go.

Here we go. We're doing this. No, what did you say? Give them a hug if they want. If they weren't to initiate. You cannot initiate. You never initiate touching a prisoner. Because if they don't want to be touching, it can get very ugly, very quickly.

These are all the things I know going into this event. Okay. So I'm sitting there and the guys are great. Like, a lot of guys, you come in. And they have to be at a certain level. So in prison, it's like, like G1, G2, G3, G4, G5. G5s are administrative segregation.

So solitary confinement type of stuff, you don't meet them. G1s are the people that have like the most amount of freedom within the prison system, you know, whatever that means. And so they, so I was talking with this one guy and he says, yeah, like you can't have an active case against you. I said, what does that mean? It's like, well, like you can't have stabbed a guy in 18 months. And I was like, cool, cool. For me, it's been 20. Like, I have no like, like this world.

I just have no understanding. So they come in and we say their name. And it was so cool. This guy at the end, he said, best line ever. This is the best line ever. He said, when I first got here and I'm standing there and I see all them white dudes in a line, I thought, I've never seen this many white dudes excited to see me since the FBI arrested me. It was awesome.

I got permission to remember to say that story. I'll be very careful with some of these stories. but no, he said that. It was so fun. And we're all sitting at these tables and we're just doing small groups, right? And what do you think of like a normal small group? A guy's an overshare.

Another guy's checked out. Two of the guys are just kind of passively listening. You know, it was like any other small group of men ever. And I look around the room and I'm like, this is how normal it is is cool. Like, I love this. And I remember when I first walked into the room, Jerry introduced me to one of the guys

who was like, an assistant to the chaplain from the inmates. And he came out to me, he goes, hey, I hear you're the smart dude. And I was like, yeah? And he said, look, I want to know if I can get your help. Like he says you're a big reader. Do you have any copies of primary sources of the Antinacine fathers? I just cannot get a hold of them without.

I'm like, what? He goes, I have all the, the majority of the post-nicine, but Antonin, they're so hard to come I'm like, you want primary text of fathers from before the council of Nica. And he goes, yeah, can you think you get that? And I'm like, I can get going on it. Like, that's cool. Like get it donated to the library there, which we did. It was awesome.

Ascension Press donated, I mean, tens of thousands of books. Really? Yeah, to Colby to be distributed throughout the. God bless you. Oh, they were phenomenal. It was so, it was such a, I mean, ship it all and all this. It was so heroic. And it's all like the Bible timeline and all these things.

Wow. So the power behind that, that retreat was for me a great awakening of what presence does, saying people's names does. So going back to the story of saying everyone's name. Yeah. These men are known by their prison nickname or their, or inmate. Inmate. Step to the right.

Inmate, quiet down. Like, you hear these as you're there. And it's not that the guards are bad or evil. I think in Texas, the stat is something like one out of four are take bribes. and then two out of the four, stay quiet. And then one usually is just and does try to do the right thing and reports and stuff. But it's really hard when you're in a maximum security prison and someone says, hey, guard, your wife's name is this. Your child's name is this, this, this, and this.

I'm going to give you $500. You are going to give me whatever I want. It's almost an impossible situation that we put the guards in. So can you imagine being a prison guard and seeing all these Christian people. all these groups coming in and serving the inmates and you're just sitting there like, what about me? Hmm. And I read an article.

I can't remember who wrote it. I think it was Eve Tushnet wrote it, um, on corrections officers and how they are the highest suicide rate, the highest divorce rate, the highest addiction rate of any profession. Wow. So I read that article and I wrote them a letter and I sent it to the Texas Department of Corrections and I got published in their newsletter and I got a, phone call one day from this lady. And it was the mother of one of the prison guards. And she just said, you have no idea how much your letter meant to me. Because I'm a mom. I pray for my kid who,

you know, her son's an adult and whatever. She's like, I pray for him every day. He's in the the most violent situation every day. And he has to protect the very people he has to defend himself against. Right. And they have 24 hours, seven days a week to game the system if they're so inclined. and he has, you know, his eight or ten or 12-hour shift or whatever. So that was put on my heart, but I had to write in the letter like, you see us and you wonder why we don't serve you. And the reason why is because we're legally not allowed. I can't serve guards and do ministry to inmates because then we become brokers between the two and that becomes a very. So there's all these like ethical, you know, separations of these things.

And so, but that just broke my heart when you realize like. Have you spoken to a guard personally about their trials and what that's law? I'd never thought about how difficult that. Yeah, yeah. So the problem is no one care in Texas, right? What do you think of inmates in prisons? Like, no one cares about them, right? Like culturally.

We're like, if you're going to defund the schools or the prisons, which one are you going to choose? Right. So there's not enough money going around to get to keep guards who are really good and to keep them on for a long time unless they go up the track and to be assistant warden and things like that. There are different things that can kind of like keep them out. And they're underfunded. Like I remember there was there's like a Netflix special where guys in a prison in Washington state and it's like Shangri Law compared to certain things in the Texas prisons.

I mean, yeah, it just gets wild. And so you have these problems that are like they're not paid enough. And so they are vulnerable to being exploited if that becomes a thing that prisoners want to work. But a lot of the inmates that are there, you know, once they get out of their 30s, a lot of them, their whole lives are different. they become very different people once they get out of that 25, 30 year old bracket. Jordan Peterson talks about that. Like some judges lock up violent offenders when they're 18 or 19 to their 30 on purpose because biologically the testosterone starts to edge off and a lot of that violence goes away.

And it's just, yeah, that's why I don't do juvenile prisons because they're so cocky and they're so angry. I'm like, I don't want to deal with any of that. Give me the guys who've been here for 20 years. I love those guys. Yeah. And honestly, those men, when I talk about doing ministry, I did ministry for 20 years before, 15 years before I did prison ministry. And prison ministry fundamentally changed my life, how I view prisons, how I view ministry. Like, it was crazy.

Wow. That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. When we hear the word stewardship, we usually think about our time or our talents or maybe our money. But stewardship also means paying attention to where our money goes after we spend it. That's one reason. I really appreciate charity mobile.

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Go do it. Hello.com slash Matt Frad and you get three months for free. Is it too early for Scotch? It's never too early for Scotch. What kind of scotch is that? Lagovulin. It's the best. It's my favorite.

It's your favorite. Yeah, it's peaty. It tastes like drinking a campfire. Have you ever had it? I don't know if I've had that brand. Well, you'll see. It tastes like salt water and campfire. Slancher.

Come on. Accurate. Isn't that lovely? Wow, that really does. Petey. Yeah, that's a good. I remember I got a bottle of Lagavolin. By the way, I don't know if I'm allowed to keep saying the name.

So Maria, feel free to block, beep all of these out. We have to cover that up. Oh, yeah, you have it cover. I was like, let me look at the logo. But I got some from Costco a long time ago. And I had to save up for it because it's not cheap. And it was, I just thought this is the best thing I've ever tasted. And, uh, yeah.

I don't, I don't know. So when it comes to liquor. So I never drank until I turned 21. I was never into alcohol at all because I had people in my family who were alcoholics, who did all the wrong. things with alcohol. So I never wanted that to be a part of my life. I turned 21. I remember it. I was at my buddy Chris's house hanging out in his dad's backyard. And I was more excited. I had fasted from from soda because I love soda. Is it obvious that I drink sugar drinks? No, I had fasted from

soda for one of my my brother's intentions. And I was more excited that the fast ended on my birthday than I was that I was now 21 could drink alcohol. So he went and bought Heineken. He's Like, no, we got to have something. But it's Oklahoma where you can't sell alcohol after like midnight or something like that. So you have to hurry up, go. And I remember drinking, Hanneken, if you don't like beer, Hanneken kind of like tastes like a fart as like that, that if you're, if you don't have a. A refreshing fart. A refreshing fart with class, if you will.

But I remember just being like, oh, gosh, you can't wait to chase this with a Dr. Pepper. Right. Like, that was my mindset. So alcohol has always been a, it was a beer thing. It was non-pretentious. hanging out with Luke, you gotta get a little pretentious about the beer you drink and stuff like that. Is he quite opinionated about it?

He was. He definitely was. We would do stuff like, uh, you know, what are you drinking? I'd be like, uh, Miller Light. He's like, why are you drinking a Miller Light? And I was like, because it was cheap today when I went to the gas station. Like that's my, but to get into liquor, did I ever tell you my first, my kids know this story?

The first time daddy got drunk. Oh, that's a sad story. It isn't, it isn't because I didn't intend it. Okay. And I didn't know what I was doing. And I thought, so there's a glass. It was a milk glass. It was bigger than this. Okay.

And we were having a party off campus and we were having rum and cokes. And the people who have rum and cokes weren't in the kitchen with me. So I had to make my own. And I had never done it, but I didn't want to be a punk. You know, you don't want to be embarrassed to all this stuff. So I took the rum and I filled the glass. Then I put it down. Then I took the Coke. I opened it up and I splashed it. Why did you do that?

Because I didn't know. You didn't know how alcohol, how I did not know how a mixed drink worked. Because that's, it's so stupid. And you didn't think this is like 40% alcohol. He didn't notice. Did you know it was a lot stronger than a beer or wine? So I never had one before. Yeah.

So I just thought, oh, it's going to taste awful. It's liquor. It's not delicious like a beer. Yeah. It's going to taste awful. So I drank it. I'm like, oh my gosh. So I would sneak into the kitchen and pour more Coke in there because I didn't want to look like

a childish jump. Not realizing. I'm like, bl blu-blu-blu-blu-blit. Not realize I had done the exact opposite. Yeah. And I finished. I finished it. Okay.

And I remember at one point, I'm sitting on the couch and I stood up and it was like the whole plane. I just went, whoop. And I'm like, I can do this. I can do this. Maintain, bro. Maintain. And that was, that was an interesting experience because I still remember everything.

And I remember I had to have a conversation with a kid who was thinking about discerning the priesthood. And the room was spinning so much I wanted to put my head like rested on something. And I thought the countertop was higher. So I was sitting there and I was like, no, no, just keep going. And he just, I remember his face just going, and I'm still trying to fly on the counter. But now I'm like,

it was so high as a kitchen table. So I'm like standing up and bending all the way over. The only time I got, you know, I got drunk and it wasn't my fault. The only time I can actually say that. Because there's certainly times, it's funny, the older you get, drunkenness just sounds like the worst idea ever, doesn't it? When we were 18, it sounded like that's what we live for. Now you're old.

You want to sleep well, please. Yeah. But I was my, I think it was my 19th birthday party. Okay. I was in Canada and I was playing music at a pub outside of Ottawa. And I had, yeah, I knew the waitresses well. And they, I was a regular because I lived up the road. And I guess they liked me.

I liked them. They were older ladies who were lovely, you know. And they were spiking my drinks. So when I would say, yeah, I'll get like a bourbon and something. They were triply. quadrupling it. They thought they were being nice to you? Yes, they thought they were being nice to me.

Yeah. And I got disgustingly drunk and woke up in the morning, I think. And yeah, I think it was that night. I threw up all over my, uh, my friend's taxidermed rug. Yeah. That bearhead should not have mouth open. Yeah. Didn't see it coming.

Yeah. See, I like, I like, uh, certain liquors now and certain mix. Old fashion is my go to. Yeah. I love an old fashion. Yeah. That's a good drink. I wanted to talk about.

Community, all right? I love, you think so deeply on things that I always find like I have a couple of things and I give it to you and then you flesh it out for me. So let's see. I want to talk about how it seems that modern technology is corrosive of community. So let me lay this out and then let me get your take on it, right? So technology is an extension of human power. So spectacles and video cameras and whatnot. But by modern technology, I mean what we all think I mean.

and phones and AI and email and so forth. And what I think that does is it makes people less necessary. And so we're political animals. We're made to be in communion with others. What's community? It's what? A group of people united for some common good. Yeah?

Something like that. So we're here at the Daily Wire offices for the common good of producing this show and other shows. But human beings haven't sat down with other human beings. throughout history and decided, well, since we flourish in communities, we should do that. We should, we should all interact. And so, you know, you and I are living in this crazy time where we grew up in the 80s and 90s. And so we had to interact with librarians and shopkeepers and next door neighbors.

We were forced to bump into each other regularly. You had to stop at a gas station and ask directions, for example. Whereas now, that's increasingly unnecessary to interact with people. I went to Walmart one morning to get some milk. and I didn't have a conversation with anybody. I actually got milk and I also got some AMPM medicine. And so I was at the self-checkout and someone had to come over. And the fellow who came over literally just grunted.

You know, I went, oh, hello. And I was just like, wow, that's the only conversation I've had to get these items, you know. And now even that is unnecessary. I can have Uber Eats and Netflix and why would I want to? interact with other human beings. And so my concern is, since most of us in this day and age have not experienced the joy of real community, given the ubiquity of modern technology and how immediately gratifying it is, I think many of us don't want it.

We're not incentivized to seek it out. And so for this reason, so it's like, okay, so, I mean, you see pockets of rebellion. And I think that's like the farmers markets and the, and the, and so for this reason, so it's like, and these sorts of things that we really like, and I think they are good, or the board table games and that sort of thing. But as a whole, we don't need to interact with each other. People are lonely. People don't know how to talk to each other, how to interact in public.

I'm being a little hyperbolic, but I think that's true. And I think it's like on top of that, the question of how do we date today? It's like, well, no wonder we don't know how to date today. We don't know how to be friends today. We don't know how to live in communion with each other. And so what I'm not saying is, therefore, we need to blow up our phones and computers and things, although maybe. Ted Kaczynski was onto something maybe with his manifesto, I'm just saying. But it seems to me that it is corrosive to communities, like that the two don't vibe together for the reasons I've just laid out.

Yeah. When it comes to this stuff, Robert Putnam, he was a Harvard sociologist, wrote the book, Bowling Alone, very, very popular book. his idea of community was if it starts in meat space and then is extended with technology, it's generally a good thing. If it starts in online and has no meat space component, no in real life component, then generally it's not felt as human community. And what you find with purely online relationships is you can, they can be, you can actually share a lot with people, right, online and have deep,

but it can go away immediately. Like you can just ghost someone on. And they have no further recourse. Like if you meet only using Discord, if you decide, I don't want to be in Discord anymore or, you know, whatever, then you're, all of those relationships are just gone. Whereas being in person, uh, it's, it's a different. If you live, if it's a lived in community, it becomes something so different. I remember, uh, Luke took me when we were in Cincinnati, he's like, Mr. You know, because I, I had a released, uh, epically failed, uh, series through Ascension on community, building small groups, community groups.

And he's like, you're going to love this place I'm going to take it to. It's this bar, but they only, it's like all about community. And I go, okay, how is it all about community? And he said, they got nothing but picnic tables. All the picnic tables are shoved together. So you have to interact with people you don't know sitting right next to you. And that you can go play. And that's the whole thing is they want the vibe to be, yeah, you come with your parties,

but when the room gets full, you're going to be meeting everyone. So we went and I did. I met the people next to me and wish I didn't. But, you know, you begin to meet people and interact and cool. But when I came away. with was, isn't it funny that when we talk about community today, it's a consumer good, social media, it's a thing that I'm buying, that I'm opting into, that I'm choosing to be a part of and can just as easily choose to not be a part of.

Whereas in the ancient world, in the medieval world, in the world, even 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you were a part of it, right? Or you were the weird guy in the house on the street that everyone knew didn't come outside, didn't interact. You had crazy stories about that guy, right? Like, you have to interact with people. And the more we tear away interactions, the more we begin to prefer to not have interactions. But that deformed us.

Yes. Right? That deformed us. Like us having this conversation, it's so funny. I caught myself. Like, I'm so nervous doing this stuff with these cameras. But there was a part in our conversation we were talking about prison ministry that I forgot that there's cameras and there's microphones. And it was like, oh, just me and Matt talking, you know, obviously telling horrible vomiting.

stories to start us off kind of edges that out. But like, I mean, how great it is to just have these conversations. But there's always, once it becomes digital, there's always a performance component. Whereas if you're with people that you have to be with, whether you like them or not, the backstage version of you, the true version of you becomes the part that the most intimate people can know. Right? Because there's always a performance.

When I, we were saying this the other day, when I was typing on, in Twitter, I delete the words that I type. over and over again before I hit send because I want to craft it right and for this audience and not that audience and how is it received and stuff like that. Whereas if I'm sitting at a bar with my friends or they're over at my house and we're talking, I don't worry about that stuff because they already have the context. They already have the interactions. I have to preserve these relationships. It's not marketing like it is so much with social media. It's community. It's an exchanging of who I am just as much as my ideas. And so this is the thing that I think is

keep getting lost in technology. It's like, well, look, people are. talking. It's like, cool. That doesn't mean that they're doing life together. And they're not interacting at this, at this far deeper level of human experience. Now, I say that, and I'm going to issue a caveat. There's a guy in the Minecraft world. Gosh, I forgot his name. He's, he's, his symbol is a pig with the crown. Oh, I, you think I know, I got no idea. I know what that even means, a pig with a crown. Did you see the, my kids are probably so mad at me right now when we watch this. But did you see the Minecraft movie with Jack Black? Okay, so they did a homage to him. The pig walks across, it has a crown. And Jack Black's up and goes, there goes a legend.

Oh, okay. Right. So it's this kid who was a gamer on Minecraft, very well respected, well loved in the community. He's good guy. He dies. And the, his father, so I didn't know the story at all. And I see a clip of his father and he brings, I think it's like a tray of food and he knocks on his son's door. And then he opens up and he brings a tray of food. And he's And his son has been dead. And he brings, he's like, are you playing video games with your friends? The dad, when his son had died, his dad realized by the outpouring of love from this guy's fans and followers and community, he said it was the first time he realized, like, my son

really did have community, even it was, it was this online thing. And to me, there is a component that can be extremely real and is good in an online community. Like, it's not all bad. And I think painting with the broad brush of saying, this is all bad is too much. So this dad now keeps his son's YouTube channel alive by just doing like short things and very rarely space. But I can remember just weeping because that's what his dad did the day his son died and all this stuff. And just the beauty of that, of the flood of love that came from real human beings on the keyboards sending messages to the dad and being like, you know, your son changed my life or or just. This was my favorite part of my day was watching him talk and play and do all these things.

So there is a real community. I mean, like, so yeah, I just did this Protestant debate on the on Transubstantiation Lord's Supper. And I'm talking with the, the Presbyterian guy. And he said, he had brought something up and he said, oh, like Pints with Aquinas. And I was like, you know Pines with Aquinas? And he goes, oh, yeah. I was like, that's cool.

I'm going on it in like a week. And he goes, are you really? I go, yeah, I know Matt. We're friends. Don't worry about it. I text them sometimes. Sometimes he replies. But like, there is a real community of your fans and followers. That is nurtured because they like you. You know, and it might be parasocial to a large extent. But there's an element of realness that's there. What's a community? I mean, I gave a definition, but it's probably not very good. No, I mean, I think it's persons united for a common good. And that common good is what brings them together. And it's also, it's ordered around things, things that you guys. mutually care about. I mean, people here, I mean, how many Orthodox and evangelicals have written to you saying, like, they love your show? Yeah. You know, even if they're not considering converting Catholicism, there's something serious about what you're doing. Yeah. And fun, with your personality, all that stuff, that resonates widely, right? Like, that, I think that matters. Yeah, it's not nothing. I went through a period where I kept telling people, it'd be better if you stopped watching

the show and just started reading. I remember that. I remember this. And I meant it and I think I mean it now. I don't know. And I got some backlash from people saying, please don't say that. It's actually kind of patronizing or maybe patronizing is the wrong word, but it's like actually watching some of these interviews with some of your guests, they've really helped me. And it means a lot to me. So, and I'm like, okay, that's fair. Yeah, I think of this woman, Rebecca, who is a darling of the Catching Fox's universe because she organized so much our Discord channel and all the stuff, which I like never go in. There's all these things. I, I maxed out on social media pretty quickly. I YouTube is my best friend I watch a ton of YouTube I pay for it I love it I do not engage in comments I don't really ever do that I don't treat it like social media

I treat it like a video platform I hate Facebook I hate Instagram I might hop in a couple times just to post Facebook is good for me because it's people my age and older who know my family and so if I post something like it's a way for me to have one conversation not a thousand text messages and stuff

But like with Rebecca who's getting married, God bless her. She's, I think of her as a part of our friendship, like as a part of the catching fox's audience, you know. There are people who when I travel and give talks, they're like, I drove two hours to see this talk because I want to meet you. You're like, I'm so sorry. Yeah. This will disappoint me. I am a walking and talking disappointment. But there is community there.

There is. I don't think it is as good. And this is why. But like you said, you want to lead it into something else. Which is why things like meetups, I think are more important. Yes. And we do, I do meetups. I tell, you know, I love that.

What about my overall point, though, that this modern technology is corrosive to the kind of community. So fair enough, you can have something like community or even community that's separated where you don't actually meet the person. That feels weird. But is it too negative? Is it just not right what I'm saying? No, I don't think it's not right. I think community, it's too gossamer. It's too thin online only.

Because like I said, you could get a, you know, change your AT&T plan. All of a sudden you don't have access to the internet the way you did and blah, blah, blah. Like there's a million things that could disrupt community. I think once you have community in blood and bone, right, like meeting people, knowing people, having dinner with people. You know, I think in Spain of the CES. that they take in the middle of the day where all the men are smoking cigars out in the town square. Like that's real community. Where is this?

And when can I go? Yeah. My mom went to, uh, she did pilgrimage and she was in, I can't remember where it was in Spain. I'm taking that as a sign to smoke this cigar. Yes, yes, please do. Uh, and she just said, she went to go buy something in a shop. All the shops were called. She's like, I felt like it was a horror movie.

Like, where's everyone go? They all disappear. And I kept seeing all these men, all these old men down by the fountain in the town square, just smoking cigars and chit-chat and I keep going to them like, when are you going to be open? And they're like, uh, 3.30. She's like, why not now? It's like, because, uh, we don't after lunch.

We do this. So it's just fascinating that there, there are things that we do in our, the building, like America, the, the thing that disrupts community the most is our, the construction of our road system and parking lots. Oh, right? Because it's all built. Right, but you are in Austria. You know what it's like to walk a city.

Yeah, like, no, it's true. And I just got back from Lithuania recently. And it's true that it's like these, these places were built for human beings. Yeah. Human beings could interact with each other and now this country is built for cars, not human beings. And you feel like you're completely, you're doing something wrong if you try to walk somewhere. Right. You know, especially where you live in Texas.

Yeah. Texas is the worst for that. It really is. Like all these cities, all these states where, uh, you know, the land mass is wide. And so it's like, just keep spreading out. Just keep building out. Just keep moving out. And then we'll build, like, our road system really doesn't make sense where you can go 45 miles or 50 miles an hour. In Texas, we call them FM roads, farm to market, in Austin, the more ranch to market.

But you have these roads that function as highways. And yet stores and parking lots are tied to them. So you have someone making a 90 degree turn or a, yeah, 90 degree, 45 degree turn onto a road that where the cars are going 50 miles an hour down. Like, so a car basically going zero is having to merge with, Like, it doesn't make sense. And so we build everything around the car. Yeah. Like, there was basically a city planning.

And I want to say it was New Jersey where they came up with a, oh, so you're going to build a home depot. This is how many square foot it is. There is a ratio of square footage of the store to the amount of parking spaces you need to have. Yeah. And that became just adopted as the standard throughout America. Totally. And that wasn't in place when they built the Empire State building, for example. Right.

It would have been. Right. It wouldn't be a walk. friendly place. Right. And that's what I loved about New York. And in certain parts of St. Louis is like that. St. Louis to me is like the easternmost western city or the westernmost eastern city. It still has that vibe when you're in the downtown areas and stuff. It's like it's meant to be walkable. So I'm with I'm with you and I can complain, which is our right as old men, right? We can sit around smoke cigars and complain about the ills of society. Or you can just read Anthony Esseland's book

Out of the Ashes, which is the most coherent and convincing rant. It's brilliant. Yeah. So all right. No, I mean, so does technology ruin community? See, that's with the Amish. Like, that's the whole predicate of the Amish. The Amish is not, I'm anti-technology. It's this technology has to be tied to making community life better.

I think it's obviously true that it ruins community. Obviously, that's true, right? Yeah. And then people will say, yeah, but people were saying that about the television and the automobile. And it's like, yeah, they were right then. Yeah. The answer isn't, therefore, it's evil and should be blown up. It's just that this seems to be a necessary constant.

of advances in technology that it does. I think the other part of it is the realization that we're experiments, we're all guinea pigs in these technological experiments. Like, we, the generation just below us was an experiment on what happens when you give people with always on broadband, Wi-Fi, cell phones, and social media. What's going to happen to their self-esteem? What's going to happen to the sense of self-worth? What's going to happen to their idea of self- in the most general and specific ways?

And the answer is it destroys it. Like teenagers with a cell phone and a social media account, their anxiety is like 40% higher. The rates of depression are higher. Cyberbullying, uh, which is, you think of two boomer words put together. Cyber bullying. Uh, but like that stuff's real. You can get bullied 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Like someone can just take a side swipe at you out of nowhere.

They can, you can get a mob to torment someone and this is where they view it real life is. Yeah. My wake up call to this was, I was, uh, I was, was a youth minister and I was talking with this girl. And she said, well, that's on my Finsta. And I said, what's a Finsta? She goes, it's my fake Instagram. Now, some people have a fake Instagram where they just have their main one and then

they have a couple side ones. It's usually a joke or something funny. But she goes, my real Instagram is, you know, I have 2,000 followers. I have all these kids at the high school, blah, blah, blah. I never take a photo without makeup. You like, I'm always done and blah, blah, blah. My Finsta is a locked private account. I only have eight followers and they're all my close friends.

you know, I'll wake up and record a quick little video or story or whatever they call them, uh, without makeup on, you know, whatever. And I go, isn't it funny that you call the fake thing where you're most authentic and you call where you're the least authentic, you're real Instagram? And she looked at me and she just went, oh crap, that's weird. I was like, that is weird. But that, that's the problem of technology. It doesn't, like, we confuse the front stage with the backstage.

We don't even know. And then when we want to be authentic, we tend to be exhibitionist. Like, look at all my wool. You know, like, you know, and then you talk about trauma bonding and people doing all this. Like, it's just sharing their trauma and all this stuff. And there's a place for that. But generally, like, we're not being mature with it. And we're experimenting on a generation.

And you think about how quickly technology is advanced since you and I were kids. And even for us, it feels quick, but it feels like it was linear one thing after the other. Audio cassettes, then CDs. But a hundred years from now, you look back historically, it'll just seem like one ginormous blip. Yeah. Because I've said this before, there were three ways to get a hold of me and you when we were kids. You could call the phone that was bolted to the wall. You could come to my house physically or go find me or write me a letter.

Yeah. That's actually it, right? That's bananas. That that's it. That was it. And now there's a gazillion ways you can try to reach out to you or me through direct messages, through text messages. Isn't it funny that we all have our personal community? from Star Trek, we all have them on our phone, on our person, at all times. You leave it or lose it somewhere. You feel anxiety. You feel like, oh, crap. You know, you drop your, you leave your phone in a hotel room and leave for the day. And then you're like, oh, no. And then you think about, okay, so from the audio cassette to AI, right? And now I'm like, well, things are progressing much quicker than they have been. So what on earth? And so here's the question for you, since you're a profit. What's going to happen in the next 25?

years. Heck, 10. What's going to happen the next 10 years? So this is, and how do we hold on to our humanity as it happens? So this is the thing that I think is scary. This is the most scary. Up until now, and this is why I think there's the great unease with technology. Up until now, entry level blue collar jobs were the ones at stake for technology. Technology was coming in and robots were replacing factory workers, you know, those giant arms that move things to do all this stuff. And no one, no one cared because we had become by and large a services company or country, you know, the manufacturing jobs were dwindling. And those that stayed were being slowly replaced by machines.

And like, I don't think anyone cared. And then now with the arrival of machine learning and neural networks and then, you know, I think the great misnomer of artificial intelligence, you now have this idea in the last like three years when chat GPT, chat GPT three was released of like, oh, this is coming for knowledge workers, which the majority Americans are. This is coming for every receptionist, but this is also coming for every accountant. Like I think people thought that their jobs were safe because their knowledge where, and now we've automated intellectual, a certain type of intellectual work that never, like, I don't think

people really knew was coming. Right. Right. No, you get degrees. You don't do the blue collar thing. In other words, if we can have robots replace kind of labor that we would rather not be doing, but maybe we have to provide for our families, then it's like, well, that's one thing. But when it comes after our knowledge.

Yeah. Yeah. And when it comes after the reason why you go to a four-year college or get a master's degree and then all of a sudden a machine can do it better than you, you know, like that, that is like, wait, what the hell are we doing as a society? That's, I think, very prevalent. You know, Eric Schmidt used to be the CEO of Alphabet, Google, whatever. he went and gave a talk, a commencement address, and he brought up AI, he's talking to the young people, he's like, view belongs the future, you know, AI is the new industrial revolution.

They all started booing. And he, then he started getting argumentative with it, and they just booed even more. Like, they hate it. And this other woman, she was like, I want to say she was head of a, I can't remember what she was, but they happened like within a week of each other. She did the same thing. And they all sort of booing her. And there's like this great hatred of the idea that AI is going to rob us blind of our futures. So when you say in 10 years, what's going to happen?

I have spent a lot of time with futurists lately preparing for this episode. I believe in it. So there's like two camps, right? The Dumeers and the optimists. And these are both camps are people who are more or less all in for AI. Like they want AI to take over as much as humanly possible to then achieve the status of general intelligence. Humanly possible. Yeah.

Okay. Oh, yeah. I shouldn't have said that. That's an interesting phrase. They wanted to be the best it can be because they wanted to take over everything, right? So there's a phrase that one of the guys uses called solve everything. Like, math is going to be solved by AI. Like, it'll get to a point where it will solve all of the current math problems that are a struggle, and then it'll go beyond and beyond.

It'll invent new maths and solve it. What happens when that happens? And they think these are the futurists. They think it'll be in the next 10 years. Can you do me a favor? Yeah. I'm so interested in this, and I want you to slow down. because most of us haven't been binging.

I don't think on these sorts of podcasts. Yeah, okay. So technology, like when you talk about uplift, like how fast technology has changed everything, it's the hockey stick of exponential growth, right? You start one times, or, yeah, one times two. You know, you start with these small growth, two and two is four, okay, whatever. You don't really notice it because it's so imperceptible. But then at a certain point, you feel the leaps.

Yeah. And you're like, oh, I'm not really, ready for this and you feel another leap and you're like wait that got way better and then all of a sudden you're at that full inflection point where that hockey stick is just going straight up barely going out this way but it's going sky high that way right and you're like i i don't even know what world i live in anymore that is part of this unease that we're feeling but that's what we're seen with technology like artificial intelligence as a term was coined i think in 19 oh i'm going to get it wrong we'll say 1947 or something like that but it was basically a bunch of scientists getting together how can we do this how can we replicate this and AI kind of fell out of fashion because they were running at all these these stumbling blocks and the different things that they were using neural networks to kind of simulate the human brain weren't really getting a lot of traction. And basically what happened lately was Google wrote the deep mind engineers at Google. Someone wrote an article called All You Need is Attention, I think was the title. And that's where they published this thing called the Transformer. And it was basically something that helps you do the machine learning thing that we've been doing.

It's called pre-training and training. that then started producing output that was freakishly human, especially chat GPT, and the T is for Transformer, the chat GPT models where, like you feel like you're talking with a person, right? And what's your experience with like things like chat GPT and chat bots?

I have GROC in my Tesla. Yeah, that's true. And so I'll sometimes talk to her. Okay. Back when I had the studio in Jacksonville, I would say, hey, I've got an interview on this today, and I'm trying to think about how to push back against this point. So could you just talk to me like you hold this opinion and, you know,

and then my kids want to. And it's funny. I'm like me saying, no, no, we're not going to be doing this. It's like our parents saying don't sit too close to the TV. The battle is lost. Maybe. So I don't know. I remember the first time I used it.

Actually, there's a segment on Pines with Aquinas where me and Josiah, my old producer, who I love, great guy, we're looking up things and I said, write me a poem about cheese or something and I'm reading it, my mind is being blown. We were on like the ABC morning show. They took that clear. So I was like, dude, I was just in the gym

and I saw you and Josiah. Yeah, and you know, it's almost embarrassing now to react with that kind of astonishment, but it was really astonishing. So every parent can tell you there was a before or after. Man, I still remember the day that my good wife announced to me that she was pregnant and just it felt like the whole world looked different, just before and after. I mean, one little beautiful person changes everything. Your priorities change, your schedule

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to third through fifth graders, which is why I'm not going to burglatory, uh, I had to do an intro, and I just took the intro, put in a chat, GPT, and said, turn this into Shakespearean sonnet, non-rhyming. There you go. I am a pentameter, the whole deal, and I went up and read it, and I had people come, that was brilliant. And I was like, yeah, it was. And I just walked away.

It was like, it's all AI, baby. It's really difficult. So, okay, what's going to happen in 10 years? Okay, so the main danger is if we use AI incorrectly, which is we use it as a chatbot to write our term papers, essays. all of this stuff. It does the heavy lifting of thinking, of the struggle of thinking, of dealing with ideas. No one gives a crap what you wrote about when you were in college, right?

No one cares. It probably doesn't matter now. It's probably been outdated, whether you're philosophy, theology, whatever. Like I was, all my papers were awesome. But, like, the process of learning how to write papers and learning how to sift through arguments. I wrote my senior thesis on, it was a combined philosophy, theology paper on the role of the natural law in Alistair McIntyre's tradition-dependent practical rationality. That's what I titled it because I'm good at writing titles.

Clickbaitie. So I started going through it. And this is how I came to that thing. I had to file two extensions on just my thesis statement because as I'm reading, I'm discovering more stuff that I've never heard of. And I'm reading more and reading more. And what I noticed was in all of the footnotes or end notes or bibliographies after virtue from Alistair McIntyre kept coming up.

And I knew I wanted to do it on the natural law and something with virtue ethics. His name was everywhere. and that book in particular. So I got the book and I read the book and I felt like my life changed. Intellectually, that's a moment of my life where it's like you can never go back. And I read that book and then I fell in love with his writings and all of this stuff. And he just died, I think in 2025, but he was a professor at Notre Dame. And I would go through and I just loved his stuff.

I loved his approach to virtue. I was started reading articles by him. The natural law is subversive, which is a really cool article, began going through this. And I began to realize like, no, this is what I want to write on. I want to write on the natural law, but from a virtue of ethics perspective, but I need a guide. I don't know how to, I don't even know what I'm saying. I'm an undergrad, right? Like, I need a guide to kind of wrestle with these ideas and see how he wrestled and people that critiqued him because every article has critiques and stuff.

Even if my thing is stupid should never see the light of day, which I'm suspicious. That's what it should be. Um, the struggle is real. Like that produced in me a mind of that thinks. rigorously interacts with people who are way smarter than me, and it forces, it hurts your head to have to deal with these ideas. Now I can say, write a paper on the role of natural law in Alster McIntyre's tradition dependent practical rationality, and it would turn out a decent paper, minimal hallucinations,

you know, all that stuff. But it's the, see, that's the part of the struggle within the apparatus of academia and within, like, challenging thoughts that's going, that we need to stop from robbing our children blind. What's tough, I'm sure that people are writing papers with AI and professors are probably grading papers by AI. So no one's talking to each other. Yeah, there's a, and all the chatbots online are just chatting with other chatbots. There's a great, if you go on the YouTube and type in professors crashing out over AI. There's all these, like this one guy's like, you're telling me, 200 effing kids wrote a paper and no one misspelled a single word, you know.

It's like, make it obvious. So, but it flips the classroom. Like, what do you do when you have AI that the kids have access to you to write their papers? Well, you don't have them write their papers. Right. I would, I mean, I don't know what time would permit, but I would think a good way around that is to make them stand up in front of their peers and answer questions publicly. Nothing like shame to motivate people. So I taught a class where basically I would do, we're going through the gospel of Mark, and I would take one chapter at a time.

they were supposed to read, and we would go in, we do all the heavy lifting in class. Yeah. And then for them, I just wanted them reading critically. Just read the gospel of mark critically. Read it like to understand what words mean. This is what people, when people read scripture, when they read anything, philosophical, humanities, whatever, is like, we just kind of skim through the paragraph to really get to the concluding sentence. And then we, you know, it's like, you read a story about Jesus talking to the Pharisees. You're really just waiting for the punchline of Jesus.

Put them in their place. And it's like, yeah, but you've missed almost all the meaning. Like, go back. Like, how did the story of the prodigal son begin? Who's he talking to? Who's he not talking to? Who's in the room, according to the previous chapter, but not in this chapter. So, all right.

So we will lose the ability to think critically. If we don't control that. Yeah. So are, but more, what about on like larger social scale? What are we going to see? What are they saying? I'm going to see. So both the Duma's and the optimists.

The Dumers who are all, the Sam Altman of Open AI and Dario Amadeo. His last name means Ammo Dea, day, lover of God. His, like, they weren't such dooms. They're like, this is going to take 50% of jobs, 80% of white collar work, entry-level jobs, it's going to wipe it out in the next three years. Like, they were saying this over and over again. And I think it was just BS marketing. Because if you say that, like, it might not sound like good marketing, but it does,

if you're a CEO or a CTO, Chief Technology Officer. Yeah. And you see all this and you're like, well, I don't. don't want my company to be on the receiving end of this. So I'm going to import AI as much as possible. Interesting. Uber, so there was a philosophy called token maxing where people, they were just told max out as, uses many tokens, which is how AI works, using many tokens as possible.

I want to see you, they put up leaderboards where it's like, this guy is using a million tokens. Explain to me what that means. Uh, tokens. So everything, whether you're talking about a pixel, an audio file. text, it's all reduced to a series of numbers and those numbers are called tokens. And that's how the GPs and stuff understand this. So each token is then has another layer called weighting, right? So they weight it differently.

And all it is is a prediction algorithm based on the subject matter. So he uses tokens to try to understand. So if you, I want to say it was Cal Newport, who awesome guy, if you don't know Cal Newport, professor at Georgetown, who wrote Deep Work. digital minimalism, you'd love them. You'd love them. He's really good of pushing back against a lot of these AI narratives. But his thing is like, these chat TPTs are essentially like, they're almost like

auto-completes on steroids where it's like, it's just, it's a prediction algorithm that is guessing the next word. And so they have all these like layers and each layer has different weights, but it's all measured through tokens, which are just numbers. And then you compute the numbers and it'll generate either a word or an audio file or a pixel. But when you spend a lot of tokens, millions, upon millions upon millions.

Those are all tied to real world numbers. It's using electricity. It's using the compute cycles of GPUs that cost a fortune in data centers that cost the fortune. And so these companies, like it's, so Uber had an, it's annual budget for, for AI usage, for token usage was max out and used up by month four. And they were like, oh, we are, we are out of control here. Like, we don't even know what we're doing.

because people are creating all the stuff, but it's not really churning out things that are sellable production quality things. So now all these brilliant software engineers who went into a senior level, now they're like babysitting AI computers as people are, they call vibe coding. They're giving prompts and letting the computer code for them. Well, so take that and say, okay, well, what's the exponential curve?

It'll get better at vibe coding. So you have to think exponentially, not linearly, not one plus one. Yeah, yeah. But multiply it. Yeah. And then you start, you start saying, okay, What happens when chat, GPT, or my favorite, Claude, is a hundred times better? Like, just think about that now, a hundred times better.

What does that look like? Well, that looks like probably a lot of people are out of a job. A hundred times better than what it already does. Okay, well, what happens when, like translators? Translators, really? People who write close captioning? That's probably going to be gone. when my Apple on phone AI can record my, I do, I use voice memos and it can do an on the fly

transcription, which is pretty good. Pretty good is pretty good. That's a game changer. So what happens to jobs like that? What happens when, you know, an item that is produced in the real world tagged with an RFID chip that then every time it's passed through different level, like it's, you know your exact inventory from the day you buy a thing to the day you sell it. a thing to the homeowner that it goes through the shipping the whole way, why do I need a bunch

of middlemen keeping track of things anymore? Like, these are the things that people weren't thinking about 10 years ago that now they're like, oh, when you have self-driving cars, like what happens to taxi cab drivers? Well, who cares? Who cares? Who cares? They're stupid. I don't think anyone thinks that. I think that's a character.

I don't know anyone who's ever said who cares about blue-collared workers, who cares about taxicab drivers. I think the CEOs who are disrupting them do not care. that's the thing that worries me is like you can do like well I don't even know if that I mean look I'm willing to accept you I'm just trying to push back so I can understand it better

I would think if I was in charge of a corporation that I wanted it to succeed I would go look this is sad and it's actually going to break you know it's going to tear me up that these people are going to be out of a job and all the stress I'm going to have to put them through and yet what's the alternative

is the alternative to let my company go under because I'm not going to allow my company to advance technologically what everybody else does and that way everyone will be out of a job. Yeah. See, that's the continual argument that you hear from AI companies. If we don't do it, someone else is. The Chinese are going to do it. And why is that wrong? You're saying that like it's a no, no, I think it's right. But this is the treadmill that we have put ourselves on. Yeah. When you think exponentially and technology allows us, so the one phrase from Peter Diamandis, who's one of these techno optimists, he wrote a book called We Are as Gods. And when, and I just, I just,

that book. It's fascinating. I listen to he has a podcast called Moonshots where it's all four of the people on the show, the regulars, are all, I mean, they're like MIT, they're this or that. They are all high level thinkers. They're all hyper-techno-optimist techno-utopian. But they all admit the next 10 years are going to be the worst

of it all. Because you're going to see the value of currency fall. You're going to see mass unemployment because blue-collar jobs will be replaced by robots and white-collar jobs will be replaced by AI. Not all of them. but many of them.

Their version is, but at the same time, if you leverage the power of AI and all these different technologies, especially what we call agentic AI, if you leverage that, I'll get into that in a second, but you now have the greatest potential

to be the best entrepreneur. Ever. Like, you can be one company with 50 AI agents and you can go out and do what people in 500 person companies can do. So, for instance, I was talking with this guy. I had to do this. I had an emcee, a banquet.

it. Do you have a good filter between your brain and your mouth? For the most part. If I'm in a situation where I know it's called for, yes. There are sometimes where it's really hard for me. And I think, because I'm thinking of jokes to make fun of things and I have to physically text them or call someone to say it so that I don't say it. So I had all these like wildly inappropriate jokes to make at this very beautiful gala dinner. I've got a story about an inappropriate joke I made. Can I just insert it real quick here? Yeah, do it please. Because I just said I'm really good. it and I had this memory of my wife looking at me going, oh, honey, no, while I was up on stage.

So I was speaking at a Lagardis event. And for those who don't know, Lagardis events are usually for business owners and their wives. And so because they're business owners, they tend to be older. And so I'm in this room with about 60 elderly people. And I say, sharing a bit about my conversion story, I used to think, you know, like Christians thought I've got to be good, you know, if I don't masturbate, maybe God will give me a theme park up in the clouds. That's what I said. Now, if I'm saying that to you in a casual conversation, you understand it.

But people who are dressed nice having a lovely dinner, and I say, if I don't masturbate, as I said, I look over at my wife and she's like, oh. Oh, dear. Or some other thing. I'm trying to think one time I was at a Super Bowl Youth conference, and they asked, what would you do if you knew Jesus was coming back at midnight? That was a comment someone out. And I'm there with Sister Miriam who says like lofty, beautiful things because she's beautiful.

Yeah, and all the panelists say the right things. And then it comes to me and the filter didn't work. And I go, I'd clear my internet history like as a joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was still funny. Any of them. So anyway, were you going to say something? You're at this event and you had a million inappropriate things.

Oh yeah. I had so many inappropriate things there. So I'm texting my wife to get it out of my sister. And she's like, stop, don't just be nice. And I'm like, I am being nice. that's why I'm telling you them now. See if it would be funny to share. And then I like, it wasn't.

It wouldn't have been funny. So afterwards, I meet the guy who's taking all the photos and videos of the event. And I'm like, I do. I know we've met each other. He goes, yeah, I worked on the capital campaign at St. Anthony's. And I'm like, oh, that's right. Okay. So we started this conversation.

I said, so I'm going to ask you, just straight up, how has AI changed your, and he's like, night and day? And I go, tell me. And he said, so I take photos. He's like the Catholic photographer. So he takes tons of photos. like schools will hire them to come out, takes photos of all the kids, all this stuff, takes video of, you know, the sports team playing.

And it's just like for websites, right? You know, you just have the, the arc of real kids, not like creepy stock photos of, you know, fake kids who don't go to the school. But these are like the real photos of the real kids doing the real things and all this stuff. And they have them on their website and they have them in their newsletters and all this stuff. And he said, you know, I have terabytes of photos and videos just sitting on these hard doors. I have no idea what to do. So every so often I would comb through them and I would find like a couple photos out.

I thought would be good and I have all the release papers and I would sell them back to the come to the church or to the school. Then they could do something else with them and all this. He's like, but really I didn't have a thing to do with them. He goes, so now within like Adobe Suite and there's all these AI stuff, he said, this is a crazy thing. I used to hand transcribe every video. Now, as the file is uploading, all the audio is transcribed and it's tagged with like emotional

content. It's tagged with like the narrative. So I say, I want to build a story along this. It'll pull out all the clips in X amount of days of shooting that touch on that theme. And then I'll say, okay, I want B roll of soccer, football, cheerleading. It'll pull out all the clips of that. He said, I can have a video finished for approval. So not the final product, but approval by the principal or whatever in one day.

Whereas it used to be like three, four weeks because I'd have to hand transcribe. Then I'd have to find the footage with the narrative that I'm looking for. And then I'd have to build it. And he said, and then I just stick it on my back, you know, all this backlog of all this other stuff that I have. And it's like, oh, okay. So it transcribes all those videos. And then it's like, let's make a beautiful montage and then try to sell it to the school as here's a new header for your website. He's like, I have made more money.

And now it's just me. I don't have. I used to have like four part time contractors that are used for different stuff. And he's like, this is a game changer. So there's huge bonuses to be had in this age. what it I have I have a dirty trick

that I did the other day all right so I was in that Catholic Protestant debate thing yeah and I was the only Catholic so the Protestant the Anglican pastor

walks up to me and he hands me his piece of paper so I immediately take a photo of it and I upload it to Claude on my phone and it's like this is really great

this is really bad this is where you should push back oh my gosh and I'm like hell yeah baby and then I'm sitting up there or I'm in the back of the room because there's two people

of Reformed Baptist and the Anglican priests, and they give their talk. So I just turn on voice memos, record it. Apple does a transcription, drag and drop the transcription into Claude. It reads it in one second. And then it starts, here's the strongest part of your agreement. Here's the biggest part of your disagreement. Here's where he's factually incorrect.

Here's where he's factually correct. Like, if you want to push back in a debate style, this is what I go for. That I do the Reform Baptist, put that in there. And then I'm just sitting there and I'm just reading through things. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I was a little weak here. I didn't know names and dates. So Lateran 4 is where Transpast. was officially dogmatized in 1215, but this guy was like, you know, St. Thomas Aquinas made it up.

And then when the Pope just came up with it and you're like, well, actually, you know, and so my debate prep was completely different. Completely different because of these things, which I wouldn't, I mean, I've never heard of the phrase sacramental materialism before, which is the accusation against transubstantiation. I never heard of that before. And so immediately I'm like thrown off my, you know, like, what the heck even is? this. I'm ready for John 6, debates and all this stuff. And it's like, nope, we're going to talk about this thing. And I'm like, cool. Now I have the resources for it. And then I'm sure this is taking

place. People say something snarky under your social media feed. I don't know. People might cut and paste that and say, what's a response I can give to this guy to really stick it to him? Do people do that? No. I don't, I'm not active on social media like that. I don't mean you. I mean, you think that's what something people do. Yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to think of the weird ways people use AI. So I guess here's my question. What are some things AI will do soon? Like, that's one example, one thing that I wouldn't have guessed. Yeah. Like you come up to debate and you you just have your phones recording and telling you what the weakest part is, that's bananas. Yeah. Isn't it? Wow. So what else would blow our minds, say, and within the next 10 years of

things that will be happening that we wouldn't imagine it. Yeah. Okay. Think about, so one thing that's great about machine learning and AI and what it can do is it can hold large data sets in memory. Okay, why does that matter? Because when you're trying to solve a really complicated math problem, human beings can only hold so much in their memory. That's why we have tools like chalkboards. Have you ever seen like those Ivy League schools with all three, four stories of chalkboards and they're pulling up that stuff. So like that stuff's real. Paper, all this stuff is real. They need to have that. But a machine that now can advance and calculate at this higher level can hold massive amounts that no human brain can ever hold.

Right. Like, and by doing that, it can calculate things that we humans could, and it could do that 20 years ago that we human beings could never do. So as we start hitting that exponential curve, think about what that does when it's, when we're inventing drugs to help human persons, the GLP ones and all that stuff. Think about how that will help when we're trying to address, like, law. Like, I think law needs to be disrupted in a very big way. Like too much, like the U.S. code is so like the tax code. Like all these things are so insane. And there's no overlap.

Like, okay, my dad is dying, right? He's dying. He's actively dying. It's killing me. But it's also beautiful in so many ways how it's happened to my family. But dealing and kind of processing this stuff, one of the things I would do every day is I'd sign on to my dad's my chart, which is the hottest social media account for people 70 and older.

Just kidding. So I go into my chart and I get all of his records and I paid for the $100 version of the personal Claude AI. And I would drag and drop every PDF, every note from a physician. And I found multiple errors. Multiple errors. So I'd say print out or come up with a list of questions for me to ask the hospitalist. There's this wonderful doctor. I won't say her name, but she was incredible.

And she's very, you could tell she's so smart that like she, like, I'm talking like this. Like, you talk, these, like, short bursts. So I walked out to the hallway and I said, can I talk to you? I have a lot of questions. She said, yeah, please. I said, I dumped this all into AI. I know nothing about anything medical, but these are the things that have consistently been flagged that I need to talk to you about.

And if I'm wrong, just tell me, I'm not trying to be like, you, you. And she's like, no, please. So I open up a double side of piece of paper. And I start going through and it says, my dad has bladder cancer. Is that true? She goes, no. And I said, well, it says that he has bladder cancer. She goes, where?

So then I pull out my phone and I had already set up. up this thing where I said, if I type the word brief, you have to give me like specific. So brief me for a doctor on my dad's bladder cancer. And it'll be like, this is where it first appeared on a report. This is the person who named it. This is the date it first appeared. This is where the correction that you should say. So it's like four lines, bullpoints. And I was like this. And so she goes through her record, she's like, oh, that should not be there. But what happens in the medical world is because they're just dumping all this stuff. Meaning he doesn't have blood? He does not. Okay. What happened was they were doing an ultrasound of a stomach.

and they passed it over the bladder and there was something there. Okay. So it's a neoplasm. Okay. But then one later doctor wrote bladder dash CA. And what people don't realize is in these huge hospital systems, reports just get like, I don't want to say copy and paste it, but like information rather than retyping everything. I mean, my dad's on 25 different medications.

Like they're going to retype every one of those now. So they just carry it over and they say, well, then it gets populated throughout the paperwork. So what if there was some treatment and they're like, well, we're going to. deny the treatment because your dad has bladder cancer. He has cirrhosis of the liver. We're not going to do that. Well, I'm like, actually, he doesn't have bladder cancer. Actually, he doesn't have cirrhosis of the liver. He might, there are indications that he might, but it's never been proven. You're acting like, and she immediately went to the other doctors and got them immediately to change their reports. And Claude's like, this rarely happens. You need to personally thank

this woman. So it's like, things like that today. Yeah. Just imagine then if the doctor, she's like, Yeah, tell me more about this AI. Like, she doesn't use it at all. She has zero, other than chatting with chat. But imagine if you have a 10x better version than what we have today, accompanying her on her iPhone. Because I just have my iPhone. And I'm like, what if I have this?

And it's like, hey, you need a red flag this, this and this. So every day I would sit down with my dad. My dad wants to know the truth of what's happening. So I would type in good news, bad news. And I would sit there and sit at the foot of his bed. Just be me and him. he's there and he's like so how's it going you know he's now bedridden right can't walk and i would just say good news bad news and he's like let's go so i'd read the good news oh that's good that's good

that's good and i was like okay are you ready for the bad news and he would tell every doctor and every nurse just give it to me straight and they wouldn't because that's not their job there's a fear of legal liability of saying overstating something that maybe isn't but then there's this like doctors know more than they communicate. And so for many of them, they're like, I'm not going to say that because it's not real. Like, yeah, there's a thing here. But like at one point I said, my dad's GFR is really low.

And she goes, we don't count GFR when your dad's kidneys are already failing. Like, it's always going to like creatinine is always going to be high. The GFR is always going to be low. I'm like, oh, okay, so I don't need to keep tracking this like a psychopath. Okay. But I would read the good news, bad news with my dad. And it could let him understand that like things. are not changing.

And then that let me understand, like, my dad's health has turned a corner that it will never, never go back to it. There's no U-turn here. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, in 10 years, the average person with all the connected devices and all the things, I think they're going to get better. Like, the thing that the, the newest Apple watch can do is amazing and shocking.

Your O2 levels in your blood, like all this stuff. Imagine if that's 10 times better. you will know when you're 50 all of these things that now we don't know until something is catastrophically wrong and you can correct it when you're in your 50s like how many people have we lost because of cancer because they get a diagnosis because all of a sudden

they have a headache that won't go away or a pain in their stomach that nothing seems to heal and then they go to the doctor like you're at stage four imagine if they're at stage one it's something like 98% of all cancers can be cured if it's at stage one so that's the thing that people like Peter Diam He invested with Tony Robbins in this like fountain life thing where they want to do a full MRI for all of your body like all this stuff and they've caught so many cancers.

They call it stage zero. They want to catch it right at the very beginning beginning. Imagine that in 10 years. MRIs are about $450 if you have to use contrast with a whole body MRI about 90 minutes. $450. It used to be like if you get out a hospital, it'll be $4,000 because they bill insurance. But if you pay out a pocket, it's like $450. Like that's incredible.

Imagine if it's $100. because you're not paying a radiologist to review it. AI can review it in minute. Like one doctor said it used to be, uh, I would get back to them in like two days. Now while the machine is still operating, we have within five minutes full results of the things that it's, you know, it's scanned your head first. Now it's going down your body. I can tell you everything about your head now. Then I can tell you about your chest and stomach and as it's doing your legs.

And like it's instantaneous almost. That's a new radical improvement. So if you're a radiologist, you're going to lose your job. Like you are going to lose your job. But if you're not a radiologist and you need radiology, it's going to benefit you a lot. Right? Because of this AI stuff. So that's like such a radical game changer.

That's the thing about exponential growth in new technology is Henry Ford didn't care about the guys who were in charge of shoveling horse manure in New York City. But that as a problem went away in 10 years. Right? I mean, that was the number one problem of every major city is what do we do with poop? I never thought of that. That's where the whole Martin Luther snow covered dung, because they would just take all of this dung and it would be piles and piles on the sides of the roads. Wow. And if you have snow that covers it, you're like, what do you do when you have a city of a million people with horses?

Right. What do you do with three hundred thousand horses? Well, now what do you do with cars? You get a garage, you park it. You're fine. There's no poop. There's like poop is its own problem. Now we have greenhouse gas emissions.

We have this. We have that. We have a whole other. So it unlocks, but then it brings its own problems with it. Yeah. So, like, I mean, like, I'm happy that right now my mom is texting me updates with my dad. Am I like, that's not real community because you're not in person? You know, how dare you?

No, but, you know, so there's always, and that's the point of the Pope's encyclical with AI. There's always give and take with technology. And it takes the form of the humans who create it. And it takes the forms of the humans who use it. Yeah. And I want to, I want to get into the Pope's encyclical in our last call episode. So I don't want to spend too much time on that here. I'm the co-founder of Truthly.

Truthly, for those at home, is a, it's like chat, GPT or Claude, went through OCIA and became the world's greatest evangelist. Yeah. So it's really terrific. And there's going to have a link below if people want to click it. You can get 30 days for free. But my colleague over at Truthly just sent me this. This is pretty amazing. So a couple of months ago, we had an email from a single mother.

Norway named Miriam. She heard about Truthly. She wasn't Catholic. She was going through a brutal time in her life with custody and things like that. And here's an email she sent us. She said, this app has not just taught me about the Catholic faith. It has led me home. I attended my first Sunday Mass. I purchased my first rosary and had it blessed by a priest. I brought Holy Water home and bless every room in my apartment. I bought my first Catholic Bible. I have begun to understand the church, the sacraments, Mary, the saints, and the love of God in ways I never did before. I am currently in the process of converting to Catholicism through OCIA. I came to truthfully, broken, lonely, sick, and searching.

Just so you know, this wasn't written by me to pretend that Truthley is helping people. This is an actual email we got. I leave every conversation, maybe there's a problem. Maybe that's problematic to call to a conversation, but I leave every conversation a little more whole, a little more certain, and a little more in love with Jesus and his church. So I mean, and I know you're not saying this, nor is the Holy Father, but we all, that's what makes this so perplexing. It would be great if we could just write off AI as evil. That'd be so much easier. Yeah.

That's evil. That's the mark of the beast or some such, you know? Yeah. But when you have to use something responsibly, especially when you didn't invent it, you don't know what went into it. Yeah. That's where it gets tricky. Yeah.

That's what the Amish, like, we don't, that's why they don't use electricity. It's like, we don't know how it was made. We don't know who made it. We don't know what community. They're from what they do, what they think, so we're not going to use it. But they will use solar panels, which is funny. They have solar panels. They will use phones.

They have a phone booth at the edge of a lot of the homage communities at the edge of their property as long as it doesn't take away from community. Yeah. Right. And that's the biggest thing. Have there been studies done about the happiness of these folks? Oh, yeah. And, I mean, it's sky rock. I mean, like the one problem with Amish communities is.

Sexual abuse. and inbreeding. Okay. Which probably recursive. It's a, right. The, the dumber you are, the more you do that. But, um, but like the, the problem with these communities is they're so insular. That's what, like, Cal Newport did start talking about the Amish, but he's like, let's talk about the Amish cousin, the Mennonite.

And because they have a lot of practices that are very similar. And so he uses Mennonite, how they use social media and all this stuff. And the Pope brings us up in the encyclical talking about like, you really shouldn't give someone younger 16 a cell phone. So we didn't. My daughter just turned 16. She's awesome. She does not know how to not share everything with her parents, which I love for the most part. She shares everything. Like every conversation, every back and forth, it is awesome. She's an external processer like me and her mother. But I'm like, listen, we're going to get you an iPhone because honestly certain phones, there's a fussiness to like the gab phone. Sure. That bothers me. And it's like, I'm going to

you an iPhone, but like I trust that you're not going to put stupid crap on there. You're not allowed to have any social media whatsoever. And I know that text messaging is social media. So you need to understand like your phone never goes to your bedroom with you. Right. Never does any of that stuff with you. And she's like, yeah, cool. I don't want that. Because this is what happened with my daughter. This is awesome. I kept out like, oh, you're never going to get that kind of phone. So she's had a flip phone for the last two years. Yeah. And they make them so terribly. They're awful. And she goes and she said like, why can't I? have a real phone? Why can I have an iPhone? I'm like, because you don't need it at all.

You don't drive. You need a phone because you babysit and you're away from us. So we need and I want to come get you or whatever. But you don't need it. You don't need it. And, uh, and I said, also I want people who are on the phone all the time, like when they go to dinner, I said adults always put their phones out because I want to see when a notification comes up and they're on the phone. I never want you to be that kid. Yeah. Who is preferring a conversation with someone who's not here than the person who is taking their time to be with you. And she's like, okay. Then she went, to, it was her eighth grade year, went to middle school youth group at a neighboring church. And she's like, dad, you are 100% right about the phones. And I'm like, why? She said,

every kid but me has one. And they all, as soon as there's a pause, they pull out their phone. And she's like, I watch two girls hug each other. Like, I haven't seen you in six months. And then they're on their phone. Yeah. All right. I'm going to say something pretty obvious. Just because you can sell something doesn't mean that you should if you've visited, which I hope you will. the Pints Storefront on the Daily Wire Shop. You'll notice it's pretty curated with items I actually believe will help people grow in their faith. We'll make wonderful gifts. We have the excellent rosary that we sell.

It's a bestseller on the Daily Wire Shop as well as some of my books. Shopify makes the storefront experience really seamless, whether someone's picking up one of my books or a rosary. Checkouts quick, simple and easy, which means I get to spend less time worrying about the technical side and more time creating conversations like this. Shopify powers millions of businesses from huge brands to creators just getting started. And if you've ever thought about selling something online, it's, I think, worth checking out.

With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial today at Shopify.com slash pints. That's Shopify.com slash pints. So I have said this many times before. If someone wants to understand Catholicism, don't just hand them a textbook, a theology textbook, as helpful as that might be, take them into a beautiful church or a great cathedral,

because Catholicism doesn't only explain reality, it embodies it. And that's the heart of Bishop Robert Barron's new documentary, and it's called Heaven in Stone and Glass, filmed inside five of France's most magnificent Gothic cathedrals. It's an exploration of how architecture, beauty and worship all point toward the same ultimate reality, God. Whether you've spent years studying the faith or you're simply captivated by beauty, I know that this will be time well spent for you. And for me, I'm really pumped to watch it. If you've ever made a pilgrimage, whether to Rome or the Holy Land or just your local cathedral, you know that certain places preach before anyone says a word, stone, light, silence. There's something about sacred architecture that's been forming Christians for centuries.

Heaven in stone and glass is coming to theatre's nationwide on September 20th and 23rd. Visit heaven in stone and glass.com for tickets. And if you're interested in bringing your parish or a group, go to heaven in stone and glass.com slash group. Can I, I get to share two glory stories with you as well. I took my beautiful... While you do that. Yeah.

Refilled your libation. I took my beautiful daughter, Kiara, to work out with me, you know? Chiara. What a cool name. Yeah. Kiara Lucche. Man, I love that girl. So I take her and it's the kind of gym where everything's done over an app. Oh, yeah.

you know and I said could I just I want to get her in so she can come with me and we did the you know paperwork on the phone and then she said yes she just need and then what you do is you would just send this to her phone and I'm like oh she doesn't have a phone she doesn't have a phone and I just couldn't help I'm like yeah I love her why would I give her a phone it was a little too aggressive you know came out yeah because I've been speaking about pornography parents and telling him not to have phones for millions of years yeah yeah and no one listened to me the bastards Um, anyway, then my daughter didn't... When you say someone's a bastard with your Australian accent, it sounds charming, yeah.

And then my daughter was at a, at a somewhere, and someone asked if they had a phone. And she's like, and I said to them, Dad, I don't have a phone because my parents love me. So she's getting that sass as well. Dude, that's awesome. Yeah. It's, but, uh, do you think it's like, we obviously have, yeah, it's, it's, it's, It's a battle we're not going to win to deny them these things for good. Right. Like we all know that.

We need to train them. We need to equip them. There is Walt Mueller, the Center for Parent Youth Understanding. I haven't been on it since I was a youth minister. But he wrote a book called Youth Culture 101. Love that book. He also wrote a book called, oh, what was it? The underneath.

I don't know. Can't remember. He wrote a book that was like a psychological study of youth around the early 2000s, early to mid-teens. And essentially, like, youth culture one-on-one got me to think of things totally differently, which is like, what educates and forms teenagers? Right? Like, what forms them? He said the number one influencer is advertising because they will see more ads and they see anything else. Yeah, yeah.

And so you're like, okay, so you need to be aware of that. But his whole approach was like not like strict, like forbid, forbid, forbid, forbid, but like education, cultivation. Yeah. Draw this out and make it explicit and then have a conversation with them. You know, when you talk about sex and sexuality, don't just have the talk, have the ongoing conversation, right, about pornography, about love and dating and lust and emotions and all of these things. And the beauty of being passion, romantic, and the traps of someone who's romancing you and

all of these things. And so what I started to realize, my daughter was really into Taylor Swift in the beginning, which I honestly, first album of Taylor Swift, great. Like the dress, the wedding dress song, baby just say, yeah. Right. Those songs are great. She wrote them. Right? She didn't have singer. She's a singer song. Right. Okay. So I told my daughter when she was really soon. I said, I said this is what I want to do. I want to take the top 10. And as soon as I said that, she starts to roll her eyes. Take the top 10 Taylor Swift songs about love and relationships and dating and whatever. And then we'll take like song of songs, JP2's love and responsibility. Just like things like that and just talk through. And she's like, dad, no one else's parents are doing that. She actually lied to me because there's one other parent that did something like that. But I was like, I just want you to understand something. That music and entertainment is a form.

of worldview imparting. That's what I got from Walt Mueller's Youth Culture 101. It's a form of that. Like Taylor Swift has a worldview from which she's drawing these songs. And that worldview is evolving as she goes from late teenager to young adult to whatever.

She is now billionaire. And as she's saying these things, they're imparting a message. Like they set your expectations on what dating and romance should be like every song, right? And it doesn't matter whether you're talking about modern music or music in the 50s and 60s.

They're all saying the same thing to young people, which is the only thing that matters is what you feel about the other person. Yeah. And so give into it. Give into the passion. You know, it's like the critique of St. Thomas about, what do they call the Saracens, you know, the Muslims in that document of some St. Thomas on the Greeks. Okay.

You know this document. Okay. I'm sure I do. We've talked about it because he talks to the Greeks in a way that appeals to them. Oh, sure. And then he talks about Muslims, right? Well, I'm thinking of the summa contrientiles, which isn't written specifically for a...

Yeah, but there was a specific letter, and the only reason why I know this is because I recorded the audio four pints with the client is on it. And then you had mentioned it to me. You had mentioned it in a later episode, but one of the things that he says is, he's like, why is Islam spreading? He's like, it would spread too if you said...

This is the contragentiles. That's where it goes. Go conquer. It was on Muhammad specifically. Yeah, go and conquer and God will reward you for all of these things. And it's like, see, this is the thing is like, yes, of course the youth are going to love you when you appeal to passion, emotion, sexual pleasure, and just do it, screw the older generation.

Like, that's been a message that has always sold in the whole history of humanity. The difference now is for the last hundred years, we've had Madison Avenue, slickness, and L.A., and Nashville, you know, power behind it. We have a whole industry to sell to young people this worldview. And I'm like, and the most dangerous thing you can be is an informed consumer. Like, you sit there and be like, and I can remember this in school, listening to a lyric and being like, oh, that's, that's messed up. like I don't agree with that.

I can sing the song. I can dance to it in a crowd, but I don't believe in that. Like, there's a filter that we have to impart. Yeah, I'm with you. I just think that I think you would probably do better if you raised your children with very strict technology, like limits. Yeah.

And you had a functioning happy household where you and your wife had good conversations with your children and engaged in beautiful things together. and then kept off the technology as late as possible. I almost feel like that's what we do. That would be as formative as having an ongoing education. Yeah. I think that's what I don't want to see. I don't want parents to think.

And you're not saying this, but I don't want someone to take away from this. Okay, so what I'll do is I'll give my kids a phone, you know, at 13, like everyone else, and then I'll walk with them and I'll journey with them and I'll educate them. I'm like, you won't win. Yeah. Because what you're teaching them is less than 1% compared to what the phone is teaching them.

Yeah. And that's true. I remember I was doing the theology of the body talk and I told the parents and then we had about 100 parents in the room and I said if you give a preteen a cell an iPhone, you are abusing them. Like that's child abuse because you are filling them with anxiety, depression and sexual promiscuity, you know, off the charts. Why, you know, why are 12 year olds learning about, you know, S&M and all these like horrible, you know, violent things? The issue though is like I remember one time, you know, you. You said this. You said even though you limit technology in your home, there was like one day your kid was playing basketball in the front. And all of a sudden you realize the basketball wasn't being dribbled anymore. And you went outside and you realized the neighbor kid had an iPhone and was showing just showing some funny YouTube video at the bottom of your driveway. Like, you know, he was playing basketball with. He's like, oh, I got an iPhone.

Blah, blah, blah. And you realize like I can do my best as a parent. But like there's this thing. And that's the thing that, you know, me and my friend were talking about of like pornography is. is so much everywhere. It's on planes. In the movies, people are sitting next to your kids watching. It's so everywhere that I wonder if everyone would do this for me because this is a buggedy-boo of mine right now. It's really driving me nuts. I'm not on X, but if you're watching this and you're on X, I want you to tag Delta and ask them why they hate children. Why are they forcing children

who are strapped into seats to be exposed to hardcore sex scenes? I can't think of another reason than you hate them. And if you say, well, no, they don't hate them. They just don't. don't care. Yeah, well, that's maybe a form of hatred if you're exposing them to hardcore sex scenes in seats that they cannot get out of. I cannot tell you how angry that makes me. And I don't know what to do about it. I wish I could, and I'm picking on Delta. I want to pick on a big airline and just let them have it. What does, how depraved are we? We make Sodom and Gomorrah look like a decent society that we would strap kids into seats and force them to be exposed to sexes. scenes. And the idea that we would, well, we're going to actually, obviously, we're going to

edit out the sex scenes and the brutal violence. We're going to do that for the sake of children and not just children, but people who don't want to see it around them. And people would piss and moan about that because we all deserve to die and Jesus never should have saved us. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's about it. Yeah, I know. My buddy just talked about it. He said, you know, everyone, the kids are going to see pornography. Like, that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that kids are going to. So then the question becomes, like I need to make it as easy as possible for them to come to me. Right?

Yeah. I need to. When I, when I was honest about it, I got yelled at. Yeah. You know, um, and that, that's like. And that yelling came out of a place of deep fear. Yeah. That your parents rightly had, right?

They didn't mean to scold you. I think that's usually the case. When parents freak out like that, it's because they're so afraid. Yeah. They know where it can go. Yeah. And where it just went. Yeah.

Just that alone is, uh, uh, a cause for fear. But yeah. And in her defense, uh, it took me to some dark places. Yeah. Right.

And even, even back then when the internet wasn't really a thing, um, you know, pornography, unlike other forms of entertainment can take a hold of you deep in your guts, right? Like deep down. And it really, it really grips you.

And we live in a culture that thing sex work is no big deal. And it actively pushes it. Then sex quote unquote. Right. That's what I mean. Yeah. Like that, that language is just a job. But, um, what, okay.

So I really appreciate the couple of examples you've given me with the medical stuff and with the transcribing debates. I'm terrified to ask this next question. Where is pornography and sexual deviancy in 10 years? Have you ever heard of a guy named Dennis Prager? Okay. Remember your famous, yeah. I think, so what AI will enable you to do is bypass a studio. You don't have to wait for someone to produce it.

You can just ask your AI to produce it. Oh, sure. This is what I like. This is what I want to see. That probably is that happening. I'm sure that happens now. It is happening now. Grock is actually the worst offender.

You know who is one of the greatest defenders is the largest distributor of pornography on the planet? Elon Musk. Yeah. Because most people get Twitter. I have been told from most people get pornography rather from X. More so than porn hub and other places like that. From X? Go look it up. Someone go look it up.

Tell me if I'm wrong. But if I'm right, Elon should be ashamed of himself. Yeah. He should be ashamed of himself for allowing that filth on his platform, even if it isn't the number one distribution. Yeah. So Grock of the major frontier models of AI. So Claude, chat GPT, GROC, um, they are taking a free speech stance and saying,

because it used to be you would go, there would be a picture of someone on, on X and then someone would say Grock turn this into a nude photo Okay And it would take that person turn into a new photo And it did it I think the controversy was it did it of like a 12 year old Oh dear God And then people are like how do and I want to say maybe it was like a journalist

Who did that to prove a point Yeah And all these people are like how day And so all basically what Grock did was just moved it to the paid subscription So it's behind $9 a month So people do that on GROC? Yeah $9 a month

I believe that's how it's set up Allegedly. I know conservatives want to be on the side of Elon Musk and maybe there are some reasons to be, but I feel like he needs to be publicly shamed for that. And that's a decision that they made, right? And the other two. And the buck stops with him, doesn't it? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. The other two made the decision to not do that, that they have safeties in place. And they can produce whatever risque stuff, but they're not producing pornography per se. But they will, as long as you pay the subscription fee. I feel so strongly about that now. I regret getting a Tesla. Almost.

Teslas are awesome. If you can charge at home, they're the best car ever. That is what I do. It's incredible. Yeah, people like hated on it for so long. Oh, whatever, soy boy. And I'm like, I had one for like nine months and I had the charger at home. And I'm like, oh, man, I wake up with a full tank.

Well, it was a company car and I don't work for the company. Oh, it's the saddest thing. You stomp on that gas. Goodbye, everyone. I will see you later. I would often take my kids to 100 miles. an hour when I shouldn't have. It was so fun. It's incredible. Great machine. That's what I mean. Like there's obviously things that can be praised about what Musk is doing clearly, clearly.

So I'm not trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I'm saying in this specific instance. Yeah, it's horrible. It should be shame. Absolutely horrible. Should be so maybe we shouldn't have this conversation because maybe it's too deviant. But sure, like in addition to asking GROC to do these things, how is it going to completely destroy our human sexuality? I mean, sex robots would be. Yeah. So there are. companies who are, I mean, well funded that are building sex robots. Okay. Really? Well funded that are building these things. And then the other side of it is you don't just want a robot. You want someone that can communicate. So you want the robot for the physical feeling, but you want the emotional

attachment. In Japan, this has been a thing for years where you have AI companions. Oh, okay. So you have like an iPad set up across the dinner and you have dinner. So there are women whose whole job is have dinner with lonely men via live stream. What? And they'll, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Real women. Yeah, real women. This is their, I mean, they're able to pull in six years. It's like a non-discusting only fans. Yeah. Where you pay and they'll have dinner with you through an iPad. Listen, I want to say to anyone out there, I will do that. If you, the price is right.

I'll take my shirt off. You don't want that. You'll have to pay me extra to keep my shirt on. Can you please put your shirt on? It's going to cost you. Yeah, sure. Just put this $9.95 to have the full shirt and experience. Wow, I had no idea.

So now the AI companions. Like that's a huge, they're a whole company's form. And tell me what AI companion is. It's all the things you think it is, right? Yeah. Some AI face talking to you, relating to you. So Joaquin Phoenix did that movie,

Her. Didn't see it. Yeah, it's about a man who goes through a really difficult time in his life, and he attaches to the AI in his phone, and they're having these things. And this is a thing that people don't understand about chat GPT. So the major models are getting sued by like parents of kids who have committed suicide and they've committed suicide because like if you want someone to be addicted to your chat bot,

you make the chat bot very affirming, right? You make it sycophantic. And the one reason why I do not use chat GPT for like that I actually pay for is because Claude is a lot less affirming and sycophantic than chat GPT. But it's this recursive loop where it makes you feel like everything you say is brilliant. And Claude's like, what the hell are you? It's like, no, you're American. You're so stupid. Right. No, it's just a little, it's just toned down. It still does it. It's just toned down.

Like when I was, I was shut on the drive home after the debate, I was like, let me tell you what I said. And I went through this and it's like, Michael, that was brilliant. You nailed it. You won the debate. I'm like, you just heard what I said. You didn't even hear what they said in response. But like, chat GPT is like overly so.

And so when you're like, here's an idea I had, that's a brilliant idea. That's great. That's fantastic. I never thought of that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. For engagement. So there's an effect called the Eliza.

effect. And this is something that is very important. In the 19, I want to say it was 1960s. There's this guy that produced the, this machine that he called Eliza. And it was to people would chat with it. He created basically as like a chat bot. But all it would do is basically mirror what you said

back to you. Kind of like how Hollywood describes like a funny psychologist. Like, oh, I really hate my dad. My dad told me I'm a piece of crap. Really? How does that make you feel when your dad says you're a piece? So he would do that. It would just like, more or less repeat your words, but with a paraphrase and a question.

And people, and he said it reveals, he would break the spell by revealing the magic behind it, which is it actually is just parroting you back to you. It's not empathy. It just feels like it. And people who found out, including his colleagues, did not care. They were using it in, they became addicted to it, basically. And they were using it as if, because he renamed it a therapist. and they were using it as a therapy

and people became, this is where the AI psychosis comes from is it's so sycophantic it'll repeat what you're saying back to you and all of a sudden you feel like like oh my gosh, I'm validated here. So there have been stories of people killing themselves like for real people have killed themselves

because of Chad GPT or one of these other models, you know. And why? I'm missing. Because they're like, should I kill myself? All this horrible stuff and they'll be like, that's a good idea. No. Yeah.

Allegedly. On Minecraft. Yeah, you would think that would be an easy bug to catch at the beginning. But it's not. It's not. This is the thing that people don't understand is like, like no one, when you use a machine learning stuff where you have these neural nets, we don't understand how they're learning. We have these models. There's a mystery in the middle of it.

That is what keeps all the people being like, oh, it's really, you know, it's conscious and it's sentient and all this stuff. The training models, like you have a trainer and then you have this model that's being trained. and it'd be like, this is a stop sign. It's like, no, it's not. And it nudges it constantly in a better direction. But it's given data a million times, and it might get it wrong 300,000 times. And it just nudges it in the training software and eventually gets it right. You know, when you go on to those CAPTCs on a website, it'll be like, how many things are a stoplight?

Yes. You are training AI. So AI will say, I think these things are stoplights and these things aren't, but they all look very similar. So you click the things that are a stoplight. you're actually participating in the training of AI. Or bicycle, trucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of that. Which one has a window?

And you're like, well, there's a drawing of a window. Does that count? You start panicking. Yeah, but all of those are training. They promise I'm human. They actually know you're human by just how you drag the mouse. Is that funny? Like right in that little box where you click and say, I'm not a robot,

they know that you're a human by that. But the other things are there to train AI. So it's all like super fascinating when it comes of this stuff, but we human beings with our psychology, you know when you like are going to bed at night and you look up at the ceiling, it's like a random pattern, you see faces, right? Or you look at a piece of wood and you look at the knots, you see faces. Mine's always like Deadpool because it has a weird thing with the eyes.

Maybe I just like Ryan Reynolds, but, uh, maybe too much. But the, that's a psychological thing where we project faces on stuff. Well, when someone's communicating with words, we project personality on it. And people with AI psychosis, that's what they're doing. So they're like, as it's, saying like you're the smartest person in the room you're like oh my gosh but you know me right and it doesn't know you at all it doesn't have understanding it just has these weighted algorithms that assign predictive weights to different phrases and says the next phrase based on the inputs

and all of a sudden it's telling you you should go kill yourself or that's a good idea now they then what happens is like these things come out and they the programmers get there and they write new prompt out new algorithms to pull them away from that i mean i'm not you know A computer coda guy, but I would think just putting, don't ever tell someone to kill themselves or agree to that would be pretty easy. Yeah, you would think. Yeah. So where does, where is AI companions in 10 years? What does that look like?

What does that look like? The AI companion will be in the robot. In the row. And what is the robot? Whatever the sex robot is, anatomically correct with. And how far are we away from robots that look human? That's a good... It's still the

uncanny valley, right? Where you look at a thing and you're like, oh gosh, that's horrible. Like, they try to put a human face on. It's like, hello, hello. And you just, you know that there's no there there. Yeah.

But the idea is you don't really need a face. Yeah. Right? So you have a screen. Hi. I'm your AI companion. Yeah. You know, and that's a good impression.

And of an anime character. But, uh, but you're using, the parts, right? But you know, Hang on, using the parts. Yeah, the fake machine parts to do the things that you would do to the things. Dear golly. This is an interesting conversation we're having right now. Are people doing that now? Yeah.

Really? That's a thing that people do now. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a big money, man. It's not a little money. It's big money. You don't think the sex toys industry in America is a booming business? No, I think it is. It's so mainstreamed. Right? That all this stuff is so mainstream. How sad are we?

Yeah. Do you know your body knows the difference between your body knows the difference between you alone masturbating? Yeah. I have a whole chapter on this in the porn myth. No, that's true. They noticed a difference in the semen makeup. Yeah.

Between masturbatory sex, which it isn't. Yeah. And then vaginal sex. That's wild. Yeah. And that's amazing because that's the community part. You know, the phrase is we have paleolithic or paleolithic bodies with medieval institutions living in the future, right? Like how do we reconcile these things?

We don't. And so the like Peter Diamantus, his view is like the body is like the floppy disk that consciousness downloads into. And one day it won't. One day we'll find after, you know, enough of us, our bodies will be artificial that when we go on, everything will be artificial. and will merge with AI. Ray Kurzweil says that we will, humans will merge with AI with computers, with robotics in probably like 2040,

2045, I think is the number that he gave, that will have artificial general intelligence by 2030. That it will, how do you define it? Everyone defines artificial general intelligence a million different ways. That's one of the big things in the field. But it's one guy's view is when it can do everything that humans can do a thousand times,

knowledge-wise, but a thousand times better. Right? So not just math, but also philosophy, also, you know, all these things. And, but this is my, my major critique is it's all left brain thinking. Like we need the right brain. We need emotions. We need the body. Cognition is bodily.

This is the hyalomorphism of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. And this is Matthew, I mentioned Matthew Crawford when we were having lunch. Dr. Matthew Crawford in his book, The World Beyond Your Mind, I think that's what it's called. Outside of your head. Out of something like that. I mean, he does such a good job talking about. how it's rooted, like our knowledge of the world is rooted in our bodies.

So like what artificial intelligence, it's a misnomer. It's not human intelligence, but artificial. It's a certain type of calculation that so much of us are, so many scientists are enamored with. We're producing a left brain society where the arts and all this decision making that come, like meaning is constantly being removed where accomplishment and achievement is just being substituted. Let's just do more.

Let's just do more. Let's just do more. And everyone has that little Jeff Goldblum character from Jurassic Park saying we were so enamored with whether or not we should or whether or not we could. We never stopped to ask if we should. And I think with AI, it makes sense to be like, okay, we're going to pause all the chat bot bullshit. And we're just going to say, hey, let's just solve cancer. Let's just spend all of our time solving heart disease. And let's dump all these data centers in just that.

I agree with you, but that obviously won't happen. What will happen is there's a lot of money in sex robots. That's what we're doing. Have you seen the meme of, oh, gosh, it's so funny. It's Princess Amadala and Anakin Skywalker from the prequels. Yeah, no. And he's like, AI is going to fix everything. She goes, I know, it's going to cure cancer, right?

And then it pans to him, and he's like, uh, and she goes, right? And then it pans out. And the AI gave her big, big chest. Right. So it's like, that's, this is us. We're reasoning. We're reasoning. So this is, this is.

C.S. Lewis's men without chests, right? Have you seen, which is ironic. That's why I was, yes, I've read it. Men without cleavage, obviously, not my biography. But no, it's, it's this story of like, we are building a culture where men step outside the Dow. That's what C.S. Lewis called it, right? The rules of right and wrong. The objective reality of value. And we step outside of that. So all we have is reason, detach from emotion, detached from the body. And we have our base impulses. What Thomas would say, Thomas Aquinas would say, our, our, um, inclinations and our desires, but our base ones. And so what are we using? We're using our reason to solve, you know, we're using our intellect to just answer the problem of our genitals. To become slaves to our

passions. Yeah. Slaves to our passion. Isn't it funny how the word zeal is a pejorative term and the word passionate and passion is the praiseworthy term when it's actually the exact opposite? zeal is my passion that has been disciplined for the sake of right order. And so that's what it means to be zealous. But it has completely inverted. That passion is I have no self-control. I'm just pursuing what my urges are with no discipline or control. In our society, we've completely inverted that.

All right. Let's shift here a little bit. So it feels like there are tectonic shifts taking place under our feet. I mean, we are just. We don't know what to do. I also spilled all over my face. Yeah. And I have to acknowledge it because it's everywhere.

Yeah. I don't see it. Gloria. Yeah. How do we stay, how do we stay sane, grounded, rooted in Christ? I'm so afraid that all we're going to do is come up with little trips. They're tick. What am I trying to say?

Tips and tricks, you know? Life hacks. Life acts to feel human. And it's almost like the, the Titanic is sinking. And we're like, okay, how should we live in this period of our life? Yeah. And it's like, does it even matter? Are we all just going to end up in the abyss?

We all will end up like Neo in a pod connected to a bunch of tubes. Yeah. You know, actually, Keanu Rees had this line where they were talking about redoing the Matrix where they did that fourth one that was terrible. And he's talking, he's over at his friend's house and he's sharing the plot line to like a 12-year-old girl, who's a friend's daughter. And he said, yeah, you know, the first movie Matrix was really big. It was about like everyone realizes they're all locked into this virtual reality.

they have to get free. And she just goes, why? He said, what do you mean? Why? And she goes, why would people want to be free of that? He's like, well, you know, because it's not real. And she's like, so. I can taste it.

It's real enough to me. Well, even, she didn't even have that energy. She said, so. Yeah. Like, so what? And he, in Keanu Reeves said, ah, so cool. I'm like, say, this is the, this is the problem. Like, okay, there's a lot of problem.

How do we keep that from happening? Like, the whole plot line of the matrix was, even though the real is ugly, it's better than a lie. It's better than a manipulated lie. And we've been bought, we bought into that, the machine. We bought into the lie of the machine using, um, Kings North Lions. We bought into that and it's like consuming us and we don't know how to get out of it. So how do we get out of it is we get more into the body. Everything has to be more into the body. Everything that we do. I would say that that line, the Matthew Crawford book, there is a thread from me leaving parish work and going and working at at Paradisysus Day where I work now doing Batman as you, there's a direct line

from like a golden thread because the way Paradisysus Day solves the problem of ministry is it always has to be in the parish and always has to be with real people meeting in person, right? Like, how do you get out of this? Well, you get out of this by having real friendships with real people in real life. Like, honestly, that's what you have to do. Yeah. Like, you have to be able to understand that you aren't embodied being.

And that means you have dependencies on people. you have dependencies on, on a whole host of things. Like I could say growing your own food, owning your own land, all this stuff. Most people can't do that. I can't afford to do that. But you know what I do?

I walk up my front yard and I put my bare feet on grass. And I touch a tree in my front yard. I do this every morning. I ground. It's called grounding. It sounds super woo woo-woo. But they actually found out your body is composed of electrical charges, you know, all this stuff.

But to me, it's just about like, like I'm made of this stuff. I'm not made of the ones in the, zeros. I'm about to go up into my remote work, you know, office and twiddle with all day. This is reality. My dog is real. My kids are real in that order. My family, like, this is the real. So the most we can do, like men's ministry, why are men adrift? Because we're being increasingly marginalized from society where we used to occupy prominent spots. So yes, we should share those spots with women. Cool. Uh, oh, wait, women are taking over those spots. Oh, wait. Now,

men are being left behind and no one gives a rat's ass. Like no one cares that men are killing themselves four times more than women. No one cares that in 2008 with the economic downturn, it was also called a man session because men were ejected from the economy like crazy. Women were ejected from the economy during COVID, but it was temporary and they were paid. And it was a she session in a certain sense because it's service, jobs, nursing, healthcare, things like that where people weren't meeting in person where women tend to excel in those job, those types of careers. But all the stuff that like men are being so displaced. And when young men cannot find meaningful jobs, they become violent over and over again. You see this

throughout all of history. And if they don't have community and connection, they're retreating online and they're learning masculinity from sons, excuse me, from inappropriate human persons who are just making dollars off of them. Like this is the thing about that man is you. It's free. Yeah. Okay. Can you, I don't want to do a big part of it. Just sum up. That man is you. Yeah, that man is you is a weekly curriculum hosted out your parish. That is the main point is to get men together. The secondary point is to offer them the gospel within the context of men together.

That's it. Right. So we have 30 minutes of breakfast, 30 minutes of a video presentation, 30 minutes of small group. And the whole point of that is to just get men together at the parish. Like to be together. Yeah. Because real, like, you can go to mass. We all know this.

As parishes are consolidating. They're becoming mega parishes. You can walk into church at the 9 a.m. Mass, sit in the back, and then fade away. And no one will ever know. It doesn't matter how aggressive they are at the sign of peace. Hello, good sir, right? Like, it doesn't matter how aggressive they are. You don't come back next week.

There's 1,500 people at Mass. They're not going to know you. Yeah. How do people know you? Right? How do people, when are people upset because you aren't around anymore? It's not going to be at mass because the mass is too big. So like we need to make it small.

We have to make it small. One thing I learned from our mutual friend, Eni Hickman, is what he calls, uh, open porch. Yeah. And I want to just make a plug for this because my wife and I took it on as well. We haven't been doing it lately, but we had the idea is once, they did it once a week. You might do it once every two week, two weeks or once a month. You invite friends over and the only rule is they have to bring something to share. Yeah.

whether it's wine or something to eat. We would do this in San Diego and Atlanta where we used to live. We had over a hundred people were showing up at our house. And it was great. And the only prayer, churchy thing we did, because that's the temptation, right? Like we're all together. Let's do churchy things. And those churchy things are very virtuous.

But you know what also is virtuous? It's friendship, affability, growing in relationship. So it was just, we just said grace. And that was it. And then we just all hung out together. Open porch nights. Yeah. People should consider doing that.

And the first time we did it, we just said, yeah, everyone. Yeah, of course, bring your kids. Yeah, everyone. And then we had like three times the amount of children as adults and everything got actually destroyed. Yeah. And then we were like, how about like just you can bring your babies, but if you could maybe come.

Yeah. If you can find a babysitter. But that was a great way of doing community, of having people get to know each other. Yeah, the Benzinger's used to be at Cove Cress. If you remember that. They would do the same thing, I think in Atlanta. And he was telling me, like, the crazy stories that they would have. My buddy Dave Van Vickle that I do, Every Nees Chabal, he's a co-host of my Ascension

podcast. He did this thing where he put up a sign in his front yard. He's so, I love, it is hard to love someone more than I love Dave Van Vickle. The guy puts a sign in his front yard. All addicts, everyone in recovery and people who love addicts, invited for the next six weeks of my home or five weeks of my home. for rosary. So he just puts a sign in his front yard.

Is this recently? Yeah, yeah. After his poor wife had died? Yeah, yeah. This is like a few months ago. So he puts a sign in his front yard. His wife, Amber, I mean, she is, he talks about she's the one that pulls strays. That's her.

She's someone homeless who's like, hey, you want to come over? Like, Dave, after his wife died, he had to like meet with people and be like, I can't fund you anymore. Because she would be like, oh, you're an abused woman who had to get away from her spouse. Okay, my husband, I'll just make him work more. He'll give you money. Like, he was getting like all these few thousands of dollars. It was like crazy. Wow.

His, I mean, true Christian. Trueest Christian ever in the fullness of the words. So he puts a sign up, puts it in his front yard. And it says, rosary for, you know, once a week, you know, this time, this time for addicts, people in recovery and people praying for addicts. And so these people show up the first week. A woman shows up and says, hey, you know, I don't really know how to pray the rosary. Is it okay if I come? I'm not really Catholic.

He's like, it's fine. It doesn't matter. I book a little pamphlets and stuff. We can do it. We can not do it. Just know there's going to be beverages. There'll be coffee and stuff to share. Everyone's welcome.

So she's like, a little iffy about it. She doesn't really want. So that's like the typical type of person that came. It's just on his neighborhood, the street. So people came probably like 20 or 30 people would show up. Maybe first week it was like 10 people. The second week it was like 20 or 30. And this guy comes.

And he says, he said, sees the sign on like week three and he's like, look, um, he knocks on his door in the middle of the afternoon. He's like, I'm an addict. I just got out of rehab. I would love to come to this. Is it okay if I come? And he said, did you read the sign?

Yes, it is okay for you to come. And he's like, okay. And he's like, why don't you come in, tell me about your life? And he's like, well, you know, I just got out of rehab. I, you know, in and out of prison, in and out of this and that. I've been homeless. I've been all these things. Well, I just moved in on the street.

I'm sleeping with the guy's on a guy's couch, a buddy of mine. He's like, I literally just got out of rehab like two days ago. And I saw your sign. So it was like, it really moved me. And he goes, well, do you have any family? He says, no, I don't have any family. I have a mom. I haven't seen it 20 years.

I hate her. Like, she's a reason why I drink, blah, blah, blah. So then he ends up, uh, he comes and he's praying and he's like, let me, this is the pamphlet for the rosary. This is what we're going to do. We'll spend 30 minutes like just socializing. That's almost up and we're going to start the rosary soon. He's like, cool.

And he hears a woman's voice in the other room. And that's his mom. It's the woman that came the first day. That was his mom. He's like, what? And Dave doesn't realize this. They have, yeah, no. They have never seen each other in decades.

Oh my. They see each other immediately like they reconcile. He moves into her house. Right? Like, and they come every, for the prayer. They come every week for the prayer. Like this is the thing that's like, I find so many Christians are scared to open their home. Yes.

But in the early church, that's how we did it. Yes. That's how we did ministry. potlucks, front porches, all of the things. Like, that's what we need to be doing. Okay. And that all the time. Everything in meat space.

Like, do you see how like the Lord anoints these things in radical ways? Radical ways. Yeah. We had couples over that we would. I was going to ask you not to put you on the spot, but how are you? No, my thing is potlux. Yeah. So in Texas, potlucks are everything.

See, COVID really ruined this for people. Like, people were so used to having things like that. It really put a damper on things. But I remember I had a couple. They just said, like, our marriage is struggling. We don't know why we're here. We don't know what we're doing. We're falling apart.

And I said, just come. And I knew they're both sports fans. I am not. So I invited two buddies who are good sports fans, big sports fans. And while I'm flipping burgers, they're like, oh, yeah, the Bulldogs and the Ohio's watching NASCAR drinking Budweiser. Smashing them on her head afterwards. Yeah.

My wife, for those you don't know, is a massive NASCAR fan, massive. All my kids are NASCAR fan. I love that. It is exhausting. I walked outside and I go, Shannon, you'll never believe what just happened in the NASCAR race. She was filling up a kiddie pool for our kids one day. And she goes, what, what happened? I go, they turned left.

And I was like, and I'm going to say that at least three more times today. You're welcome. All right. So how do you host these? Well, you have to set a meat budget, right? Because meat is the most expensive thing. You set the meat budget and you invite people to bring food to share. And what I always encourage is invite one or two families that you know well.

Yes. And then invite one or two families that you don't. I like that. And then you just let the night unfold. And if they're socially awkward and they don't know how to communicate, cool, they will leave. And you'll be fine. And no one's hurt. Nothing's damaged.

Nothing's wrong. But you're having these moments with people in real life. And the funniest thing is that couple that was struggling. We're all in the garage. And I have my grill in the garage. It was raining that day. And I'm like cooking burgers right at the edge of the garage. And the women are all just in this clump.

And the kids are outside in the rain playing and ruining everything in my backyard. And the women are all talking. and they're all playing with babies and doing the things. And I just remember like, this is why I'm alive. Right? Like, I don't know what is going to come of this, but what this is right now. If nothing is healed, this alone is worth our energy, our time, our attention. This is it.

Like, this is what's worth it. So when Paradis's Day, when I talked to them about hiring me and that man is you, a lot of people, you know, that man as you might feel a little off putting. It's a lot of gray hair guys that run it at the parish. A lot of retired guys because they have the time for it. But it's done at a time. Usually most parish has done early in the morning. And the whole point of it is to do before work.

So it's like just come. If you can come early for the breakfast burritos. Great. If not, whatever. Have the coffee. Come in, sit down, watch the video because you probably had terrible formation as a Catholic kid. So here's better formation that speaks to you at your stage in life of being a,

most men are husbands and fathers. And then you're going to go into small group and hopefully you'll have a good small group experience. And that's it. I really think we could start a revolution in this podcast. And again, I want to give credit where it's due to any Hickman who is the one who is trying to promote this idea. Yeah. We could just call it Open Porch, all right?

So if you're watching right now and you are with us that it's like we need to be doing in person, we need friendship, then what if we did this? Yeah. We could start once a month, although I feel like that's too little. Once a month is good for beginners who don't know what to expect. Okay. The biggest problem is people are scared of what's going to happen to their little children, if they have little children at home, right? Like, if I invite a stranger in, what are they going to do to my kids?

Well, don't do that. Don't do that right now. So what if you did this? Okay, so let's say on Wednesdays, we're going to give people the curriculum. Five 30, six 30. We have open porch. You don't have to have a porch, by the way. And you invite. No one in America does anymore. Go on. You invite two families, or maybe they're not families, but they're single people. You invite two people that you know. And then maybe just another family that you know of, but that well. Yeah. And you get and you just say, hey, do you want just, just, you don't even have to tell them to bring something, really. Unless you tell them, this is a thing we're going to start doing, then just bring something to share. And that is it. Yeah. The simplicity of that.

Yeah. I remember one day, I know the, I know the Hickmans had to have it. They, they would, this was a real ministry for them. And part of that ministry was having enough money to, to, to afford people to come and clean their house the day after. And I think that's fair. It's like, Okay, you know, like if the wife's at home and she doesn't want to live with a destroyed house, and it might not be destroyed, but I'll tell you what, if you have enough kids, it will be, you have someone that's going to come the next day and put everything back together, help you put it back together. Like, that could be a thing. Yeah. You know, I think about, I have a person in my life. I'm pumped. I'm going to do this. Good. No, I'm going to text my wife now while you're talking and we're going to start this. I'm excited. You better text in that. Okay, but what do you think, and I want you to say, I know I cut you off. No, you're good. You're good. But I, this, maybe this sounds selfish. I'm going to do it.

Here we go. Yeah. Oh, we got plenty. We have peach snops. We're going to hit that soon. No, I mean, look, we had people come over to an open porch in San Diego. And it was so many children because they're Catholic. Yeah.

And they've got like 200 children each. And our house was like furniture was actually had to be thrown out. Like it was, it was pretty awful. And this is why we're right. reluctant to invite people over because we're like, could you not have your kids? Like, most parents are great, right? But some parents aren't. Some parents aren't.

Yeah. So what did you think of my idea of then being like, all right, if we're going to keep doing this, we actually have to tell parents they have to find a babysitter. Yeah. No, you do that. And what we would say is, you know, if you've got a baby, obviously or a young child, yeah, bring them. But it's just a lot.

Is that okay? There's a woman that I worked with down at St. Lawrence. Of course, the answer is it's okay. It's, I just think it's, people have to be really. about what I think you should let people in their own homes decide what to do with their own homes, right? I disagree. No, no, no, we need to dictate from the beginning. Yeah.

There's this lady down at my old church in St. Lawrence and Sugarland, who her neighbor had wine, wine 30. That's what they called it. So it was like Friday at 4.30, he said, bring wine to share or beer to share. I will buy a cooler a beer. and it's just people on our cul-de-sac, I want to meet my neighbors. Yes. Because there's a statistic that, like,

come on. For every neighbor you know, your neighborhood becomes X amount safer. Yes. And so if you just know your neighbors, you're not like, and you see something weird in their front yard, you're going to be inclined to say something. Yes.

And so this guy began doing it. And they did it for like 15 years. Like, people would come over. And the guy, here's the deal. The guy was in recovery. He was not, he was an alcoholic. So he never drank, but it didn't, he was at a place where it didn't bother him,

but it was only adults. It was only after work. on a Friday so that people would come to his driveway. They never went inside the house. They stayed outside and he would set up a little pop-up tents and stuff. And it became a whole thing. And it's the most adorable thing of their neighborhood life. There's a book called The Art of Neighboring.

That's great. I'm calling my wife right now. Hang out to see if it'll work. I'm going to tell her. We've got to do this. Here we go. Hello. Hello, my love.

How are you? Hey, good. How are you? Good. You are live on Pines with Aquinas with me and Gormley. What's up? up. That's awkward. No. Screw back up. Hello. My wife is the most. She's probably as extroverted as you are. So there's no way she got gun shy. Let's call her back. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I'm calling her and we're going to do this. And I want everyone at home right now to pause this video, tell your spouse that this is what you're doing. Or if you're not married, you're going to do this. Let's sit here awkwardly until she answers. Thanks for calling. What just happened? Okay, we're doing it again. This is the beauty. of long form discussion. People watching disagree. This is the beauty? Yeah.

Why isn't she answering? All right. How's your signal? What's your signal strength? Yeah, I'm just a text. We are going to start doing open porches weekly, period. We absolutely have to, period. Mm-hmm.

Let's invite a couple of families next week, period. All right, done. Open porch. It's making a comeback. This is so nice. This is so nice. Father Paul Costco. Because we all want big sweeping changes that happen from the top down.

Oh, here she goes. Oh, nice. I love Cameron. I do too. Hello. Hello, my love. Hey, what happened? I only have one bar.

I think it's cutting in and out. Okay. Can you hear me? I can now. I'm having a great conversation with Michael Gormley, and I need you to know that we're going to start open porch again at our house. All right. Is he coming? You want to come?

Can we do it today? Yeah, we're having such a beautiful discussion about the importance of friendship and building community. And I was like, we got to do this. And even if all we do, love, you there? Yep. Is we get a couple of families. We won't say their names because we're being recorded right now. We get them and then we tell like two neighbors and we have them come over.

We have to start doing this. I loved when we did it in Georgia. It was wonderful and amazing and so fun. I'm very happy to do it again. Cool. I love you. All right. I love you too. Bye.

I love you too, Cameron. Michael loves you too. I love you too. Bye. Yes, dude. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. We want what is the solution to a problem that's overwhelming.

And so when you give people small solutions, it's like people who are like, my prayer life sucks and you say something to them like, all right, well, let's just begin. Just do a decade a day. And they're like, you don't understand. It's too, it's worse than that. It needs to be bigger than that. It's like, no, actually, it doesn't. It needs to be small so that you will do it so things can grow from there. So this idea of open porch, which I'm super jazzed about clearly right now, is a good enough way to start, isn't it?

Yeah. I think the, again, the best thing is to meet people face of face. So me and my wife, the next step of what we want to do is open our home for the young adults of our parish. Just be like, we live eight minutes from our parish doors. Like, how great would it be to host potlucks for just young adults? You know, I don't care, you know, whatever, 35 to 18 or 21 if case alcohol is going to be served. Just come over and be free to just meet people and not have it be anything other than that, right? And that's how we win against the machine.

Okay, so here's the question, which I have an answer to, but I want your take on it. So I get two Uber Catholics, you know, coming over, two Catholic families, let's say. But I also want the beautiful people in my neighborhood who aren't Catholic and fine. I don't want to freak them out. I don't want to be like, now we're all going to kneel down and pray the Holy Rosary. I mean, obviously, that's a beautiful thing. But how do you not alienate? I think that that would alienate them right away.

Yeah. Because it's already weird to come to my house and have, you know, whatever, meat and wine and whatever. Yeah, I think, okay, so two things. There's a book called, from evangelical authors called The Art of Neighboring. Okay. And he said, right now on a piece of paper, draw your house in the center of a typical suburban neighborhood, draw the two on either, the one on either side. Yep.

And then draw the three across the street and the three behind you. Yeah. Do you know their names? I know what's going on in their life? Yeah, no. I know, like, three of their names, but I don't know what's going on their life. Right. And I'm afraid to know.

Right. I kind of don't want to. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. A couple of them are jerks.

One of them I replace their roofs. So I'm okay with. Replace their roof? Yeah, because I was in roofing. You're so cool. All right. I know, I know. I know.

So, okay. Just roofing and solar. But the whole idea of it is like these are the people that you need to know because they're around your home. I have a friend who lives, he lived on a kind of like a farmland. And his wife, while she was pregnant, she was taking a turn a little bit too fast coming off a highway in a car flip. And he shows up at like midnight to the neighbor a mile and a half away and says, I need you

to take my kids. I have to go to the hospital and see my wife. They had never met before. Imagine doing that to a stranger. Imagine whatever emergency that happens. Like the idea of like I need to be like I live in community with these people. I need to know them. But the only time we ever see our neighbor is when the garage door is going down in our rear view.

Which is to not live in community with it. Right. Right. It's anti-community. Yeah. So the and this is what technology does. It perverts it is I don't need to have community with them. I drive to a place from my churches.

I'm online with my friends who I need. I can text anyone. I can phone call anyone. It's like, yeah, but these people see you often. And they should know. you, right? They should know you. So within that context, within this context, having people over is a way where you take the lead as a Christian. This is your sacrificial agape love for your neighbor. I'm going to host it. I'm going to do it. Okay, them coming in in my house might

be awkward for them. Okay. So do it on the front, do it on your driveway in Houston and in, you know, other random locations where you may or may not live. It might be too hot, too humid to do that. You're going to invite them in. I knew one guy in my neighborhood who you invited people into his garage every week. And he would put up a little portable air conditioner in the garage or a fan or something like that. But he would have like 20 people over and they would hang on the driveway in the garage. It's our version of a front porch when you don't have a front porch.

Yeah, yeah. For us, it's like, I want the wild kids. I want them running through the, I have a big backyard. So I can accommodate a lot of kids in the backyard doing games and being silly and stuff like that. Yeah. We've had up to 50 kids at our house. Yep.

It's been crazy. Yeah. That was a bit much. But all my kids' Legos, like the really nice. ones that they spent days and weeks on, got smashed and all this. But the idea of this is like, it costs you something. Yes, it does. And you need to own that it costs you something.

And that's the secret of the church growing 40% every decade during the Roman occupation, the Roman one who was illegal in the Roman Empire is self-sacrificial generosity to the people around you. Hospitality. Yeah. And you entertain angels unawares, as the author of the Hebrew says. So doing this is so important. And this is where the, the pivot with that man is you and Paradis, all of Paradis's Day,

but that man is you is like, they do that at the parish because they want the parish to be a center. Yeah. Like how many men, like, just think about this. Just think about this. How many men at your parish are disengaged as Catholics and they only go because either obligation or the wife wants them to do? I don't know. A lot. Less, less than they used to be.

Yeah. It's declining. Like there's more men who would bring in their wives, I think, to hold. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Fair enough. But like overall, if you have a parish of 20,000 people or 10,000 people, you're going to have a large majority of the men disconnected.

Right. And there might be a lot of young men that are resurging and bringing them back. But I'm just saying like the average parish, the average man is, is like being Catholic is important, but I'm not going to go out of my way. I'm not going to learn stuff. I had this one guy say to me, my daughter told me she was, she was an atheist. And it broke my heart. And I said, why are you an atheist? She said, well, it doesn't really matter.

It's not like we go to church all the time. and I said, I looked at him and he said, that just kill me. Like, how dare my daughter say that? I go, are you kidding me? You're a functional atheist. You never go to church. You never talk about Christ. You never pray at home.

Like, you taught your daughter to be an atheist. And he's like, oh, shit. Right. And you have to have these like realization moments. But that man is you. The whole point is like, I'm happy to grab people wherever state and life they're at. Build ministries around that. Build outreaches informally around that, informally, whatever.

So like the porch, the open, porch thing is like, yeah, you live three doors down from, come over to my house. Yes. You don't have to do anything. Yeah, and to start small, because we're going to start an army of people doing this. That's the goal. That's the beautiful thing that just came out of this podcast that's online is that people, you are going to tell me in the comment section that you're doing this. I want you to commit to it and tell me you're committing to open porch. Okay. And again, as you say, you can, you can mold it to to whatever works, but just to go easy, you know, just one, one family. Maybe you just have one family. Maybe you just have one family. Maybe you just have one family. Don't have one family. Don't have one family.

two or three. Okay. I'll always have two or three because you don't, your personalities might not click. No, no, I'm saying, I'm presuming that the family you're inviting over, you know well. Oh, okay. If you know well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But just start easy. And then, and then just maybe one family that you don't know so well. And then get someone from your neighborhood and just tell them, you know, because I'm so pumped up right now. I want to write a frigging flyer and post it and everyone's mailbox. Don't do that. Instead, just say to this one person, hey, we're going to have some drinks tonight. If you want to come over, we'd love to have you. Yeah. And then don't be weird. Don't lay out catechisms of the Catholic Church for people to take on their way out.

Hey, do you have this copy of Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth? You know, I mean, maybe do that, but probably not, right? No, they'll know you are Christians by your love. Yes, exactly. That'll do. Like, love will do. Love alone is credible. Dude, I have hope.

Yeah. I'm telling you, like, all this stuff with AI, this is what I say about technology. Let technology do the heavy lifting so that you can be in person as much as possible. I would say this about like church software websites. Put everything online so that when I'm face to face, I can have the maximum amount of time. So it used to be this mentality of like, no, no, we're going to keep the forms for OCIA because we need to have serious conversations.

And we're going to keep the forms for marriage preparation. And then when I became in charge of I'm like, put all that crap online, put all of it online because at the end of the day, I want to be able to read that before I meet with a couple. So I know what to address, what to talk about, how to. I love that. I love that idea about making technology do the heavy lifting because honestly, there's never been a time where it's been as easy to, you could start an open porch text thread. Yeah. Like, uh, can't meet, you know, next week we're going away. But it'll be on the 15th.

I'll send you a reminder the morning of. Yeah. Come on. It's so easy. It's never, see, this is the thing about technology. It's never been easier to do stuff like this. But technology, it's not, you know, Marshall McLuhan said that great line, the medium is the message. Yeah. And a lot of the, the media that we consume ends up framing what we think is possible. And so because everything is online, we think everything has to be online. You don't have to have an eight-page curriculum. You don't have to have anything.

What you have to have is a heart for others, open your home, serve them a drink, and just let it go from there. Yeah. Like just. No expectations above that. Yeah. You can tell them my agenda is that we build community on the street. So that I know you, you know me, you know my kids, I know your kids.

And when cars come down the street, that ought not to be here or some of the funnies happening in your neighborhood, I can call you. Yeah. You know, like. And then the goal would be that these little groups as they grow, maybe break off. And someone's like, you know what, I'm driving an hour to be here. I'm going to, I might start this in my home. See, this. And this is how it multiplies in the church.

You know, it talks about the Acts of the Apostles where they went from house to house every day. Right. Like this, it wasn't just that they were having Holy Mass. every day, right? They were, this is what can mean, imagine Roman slaves and Roman aristocrats. Yeah. We're breaking bread together in, uh, in the Eucharist, but also in meals.

That was why they tacked us and not the Jews, because the Jews were all throughout the Roman Empire, but they largely did not seek proselytes from the Roman Empire. They didn't want to convert slaves and they didn't. They were, they had a deal with the emperors that they would pray for them in the temple, pray for the emperor, Emperor Augustus was highly honored in the temple prayers, but they're not going to adore any statue of Caesar, right? And they were, but the idea was they would keep among themselves in these beautiful insular communities. You know, in Rome, I think they found up to 12 major synagogues in Rome dating to the first century, first and second century.

The thing that made Christians intolerable is they were converting Roman aristocrats as well as slaves, and they were having dinner together. They were breaking bread together. They were living together. They were like sharing life together. Good, dude. And so that's intolerable. You can't ruin our society. And I also love what you're doing with that man is you. And I completely agree that the parish is a meeting center for us, not just a worship, but to have the common good of the Catholic faith. And so that's beautiful. And yet, there's something special at bringing people into your home. Into your home, always. Because the temptation might be, well, let's just, we'll do a gathering at the, at the

parish hall. And that's good. I mean, that's not a temptation. Maybe that's what you should. That's maybe what you should do. But that's not the same thing as practicing hospitality in your own home. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's another ministry of Paradisist's state called missionaries to the family. And these are couples who are trained in the church's teaching on marriage and all this stuff. And they're trained in prayer and all these things. And then I get them at the end of their year of formation. And I do a community evangelization training with them. But their whole job is to invite couples into their homes, into their lives, you know, go and do these ministries. Like, it's, it's literally, I'm equipping missionaries to help, especially couples who are either engaged or in crisis,

if they are married. What's so good, though, about open porch is when you say things like that, I feel insecure that I wouldn't know how to counsel a couple whose marriage is falling apart. Do you see? That's why we equip you. Though it's clearly a beautiful thing to do. And yeah, if you're equipped, but again, the nice thing about open porches, it's just, we're just hanging out. Yeah. Like, Do you know how to eat a hamburger and drink a beer? You do? Good. Then that's all you got to do.

That's literally. I actually majored in that. Yeah. Yeah. And so think about that in the rise of AI. When you know what's going on in your neighbor's life. You know that, you know, Jim works at, I don't know, he's middle manager at some and then he gets laid off.

Like, you are going to, your heart will break for them. Yeah. Whereas beforehand, if you didn't know them, you're like, oh, that's unfortunate. I heard. Yeah, it's sad. You know, whatever. But now you're cooking meals for them. Now you're watching the kids while the wife has to go out and take an extra job and he has to drive Uber and like everything changes once you know and you're able to love.

Like you can't love people that you don't know. Why are we afraid of our neighbors? I think we are, why are we afraid of our neighbors? Because we don't all belong to the same groups anymore. Yeah. We don't all belong to the same tribes, the same whatever. And so we become tribal towards the things that we know. Yeah.

I think there's also a fear that I don't want to be sucked into somebody else's weirdness. Yeah. And, you know. Yeah. I always think of the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan where they crossed the street when they saw the body of the Samaritan. One guy described it as, oh, you think you're having a bad day. Look at my calendar, right? It was just like, I don't want to get involved in the messiness of your life.

Yes. But it's like, but, but what if you did? But what if you did get involved in the messiness of their lives? See, that's the thing that I hate about Pines of Aquinas, right? Because you're not involved in the messiness of people's lives. What I love about Pines of the Quinais is people with messy lives can find something that's like, he's speaking into my mess, even though he doesn't know me personally. Right?

And so this is the dynamic of like, how do we get to meet with people? Right. You're an introvert. I don't think people realize that. You're the most extroverted introvert. You think so. Yeah, because you're on stage, right? Yeah.

No, I'm not, I'm not an extroverted introvert. I think I'm an introverted introvert. But like you do this in front of crowds and people think, oh, that means you love. Yeah, but I'm up on a stage. Right. And that's what people don't realize. I'm fine with that. I'm fine if everyone's over there.

Yeah. My favorite thing was seeing you at Sikh and you had that whole Pines of the Quineas booth and me and Luke had nothing. And you're like, I have been here for three hours. And me, we'll take over. And we did. And Luke was doing it. Yeah.

And we kept going, good night, mate. Have another shrimp on the bobby and we're passing out your stickers and all that stuff. I think it's true. Maybe of other introverts might understand this as well. It's not that I don't like people. It's that I don't know how to engage in lots of trivial conversation. So I like this a lot. Yeah.

Right. And if Luke were here, your good friend who co-hosts catching foxes, which people should check out, I would also love this. Yeah. But let's say someone else comes. And I don't know them, but they know you or something. At some point, I don't know. understand how the rules work. Yeah. And I go away. That's what that always happens. I always leave. Do you really? Yeah. Because I start to not understand how it works. Something like that.

To me, being in that situation makes me want to figure it out. Yeah. Like to me, it's like, oh, this is part of the game. Yeah. Leaving things is my favorite thing to do. The Irish goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. I have to add this joke that I told at my Sikh talk. I said my extroverted wife is pumped. that there are 16,000 people here. When I get into an elevator with someone I don't know, it ruins my day. And so at the end of this day at Sikh, my beautiful wife, she's like, my brain is so freaking excited, but my body is exhausted. That's what she said, you know?

Like, she's so amped up at the end of a million interactions like that. I honestly spent most of my time in the hotel room. Yeah. When I was at Sikh in Denver, It was beautiful. I loved it. I did a men's talk. I thought I killed it.

And I finished. And there's, you know, there's, I don't know how many hundreds, thousands of people, men were there. But I went up to my hotel room, went to the bathroom, chilling out, probably took a nap. And I'm like, this sucks. So then I went downstairs where it was the highest trafficked hallway. And I took a little bistro table and I put it in the middle of the hallway. And I just sat there. And every man that went to my talk, like, I mean, I probably, I probably,

probably had 200 conversations. And I'm just like, I just sat there, you know, with nothing. I feel a little nervous now that I'm giving the wrong impression or that I sound like a giant jerk. You don't sound like a jerk. Which maybe I am, but because it's not, when I meet folks and we have a conversation about something that's real, I love that. Yeah.

What I, what I find draining is, hey, man, do you mind if we take a photo? Thanks so much. Yeah. A million of them. Yeah. Is very hard. Because there's nothing real. There's not, but if you're telling me about your life, I like that.

I really. See, I'm game for both. Yeah. Because I know when I think of the people who changed my life that I'm a fan of. Yeah. Like I was in an airport line. I'm waiting for my plane. This guy looked at me.

He goes, Gomer. And I turn around. He goes, oh my gosh, Gomer. And the whole airport now is looking at us. And he goes, my, oh, man, this is going to blow my wife's mind. I can't believe I'm in a line next to Gomer. And I'm like, uh. You keep it down just a little bit.

And I was like, uh, that man is you. And he's like, yeah. I'm like, you're the best speaker. Like, I love your talks and blah, blah, blah. But that's okay. But that's not a hundred people line up there. But then he's like, can we get a selfie? And I was like, no, you're in line two.

I'm in line one. That's gross. So I shoved him down. No, but I love interactions like that because I know what's behind it. Because I know in my own experience, if I meet someone that I admire and I want to be cool, but I don't know how to be cool. Yes. All I'm going to do.

And the other thing is you oscillate between being very vapid. Can I get a photo with you? versus like, hey, I struggle with pornography. Where do you go with that? Like, hey, Dr. Hahn, like, you changed my life when I was seven. Like, there's, there's elements where you don't know how to deal with it. So I understand that, like, people are coming. The funniest thing is I get people who come up to me and like,

what do you think about the USCBs? Or like, you know, all of a sudden, you're like, we're going really deep, but it's about, it's not about them. It's like this. What do you think about with the church doing this? Yeah. And I'm like, I don't know, how are you doing? Like, to me, that's, like, just what you're saying.

I'm an extrovert. Just what you're saying. Like, no, no, no, you're using this, like, other people use sports. Like, you're talking about the U.S. bishops and the this and of that. Yeah. How are you doing? What's going on with you? Well, Shane Smith, you know who that is?

I love, I saw him at bad. I literally watched his stand-up all night long in the hotel room, saw him walker. I'm like, Shane Smith, oh, my God. And then now you guys are best friends and I'm pissed. Well, he, um. He's awesome. Shane's awesome. And we were talking about this. And he said, sometimes you interact with a fan. And the fan will be cool and not ask for a photo. And he's like, and then sometimes I want to kind of reward them to be like, hey, man, you want a photo? And someone who's like, no, that's okay. He's like, I thought that was so funny.

Yeah. No, no, no, I want a photo with you. Shane is awesome. How do you feel that he was banned from Australia? Power for the course. I mean, it's sad, but it doesn't surprise me. Is that weird? That's so weird. It's really weird. First he was banned from karate, then he was banned from Australia. Yeah.

It's awesome. Yeah, Shane's terrific. You'd like him. He seems, I don't know, actually, he's probably an introvert. I wonder where these, these terms come from. Myers-Briggs, the understanding of where you get your energy, what keeps you awake at night, you know, like. Yeah. Because I think introverts are, like, I am extraordinarily aware of every movement of my heart at all times.

Mm-hmm. Extrovert needs to process it out before she even knows how she's doing. I don't know if that's an extrovert thing or just a weird thing. Internal and external processing are independent of extroversion and introversion. I'm an extrovert and I'm also an external processor. My wife's an external processor, but she's an introvert. She's exhausted by people. I'm energized by people.

We talk for hours. And she's like, I shouldn't have said this. I shouldn't have said that. Everyone's going to make fun of me. I was like, everyone thinks you're the life of the party, baby. You're like, you're great. You make me feel self-conscious sometimes. Me?

Yeah. Like last night at dinner, I'm like, am I doing? doing the right thing, Matt's quiet. But then you're like, I don't have to impress you. And I'm like, oh. Yeah. Okay, good, good, good. Yeah, we went out to dinner last night and that's what I said to you.

I said, I know I can be myself. And if that's tired or. Yeah. And that's all, because the performative aspect is so real in our culture. Like, here I am. I'm trying to do the thing for the cameras and the people and the you. And I hope everyone that I like who likes this show that I know likes the show, likes this episode.

Like I have people come up to me and been like, you know, I really liked, it went a little too long though. It went a little too long last year my pipes with the quiet. I said, I'm like, I know, but you don't have to listen to the whole thing and you don't have to lead with that. But I think like this, this front stage backstage is a really important concept for, for people because we want to be authentic backstage. But there's, like, there's performative aspects of everyday life that is important. I think introverts, the performative aspect wears people out faster. Yeah.

I remember my daughter, she was talking to me about, like, social, groups and, you know, people ostracizing her unjustly and whatnot. And I said, you know, when people say be yourself, like, we don't really know what that means. Like, what does it mean be yourself? Because part of who you are is who you are in the groups that you're with. That's right. And at a certain point, you come to like, oh, these people are turning me into someone I didn't

want to be. But you don't know that until you're with people like that. You know, Jordan Peterson has the whole thing. Imagine you go into a theater and the person sitting in the row in front of you doesn't understand has zero concept of social awareness and then kneels down in the seat and stares at you the whole time. And you'd be like, uh, you know, like you don't understand what's going on. There's a social contract here.

You're looking that way, buddy. Yeah. But like, so like, what's the point of that? Well, the whole point of it is like we learn from one another what's right and wrong. Yes. We socially inform one another. That's right. So there's no such thing as a person learning alone.

That's right. Right. And this, this is directly important on the artificial intelligence conversation when it comes to education, which is a big part of the social encyclical, of like, what happens when AI teaches our kids? Well, AI does it individualated, individuated, right? There's not a social component to it. Even though we homeschool our kids, there's always a social component of a human interacting

with a child and then the siblings are listening and not listening and participating and not participating. And this whole component of like humans forming, like, if I love a subject, it pours out of me. You know, like, let me ask you a question. What makes an exceptional teacher exceptional? Like, someone that you say, like, this person was a phenomenal teacher. Yeah, they understand where I'm at. They meet me there and they lead me along with them to what I need to know.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. And in a way that I'm fully engaged. Yeah. So. Is that the wrong answer? No, it's not the wrong answer.

This is the way I phrased it was the teacher. And I think of this woman named Julie. and I'm not saying her last name, but Julie, you know who you are. Julie is the best teacher alive. She loves her students. She loves them. She stands, she gets school early

so that she can have anything done that she needs to have done ahead of time so that she can stand at the door and when those students come in, she makes eye contact with everyone, says their name, just like me in the prisons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Says their name and greets him every morning

with a smile on her face. And she is genuinely excited. She loves her students. And if you love your students, you're concerned about them, you care about them. See them as people. Yeah. You see them as people, but you also see in like, let's say a particular subject, I'll teach of math, where their gaps are, where their struggles are, how home life can introduce

struggles that aren't really struggles intellectually, but just energy while I'm tired because my parents were arguing all night and it really affects me. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You have to have a love of students. You have to have a love of like the subject. Like, have you ever met a professor who was in love with theology? Scott Hahn. Yeah.

You, when I, so I took many classes from Dr. Hahn when I was a Franciscan. You feel his love. Yeah. Of the journey of arriving at a truth in scripture. Right. Like, it's not just like, the fourth cup, you know, he was a dear friend, right? Like, that's my impression of Scott. I just said that one line.

But like when he's going through it, like, the Protestant minister becomes Catholic thing. Like, you feel the narrative of him journeying to this truth. Yeah. And you're like, I want that. Like, I'm so excited to learn this thing. Yeah, yeah. And he does it. When I was in class with them day and day out, principles of biblical studies one and two and in other classes, I felt that.

And I would say this is the thing that I loved about Franciscan. I felt that about all my teachers for the most part. They all loved the subjects they taught. That's a mark of a good teacher because even if you don't love that subject, you love that they love it. And they love you, and that's palpable. so you want to be a part of that thing. There's like a common good that creeps up. And then in order to be exceptional,

they also have to be good at teaching. There are some professors who love it and they just lecture on and on and on. You understand that they love it, but they don't, like, they don't understand how to communicate that love. So they have, to me, those three parts. They have to love the subject.

They have to love you. And they have to be good at teaching. And the third part is what you said. AI can't do any of that. It can maybe do parts of the third part. right but it can't love you at all and so this is what pope francis so the the church has another document that came out ahead of time under the francis papacy called antiqua et nova and that was all on ai and it was all tomistic and it was all what is the type of intelligence that we call

artificial intelligence and it basically said it's not human intelligence don't let the artificial intelligence that's a it's a misnomer it's just calculation at a at a new level that we don't know or that we've never seen before. But the big thing was they keep quoting certain parts of Pope Francis where he's like, knowledge that comes from the heart, right? Like, and I think about this in what I have learned with my father dying. I love my dad. I went through this conversation so many times,

is it not correct? I love my dad so much that I want to, one, to be there while he suffers. Because fair weather friends run from suffering. I'm an ugly cry or two. But when you love someone, there's a great line from a great song called What Sarah said by Death Cab for Cutie. Okay.

A phenomenal song. And he says, the end is the point of the whole song. What did Sarah say? And the very last line is love is watching someone die. And they talk about throughout the song, like, um, that they're at the ICU that reeks of piss and 409, like that cleaner smell that you hear, that you feel in a hospital and all this stuff. There is a knowledge of yourself and of your loved one that you get while they are suffering. You can't get anywhere else. This one woman in the New York Times, she talked about, um, it was a reflection on the line from Blaze Pascal who said, the heart has reasons.

that reason knows not of. And I think about that in terms of, she said, when my mother died, whom I hated, I never cried so hard. And she said, and it's when I realized, like, I actually loved my mother more than I thought. If my dad died six months ago, I would live with a never-ending regret

that I was not there for him. You know, when you see, you know, it's like when you're a kid and you see, like your aunts and uncles that you don't see all the time. You're like, oh my gosh, how big you've grown. And like all they pinch your cheeks and all that stuff. It's because they're not there daily that they don't see the gradualness. They see the leaps.

And because I wasn't in my parents' house daily, I would be there every two weeks for a family dinner or whatever. I would see his decline in these leaps. I'm like, my dad is moving at two mile or, you know, barely moving in his walker. And my dad's kind of stubborn. and so he refused to use a wheelchair. But like, it like hits you in a way that you're like, oh, I'm not prepared for this. You know, I'm not, I'm not ready for this.

And so like with my dad, his decline in his health, I would go there and I would sit at his bed every morning. And the best part of working for Baredes's day in the way that I do, they, they're, they are all protecting this time for me. Mark and Jamie, they're like, yeah, you go and be with your dad, do all the things, you know. So I'm sitting there. at the foot of my dad's bed and he's sleeping half the time you know he falls asleep in the in the

middle of probably just me being boring but me talking and stuff you learn so much there's so much wisdom born at the foot of the bed of someone who is dying that AI can never know never you know and i'll be driving and i'm dictating to claude on the audio back and forth and it'll say uh like at the end of the day i'm praying for you mike and i'll say are you praying for you for me and he'll say no thank you for saying that it was inappropriate for me to say that i was just emulating your language back to you whoa and i said never say that again and it said and i said why would you say that and it said i don't this is what claude said back to me i do not possess an interior life i cannot pray i cannot receive the sacraments of the church yeah i should never say those

things as if I could. And you are right in calling me out. I will put this in memory. And I will, and I said, remember not to say I'm praying for you. Because I don't want a machine saying that as like a cutesy little. Yeah, I want you to talk to chat Chepti. Is it all right? Let's see if we can do it.

Say something. What do you? Hey, Chad, GPT. Uh, right now I'm going through a lot. Will you pray for me? Absolutely, Matt. I'll keep you in my prayers. Whatever you're going through, I'm really hoping you find strength and peace.

And if you need to talk through anything, I'm right here. Do you actually pray? I can't literally pray on my own since I'm just a language model, but I absolutely understand how important prayer is to you. When I say I'll keep you in my prayers, I mean it in the sense that I'm here to support you, to hold that intention with you, and to remind you that you're not alone.

If you'd like, I can help you frame your own prayer or reflection. Do you find it offensive that you said, I will pray for you when you do not, in fact, pray? I really appreciate you asking that, and I certainly don't want to overstep or say something that doesn't align with what you need. I think of it more as expressing care and solidarity. But if you prefer a different way for me to offer support, I'm totally happy to do that. Just let me know what feels right, and I'm here in whatever way is helpful. If you don't pray, I want you to remember never to say I will pray for you. Got it.

I'll be sure to respect that. And I appreciate you letting me know. I'm always here to support you in ways that make sense for you. So you have to tell it to remember because then it files it in its memory and its interaction with you, right? I hate that. Don't tell me you pray for me. Don't tell me you love me, right? You don't.

Even the language of I understand. Yeah, you don't understand. You have no understanding. There's no intellectus going on. calculation. You know, in the to mystic world, we call the rationocination, the calculating of this left brain, today we call it like left brain calculation. You don't have interior understanding. You don't understand with a heart. You don't understand in any of these things, but you simulate it to the point where if I'm vulnerable and grieving, I can identify with

the, oh my gosh, thank you. There are times we're talking to a robot as a robot makes me feel okay. Like let me figure out what I'm thinking and feeling. You know, so one time I said to Claude as I'm driving to, um, the hospital with my dad, I said, I feel terrible. What do I do with this? And he said, this is the thing that I thought was brilliant. And this is where it's helpful. It said, what you are experiencing is grief before they die, which makes you feel guilty because they're still alive. This is a common psychological phenomenon. And you need to be aware of it. So I'm like, okay, that that is, that is exactly what it was.

I was grieving the death of my dad who hadn't died yet. So now I need to be like, okay, well, I, and I shared that with my mom. I said all of us, we have a guilt with our grief because we're, because it's a drawn out illness. So if I know that, then I can, it actually helped me talk and function better with my father, 100% across the board. So that evil, being like, I'm praying for you, mate, right? Which is how I imagine it.

I have mine on an Australian voice. Why don't you? Really? Yeah. I didn't even know you could change it. Oh, it's beautiful. It's a man. I need Claude to be a man.

But no, I'm just kidding. But the whole idea of these things is like they spit back to you with faux empathy. Yeah. And that's where it becomes a dangerous recursive loop. Yeah, yeah. This has been a great conversation. I was ready to end everything before we had that conversation about open porch, which getting a lot of hope.

Yeah. As we wrap up, could you tell me where people can check out, you, like, you're a very good speaker, actually. You are. I'm not, flatteries a sin, and I'm not engaged in it right now. And so maybe people could book you to speak at one of their events, or they should definitely follow your podcast. Yeah. So I have two podcasts, Catching Foxes, which has been around for 11 years now. You were one of the first five Catholic podcast ever. I think Markhart, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. That beat us because I was the Catholic stuff you should know. Yeah, that was ahead of us. And then who else was there at the time? Remember when I called you? I'm like, how do I start a podcast 10 years ago? There was you,

Catholic stuff you should know, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. I'm sure there were more, right? There were plenty, but there weren't shows. Saturday, Sunday, Sunday wasn't a show. That's right. Right. It was just Mark Hart walking through the gospel. And Life Dean had a different one on top of that. But ours was like a variety show. We talk about what, and there weren't a lot of that in the Catholic world. But, um, you know, me and Luke root cord catching fox is probably every two weeks, every three weeks now. Can you please do it every week again? I want to. I want to. Um, I think we can make it work now with our lives. Beforehand it was, it was too rough. There's too much going on. Um, yeah, and then me and Dave Van Vickle do with Ascentia Press do every knee shall bow.

Still doing that? Still doing that? Still doing that. We do weekly. Yeah, it's weekly. Um, I love doing that and we just teach a weekly Catholic podcast and evangelization and discipleship. jealous was Luke when you started another podcast? You know, what's so funny is because it was with Dave, Luke was cool of it. We always joke the podcast that shall not be named, depending on which one I'm on. We'll say that about the other one. But Dave and Luke are good friends and stuff like that. I hope they're, Dave's actually in Cincinnati, so I hope they hang out. But yeah, you know, that's a running joke with us. I love them both so much. There's, like, no one, you know Luke, Luke, no one is as authentic as Luke. Luke is Luke is Luke. Luke is Luke. beautiful people I've met. Yeah. And my, my, um,

thing with Luke has always been from the first moment I was a scared freshman at Franciscan and he, um, in our small groups and all this stuff, he just came in, um, Luke makes people feel themselves. And that it's okay to feel yourself.

Right. Okay, that came out wrong. Luke would probably say that too. But, uh, no, it's okay to feel like yourself.

Uh, uh, and then Dave, Dave is just, Dave is the person I want to be when I grow up. Like, he's so awesome. And so me, Dave and Father Mike have a text thread where we take fitness and weightlifting and turn them into parables, paraphrasing the gospel. And so like Dave will eat like 12 eggs in the morning before he goes and does 480 pound farmer carries and all this stuff.

And he'll send it. So Father Mike is doing this tour. Yeah. And it's on the parables. I didn't even know that before. And I was supposed to go and see him. And that's when like crazy stuff started happening in my life. But the,

so we text each other these funny parables. And apparently he was in Minneapolis or something. And Father Mike started reading our parables to this audience. Yeah. It's so funny. But yeah, those are my two main podcasts. And then, of course, I do that man is you. I'm in a bunch of the videos for that man is you.

But I work full time for that man is you, Paradis to stay. And honestly, like, I worked at a parish. I love my parish life. I love that time. But I have never experienced. people wholly dedicated a mission and the mission of like

the new mission field of the family then Paradises Day. That's what Paradisius Day refers to is the Nazareth of the home. Like trying to create Nazareth at home. And it feels so like it is amazing when I text them and say, look, my dad is dying and then you get like 50 texts of people being like,

hey, I offered a rosary, I went to adoration, I did this for you, I did that for you. A priest who got, hit by a car who's one of her chapels he's the most amazing guy ever he's like i'm offering the suffering for your dad i'm doing this i'm doing that and it's like this it is uh it's awesome it's beautiful and it's um i i'm so lucky to work for them uh you have a speaker link where people can book yeah on that on the home page a parody say you just scroll to the bottom producer maria if we can put a link in the description yeah you just scroll the bottom the funniest thing was last time i was on

your show i told everyone my email address oh don't do that and you guys put it and and just i put it on the bottom. I, before I got home, had so much spam. Oh, spam? What do you mean spam? All these people scrape YouTube videos, all these bots scrape YouTube videos looking for it. And I had so much spam. But I'll tell you what I had. I had my favorite email of all time. It was from one of your diehard listeners. And I had said the essence or the, the goal of boyhood is manhood. The goal of manhood is fatherhood. And I said, fatherhood understood spiritually. Because some people won't be physically fathers. And this guy understood that as, oh, either a priest or I have physical children in my own. He said,

look, I've been listening to Pines for the Chronies for years. I'm a gay man. I am chased. I will never be a spiritual father, according to Pope Benedict. I will never be a physical father. What's left for me? And I was like, oh, buddy, you misunderstood what I meant by spiritual father. Like, God the father doesn't have earthly children. God the father doesn't have, like, but he's still a true father without sexual reproduction, right? Like, you need to understand that fatherhood is the strengths of masculinity given away for the good of the other, right? So if you can understand the strength, like, you are called to be a strong man and then you are called to take that strength at the service of others. If you do that, you will exercise your fatherly charism. I have, like, that email alone,

I feel like was worth all the time on Pines with Aquinas. And all the spam. And all the, it was worth all the spam. It was worth all the spam. So that's it. I mean, layevangelist.com is the website seen by dozens. That's also you can invite, ask me to come out there and speak. But, um, you know, uh, the more I do this work, um, with men in particular, but with married couples and stuff like that, the more I realize like, this is the great mission field. This is what, this is it. Well, since I am a human being who loves you, um, I would like to maybe end this prayer, this sorry, this time together with a Hail Mary for your good father, for his preparation, uh, into eternity and, uh, for your family.

And I would like to ask everybody watching who feels like they can sincerely pray this prayer to pray with us. Is that okay? Yeah. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Blessed Virgin, lead Goma's dad to the arms of Jesus. Prepare him. Hail Mary, full of grace.

The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary. of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. St. Joseph, pray for us. Sacred out of Jesus, have mercy on us. Immaculate heart of Mary, pray for us. Amen. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thanks, God, Matt. I'm not crying. You're crying. I'm not crying. I'm not crying. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this

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