Pints With Aquinas - Atheism, Climate Change, & Marriage Advice w/ Jordan Peterson

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a renowned psychologist, author, and online educator. His bestselling books, including “12 Rules for Life” and “Beyond Order,” have sold millions of copies worldwide. Dr. Peterson’s lectures and podcasts consistently attract large audiences, providing valuable insights into topics such as mythology, psychology, and personal development. 😄 Support Us on Locals: https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💰 Show Sponsors: https://hallow.com/mattfradd https://strive21.com/matt ☕ The Catholic mugs we're drinking from: https://catholicmug.com

G'day everybody and welcome to this episode of Pints with Aquinas. Super excited to interview Dr Jordan Peterson. Before we get underway, I want to say thank you to Halo. Halo is an amazing prayer app. You've heard about it. It's fantastic. I've been advertising these guys for years now, and they've only gotten better and better. Go to halo.com slash Matt Fradd, and when you do, you'll get three months for free. We actually now have all of the audio podcasts of Pints with Aquinas over there. So you can listen to our episodes over there.

Catholic Lo-Fi that I produce is over there as well. So they're fantastic. And I'm so grateful for them and their support, which made this episode possible. Also massive thanks to our local supporters. We cannot do the work that we do without y'all. So thank you very much. On that note, if you want to become an annual supporter over at matfrad.locals.com right now, we will send you a free beer stein. Once you become a local supporter, click the pinned

article at the top of the feed and it'll explain how to get that. You'll get our Pints with Aquinas newspaper that comes out four times a year, our morning secret podcast. There's a ton of free things you'll get in return, but massive thanks. Very excited for this interview. Please let us know what you thought of it below. God bless. So yeah, seven months. Good for her. And yeah, it's wild because if you had have told me when we got married that one day you'll just be eating meat, I think you'd die from that. You need vegetables, you need fruits. Yeah, right.

No, you don't. I know it's weird. It's hard to believe. So she was on a telemedication, like hospitalized all the time, couldn't figure it out. And then, yeah, after about three months, it was like no more meds at all. Wow. and then yeah, after about three months, it was like no more meds at all. Well. And I said this before we were recording,

but she reassures me like, I'm not doing this to be cool. I really don't want to eat like this. But when she doesn't, so she had a bit of chicken, had a little bit of soy on it. She was sick for a week in bed. Is that kind of like yourself or? Close enough. Yeah.

Close enough. A lot of things that were wrong with me have disappeared. Things that were very long-standing. Things that don't heal. I had gum disease, which never heals. It's 100% gone and it was very serious. And that's a marker for cardiovascular inflammation, right? It's not just, you know, some trivial problem with your teeth. Not that that's trivial, because it's not, but that's not curable and it's gone 100%. Took about three years, long time. So how long have you been doing carnivore?

Oh, seven years. My goodness. Yeah, yeah. Do you still miss food? Of course. Yeah, it's very restricted. Yeah, most things I don't miss. I miss dairy and, and that's what sugar sweet.

I miss sweet ice cream, for example, has been a real problem. So that's what she knows she needs to cut out now because she's been doing steak and sticks of butter in hot water. Yeah. And then I think she needs to cut out the milk because that's the- Could be. Yeah.

But this brings us to an interesting point because I mentioned that 10 years ago, if you had said this is a viable diet, no one would have believed you. Here's the point. It just shows you what we know about nutrition. All the nutrition science is rubbish, all of it. partly because they don't ever do randomized trials. Like so how can you you know you can see what people eat, you correlate with an outcome. It's

completely useless. It's completely misleading. You have no idea because there's nothing controlled. You know people who eat more beef have more heart disease. It's like yeah what else are they doing? Well a thousand other things. Yeah. Well how do you control for all a thousand? Well, you do random assignation to group. It's the only way to control it. There's no other way. The correlational studies are useless. They're useless and there's hundreds of them. And, you know, the idea that you need fiber, it's like, no, you don't. That's wrong. And are plants necessary? Doesn't appear to be, you can live on meat. Carbohydrates, there's no

recommended daily allowance for carbohydrates. Zero, there's no recommended daily allowance, you don't need them, they're not vital. So can you run on protein metabolism? Yes. Does your brain prefer it? Yes. Does it reduce seizure activity? That's been known for a century. So, you know, I talked to a

psychiatrist at McLean's Hospital, so that's the premier psychiatric institute in the US. He's starting a treatment center at McLean's based on essentially on a carnivore diet to treat endogenous depression, right? So that's depression that has no obvious stress related cause manic depressive disorder and schizophrenia I've never believed those were psychic psychological diseases. I thought no, there's something wrong Especially with schizophrenia and manic depressive disorder. Well depression too for that matter. We know that it's Associated with inflammation that's been known for a long time. So he thinks it's their metabolic diseases and he thinks he can treat them with the

carnivore diet, you know. So there are serious people taking a look at this and then there's all the, you know, people say well anecdotes aren't data, it's like fair enough but when you have like two or three thousand of them, they're suggestive of a hypothesis. You know, you're going to derive your hypotheses from observation. Yeah. When I interviewed my wife and we talked about her carnivore diet, you're used to getting people snarky and contradicting in the comment section. That's where people go to do that sort of thing. But I'd say 99% of people had the exact same story as her.

Yeah. Well, and I've met literally hundreds of people on my tour, you know, they show me pictures. I weighed up. I lost 150 pounds in one year like they're shell-shocked. Well, when I started it, I lost 50 pounds in seven months, you know, and I had gone for a year before that I ate no sugar and I didn't lose an ounce nothing nothing nothing which was very disappointing, you know, I Didn't gain any weight, but I didn't lose it, you know, and I'd gained weight, you know People gain weight as they age pound a year. Let's say well, you know over 40 years I saw I was about 50 pounds heavier than I am now it all disappeared in seven months It was shocking. You know, I have the same physique that I did when I was 25.

It's like, that's pretty good. I'm 60. I gained muscle mass. It's ridiculous. So, I did it for the month of January and I gave up. Even though I felt better, I could recall things faster, I decided I just, I don't need to do this. I don't want to do it.

So, I don't want to be optimal. It was basically what I concluded because I would rather have a beer every now and again or something else. But I actually got really sick of meat in the beginning. I loved it. Absolutely as red as you can get it. And then I had this I don't know what they call it like meat phobia meat fatigue. I don't know. I got to a point where the idea of eating meat was disgusting. Did you go through that? No, I wouldn't say so. I've been fortunate to not have that happen. That kind of happened to Michaela with my daughter when she was pregnant. Yeah, but you know people's I've been fortunate to not have that happen. That kind of happened to Michaela, my daughter, when she was pregnant.

But people's food preferences tend to change dramatically when they're pregnant, so God only knows what that means. No, I don't get tired of meat. And the diet could be worse. I could be eating nothing but porridge. If you have to eat one thing. Steak'll do. Well, right, right.

And so, you know. And the, well. I was gonna so, you know, and the well, I was going to say this brings up a broader point because I was talking about we in the internet age, we get a being funneled information constantly, but it feels like information and lies and it's conflicting and it's hard to discern what's true. So I'm drinking this drink today and it's talking about how recent science shows that we've misunderstood sodium, you know? And maybe that's true. But the point is, from little things to big things to religious things, when I'm online,

I'm hearing from different people who both look credentialed, both seem as passionate as the other, and they're telling me something that's conflicting. And I was listening to a fellow recently called John Eldridge who's an author and he said that we've become disciples of the internet In that you know, we're being tutored by the internet and not necessarily the content But the means by which we use it and it has led us to be weary skeptical pragmatists Do you get that because I meet people all the time who are so confident about political things and I think, gosh, I wish I had your courage.

I'd love to be that confident about things, but often I don't know how to be confident. Well, I think one of the things that happens when you start being exposed to a wide range of conflicting facts is you actually start to understand how unsettled, for example, even the basic science is in most situations. Like most of what passes for the settled science is nothing of the sort. Everywhere you look, if you're a scientist, everywhere you look into any given question deeply, you run into conundrums and profound sources of disagreement, even about what's hypothetically fundamental. The climate science is a good example of that. That's an appalling scam.

How so? Well here's the simplest way to look at it. You can tell me what you make of this. So we're essentially in a carbon dioxide drought by historical standards. So if you look at the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last number of hundreds of millions of years, like a pretty whopping timeframe, we're at a very, very low level. We dropped to about 350 parts per million by say 1850 something like that. Plants start to die at 250, right, because they need

carbon dioxide. So we were almost at the point where the plants were going to start to die. That's how low the carbon dioxide levels are now. they have been increasing. Why? Well some of that's probably man-made. You know, that's not exactly settled, but we could give the devil his due and say some of that's man-made. Okay, so now we're up to something in the low 400s and that's been increasing and perhaps because of industrial output. So what's been the major consequence? The major consequence is that the planet is 20% greener than it was in the year 2000. 20%

this is NASA data. No one disputes this by the way. The satellite imagery is absolutely clear. 20% greener, an area the size of the continental US has greened since the year 2000. So the whole planet is 20% greener. That's a big effect. Crops yield, crop yield has gone up 13%. Right. Okay. Where's the planet getting greener? Because you heard climate, global warming, the deserts are gonna grow Well, then it wasn't global warming because that turned out to be a scam then it was climate change. The deserts are gonna grow It's like no the deserts are shrinking

The deserts are shrinking because the planet is greening because there's more carbon dioxide. Okay, so why are the deserts shrinking? Well, because plants breathe and they breathe through these pores called stomata and when there isn't much carbon dioxide the stomata have to be open and then the water evaporates and so if you increase the carbon dioxide the stomata close and that means plants don't need as much water so they can invade the semi-arid areas around deserts. And that's what's happening. So I truly believe, I believe this to be the case,

if you took a dispassionate look at the data and you looked at the effects of carbon dioxide, the biggest effect clearly, clearly, by likely an order of magnitude is the greening effect. It's like, well, is that good? an order of magnitude is the greening effect. It's like, well, is that good? Well, it's the opposite was what was predicted and the opposite was regarded as a catastrophe. Okay, so the opposite of the catastrophe is good. There's more plants and crops grow better. Okay, so what's the problem exactly? Well, you could make the case that

it's still a very rapid rate of change and any rapid rate of change has a destabilizing effect on let's say a given ecosystem and so That's a that's a fair objection, but If you're kind of fond of plants 20% is a lot like I've never heard anyone make a credible case against that particular perspective. So I've talked to a lot of people now,

a lot of very good scientists about climate change. And the last person I talked to was Patrick Moore, and he started Greenpeace, and then he left it when it got corrupt. And he's outlined the data pertaining to the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over very long periods of time. What the climate apocalypse mongers do is they take a very small section of time, like an arbitrarily small, and that's a big problem because when you're doing something like climate

analysis, the timeframe matters. You can't just pick the timeframe that's's suitable for your bloody hypothesis that's not reasonable and so you can say well carbon dioxide has been increasing over the last hundred years it's like okay well how about the last 500 about the last thousand ten thousand hundred thousand hundred and fifty thousand two million ten million what's your time frame and why well I picked the time frame that's convenient for my hypothesis. It's like no, you don't get to do that. Like you seriously don't get to do that. And then if you combine that with the fact that

we're in a carbon dioxide drought, Patrick Moore actually believes that if we wouldn't have had to, if we wouldn't have started to burn fossil fuels, the plants would have started dying in about 500 years. So he thinks that he actually believes that the fossil fuel revolution saved the planet. Wow. Yeah, right. Now you think, well, you know, no. It's like, well, wait a minute, you know, what's, where did all this climate apocalypse nonsense come from? Well, it was fundamentally pushed by the Club of Rome type starting in the 1960s who said,

there's too many people on the planet. We're all going to starve to death by the year 2000 commodity prices are gonna shoot through the roof because there's not enough of everything right that was uh Hell's his name Stan Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich wrote the population bomb and he made a famous bet with Simon Julian Julian Simon sure. It's Julian Might be Herbert guys excuse me yeah yeah I think I think it's Julian anyways a polymath Simon brilliant man an absolutely

brilliant man he bet Ehrlich that he was not only wrong but but opposite he said to Ehrlich you pick a boat a bundle of commodities, we'll bet 20 years in the future, it was something like 20 years, I bet the prices go down. You think they'll go through the stratosphere. They made a bet, famous bet, $200, not a lot. Well, Simon collected, because by the year 2000,

not only was there not mass starvation, there were far fewer hungry people in the world, and all the commodity prices went down because that zero some Malthusian view That's like you're an idiot biologist if you're a Malthusian Why so mouth mouth mouth this was the clergyman who proclaimed that? Unconstrained a population will grow until it Consumes more than the available resources, and then it will collapse. It's like well that works for yeast in a Petri dish. We're not yeast. We learn

It's the wrong biological model and not just a little bit like it's seriously wrong. There's nothing more brutal than a zero-sum game Ideology there's not enough for everyone. Oh, yeah, really is that a fact? There's not, eh? So who doesn't get what they need? Well the bloody greens though, nature worshipers, it's like, well let's screw the poor. They don't need the wealth we have in the West. They don't get fossil fuels. It's inexcusable. So who's pushing it and why are they pushing it? Who's pushing it?

The climate change. Cynical anti-humanists possessed by the resentful spirit of Cain, socialists, communists, and people who worship nature. And I mean that in a very specific sense. I mean, look, the Irish government is planning to cull 200,000 cows. Why? To change the weather. This is where we're at. The nature worshipers sacrifice cattle

to change the weather, right? We're right back in pagan times. And they are definitely nature worshipers. It's like, you know this word, the environment. What the hell is that? The environment. You know, that's Gaia, that's the new female deity that we sacrifice children to. The environment. You have to save the environment. What the hell is the environment? What does that mean? You know, I grew up in northern Alberta. What was the environment? You go out in the bush in the spring in northern Alberta? You'll run smack dab into the environment all right clouds of mosquitoes and blackflies

You'll be one miserable little primate no time flat isn't it beautiful. It's like it is if it's a What would you call it an impressionist painting of the French countryside? Yeah? Yeah, I'm from Australia a lot of deadly animals Oh, yeah, yeah nature right nobody right? Nobody lives in Australia, right? Except on the coast, like clinging to the edge of the continent, because everything else is so formidable. I've heard that in Ireland, they have now forbidden people to build fireplaces in their house.

Which pisses me off. There's lots of cities, there's lots of cities that are doing that. Well, they're trying to ban gas appliances for the same reason. You know, Montreal and Canada, they were going to ban the wood-burning ovens that the, there's a Jewish community in Montreal that's very long-standing and they make excellent bagels. They're famous, like New York bagels, Montreal bagels are famous too. And they cook them in wood burning ovens.

They did the same thing in New York with the pizza ovens. You can't have a wood burning fireplace. It's like, these bloody nature worshipers, they'll take everything from you. Do you know what the C40 consortium is? No, I've heard of it, but I don't know enough about it. Yeah, well, they're a lot of fun. You can look them up. It's a consort heard of it, but I don't know enough about it. Yeah, well, they're a lot of fun. You can look them up.

It's a consortium of municipalities, 40 of the biggest cities in the world. They've all signed on to this. So what's their agenda? You can't even believe this is true. It sounds like a conspiracy theory. I've read the documents like three times because I read them and then two months later I think there's no bloody way that can be right. One short haul flight per person every three years, right?

95% reduction in private automobile ownership. You know this idea we're gonna have electric cars? Everyone knows the grid can't withstand that. So what's the plan? You don't need a car, buddy. Yeah, stay where you are. You ordinary person, you don't need a car. That's way too much.

You're cluttering up the planet. No meat consumption. I know. No meat consumption. I'm in Europe right now. Everywhere we go, it feels like people are evangelizing veganism to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, and finally, three items of clothing a year. That's their plan. We know. Absolutely, 100%. Three items of clothing. C40, three items of clothing. How much bloody clothing do you need? The planet's at stake. You know, and you need to drive? What makes you so special? What puts you above the rats and the weeds? Exactly. Stay home, watch porn, and get uber eats

from the electric car and just shut up, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you get uber eats. What are you gonna get? You're roasted. You're roasted what? Soy. Soy. Yeah, so you can grow breasts as a man. Yeah, this is like the c40 Consortium it's so off the top It's so off the charts and what really irritate there's there's a couple of things that really irritate me about the modern environmental movement The greens mean the fundamental anti-humanism and the nature worshiping is bad enough But this is really what pisses me off Humanism and the nature worshiping is bad enough, but this is really what pisses me off

The lefties in principle are for the oppressed for the poor. Yeah in principle So, what do you do you you restrict energy usage and you raise energy prices like they have in Germany, okay So who suffers? Well, obviously the poor now, how does that work? The economy is a pyramid The people at the top have virtually everything that's a Pareto distribution Well, obviously the poor. Now, how does that work? The economy is a pyramid. The people at the top have virtually everything. That's a Pareto distribution. That law that a few have, that's a fundamental law. It's not due to capitalism. It's way deeper than that.

So a few rivers have most of the water. A few of the blood vessels in your body have most of the blood. A few stars have most of the stellar mass. A few planets have most of the blood vessels in your body have most of the blood a few stars have most of the stellar mass a few planets have most of the planetary mass like it's a it's a it's an iron law of Distribution and it's related in some fundamental sense to the workings of entropy. It's been modeled with money for example So a few people end up with most and that can be a social problem

Okay now so you have a pyramid few people at the top are hyper wealthy It's not like they're sitting on sacks of cash, you know Their money is distributed out in the economy But then right at the bottom you have a very large number of people who are barely hanging on right there Like one crisis away from catastrophe one percent employment Decline is a five percent increase in psychiatric hospitalization, right? Because you just these people at the bottom. They're They're just barely on on the margin. Yeah crank up energy prices. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so that's the leftist solution And so my observation with regard to that is alright

so you bastards when it when it comes down to it, you'll sacrifice the poor to facilitate your delusions of planetary messianism That's your plan and then you think well, that's a little harsh. Dr. Peterson. It's like really is it are they pro or anti nuclear? Well, they're anti nuclear. Well, isn't that interesting because Nuclear power especially with the new technology actually happens to be quite safe The small reactors can't even melt down Plus they produce zero carbon dioxide. So what's the agenda here?

Exactly. Is it like Human beings shouldn't exist or is it we need to get rid of carbon dioxide? Well, if you want to get rid of carbon dioxide, why shut down the nuclear power plants? Especially when you're making energy more expensive and that hurts the poor and then there's something even more pathological about that Because you might say well what happens when you make energy expensive and the answer is you make the environment worse Not better. So Why? Well poor people discount the future, so they live for the moment and they'll burn up the future. That's what happens in the

developing world. I mean, part of the reason it's environmentally devastated in the developing world is because people don't have the luxury to think more than past lunchtime. They don't have the wealth. If you bring people up to $5,000 a year GDP, they start being concerned about the environment. So what's the solution? Drive energy costs down, eradicate poverty, everyone will become concerned with their children and grandchildren, they'll start taking local action with regard to the environment, everybody has enough, start taking local action with regard to the environment, everybody has enough, children have opportunity, and local activity that's devoted to environmental sustainability will spread.

So what the hell is wrong with that as a vision? Well, it doesn't satisfy those who hate humanity. That's the answer to that. Well, then also those of us who are open to questioning the narrative are unwilling to because we feel like it's the equivalent of denying the earth is spherical yeah because it's been pushed on us for so long that I just don't want to be an idiot and also people don't have time to look into the things that you've looked into they're just going about their lives and say they don't they just I haven't found a serious

scientist and I can tell the difference between a serious scientist and one who isn't serious what's the difference But 1% of scientists are serious. Well, because it's like everything else. It's like most scientists, university researchers, are careerists and most of what they produce is nonsense. It's not replicable. But there are people who are devoted, just like there is in every enterprise.

And what is it? If you have 10,000 neuroscientists, 100 of them publish half the papers. Right. That's the preto distribution. The square root of the number of people in an endeavor to half the work. Right. Iron law. The square root of the number of people in an economic domain have half the money. Right. Right. So it's a very strange law. So the scientists the real scientists are the ones who are hyper productive like that and they usually have major league positions in high-end universities, right? Now there's some other people that are you know doing reasonable work, but that's and then they have they're in their 40s or 50s

They have like 200 publications or a hundred publications. They're highly cited. They have a lot of graduate students. They've produced students and they're skeptical as hell and they know how to run an experiment. They know how to evaluate data and I haven't found anyone like that who believes there's a climate crisis, that's for sure. There might be people who are somewhat concerned about carbon dioxide, although that's becoming increasingly rare, especially given the evidence of the greening. It's a complete bloody lie. The idea that 99% of scientists agreed. That was an absolute fabrication. What was it? There was probably a consensus for whatever the hell that's worth, because not much in the scientific realm, that human activity was producing some effect on the climate. But that was as far as it went. Even the IPCC doesn't think that there's an emergency. And

so why are we running around like chickens with our heads cut off, sacrificing the poor? It's like El Gore. That's his, his game or what's his name? The climate envoy, Kerry, John Kerry, Skeletor himself. Oh my Everything's coming to an end. We have to act like there's an emergency. We have to lock everything down We have to take everything from everyone why so I can be seen to be the savior of the planet right brutal Seriously, this has got to stop. It's not good. We should be making energy cheap We could the technology is there we could drive energy costs down and we could make the third world rich

And that's happened a fair bit since 1989 anyways, right since the Berlin Wall fell and since many developing countries aren't Absolutely committed to the most destructive possible economic doctrines, most of those economies have been growing. And so the proportion of people in poverty is far smaller than it's ever been in the history of the planet. And that's due, boys and girls, to capitalism. Capitalism. To free markets. Capitalism's, you know, that's a word for radicals. It's the free markets, free trade. I want to talk about your tour. So how long have you been on this tour? Since February.

Okay. And how many cities do you hit up in a month or a week? Three. Okay. How important is it that you have a routine during this time on the road? And what does that look like? Well, the most important part of the routine likely is traveling with my wife, but she isn't traveling with me in the moment. And that sort of breaks things up.

We've been on the road a long time. And so, you know, it's more like life on the road fundamentally. And, um, I write and I have my podcast, which I do twice a week. So, you know, I have, while you're traveling, yeah, I have a stable schedule I do twice a week so you know I have that while you're traveling yeah yeah I have a stable schedule stable work schedule and then at night it's a routine in a way I mean the show goes the show has a structure it opens with music which is an excellent way to open a lecture yeah it really it really makes a difference it gets everyone focused and I have a very good musician David Cotter opening sometimes my son son opens, Julian Peterson, and that's fun. Is this a new thing you're trying or have you done this for ever? No, I've been doing it for quite a while. It's been a hundred shows probably. We've had music and it's

really useful because David, well both musicians play at a very high level so they set a high bar. It's very inspiring. It focuses people's attention. Then I run a couple of announcements about two projects I'm working on, three actually at the moment, an app called Essay. App that teaches people how to write. Yeah, there's a mobile version of that out now. And so if you use that, it'll teach you how to structure your thoughts and how to edit, which is crucially important. Because editing is how you separate the wheat from the chaff, right? You wanna produce a lot of ideas,

but most of them are stupid. So you've got to evaluate them. And people don't know how to do that or why they should. An essay helps with that. We're launching Peterson Academy at the end of May, a soft launch, and that's my attempt to, what would you say? Put the universities out of business?

I would love to do that. But at least to raise the bar for them. So like our plan, we have a great stable of professors. And I've been fortunate because of my podcast and my travels, I've been able to find great lecturers. And they're more than willing to work with me. And we bring them, mostly we bring them to Miami. And they film an eight hour course in front of a white wall with a studio

audience and we filled the white wall background in with animation. It's very professionally produced. They'll be the, I believe, and I've seen the trailers which will release soon and some of the courses and I think I can fairly say that they are the best university courses by a good margin that have ever been produced. And so with any luck, we'll set a new standard, at least for the universities. And then we wanna use AI to translate the courses.

You can now use AI systems that will allow a lecturer to speak in a different language in his voice with the appropriate mouth movements. And so, yeah, it's a little expensive at the moment. That's what we're doing right now. You're not actually in the studio with us. We should have made that disclaimer. Exactly, it's just a deep fake.

Yeah, yeah. And so what that should enable us to do is to bring university level education to the developing world. And so we can set a standard there, we hope. And accreditation is a bit of a problem because most of the accreditation enterprises are corrupt just like the universities. And so if you go for accreditation, you end up walking down the woke path.

So what we're going to do instead is we're going to give people one year, two year, three year and four year certificates. We're going to structure a CV for them. We're going to tell employers what they've learned and what their performance indicates. We're going to set the performance standards high. We're going to make sure that our graduates are literate and we can guarantee the potential employers that they're not woke ideologues, you know, propagandized by dimwitted leftist radicals hell-bent on the destruction of our economic system. You think maybe, you know,

potential employers might be, what would you say, interested in that given that it's in their, it's in their, well, they're playing that game. So, you know, despite the proclivity of corporations to be woke and even the fossil fuel industry to play the green game, you'd think that a certain degree of self- interest and good old-fashioned reliable greed might win out in the end. What do you do when you give a lecture and you feel like you didn't do a good job? I'm sure that happens.

How do you handle that? I don't ever feel like I didn't do a good job. Okay. I feel like, I mean, that doesn't mean there isn't variation in quality. Yeah. You know, like I've lectured for so long that, like, on this tour and the previous tour, I did a fair bit of it when I was pretty ill, often in bed, like half an hour before the lecture, thinking there's no way I'm gonna be up on stage in front of 5,000 people at an hour but like I have a very large cache of

stories yeah you know because I've been doing this for since 1984 I was a long time right 40 years I was one year old Kiko. There you go. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I trained myself to lecture without notes really right from the beginning. Now when I was a junior professor at Harvard, I did use slides because when I was learning new material I needed the scaffold, you know, but I tried to dispense with that necessity as rapidly as possible and that means you have the stories at hand and so even if I'm You know barely upright I can string together a coherent There must be a lot of pressure to realize if I cancel this all these people who've made plans who've yeah

Yeah, you don't want to cancel. No. Well, that's the other thing too with the tour like To do a tour successfully you have to have your priorities right. And the fundamental priority is that you're there half an hour beforehand and you're bloody pleased that everyone's there. You got the right attitude. The music helps with that too. Because it's amazing that all those people showed up. It is.

Especially for this kind of thing. Yeah, you don't want to take it for granted. Not in the least. You go home then. Never take the fact that people aren't throwing rocks at it for granted. Not in the least, you go home then, right? Never take the fact that people aren't throwing rocks at you for granted. I'm damn serious about that. That's awesome. I'll do that.

Yeah, for sure. Especially if you're in the public eye. So if there's 4,000 people showed up and they're, you know, hoping for something positive to occur, it's up to you to be there and deliver. And so I have an excellent crew, logistics and security people. My tour manager, John O'Connell, is a star. He's been on the road forever. He was a stand-up comedian, toured for a long while, and he's been with me for six years. We've got it down to a, it's a well-oiled machine. So you're going all over.

And I fly privately. That helps me feed the machine. So you're going all and I fly privately Now it helps me feed the plants. So I'm happy about that Yeah, that has to happen because the commercial airlines are Sufficiently erratic so that well not just that but I wanted to ask you at what point in your career Did it become almost impossible to walk down a street or enter a college been that way for? Did it become almost impossible to walk down a street or enter a coffee shop? Oh, it's been that way for... Since about 2018. Yeah.

Was there a tipping point where you realized, Oh, I need to do things differently to other people now. Tipping point was probably, there was, there was a number of tipping points. Um, there was some protests in Canada, uh, a furor around a compelled speech lot. That's really where things started. Then there was an interview, I did a lecture series in 2017 on Genesis that was a public lecture series and that became very popular online. And then I launched my book and then I had an interview with Kathy Newman from Channel 4 and that was explosive Yes, it was yeah, and it's still it's still explosive people still bring that up. Well, it's still watched it

I think it has like I didn't what 40 million views now. I know you've said this but it's remarkable that they put that online. I Mean to their credit they didn't edit it they could have to their credit. Yeah, I think they thought that it went well Oh, I see. Oh, I believe that. I'm certain of that. Oh, no, no. Had they understood what they were doing, they wouldn't have done it. That's for sure. I was amazed they put it online. They thought it was fine. Well, Kathy herself has commented on it. She thought she did a fine job. Okay. And you know, what do I think about that? She only had about four tricks. I did an interview with, what was her name, Helen Brown from GQ? Oh, I remember that. Yeah, that's got like 63 million views. She had 200 tricks. She was much more... Well, it seemed like you knew that because it seemed

to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that you came in there with your elbows up. Well, you know, normally when you go for an interview, people have at least enough, what would you say, graciousness to fake hospitability. Yeah, yeah. Well, there was none of that on display. Wasn't there? No, no. The room was an ice cube.

I knew that the jig was up when I walked in. No, no. And her interview style, reprehensible Philistineism, her interview style is fundamentally lay every verbal trap you possibly can to snare the unwary so they devastate their reputation to redound to your moral superiority. It's a brutal game and I can play it because I was a clinician and so it's a dangerous thing to play tricks on me because I've seen a lot of tricks and normally you know I treat people like they have goodwill but if they play three tricks I think I see you're insane

I know how to deal with that so that was that interview. I've heard you say you're not confrontational by nature is that what you said or you don't enjoy? Well I'm an agreeable person I would have been a clinician. This is remarkable to me because you do go on the offensive when you feel like someone's attacking you, which is of course what you should do, I think, in moderation. You did this recently with that fella Destiny. Yeah. I mean, that was fun to watch. And I thought the two of you, it was an excellent exchange,

but you seem to have no trouble calling people out and Getting it. Yeah. Well just because I'm agreeable doesn't mean I'm an idiot you know and there is a distinction there and it's been something I've wrestled with my whole life because I was a peaceable and agreeable child and I grew up in a relatively rough town and with relatively rough people and I had to learn to hold my own. And that was a, I skipped a grade, so I was young and small in my class. That also put me at a disadvantage, especially athletically. And my friends were like tough kids and you had to learn to defend yourself and I could defend myself verbally.

Okay. So, and I... So as an agreeable person, did you have to learn how to, you know, be disagreeable? Definitely. Have it be uncomfortable, but just keep going anyway? Yeah, I learned that all the time. Every agreeable person has to learn that. I mean, that's partly what you do as a therapist.

One of the things that, one of the reasons people come for psychotherapy is because they're depressed or anxious. That's very common. The other most common reason is for so-called assertiveness training, right? People don't know how to stand up for themselves. Well, those are agreeable people. You know, they're other-centered and maternal in some fundamental sense. The problem with that is that it's not a good strategy for dealing with snakes. So, you know, everyone's a victim. It's like, no, not everyone.

Like there are victims, infants, for example, you could take care of them. They could use some care, you know? Adult men, they're not infants. But I thought it ended well, you know adult men. They're not infants. Yeah, but I thought it ended well you and destiny Yeah, yeah, because you even said like hey, we're getting everything out here We're trying to we're trying to come to something and sometimes you have to be a little unruly and how you see it Oh, you know really, you know the problem with that. I Found that likely the most I

Had the most qualms about that podcast of any podcast I've done. Well the reason is, see I learned this when I was like 24. I learned that I had a proclivity to battle verbally to be right. Right? And that was a status thing. I'm right, you're wrong so you know that redounds to my credit. I use my verbal intelligence as a weapon of dominance. Well, I stopped doing that when I was like 23. I thought, oh, that's not, that's not, that's the prideful worship of the Luciferate intellect. It's a really bad idea. Like seriously, it's a seriously bad idea. And so I don't like talking to people who want to be right and destiny wants to be right. And so I found it, it was out of my bailiwick because I usually talk to people who want to talk. Yeah. Right. And I can

disagree with them. I disagree with Russell Brand about lots of things. We get along just fine. Yeah. Right. And the reason for that is that Russell talks and listens. Yeah. You know, he isn't hitting me with a hammer trying to be right. And so I don't like those arguments. I don't like arguments. You know, and people don't like arguments generally. This is why Joe Rogan is so popular.

Rogan doesn't argue and he isn't trying to be right. I mean, he has his opinions and he'll defend them. Well, it depends what you mean by argue, right? Like I would say he argues in the good sense. If disagrees with something. He'll say what he thinks, but he's not trying to be right. I see. Yeah, you know, Joe doesn't play dominant, primate dominance hierarchy games. If he did he wouldn't be where he was, where he is. He he's trying to learn. You know, and he'll push back but that's more a matter of- he's trying to understand what you're saying. You want it? You can use objections as a tool a matter of he's trying to understand. Well, that's it. You want it.

You can use objections as a tool of inquiry. It's like, well, what about this? You know, because you want to see does the person's viewpoint is it is it possible for them to take that obstacle into account? It's like a cloudy thing that you're trying to bring into focus. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's the potential of the world that you're trying to wrestle into order. What was it like becoming super famous when

you were what 50 40 50? Well, it was probably better than 50. Okay, so what let's see 2016 54. So here's the question. How did you handle it well and poorly? And then the next question would be, what would it have been like if you were 20? Well, well and poorly. You know, I had done a lot of clinical work and I had a fair bit of exposure to the misery of the world. But when I started speaking to a much broader public audience, the magnitude of that misery became rapidly apparent. I didn't understand how many people there were who were literally dying for lack of an encouraging word. And that came on me full force and constantly. And that was, I think that's part of what made me ill because I was very ill for, from well, what, 2018 till 2020, like terribly, terribly ill. And there were a variety of reasons for that, but you know, stress was one of them. I mean, I basically lost my job. I lost my clinical

practice, which really hurt me because I knew those people, man, they knew me better than anybody they'd known in their lives. I had relationships with all those people, and that just became impossible. And so, and I was also being investigated by the tax authorities and all this else. Yes, and they admitted three months later that they'd made a mistake. It's like, oh, thank you for figuring that out. You know, your timing could have been better. And so that was, that was stressful. And then with the exposure to all that misery, that was a lot.

And so could have I handled it better? I mean, I guess does that surprise you? Because I suppose a lot of people either go, I wish I was, I don't know if anyone actually says this anymore, but I wish I was famous or guess does that surprise you because I suppose a lot of people have to go I wish I was I don't know if anyone actually says this anymore but I wish I was famous or something like that, but yeah, well people stress of that is what you're referring to, huh? And and did you I guess did you realize what that stress would be like as you grew in popularity? Because you didn't seek it out feels like it came and then sort you out. Yeah. Well, it's a little of both you know in some ways because I Put all my lectures on YouTube. That was

more curiosity, you know, I've tried to stay on the cutting edge of technology to the degree that I'm capable and when YouTube popped up I thought, oh, you know, what the hell is this? Permanent video. Permanent video. Oh, permanent video. That's sort of like the printing press, except for audio and video. We now have a printing press for audio and video. What the hell's that? Well, that's a Gutenberg revolution. Better jump on that. So I started, this is when YouTube was still cute cat videos, mostly. I thought I'll put my lectures online and see what happens. You know, and they started to grow. By the time everything exploded around me in 2016, I had like 200 hours of lectures

online which really saved me, right, because people came after me when I opposed idiot Trudeau's idiot legislation. You have to use pronouns. It's like, fuck you, buddy. Seriously. have to use pronouns. It's like, fuck you, buddy. Seriously, you try to get control of my tongue and see what the hell happens. So I knew what that meant. Anyways, you know, I got pilloried for that, for my meanness, even though I could see what happened. I told that bloody Senate in Canada in 2016 that they were going to produce a psychological

epidemic among young women. I knew that. I thought, okay, what are you doing? You're confusing people about their sexual identity, okay. Well, who's most confused? Oh, young women. Who are sensitive to psychogenic epidemics? Oh, young women. Oh, I see. So we're going to confuse adolescent girls about their sex. How's that gonna work? Oh, we'll have a psychological epidemic. Well, that's exactly what happened and I could see that. I knew the literature. There's a literature on psychological epidemics going back 300 years outlined in a book called The Discovery of the Unconscious which is a bloody classic, a great book. Yeah, it's a great book. And so I told

the Senate that. Anyways, people came after me for being mean Can't you just you know call the poor victims what they want? It's like not if they're gonna force me Thank you very much. Did you have to learn how to handle that level of criticism? I Mean it seems like you've grown into it. You're okay with it now, but in the beginning Do you gotta be afraid of the right things? Yeah? So you learn to handle it it's like I things. Yeah. So you learn to handle it. It's like I learned in the 1980s that totalitarian states depend on the lie. I spent my whole life studying atrocity. Nazi atrocity, Soviet atrocity, Maoist atrocity, North Korean atrocity,

Japanese atrocity, serial killers, sexual slayers, like you name it. You know, and I had a fair number of pretty dark people in my clinical practice too. And what did I learn? Lies lead to hell. And like, I learned that, it's not some hypothesis. It's like the Soviet Union was a tangle of lies, like Maoist China just like bloody communist China now that's hell

so how do you get to hell you lie how do you stay away you tell the truth okay so what am I afraid of like politicians journalists no hell right so yeah you got to have your fears in order, man. And I know you don't lose control of your tongue. You sacrifice your soul and the state and everyone you love. You don't know it. You know, you're maintaining your silence to protect yourself. It's like, yeah, good luck with that. That's never worked. That's the moral of the story of Jonah. When God comes knocking and says that you have something to say, it's time to open your mouth.

So I knew that. What's it been like having tens of thousands more tell you how much you've helped them? Well, it's great. And how is how have you not I don't fall into or how do you struggle with the sin of pride when everyone's telling you how wonderful you are constantly? I'm pretty sure maybe it's balanced by everybody telling you how much you suck. So there's an art there's a there's a paper written by Carl Jung.

It's brilliant paper. It's very hard to understand unless you know what it's about. It's called Relations Between the Eagle and the Unconscious and he talks in there about the danger of inflation, right, which is identifying with the redemptive process. Let's say you could do that if you're a therapist. It's like are you helping well The process is helping is that you? well You know, why was I a good therapist? Well, I read Rogers. I read it Maslow. I read you I read Freud

I mean, there's all these people I depended on right man much more than that you know like and all of that was founded on a tradition that was even deeper because the psychotherapeutic endeavor is an extension of Dialogue it's an extension of redemption by logos. This isn't me Okay, I know the difference. You know, I know the difference. It's not something it's like let's say you have an IQ of 150 Well, you don't take pride in that well why? It's not you. It's a gift. It's a talent. It was something that you were awarded

Let's say you have a responsibility to use it with integrity beauty is the same way. It's not you I mean you can screw it up. Yeah, you know, but that's the sin of pride and so I've integrated the thoughts of many people and but and what's my contribution to that? Well some furtherance of it some integration of it Certainly capitalization on the opportunity to communicate that to a broad audience. But I don't. And this is probably an advantage of being older too.

It's like, what the hell do I want? You know, there's nothing in it for me particularly. I'm not that interested in in am I interested in status? Well, everyone wants if they have any sense Everyone is appreciative if they have a stellar reputation and if you have a reputation for actually being of aid to people it's like yeah That's pretty nice. That's why I keep doing the tour. Yeah, you know because in principle it helps people That's what they say. And it looks like it because lots of them are thriving. And that's why I keep hearing.

So why would I stop doing that? Yeah. Especially when the world is so unstable. It's so unstable. So okay, so if you were 20 and this had erupted, how would you have handled that differently? Would have that gone to your head in a way that- Oh, more. Yeah. You know, you have to put yourself in the situation of people who were in that situation. That's part of the reason it's been interesting to talk to Russell Brand. You know, when I saw Tiger Woods fall prey to temptation,

I thought, well, all you moralizers, you don't have a bloody boatload of Swedish bikini models waiting for you in a bus at the end of your day. Come back to me when you've had that and you've declined them. That's for sure. That's for sure, man. Failure to be offered temptation is not a moral virtue. Amen. Right, that's for sure. And so you should step lightly, you know, and talking to Russell's been very interesting in that regard because, you know, he took advantage and the opportunities were offered constantly and the culture of

course rewarded that immensely and he found it hollow and hurtful in the final analysis, which is exactly right. Would have I fallen prey to that when I was 20 more? You know more You've said something once and it's it's gets into what we're talking about here And I really like it so I'll change a little bit for what we're talking about What's interesting isn't why Tiger Woods would do such a thing or why someone would get addicted to porn? You like that's all cocaine. Yeah, absolutely.

You're kidding. It's amazing. I'm sure it feels terrific. What's interesting is why someone would decide that I don't want to live like this. Oh yeah. What's the same thing with fear? Why are people afraid? That is a stupid question.

That's a stupid question in light of our knowledge of our own mortality. Yeah. The old mystery is how are you ever not terrified out of your skull? Yeah well that's the fundamental religious question. That's something I really learned from well some from neuropsychology and the study of the brain but a fair bit from Jung too. You know that belief, well that fear itself is inhibited by the presence of a structure of integrated meaning and you know there are skeptics on that front like the terror management theorists who

think that it's only delusion that saves us from terror but yeah no no no no no bad philosophy bad philosophy bad psychology bad philosophy it's like no no no first well the terror management theorists. They think the fundamental fear is of death That's just because they're not they're not very wise. They're not very deep There are things that are much worse than death So I love how honest you are. Are you afraid of death? I'm afraid of dying. Yeah, the pain of dying.

Well, you know, that can be trouble. You know, I was very, I was very ill and very, a lot of pain for three years. Like more pain every day than I'd ever experienced at any second in my previous life, constantly. And so that was, and my wife was dying at the same time. And so that was a lot. I'm afraid of that. There were lots of times, most of the time during that death would have just been a relief.

It's like if there was a button, I would have pushed it. So well, partly because it didn't look like it was ever going to end. And I thought, well, God, I'm just a burden to people around me. So but you know, most of that receded. And my wife lived too. So away we go. We both feel like we landed on a different planet. Seriously.

I have worked a lot with people who are trapped in pornography and want to be free. I would love your advice here. Two questions. One would be, why should young men quit porn? And then what's your advice to young men who feel like it's just inevitable? Like I started when I was young, I've tried all the tricks and tips.

I don't know how to stop. I keep promising myself I'll stop only to go back like a dog towards a vomit. So first of all, why should they think about quitting porn first of all? Well, no one ever quits anything. They replace it with something better. Right?

Right? I mean, that's... so let's say alcoholism. Let's start with alcoholism. Well, why do people drink? Well, if you like alcohol, that's a stupid question. Like I really liked alcohol. It was pretty bloody obvious why I drank. Why?

Well, it made my social relationships feel closer. Yeah. It woke me up, it quelled my anxiety, and it knocked out the part of my mind that was concerned with future consequences. So it was like impulse city. So like you don't need explanation for that. And some people are particularly susceptible to that alcohol effect. I had a friend, colleague named Frank Irvin back at McGill

and he had a monkey ranch on St. Kitts, green monkeys, vervets, if I remember correctly, I think that's what they are. And he'd feed them rum and Coke. 5% of them would drink Tacoma on first exposure. Right, five percent. It was like alcohol? Huh! Just like Barney Gumbel in The Simpsons. Where have you been all my life? Right. Well, so how do people quit drinking? Well, no treatment centers work. Really? No, but people do quit. The most reliable cure for alcoholism is religious transformation and that's been known even among the secular

What would you say psychiatrists for like 80 years? Well, what what happens when you decide you're going to do something other than drink? Okay. Okay. You got to get rid of all your friends Because all your friends are drunks Right, you got to get rid of probably a fair chunk of your family. All of your social habits are wrong. Every single one of them. Everything you do that isn't work that's alcohol related. That's your life.

All that has to be replaced. You need a replacement. So I would say to young men who are listening to this podcast for example if you want to stop engaging in a Self-destructive impulsive and juvenile habit whatever it is make plan We have a program online at self authoring comm called future authoring it's like it helps you make a vision So you're ashamed to yourself for some reason that's why your conscience is calling at you. You know you're taking the easy way out. Okay. What are you being called to?

Why are you plagued by doubts about the appropriateness of your behavior? Well, because something is beckoning to you. Well, what? An unrealized vision. So in the future authoring program, people are asked to, okay, so here's the deal. It's like a covenant. Here's the deal. Five years from now, you can be who you would like to be. And you can have what you need within the bounds of reason, if you specify it. So if you could be who you would like to be, and if you could have what you think you need in

Principle, what would that look like? Well that starts to you start specify targets. So we say we'll write it down for 15 minutes. Don't get too self-critical Just think you know we ask questions. Who do you admire and why? You know, and what do you think you need and why and what would you want if you could have it? Then we have people do the reverse, okay now Picture yourself five years out and you've let your bad habits take full control, but you're five years older Right. So what does that look like? Well, it should be scary. Like what's your little what's the little hell your whims are aiming at? So what do you you're the you're the 35 year old creep at the at the what at the bachelor party who's still Involved with pornography who still has the mind of a 16 year old and getting kind of perverse around the edges because everything he watches

It's getting a little more brutal right you're that kind of scum rat creep. That's your destiny You want that think about it think about exactly what sort of hell you'd involve yourself in. You know, you bloody well know where your bad habits are likely to... some people end up on the street, some people that end up women, end up as hookers. There's addiction, there's pimping, there's what? There's like brutal cynicism. There's lots of hells. You have yours. You can be sure of that, where your temptation would lead you. You want to think that through and decide if that's where you want to go. And then when you're tempted, you can think, oh, that's a pathway to hell. Maybe no, right? You need both of those. That's why in the archetypal realm, the moral landscape is anchored with heaven and hell. You need something to run the hell away from. Right? Because that avoidance, motivation, all that negative emotion, that's really useful.

Okay. Like anger is part of that too. You want to have that behind you. Damn right. You want your fear, you want Satan behind you, pushing you forward. Right? Exactly. Not in front of you, barring your way. But there needs to be something to run to. Well, that's the other thing is that that gives you incentive pleasure. And that's exactly what drugs do. That's also what pornography does. Like technically, technically you experience a dopaminergic release in relationship to a goal.

And when all the drugs of addiction produce dopaminergic release, all the bad habits, right? You got to replace that. Well with what? Movement towards a replace that. Well, with what movement towards a valid goal? Well, what's your goal? Well, then we ask people in the program, it's like, okay, what do you want a relationship? Like if you can have what you wanted, what would it look like? Think about it, envision it, envision it, imagine it, let it reveal itself to you, right? How would you like to structure your friendships? What would you

like to do to put your family in order? How would you aim with regard to your career? How would you educate yourself? How would you take care of yourself mentally and physically, assuming you were trying to do what was good for you like you liked yourself, which is a very difficult thing to pull off. How could you serve your community?

Flesh it out. We know we did that with young men who were on their way to trade school in Ontario. And they sat and did this exercise in 90 minutes. Cause we say, do a bad job. You're not gonna get it right anyways, your bloody plan. Do a bad job.

Yeah, yeah. We dropped their dropout rate by 50% with one 90 minute writing and we matched that we randomly assigned to group that the other group did a writing exercise too they talked about what they done in their life the last couple of weeks matched for amount of writing right and we did it at McGill we got a 35% increase in grade point average among third-year students we did it at business school in Netherlands and the people that helped most were minority young men who had a bad academic record.

They just ratcheted themselves up, because young men in particular, if young men don't have a vision, they just don't play. It's like, up yours, we're not gonna work in school, we're not gonna work, we're not gonna commit. It's like, if you don't have a place for me, if I don't have a plan for myself, I'm just not going to play. That's part of being disagreeable.

And so that's why young men are failing so dismally. What scares me is when you said, where were you going to be in five years? What do you want? Yeah. As soon as you said that I applied that to myself and I was terrified because I didn't know. And I wonder how long I sat with that if I'd go I don't know my wife and I sat down on a New Year's Eve once yeah okay what are our plans what do we want this year and I

was like I I don't care and it was an apathy it felt like I would we lost some juice I lost some energy I can't think of what I want right now is that yeah I hope that this is a common experience people have or is this just me well it's not look one of the things that's very pathological about our culture is that when I when I'm built these exercises this is Decade ago probably I started working on them. I Started to understand that people live in this story and that You need to

Get your story straight and then you need to get your story straight. And then I started to understand that no one ever did that in our schools. And then I did some background research into that. Well, why don't we teach people to be visionaries in school, ever, not even once, never. We never do it at all okay never the school system the public school system in North America yeah and in much of Europe and in Japan was literally started by fascists literally

so it was the Prussians first and the goal of the universal education system was to produce soulless and obedient soldiers Right. Okay. So then that was imported into the US this was before Fascism was like Mussolini and Hitler, you know, so there were fascists who weren't self evidently as evil as they became in the 1940s, you know, but they were interested in the amalgamation of corporation and state, let's say, that they regarded the super state as a necessity to rule over the, you know, vast masses of unwashed. And at the same time, late 1800s, rural people were flooding into the cities, mostly for factory jobs.

And there was some real concern that their children would need to be trained to abide by a schedule. And so that's why you have the school system set up the way it is. Rigid rows of desks, bells. That's a factory. It's obviously a factory. It was set up on factory lines. It was to train people to become obedient factory workers, just like soldiers. Well, that was great in like 1880, although it wasn't obviously, because they could have been being trained

to be entrepreneurs. And the system was set up specifically to make sure that didn't happen. I'm dead serious about that. It's stunning. Well, it's fine, but now, I mean, have we not progressed? Well, no, the answer is we've actually regressed, because now we not only do we train people to be like subservient robots, we demoralize them with idiot Marxism. And so we've taken a bad lot.

We've taken the worst of the fascists and the worst of the bloody Marxists and turned that into the education system. So it's stunning, you know, that... Well, we also published three studies with this program. Not one university has picked it up, even though we showed like 50% dropout rate decrease among young men. It's like stunning. It's stunning. It's amazing. And we did the research very carefully. We replicated it three times in different places, different countries, at different levels of the educational strata. And there's a big literature on writing and its beneficial effects. Well, it's no different than thinking, you know, you think thinking works. It's like, well, why don't you try thinking about your future, example and so so if you're wanting to get back to what we

started with it's like you got to replace your idiot juvenile personality with a more mature vision yeah that's how you quit you don't quit by stopping because then what do you do it just leaves a hole it's like the alcoholic stops drinking well he's got no friends. He's got no family He doesn't know what the hell to do with his time Right. It's a big void And then stress comes along. It's like drinking time or maybe or not stress. Maybe something great happens That's that's often when people fall off the wagon. It's like well people drink to cope

It's like not usually the real drinkers drink to party and most of the people that I knew that were addicted It's like the biggest risk for them was occasion for a celebration Right. You said religious conversion is the number one thing that what's radical personality transformation? What is religious conversion? How do you understand that? What does that mean? Well at the simplest level it means determining to aim up. What does that mean? To be better, to act with virtue?

Yeah, to be better, to decide that you're gonna be better. And there's stages in that, like the simplest stage fundamentally is, well, make a list of all the stupid things you're doing that you know are stupid. Yeah. Right, everyone can do that. It's like what's making your life not as good

that you're doing. You should be able to write a few things like that down. Okay, then you take those and you think, okay, is there any of those I would stop? And then you start with that and you make a commitment. So for example, in the biblical stories, when Abraham, this happens very frequently when someone attends to the call of God. So when someone attends to the call of God. So when Abraham attends to the call of adventure, because that's how God is represented in the story of Abraham, the first thing he does, he agrees to leave his comfort zone. He leaves his tent, he leaves his father's wealth.

He's 70 years old, he's never been out in the world. He decides to go out. He builds an altar and he consecrates it to God What does it mean? Well, it means that Part of the adventure is upward aim you consecrate yourself to that you make a decision this happens This is what people do when they decide that they're going to change their life. It's like oh, I'm doing something wrong I'm going to try to aim up. Okay, well You're blind and stupid and sin-ridden. And so how do you know what's up? Well, you probably don't, but you might know something about what's down. Yeah, right. So you can start with prohibitions. That's why the 10 commandments are basically prohibitions, right? They're not how to climb to heaven. They're how to stay away from hell. Well, that's not a bad beginning. Right. And so you look at you do this in therapy with people, it's like, okay, you're miserable. Well, what is it that you're doing that's contributing to that misery as far as you're

concerned, right? This is your own judgment that you can identify that you would take responsibility for and that you would be willing to work on changing. Well, that's a good start Yeah, start with the so for example with regards to Spoken truth, you know, we say well tell the truth. It's like what do you know about the truth? Yeah, right. Okay fine You're ignorant and Deluded. Okay. So what do you do? Stop lying? I love that. Yeah, which lies the ones you know are lies.

Yeah, at least at least those just those just start with that. Don't say things that you know are false. Right. Right. So practice that and then what happens is your capacity to discriminate improves. Right. And then you think, oh, that's a lie, too. And oh, that's, that's another law. It's like lies everywhere. When I, I figured this out out in my 20s when I was working on the problem of Atrocity and I realized that lies were associated with the dominance of a totalitarian state Okay, I thought oh, I'm gonna stop lying. Well, what did I figure out? 95% of what I did was a lie. It was a stunning shock. It was a shock. Because like I said earlier, I had a proclivity to use my intellect as a status tool, a weapon, something

I was proud of. Because I was a smart kid and so whatever status I had, reputation let's say, was built on that. And well, that's an invocation to pride, fundamentally. That's the Luciferian intellect. It's the worst sort of sin, maybe. When you were a kid or in your teenage years, did you ever flirt with religion or atheism? Did you ever adhere? Socialism. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I went to church until I was about 13. And then- Were your parents Christian? My mom went to church. Were they Christian? Fundamentally.

My dad was, my dad didn't go to church. Does he regret that now? Probably. My mom went and she was, you know, in the pack of ordinary believers, habitual churchgoer. she liked to sing. It was a good thing for her. She was not happy when I stopped going.

She gave you the choice at 13? Well, I don't know if she gave me the choice. I stopped going when I was 13 as well. How much control do you have over a 13 year old? I just made it miserable for my mother until she gave in. Well, that's it. Well, yeah. What do you think the best argument for atheism is?

I don't think there is a good argument for atheism. I think it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the world. So it's just, it's what would you say? It's an illegal chess move. Okay It's based on the wrong it This might this might just show that I don't understand you but we'll get to it if I don't best argument for a what's the best materialistic Materialistic determinism is the best argument for atheism. But isn't that a philosophical sort of

Assumption or axiom? Well, yeah, that's a problem Yeah But isn't that a philosophical sort of assumption or axiom? Well, yeah, that's a problem. Yeah. Like for me, I think it would be if this, and let's just choose the Christian God, if he exists and wants me to know him and save me, wouldn't he make it easier? Why does he make it so difficult? Why does he seem to hide? Because you have something to do. You have something important to do.

It's no game. The price of life is death. It's not a game, right? There's evil too. You have something to do. It's not easy. In fact, it'll take everything you have. Everything, right?

That's why you're to consecrate everything to God. This isn't, you're not an infant. But you're not being treated by God like an infant. You're being treated by God like someone who's- Responsible moral agent. He doesn't just want comfortable little pets in his little habitat, apparently. Yeah, well, to be made in the image of God is to be someone who wrestles with potential. Genuinely.

Wrestle with potential. That's right. Well, that's the Tohu Vabohu that exists at the beginning of time, right? The potential, the watery chaos, the spirit of God sits above the chaos, the primordial chaos and extracts order out of that. That's what you do as a conscious agent. And you do that. You do that in a way that is aimed towards hell or aimed towards heaven.

Really. But you wouldn't think people who claim to be atheists unnecessarily irrational? Because they might, they're perfectly rational. I'm sympathetic. I accept the initial axiom, but I don't accept the initial axiom. Which, what's the original? Like I said, it's something like a materialist determinism. Yeah. No, first of all, whatever matter is, and we certainly don't understand it, it doesn't look at all like something deterministic at the highest level of resolution. There's something very weird going on down there at the quantum level, you know, and what the philosophical implications of that are, you know, God only knows. But there's no easy determinism in the physical realm.

So anybody who claims that is like stuck in the world of Newton. They're like in 1830, way past that. What if the person just says, all right, I'm open to believing in God or not believing in God, and I've seen no good evidence or arguments for God's existence? Like I said, it's an illegal game move. It has nothing to do with, see, the problem with that argument is that it's an illegal game move. It has nothing to do with... See, the problem with that argument is that it's an atheist argument right from the beginning. Well, what's the evidence? It's like belief in God is not propositional acceptance of a set of

descriptive facts. That's not what it is. It's commitment. Right? So, what does it mean to follow in the footsteps of Christ? To believe. It means to hoist your cross and walk up the hill. It doesn't mean that you say, what does Christ say? Not all those who say, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Well, that's for sure. What? It's not, the religious doctrine is not a scientific theory.

It's not something you believe, like you believe a description of a set of facts. It's a mode of being. It's a mode of apprehension. It's a mode of perception. It's a mode of action. I'm pushing back to see if I can understand what you're getting at.

Like in order for me to marry my wife, I need to know she exists and I need to know she's interested in me and I need to be able to pursue her Right to marry your wife. You need to take a leap of faith, but I need to know she exists first in order to true Yeah, so that's what I'm saying with with God's existence if God does exist Surely I need some kind of reason to think this isn't just a story. I'm telling myself conscience Where does that pesky little thing come from? I think there's three options.

OK, one might be we evolved this way. That's fine. I'm perfectly happy. But here's my problem with that. Yeah, because if you say, OK, if we were raping and pillaging, we would have never gotten this far as a species. Therefore, these things have become taboo or something like that, which is a far cry from saying they're somehow objectively wrong or mind. I don't know. It's not so far.

It's not so far. No, I think I know I think the evolutionary biology and the religious will dovetail perfectly. OK, but then here's the thing. If I if I know is the deepest instinct, if I now know if I now know that it's evolution that's wired me thus, I can choose to disobey it. It's lower than me.

I could be Ross Kolnikov, presumably. I can go against it. Of course. And another source would be individuals. Like you could tell me I'm a bad person to do X, Y, O, Z, or praise me if I do other things, and I might feel good or feel bad. Or collectively as society you can say this. But just as you have no right, it seems to me, to determine how I ought to live, collectively why would you have any more authority? That's Roskolnikov's argument too. Or the Marquis de Sade.

So this objective morality could come from beneath us in evolution, from outside of us on our level. Maybe it comes from above us. And then it's like, okay, if it comes from above us, is it in some sort of platonic form? And if it is a platonic form, is there a commandment being issued? And why do I need to be obedient to a platonic form? So you don't end up in hell.

That's why. Right, so I could, yeah. No, but seriously, that's why. No, no, I see. This is sort of like Aristotelian. Violate the moral order and watch what happens. Go right ahead. I'm with you.

This is the sort of Aristotelian, Nicomachean ethics idea, right? Where like Eudaimonia is just flourishing. And so it's like, there is a way to act. Put yourself in alignment with the cosmic order. Yeah, but I could choose not to do that. Sure. Which you can choose to go to hell.

Yeah. Absolutely. And you might think, well, it'll be a fine ride on the way and maybe it will, but that's where you're headed. So no, everything has to be put in proper order. That's why Christ says that he calls upon his followers to be perfect Why because everything has to be put in the proper order? Why because otherwise it falls into disorder? It's like is that good well if you want disorder

But what are you gonna? Do you're gonna keep burning coals of fire on your own head? Well you can that's hell every devil shoveling The burning coal on his own head Right. I'm still trying to get at this. Or what if I just say, all right, I can't believe in some invisible sugar daddy up in it. This is not what I think. Invisible sugar daddy up in the clouds is going to give me a theme park if I just quit masturbating. All right.

I can't believe that anymore. It just seems like it's bullshit. And it's a fairy tale. People tell themselves. It is and it isn't. It's a concretized representation, but it's a fairy tale people tell themselves. Well, it is and it isn't it's a concretized representation But it's not without its wisdom like there isn't anything more complex in the cosmos than a human psyche and Do you think of the psyche? Let's say the father as a representation of the highest spirit. It's not

It's not prima prima facie absurd. It's not a bad metaphor. So here, I'll give you an example of that. So imagine all the admirable men you've ever known. Doing it now. Okay, okay. Well, they have a unity, right? It's the unity of whatever makes them admirable. Right, so they all reflect the same spirit.

Seriously, they're all approximations to the same spirit. Well, what's that spirit? Well, it's the God of Abraham. That's what it is. This is a definition. Yeah, all right. So God is the benevolence that shines through the good Father.

It's a definition, just like God is the call to adventure, or just like God is conscience. And you think, well, that's not God. It's like, well, have it your way. You know, you're playing games. You're playing games. But surely it's not playing a game to just be curious and say, okay, maybe there is no such being as God.

Maybe Jesus wasn't the second person blessed Trinity. Maybe heaven is a myth. And yet these stories helped me flourish for some unknown reason. And so I'm best to go along with it. But it's hard to get on board with something. You can't commit to that. No, no, this is like this is an all-in enterprise. Okay. It's an all-in enterprise. So in the story of Cain and Abel, for example, Abel offers his best and God accepts it. And Cain doesn't. Cain offers what's second best,

and God rejects it. And that's life. And everyone knows that. It's like life is a for a fatal game And it's gonna It's gonna require everything you have and everyone knows that it's like you can offer your second best and be accepted No First of all, you won't even accept yourself under those circumstances because you'll take no pride in your, no, not pride, wrong word. You'll take no solace in your accomplishments if they're of second rate quality.

Yeah. Right? You can't fool yourself. That's for sure. And the times when you're somewhat satisfied with your miserable existence, well, that's when you know you've put something on the line, right? And that's what you're called to do by your wife and by your children and by your community, by your conscience.

Well, that's all a reflection of something real. And you might say, well, not transcendentally real. It's like, well, why not? Why not transcendentally real? What do you think we're made in opposition to the spirit of the natural order? Is that your theory or we're random? Really random. Is that your theory? Or random? Really? Random. That's your theory, is it? That's not a very smart theory. Okay.

There's nothing random. There's some random mutation, and even that's not true. You know there's a hierarchy of mutational repair? No. Yeah, well, this has been discovered quite recently. Mutation is random. No, turns out that's not true because mutations that occur to genes that are crucial for survival are repaired with 100% accuracy. There's some room for experimentation out in the margins, but not at the center, just like in life itself.

And whatever shaped us isn't random, the mutation process, part of it is random. And I suppose we capitalize on chance, but as an explanation for the nature of being itself, it's like, no one knows how life arose. No one knows anything about consciousness. Not the least. It's a byproduct of neural activity.

It's why isn't your solar plexus conscious then? Right, you've got neurons galore. There's more neurons in your autonomic nervous system than there are in your central nervous system. It's not conscious. It's not neural activity per se. And most neural activity in your cerebral cortex isn't conscious. The hell's consciousness. It's the spirit of God that that what would you say, broods upon the... Face of the waters. That's right, that's what consciousness is. That's as good a definition as any.

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And it's also not an isolated course that you go through on your own, because literally tens of thousands of men have now gone through this course. And as you go through the different videos, there's comments from men all around the world encouraging each other, offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that. Strive 21, that's strive21.com slash Matt. Or as I say, Text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it. Why do you think it is that it seems like more big bigger name folks are becoming Christian to some degree, not like Candice Owens and.

I.N. Hersey, your bride. Yeah, I.N. Hersey, Lee,. Yeah, Ferguson, Russell brand Joe Rogan Douglas. We do a Joe Rogan. Yeah, well, Joe's Joe's already he's got a foot in the camp. He's a lot less disparaging of Christianity that he once was. Absolutely. We all really appreciate Joe Joe figured it out. Joe figured it out. Yeah. Cause here's why here. Here's the answer to that. Sacrifice is the basis of the community. Yeah. Well, that's what the, is it? Well, of course it is. Well, it's all about you. Right? No. Well, then you're not in a community, right?

Right. That then you're a grizzly bear. Yeah. Right. It's all about you. You don't have a community So what do you do to join a community? You sacrifice Obviously, yeah what? How about everything? Well, that's the Christian offer Is that the basis of community? Well, why do we put the crucifix at the center of our communities?

Okay, because we know that voluntary self-sacrifice is the basis of the stable psyche and state. We know that. Even though we don't know, we know it. That's why we worship it. It's like, what did Christ do? Took the sins of the world upon himself and offered everything. Well, is that the basis of community? Yeah, it's your responsibility, buddy. Get at it. So is the idea that as people kind of understand this and begin to live this way, they become a lot more open to the Christian message and find it more persuasive? Is that what's happening?

Well, I also see, I think they are increasingly apprehensive about the weakness of the alternative. And this is true. Dawkins called himself a cultural Christian like two weeks ago. Well why? Well, how about because he's terrified of the Islamic fundamentalists. How about that? So afraid that he won't speak against them in public. Right, well there's something to think about. Oh, you mean the Christians had something right? I guess so. What? Exactly. Oh, well they had something right. It's like, yeah, they had something right. What is it exactly

that they had right? Principle of voluntary self-sacrifice. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's the central motif. Why else? Well, the humanists aren't doing such a great job, are they? They seem to fall into the camp of hedonism or totalitarianism at the drop of a bloody hat. And that's happened.

It's happening now. It sweeps the campuses. The admirers of Hamas. Brutal. Brutal, brutal. The sweep of hedonistic pride, the clarion call of the Marxists. There's the humanism for you. But see Dawkins would say even a blind hog is going to find an icon occasionally.

And so he should be surprised. Hey man, he's the one who called himself a cultural Christian. You're not putting that on him. But his point is it's false. It's false. Yeah, whatever. Just accept the good that came from it, like the things you're talking about. You can't do that. No, that's the thing is that's not. It isn't. Judeo-Christian doctrine is not a scientific hypothesis. The people who came up with the stories weren't scientists 3,000

years ago. It's not a scientific theory. What is it? It's a story. We see the world through a story. We inhabit a story. What's the story? The principle of voluntary self-sacrifice reflects the fundamental spirit of being itself. Why can't it be a story and there be no historical Jesus? Like, why can't it just be a made-up story that's really helpful? The simplest explanation for Christ involves his historicity. I think that's just a non-starter. It's just simplest to assume that he existed. Partly, too, because the gospel story is insanely complicated It's insanely no one. I'll tell you a story. You tell me if you think someone could have thought this up. All right, okay

When Moses is leading the Israelites through the desert near the end of the story Mm-hmm they get all bitchy and whiny and pining for the tyranny and complaining about Moses and faithless about God and Hopeless about the promised land and you know, they're a whiny pack of Slavish hedonists. Okay, and so they have a little fit like they always do and God's pretty tired of their bitching and whining and so he sends a bunch of poisonous snakes in there to bite them and you think well That's a hell of a thing for a good god. I did that to my kids

No, it's like no no it's absolutely straightforward. If you're in a rough situation and you start pining for the tyranny and calling yourself a victim and bitching about everything and losing your faith and forward movement things are gonna get a hell of a lot worse. Right? So that's the snakes. So you can blame that on God if you want, but that's not very smart. So it's like, if you weren't such a, what, slavish weasel, ungrateful weasel, the snakes wouldn't be there. Okay, so the Israelites are getting bitten up pretty good, and you know, they get a little bit on the repenting side, but mostly it's just pragmatism and they go to Moses and they

say well we hear you've got a pipeline to God and you know there's a lot of snakes and we're not very happy about that and so maybe you could ask God if you just call off the snakes and Moses says I'll see what I can do and so he goes and has a chat with God and God says yeah I don't think I'll see what I can do." And so he goes and has a chat with God, and God says, yeah, I don't think I'll call those snakes off. Although I could, because like I... I'm God. Well, I put them there. I could totally do. And you could imagine a story where the Israelites repent, they go to Moses, Moses has a chat with

God, and the snakes go away. That's not what happens. Something really weird happens instead. It's really weird. God says, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take all the bronze that the Israelites have with them and I want you to cast a staff. Okay, now that's the staff of Moses tradition, right? That's the staff that turns into the serpent that devours all other serpents. That's the pole at the center of the world. That's the cosmic axis that unites earth and heaven. It's all of that It's the tree of life, right? It's all of that Make a staff. That's the staff Moses wheels. That's what gives him his authority, right?

That's the crook that guides the sheep, right? It's the it's the magic wand of the wizard it's all of that it's it's the pole that the serpent of Asclepius wraps itself around it's the symbol of healing itself, right? It's all of that. This is no trivial story make a staff of bronze wrap a serpent around it and Then make them bring all the Israelites to walk to look at it Okay. So what does that mean? Well, we know what that means from a psychotherapeutic perspective It's a pharmacone a little of the poison that kills you will redeem you look upon that which you fear and grow

Right. That's that that's the definition of growth That's how you learn you go out on the edge and you look at something poisonous and you get stronger, right? And so God thinks well, I'm not gonna get rid of the snakes But I'll make the Israelites stronger and you asked why we have a challenge in front of it It's like we're here to become stronger We're not here to be protected and you get stronger in proportion to your willingness to look at what terrifies you Okay, so that's fine. So the Israelites go look at the Okay, so that's fine. So the Israelites go look at the serpent and the snakes can't poison them. So that's cool, but that's not what's really cool, although that's enough. That's asclepious.

Like that's a major league bringing together of ideas, a massive bringing together of ideas. It's deep beyond anything I've ever seen represented in the literary realm. And so you can say, well, that's the opium of the people or the figment of the imagination It's like yeah, you come up with something like that. Just try it like that You defy Shakespeare himself to manage that right even Milton. It's deep. That's not the end of it Christ says to his followers that people cannot be redeemed unless he's lifted up like the serpent in the desert. Okay, it's like, what the hell does that mean?

It's 3,000 years later and Christ is comparing himself to a serpent on a pole in the desert? Well there's a crucifixion motif there, obviously. Okay, so what does it mean? You look upon what poisons you voluntarily, that's what cures you. Okay, what poisons you? Here's what poisons you. Threatened birth, right? The religious hypocrites, the scribes, the lawyers, the mob, the betrayers, right? The iniquity of your friends, right?

The most painful possible death, right? Right, right. Young, undeserved, to the most innocent, right? In front of his mother, right? Right. Even though everyone knows he's innocent. Not only innocent, but positively good. Right, and then that's not all, because there's the harrowing of hell as well.

Well, that's the full serpent with all of its possible heads. Right. And that's the equation. And the fact that the crucifix is at the center of our culture is us gazing on the ultimate serpent, exactly that, in the hopes of redemption. And you tell me how that came together. You tell me. That's what that story means. Is your point that if this was just some kind of fabricated story, we should expect it to be a lot simpler? Who bloody well fabricated that? It's like you might say, well, that's a work of genius. It's like, okay, fair enough, genius, genius genius It's like when you're speaking about the spirit that constitutes genius or this far from God So, you know have it your way. It's the power of the collective imagination of humanity Okay

No problem. That was Jung's take with regards to the archetypes of the collective unconscious I said that instinct and the religious impulse will dovetail. That what would you say? Heaven makes itself manifest from the bottom up, as well as from the top down. So you can attribute it to instinct, poetic instinct, if you want.

Doesn't matter. It's still the muse. It's still the spirit. It's the spirit that leads people forth and that calls them in conscience. And this has nothing to do with belief Not not not the way that not you know is God a table. It's like no there fine Yeah, we'll deal with the materialist God is does not have the same being as a table

He's not another piece of furniture in our ontology. No one ever said he was right There's not a claim like, in fact... Just the new atheists, I think. Well, the claim in the Old Testament constantly is that whatever God is, is ineffable and beyond being and becoming. Beyond. Right? And Moses himself, he gets a glimpse of God in the burning bush and he gets another glimpse.

All he sees is God's back between, you know, a narrow portal through two rocks, because that's all he can stand. Yeah. No one ever said God was a table. That's not the claim in the biblical corpus, not in the least. In fact, the claim is constantly God is not a part of the natural order, right? He's not, he's not Baal. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I am who I am. Yeah, and I am who I am. I am who I was. I am who I will be. That's all in that phrase.

It's the spirit of, it's the spirit that underlies being and becoming itself. It's the process that gives rise to, to being itself. And it's identical as far as I can tell with consciousness. It's the same thing. Cause that's what we do with our consciousness. We contend with possibility. We're not automatons driven by materialistic determinism. That's not what we're like. It's not even possible technically. You can't compute your way forward

into an uncertain future. You can't use an algorithm to do that. Determinism doesn't work. That's not a theory. We know that. So if you're saying, if somebody's out there and like, I want, I would like to believe in God if it's, if it's real. Let's say that you wouldn't. That's the thing. I don't know. I mean people who say if God exists, I want to know that I'm, you know, I'm not a, the price is the cross. My point is, would you say to them, it's not about looking at philosophical arguments. It's about taking up your cross and following him that that's the quick that's what it is to accepting belief in yeah yeah it's a

philosophical that's exactly no it's a mode of being it's a mode of being it's not a set of beliefs we were completely wrong about this you asked earlier why so many people in the intellectual realm are converting is because they've understood that I and Hersi Ali said this explicitly we got the question wrong Does God exist? It's like well what that's not the right question. The right question is Are you gonna take your cross and struggle uphill because either way it's faith either way either way. It's like no Okay. Well, then what then what it's all about you It's all about your whims like what's it about then what spirit is gonna possess you if it's not that I'm repeating myself And I apologize

But it seems to me that God could not exist and it could still be the case that I can carry my cross uphill and that Be beneficial to me. So why not just accept that? Well, why not be open to that? because that the the concept of God is something like the spirit of What would you say? Hierarchical harmony. It's something like that. This is a definition. So look, yeah Beneficial for you. No, no, no, it's beneficial. I don't mean in a cheap quick sense I mean it'll I will flourish if I do this thing. I thought no, but here's the offer God makes Abraham.

Okay, so so here's what the story signifies. Really, this is how the story lays itself out. So Abraham is a late bloomer, right? He's privileged. He's an overgrown infant. He lives in his father's tent. He's never gone anywhere. He peeled grapes or a pear for him magically, you know, he's got everything he's got the socialist utopia happening and And a voice comes to him says get the hell away from your zone of comfort get out in the world Have your adventure get away from your father get away from your tribe get away from your people Get out in the world and Abraham says Okay, and he consecrates his Adventure to God.

Okay, God makes him an offer. It's a deal. Here's the deal. Now, you can think about this biologically. Okay, so imagine a child. A child is motivated to mature, motivated to explore the world. Why? Because the world calls to him and beckonsons and the parent helps instantiate and develop conscience.

And so the child is pulled out into the world, regulated by conscience, and called forward by the manifestation of meaning. That is a representation of the spirit that impels him towards development. Same thing in adulthood. Abraham decides he's going to live by the calling of that spirit. That's his decision. Okay, so what's the offer? Follow the pathway of adventure. You'll be a blessing to yourself. That's a good deal. Are you a blessing to yourself? No, I'm addicted to pornography. It's like time for a better adventure there young man. Yeah, right, right. You'll be a blessing to yourself. You'll earn a well-deserved reputation. That's a good deal. That's a good deal. That's the place you store the treasure that you

store up in heaven, right? That's in the reputation that you have for ethical action with others. There's no better place to store your treasure than that, right? That's the basis of communal existence Your reputation will grow deservedly You'll establish something permanent in Abraham's case. It's a long-lasting dynasty, right? He'll be the father of nations. Why because he Treads the appropriate path of the pattern of fatherhood that both that best ensures the flourishing of multiple generations and he does that by abiding by the pathway of adventure they're the same thing and we would think well if a child fully followed the instinct that guides him to maturation would he not become the best of all

possible fathers and would that not be the proper pathway for establishing a dynastic legacy? As a mentor and as an actual father. Mm-hmm, right. That's not the selfish gene. No, no, no, really It's seriously not You'll do it in a way. That'll be a blessing to everyone else Okay, so four things all stacked on top of each other adventure okay true adventure you'll bear a blessing to yourself your reputation will grow and rightfully so you'll establish something permanent and long-lasting that echoes down the generations and it'll be good for everyone okay there's a harmony about

all that right there's a stacked harmony okay Okay, the spirit of that harmony, that's God. It's a definition. It's a definition, you see. Yeah, I have to think more about that because when I think of a definition, well, it's interesting, Thomas Aquinas is of course famous for saying, of course you can't know what God is. To know what something is, you have to define it

and to define something is to defy night. Okay, okay, so the Bible doesn't do that it characterizes it right right but I guess different if I was to give something of a definition like it's kind of people say well who created God that kind of question to me it's like well by God I mean metaphysical necessary being whose non-existence is impossible so asking who created God is like saying if your brother is a bachelor what's his wife's name? It misunderstands Yeah, what we mean by God so I didn't think more about what you'd request

Well, okay. So the way the biblical corpus deals with that is it doesn't define God. It characterizes God. What's the difference? What does it mean to carry use a narrative to characterize? Okay, and so God is shown like a He's a complex object. Let's say and So God is shown like a complex object, let's say, and multi-dimensionally complex, that's a way of thinking about it, very complex character. And so there's multiple snapshots of his character. Each story is a snapshot of his character. And the insistence, the monotheistic insistence

is that all of those characterizations speak of a unity. Okay, so I can walk you through some of the characterizations so in the Opening chapters of Genesis God is the spirit that broods on the waters The primordial waters of potential Tohu Vaboh tail. It's not water, no, there's no water created yet. It's potential. It's the Leviathan, that's the other thing. It's the monster you cut into pieces to make the world. It's the giant you defeat to stabilize the social order.

It's potential itself. That's what your consciousness confronts. You're not driven algorithmically. You have a field of possibility in front of you and you navigate through it with a vision. That's how you live That's what your consciousness is. That's why it's made in the image of God and you have something to do It's not trivial. You're shaping the world. You're co-creating the world and hopefully as an emissary of God. God is the Establisher of the moral order. He's the spirit that forbids

human beings for taking on the right to define the moral order to themselves. That's eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's like no, you can do anything you want, but you do not get to define the moral order. This is why Nietzsche was wrong. Do you mind putting the microphone up to your mouth? Is that what you're saying? Yep, yeah, keep going Nietzsche. Yeah, well Nietzsche said God's dead. We'll have to create our own values. Well, that's what Lucifer offered Eve You'll become as God's knowing good and evil. It's like no you do not get to define the moral order Why because it's it's real

It's real not get to define the moral order. Why? Because it's real. It's real. You get to ally yourself with the moral order. You get to arrange yourself in accordance with the moral order. If you usurp it, you do that as a consequence of Luciferian temptation. Truly, that's what precipitates the fall of man. I've got to quote my friend John Henry Spann. He said this this morning He was talking to this individual who chose to sleep around and he said listen What did you say? He said you can at you said it was really good. You can act as if

God forgives us nature does not yeah, God will forgive you nature will not well Yes, yes, I'm starting engaging in these behaviors sure get that shit kicked out of you and God will forgive you but you still have to deal with the these behaviors and you get the shit kicked out of you, and God will forgive you, but you still have to deal with the fact that you just had the shit kicked out of you. Yeah, well that's the that's the tale of the flood and the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's like muck about. See what happens. Well what sort of God is that? It's like the God who took the Soviet Union apart. How about that? Right, right. So, right. You wander off the moral pathway and watch what happens. I met a fella in Dublin recently. I was giving some talks there and he came up to me, noticed me, spotted me in the street. Hi, if you're watching. And he wanted to believe in God,

but he didn't want to believe in a fairy tale. Yeah. Fair enough. I mean, I had my answer, but if you could sum it up, and maybe you feel like you've already said it. This fairy tale, it's like, okay, so we have Freud. It's like Freud. Religion is a defense against death anxiety. We have Marx. Religion is the opiate of the people, compared to Marxism, like the methamphetamine

of the people. Right, okay, so it's just a defense against death anxiety, is it? Why is there hell then? If it's a defense against death anxiety, is it? Why is there hell then? If it's a defense against death anxiety, why bother with hell? Well, it's a convenient place to put your enemies. That's a very cynical answer, and it's not historically warranted.

Why bother with the notion that there's a moral order at all? If you're going to invent a fairy tale, why have one that's got a tooth, some teeth in it to make it more believable? It's like, really? Come on. This is some cosmic conspiracy so that people are smart enough to invent hell just to justify their defense against death anxiety. That's your theory. That's a stupid theory. Right. And then well it's a fairy tale for children. It's really the crucifixion. That's a fairy tale for children is it? Especially when that's what you're called upon to bear. What about a fairy tale for adults?

You know as the new atheist used to say say Santa Claus for adults. Oh, yeah Sure, there's nothing different between the story of Santa Claus and the story of Christ. They're obviously the same thing Right. There's a major There isn't a worse demand that can possibly be made of people than the Christian demand It's exactly the opposite of a fairy tale. It's exactly the opposite. It is the most brutal possible reality. It's not just death. It's hell. And you think, well, there's no such thing as hell. It's like, have it your way, buddy. If you have studied history and you think there's no such thing as hell, you are an idiot. All right. Well, what about this question? Because I know you said you don't like being asked do you believe in God fair enough?

I have an answer to that I Act as if God exists That's the answer to that right because the belief. It's like. What are you talking about? It means this I think and even just a low bar. There's a creator and sustainer of the universe. That's it. Yes, I think that's probably true. Why is why is that so silly? Especially if one is just sort of growing in the faith and hasn't really. It's just not the right. It's what if why can't I just be really superficial?

Why can't I be that? Why can't I just be superficial with a lot of maturation that has to take place? Well Look man, there's lots of pathways forward and and all the biblical heroes stumble at the beginning, you know Jacob is a liar and a cheat Abraham's a Mama's boy. Ray Habb's a prostitute. Yeah, I mean Peteritute. Yeah, Moses is power mad and impulsive. He started out as a murderer. Right, exactly. So, you know, people start out flawed and things can beckon in half-form shape that still bear promise. Yeah. Well, then here's the question. Do you think there is life after death?

Even if you have no kind of way of knowing that infallibly, do you act as if there is? Do you think there is life after death? Even if you have no kind of a way of knowing that infallibly, do you act as if there is? Do you think there is? Your actions echo in eternity. I don't, what does that mean? It's best of God, man. All right, so I think Christians love you in many respects because in many ways you you you teach us better than our Priests often do and priests will be the first to admit that they've learned so much from you and we're grateful for it I think some Christians are frustrated with you because they'll say that's okay. I'm By many Christians to me too. I'm frustrated myself daily But they might say look you're using our book a book that was written by believers and for believers and all we're trying to figure out is are you a believer and it feels like when the

question is put to you directly it's it's obfuscated somehow it's not the right question so like there's no way you know what it is interesting what color is a musical tone What colour is a musical tone? Well, sorry. The framework from within which that question emerges is invalid. It's not the right conceptualisation. Belief is a commitment. It's an existential commitment. It's not a statement of fact. But in order to commit myself to something, I have to know it might exist in reality and not just in my imaginings. Right! Yeah.

Absolutely. So, where's the reality? So, can't that just be the first step? Well, this is partly why this book I'm writing right now deals with characterizations of God. So, let me continue with that. So, I talked about the characterization in chapter one, the identity between the spirit that gives rise

to created order and the human psyche, and I think that's exactly right. I think it's the best definition of what consciousness does that's ever been formulated. And it's the basis of our belief in the West that human beings have an integral value. And that's a bedrock belief. You can't get rid of that without bringing the whole thing tumbling down.

Nietzsche knew that perfectly well. Well in what's God in the story of Adam and Eve, the spirit that punishes presumption and pride. Okay, how about in the story of Cain and Abel? The spirit that rejects unworthy sacrifices, right? Then in the flood, the spirit that is all hell breaking loose when you've gone looking for trouble, right? Then the Tower of Babel, the spirit that brings the presumptuous, Spirit that brings the presumptuous, technologically obsessed tyrant to his knees. Right. Then in Abraham, spirit of adventure, and in Moses, the burning bush, and the force

that enables the worthy to free, to stand up against tyranny and to free the slaves from their Chains that's God all of that. Do you believe in that? Well Either believe in that or you believe in its opposite that there's no non-belief position here You see there's no non-belief position Let's say the spirit of adventure comes calling to you, which it does Which is why you're to be prepared here to have your wicks trimmed, right? Because it comes like a thief in the night be awake when the call comes. Okay. What's the call the call to adventure? Do you believe it? Do you follow it?

It's either yes or no, right and if it's no Then you just believe in something else. Right? You're stuck. Why are you stuck with belief? Why are you stuck with faith? Because what the hell do you know? Right?

You're- Very little. I don't know how plastic is made. I know very little. You're confronted constantly by your own ignorance. You move forward on principle. You have to. You move forward in faith.

In faith in what? Well, the biblical injunction is the highest form of faith is represented by the spirit that's characterized in the biblical stories. And here's another example. Jacob has a vision of the ladder, spiraling ladder upward. It's an ancient vision. It's an ancient vision. It's the rod of tradition and the serpent. It's the same thing. It's Jack and the Beanstalk's pull. It's the cosmic axis that points to the North Star. It's the manner in which we orient ourselves. It's all of that, Jacob's ladder ladder Jacob decides when he leaves his juvenile His state of juvenile deception and

machination manipulation that he's gonna aim upward he has the dream of the Spiral upward and at the pinnacle of the spiral is God. Well, what is that? That's the ever receding spirit that calls you forward So imagine that as you mature your child and you're an adult, things beckon to you. Okay, but they change. But the fact of the beckoning remains constant. What beckons? It's a definition.

God. And what is it? Well, it's the same thing that broods over the water. It's the same thing that brings the prideful to their knees. It's the same thing that produces the flood or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's the same thing as the call to adventure. It's the same thing as the crucifixion of Christ. It's all the same thing. That's the monotheistic hypothesis. Does it exist? Does the call to adventure exist?

It's what develops you. It's what you encourage in your children. You act like it exists. Is it a fact that people have divine value? Well, build a society without that assumption and see what happens. Treat those around you as if they don't have it. Yeah, right. Try that for a week.

See how popular you are with everyone. Right? if they don't have it. Yeah, right, try that for a week. See how popular you are with everyone, right? How do people want to be treated as if they're the embodiment of the logos? Do you think, right, that the reason a lot of Catholics want you to become Catholic is in part because they are people of goodwill and they love you and they want your salvation, but do you think it's also because they want the big kid on campus to be on their side so they can feel more secure in a faith that they're not even sure they fully accept. Do you ever feel kind of used like these different groups just kind of want you on their team? Well there's a presumptuousness about the religiously hypocritical, right?

That's the pharisaic tendency to, what would you say? It's something like the desire to falsely elevate moral status. It's something like that. And so some of it's genuine confusion, you know, because I suppose people think I'm being a weasel with my words. I won't commit. It's like, yeah. No, I heard about, I wouldn't think that words I won't commit it's like yeah no I heard about I I wouldn't think that after I heard what you just had to say about global warming it doesn't seem like you're okay alienating people if you think something is the case you'll say it what you just said about global warming and climate change I mean that will not only piss a lot of people off

but will also have people write you off so if your sole goal was to not be written off and that's why you're not picking a side and being obvious about it well then I don't have any I don't have any broke for the nature worshippers it's like yeah now we dealt with you guys back at the time of Elijah all right but you know you're back but with faith yeah so you think some people say you're being a weasel with your words but yeah why doesn't Peterson just say what he thinks? It's like, because I don't think the same way. Yeah, okay. It's a commitment.

Yeah. You know, Christ himself, he says to his followers exactly that, pick up your cross and follow me. How many rosaries have people given you? Oh, a hundred. Rosary city, man. Yeah. My wife has a big collection now.

I'm sure that hasn't helped now with that. It's been very good for her. It's been very good for her it's been very good for her that is this practice very very good for her you know before I was done for my daughter oh is she Christian yet or she oh yeah yeah yeah she's she's like taking the plunge wow so she's not a Catholic yeah she's flirting with the then the evangelicals. Okay. So, you know. Yeah, forgot what I was going to say. God, Jesus, conversion, faith. These are big topics, aren't they? Yeah, see the thing, well we talked about faith is that people think faith is Lord, Lord, you know, the proclamation of the words. And there's a stream of Christian theology that,

and that's especially pronounced on the Protestant side, that essentially makes that claim. But no, that's not, no, no, no! That's why Christ says, not all those who say Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. It's not a matter of mouthing the words. Now you said, you know, that might be an okay start.

It's like, fair enough, man. You can do a good thing badly to begin with. It's better than not doing it at all. That's for sure. St. Paul's words, when I was a boy, I thought as a boy, now I'm a man. I live as a man. We're meant to be called to maturity. What I was going to say is, before I was doing this podcast, I would travel and give sort of chastity talks and things like this about sexuality. And one of the things that we've been arguing for years Jordan is why cohabitation is a bad idea Yeah, and all of a sudden I'm reading your bloody book and I'm like, yeah, I'm so glad that you made that case for us No, I find someone better. Well you you made the case better than we did. So I Guess as Tammy has had this journey into Catholicism

I just assume there are things about what Catholicism teaches that you're like, nope, disagree and that other things. Yeah, the whole communist part of it I could do without. I'm not sure the church is teaching that. Yeah, liberation theology. There might be people within the church. Yeah, there sure might be, like 60% of them.

But there's a, yeah, absolutely. There's corruption. The Catholic, I'm open to the Catholic church being the most corrupt institution on the planet. No, I wouldn't go that far. They've got some heavy competition. I'd be open to that. I'm very much open to that. So sure, yeah, there are scoundrels in the Church. I often say to people, if you ever leave the Catholic Church to join a pure communion, you know, like a nice, holy communion, once you join it, it won't be. Because have

you met you? Right, right. So I'm going gonna stay here. I'm gonna stay here. No, that's exactly right. It's like, and even, of course, the church as an enterprise is corrupt because all human enterprises are corrupt. And the most corrupt people will try to corrupt

what's highest. So the church is peculiarly susceptible to the religious hypocrites like the Pharisees. Yeah, right So that's eternally the case. Does that mean that you should? Abandon the enterprise it's like well, like you said if you're Christ then no problem But if you're not maybe don't well, yeah, you might think that you're part of the problem So I guess but as Tammy's gone along this journey Presumably there are things that you learned that the Catholic Church officially teaches, whether knuckleheads like me are doing a good

job of it or not. So maybe what are some things you like, bloody hell, there was wisdom there. Oh, there's lots of it. Confession is brilliant. I love confession. Confession's a great idea. Well, that's the basis of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is secularized confession and atonement.

Obviously, dialogue, so Logos, the redemption by the Logos, when there are two of us together in my name, you know, Christ is with us, that's bloody psychotherapy. And the confession, it's like, well, I'm miserable. Well, why? Tell me about your life. Well, that's a confession. Why? So you can figure out where you wandered off the straight narrow path Right. And what was Tammy's experience of her first confession? Oh You know, she had some things to You see you talked about the grip of the past what it needs you say You might think you're done with the past but that doesn't mean that the past past is done with you. Right? You know, and so she had some things to reconcile herself to.

And the Catholic Church, this is something... To be clear, I'm not asking her sins. No, I understand that. I understand that. But, you know, one of the things Jung pointed out too, which I thought was brilliant, and he was a very astute critic of both Protestantism and Catholicism and certainly gave the devil is due. He said, well, the Catholics have a real advantage over Protestantism in one regard. There's disadvantages that go along with it. It's like, well, if your sins are more than you can bear, there's a pathway to redemption in Catholicism. You can be forgiven. And God, everyone needs that. You know, everyone needs that. Now you're supposed to what like the woman taken in adultery you're supposed to go forward

and sin no more but you still have the terrible burden of your past it's very difficult for Protestants to deal with that the Catholics offer absolution and in the name of an authority and you know we need we need to be reset and so right there's something to be said you know some a Protestant might say to the Catholic why can't you just confess in your room in front of your Bible or kneeling down by your bed? And the answer is seems to be, well, of course you can. But we would want to know how is Christ instituted, first of all. But second of all, there is something so beautiful about having to like Father Boniface out there as my spiritual father and having to go to him. It's a deeper admission.

Yeah. And then having to go to war with your ego and then noticing when you're confessing sins in a way to make you seem Good like good even when you confess bad sense so that you'll be seen as humble Yeah, shit now I confess that and but there is something very beautiful about hearing those words from another human being. Yeah Yeah, well, it's also it's also a manifestation of of trust in a variety of ways. It's trust in the other person, it's trust in the institution, warranted or not. You have to trust institutions to some degree, whether it's warranted or not. Doesn't mean you have to be a fool. It means you put your best...

The basis of civil conduct is trust, and trust is a form of faith yeah right and you have faith and you evince trust regardless of the fact of corruption and you have to because if you don't what are you where do you just in a corner you're in hell yeah with all the other devils mmm right that's not good and so you trust in spite of corruption right that's faith faith is trust in spite of corruption and I don That's faith. Faith is trust in spite of corruption. And I don't mean like, naivety. I don't mean the things that a child believes. That's not what I mean at all. What was Tammy's coming into the faith like that day? Was she baptized or just confirmed? Yeah. Yeah. What was it? Was it a good experience? Where did it take place? Yeah. When at Cathedral in Toronto. Okay. Yeah. No, it was great and and she knew the priest well and and you know

they were all happy that we were there and I was very pleased for her and like her her prayer life was Unbelievably useful to her when she was dying unbelievably useful. Here's a good question I think what is prayer and how does it differ from prayers? That's simple. How am I stupid? Really? Well, yeah, okay. So here's the temptations of Christ in the desert. Yeah, man, absolutely. So the first temptation is to ask God to turn the stones to bread. Okay, so what does that mean? To ask God for an unearned favor.

That's a satanic temptation. It's like God is not your delivery man. You don't get things you don't deserve. He's not to be called on to grant your wishes. He's not a genie. Okay. Okay. Second temptation. Throw yourself off the highest place. Oh, I see. So you want God to rescue you from your stupidity. Yes, please. No. Okay. Not happening. Third temptation, power. To turn to power, like Moses does. Right? That's why he doesn't get into the promised land. Well, those are major temptations. Okay, so that's not how to pray. You don't pray for power. You don't pray for favors, and you don't pray to be delivered from

the necessary consequences of your own stupidity. I see. What do you pray for? You pray that the pathway forward might reveal itself to you. That, and in all humility. That's the humility is, I don't, I see but through a glass darkly. Please help me clarify my vision. Let there be light. Yeah, and that works, that works, that works. It's no different than thought itself. Yeah, and that works. That works. That works. It's no different

than thought itself. Thought is secularized prayer. Poor guy. Every time your movies crawling around. Thanks, Thursday. I heard you advertise that app, Hallow, before. I guess it's a Catholic app. It's the number one prayer app in the world. It's extremely cool. I'm still trying to figure out how is prayer different from just talking to ourself Because it it's an opening up to revelation. So this is why I said that there's thought is secularized prayer Okay, here's why this is what you do when you think yeah, it's very cool. It's very cool, right? This is what you do when you think Really when you really think okay first of all of all, you have a problem. Okay,

well that's an act of humility. I've got a problem. It's a serious problem. I don't know what to do about it. Okay, so you have a problem. You're confronting something important and you would like a solution. Yes, I have one in my mind right now. You don't have a solution. Yeah, I keep. So what do you do? Well, you open yourself up to revelation. That's what thinking is. Okay, you think well, I thought up the answer. It's like, did you? How do you do that? Oh, well, I don't know. It appeared. It's like, yeah, it appeared. That's a revelation. Right? It's a revelation. Well, if you thought

it up, why didn't you know what to begin with? Yeah. Right. And what do you mean you thought it up? What were the mechanics exactly? And isn't the precondition the admission of your ignorance? Okay, so now you have the revelation, then what do you do? You examine the spirits to see if they're of God. What does that mean? Okay, let's say you have a problem. Now you want to solve the problem.

Okay, why? Well maybe you want to solve the problem because it would redound to your prideful credit. Well, then the spirit you're calling on to reveal the answer isn't exactly God. Real quick, I'm thinking of Paul who says, I asked the Lord to remove the thorn in my flesh and he says, my grace is sufficient. So he presumably doesn't remove the thing that he's... Right, right, right, right, right, right. Okay, so when you think,

you calling upon different spirits, right? And so if you think maybe you're a scientist and you want to publish a research paper and you're looking for the truth, but not really, because what you're really trying to do is advance your career. And so that's the spirit of usurpation. And so you conjure up your hypothesis and you get

a revelation. Well, where's it from? The author of all ill. How about that? You have to have your, if you're going to pray, you better be sure you're praying to God. Right. And that's why you should be on your knees. Right. And then maybe what reveals itself to you will be, what would you say, an emissary from the proper spirit. That depends a fair bit on your orientation. Okay. Right?

You better be aiming up, buddy. You want to solve the problem? Like seriously? Okay. You got to have your ducks in a row. You got to be aiming up with every fiber of your being or the revelation will be from an unclean spirit. That's for sure.

It's the truth. There's no better way of conceptualizing it. A bit to the mechanics of prayer, right? Because a Protestant might look at someone who's praying the rosary and say, this formula that you're doing, right? It's a little rope and you go around, is unnecessary. And it sounds like what you're saying,

it doesn't necessarily include a formula. So do you think there's something wrong with prayers, traditional prayers that we were taught as children or praying the rosary or is it? No, I'm missing the point maybe. No, no, no, no. I don't think that there's, first of all, I would say that it depends on the spirit

in which the endeavor is undertaken, right? Okay, but then, well, there's all sorts of valid games. I think there's been times in my life where I've been praying the rosary to avoid myself. Yeah, right. And I felt like God was saying to me, put it down. Yeah, right. Look at me.

And that was terrifying. Sure, of course. I didn't want to do that. That's when it deteriorates into an empty formalism. Right. Then it's the shell of the thing, right? God has departed from the house. But if it's done in the right spirit,

like when Tammy was praying the rosary when she was ill, what was she doing? She was praying for strength to bear her burden in a manner that didn't, what would you say? Demoralize her family, how about that? That's a good prayer. Can I face death in a manner that doesn't demoralize my family? That's a prayer likely to be answered. That's different than I wish my cancer would go away. It's like, you're

fair enough, man. You know, God's not a butler. Yeah. Or a vending machine. Yeah. And it isn't even obvious that you should pray to have the burdens of your sins removed Yeah, or a vending machine. Yeah. All right. And it isn't even obvious that you should pray to have the burdens of your sins removed from you. The burden of my sins. Yeah, well, maybe you've got something to learn. That's exactly right.

Yeah, yeah. Now, like, I know that's hard to squirreled. No, no, but I think I know, let me see if, I once knelt before our Lord in the blessed sacrament. I said, Lord, I thank you for everything. And I thank you even for my sins. And what I meant by that wasn't the evil that I'm committing that's hurting me and you and those around me. That's obviously not what I mean. It's just that, what do I mean? I mean, I thank you for my poverty so that I can rely on you and not have to rely on myself.

I thank you that even my sins can be a cause of delight to you when I repent of them because surely it's a delight Also a choice for the same. The fact is you had the choice That's something. Yeah, right. Yeah And you know, there's William Blake to wisdom through excess and the prodigal son, you know There's something to be said like it isn't exactly the case that the God of the Old Testament Let's say or the new rewards the God of the Old Testament, let's say, or the new rewards a kind of moralizing cowardice. You're gonna make mistakes

when you tromp your way forward, right? I mean- There's apparently a quote from Augustine who says, "'The man who is lost in his passions is less lost than the man who has lost his passions.'" Right, right, right, right. Well, Christ makes a similar point when he talks about the, it's the parable, I believe, right, right, right. Well, Christ makes a similar point when he talks about

it's the parable, I believe, of the unjust steward, right, who ends up being hyper concerned with his own monetary gain. And Christ says something like, don't deny, something like, do not deny the greedy their wisdom. And I've noticed this in my business dealings, for example. Well, I'd much rather deal with someone who's greedy than someone whose motives are unspecified. It's like you're moralizing, I don't know what to do with you. You want money?

No problem. If you actually want money, like at least I can understand your motives. Now, is that pure well? If you're in love with money no, but if your love of money is put in the proper place then there's nothing about it That's not virtuous. It's not money. That's the fault. It's the love of money Yeah, absolutely and but how do you distinguish like how do I know when I'm falling into the sin of the love of money then If the love of money is the root of evil not money the love of money I

Suppose that you know, there's an inclination there to sink into that kind of materialistic infantile comfort instead of the adventure Because what like what is it that money is supposed to be bringing? It's an exchange there's natural wealth and artificial wealth artificial wealth exists for the sake of something else and Natural wealth can be had somewhat simply housing food water We are and the the opportunity for growth, you know, you can put money, well that's what the talents are for, right? I mean and in the parable of the talents, obviously God rewards the people who multiply the talents and take risks to do so, right? And so that's an investment, there's an investment idea there that is associated obviously with something like free and individual

trade. So you put yourself in front of the adventure. It's something like that if you're worshipping money, you know, because you can use money in an extraordinarily adventurous manner Obviously, yeah, and and then It's difficult to make it serve the good like it's difficult to make anything serve the good But that doesn't mean it's not possible, right? One of the things people love about you is you're not talking about Gossip, you know, you might talk about people like Joe Biden or something, but you don't tend to stay there

I wanted to ask you what were the benefits and drawbacks of joining the daily wire? Because I'm sure when you did join them people just as lumped you in with American conservatism Yeah, and the Jews to the and the Jews. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun We've got a lot of right-wing trolls come out of the woodwork Although I think the left-wing anti antisemites are by far the worst beast. So I mean the right-wing antisemites, they're perfectly reprehensible in every possible manner, but you know they're kind of scattered and atomized and contemptible, sort of self-evidently. The bloody left-wing antisemites, they're moralizing beyond belief and they're way

more, they're a way bigger threat way bigger threat anyways what were the advantages well I like them people and they leave me alone they let me all they've done is help me I've had zero trouble with the daily wire zero they have a very professional crew they've helped me they've made my podcast simpler because they take care of all the production details. They do a fair bit of the arrangements with the guests almost completely, although I choose the guests by and large. They make suggestions and sometimes I accept them. They've enabled me to do all sorts of things I wouldn't have done on my own. Exodus seminar, we just did a seminar on the

Gospels. I did a four-part series on Western civilization we're going to release soon. We went to Rome and Athens and Jerusalem Rome and I loved your marriage course by the way. Thank you. We did the marriage course. Yeah, so they've There's been zero trouble now people were all squawky about you know me joining the reprehensible Shapiro types and That went away in about three months because they also let me continue putting my podcast on YouTube for free. Like that's generous. Yeah. It seems like they've given you a long leash. Yes. And they're fun to work with.

Yeah, what's your role with them though? Because you don't have the same kind of role as a Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles. They seem to be working for the Daily Wire. You seem like you're associated with them doing your own thing, but under their umbrella still. It's a partnership, I would say. There's enough shared goal.

Well, some of it's relationship. Like I like the Daily Wire people. They're fun and their orientation is pretty damn solid. And they're conservative, it's well good. They're a voice in a sea of radicals. So I found it much easier in the last 10 years to speak with conservatives than with, certainly with progressives.

I can't talk to progressives at all. I tried, I worked with the Democrats for like five years. Like a lot. That GQ interview is an example of that. Trying to keep short with her. Yeah, right, it's like, well, even when I talk with the Democrats for like five years. Like a lot. That GQ interview is an example of that. Trying to keep short with her. Yeah, right. It's like, well, even when I talk to the Democrats that I was hypothetically aligned with,

people trying to pull the party to the center, it's like there's all sorts of things I just couldn't ever say. I certainly couldn't say anything I thought about climate. Did you make an intentional decision to stay out of what's happening between Candace and Ben right now? Or do you have opinions on it?

Yeah, there's nothing useful I can add to that. Yeah. Is that hard to make that decision when you're so public? No, not really. It'll sort itself out. There's nothing in it. There's nothing that I can add to it that would be the least bit useful. You know, there's no point in adding to the to the clamor at all and Yeah, that takes yeah the day the daily wire deal first of all was very generous It was a very generous financial author very and ridiculously so and so that was good and good It's nice not to be alone. Yeah, you know and was good and it's nice not to be alone. You know? And it's good to have some support staff and they're very good. They're very professional. Excellent editing teams.

They film a lot of your presentations. So you've got that now forever. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, they are and they're a lot of fun. It's a very entrepreneurial organization. It's in its growth phase. And so it doesn't have that Stultification of us of a you know, when a when a corporation an enterprise Reaches its maturity and starts to decline it gets all ossified and there's rules for everything You can't do this and you can't do that. You have to get permission It's like I hate that and so when I go to Jeremy the the CEO for example, or the producers and I say well I got this wild idea, they say okay, like the Exodus seminar. I mean what a

preposterous thing for them to bet on. It cost them like a million dollars. They're gonna bring nine people together to talk for 34 hours about Moses. Who's gonna bet on that? Well originally it was only supposed to be 17 hours and so we went and did the seminar and look it was clear that to take the time necessary we weren't going to get through the whole thing. They doubled the time, they doubled the budget with like no trouble, no trouble, no paperwork. They took the risk. Yeah. And they do that all the time, they take risks all the time. And so, you know. And I'm fond of the conservatives because.

The center has been loosed from our culture and someone needs to put the state back in the ground. And so. Well, speaking of conservatives, who will win this election? Trump or Biden sitting from where I'm sitting, I don't see how it's possible that Trump doesn't win it. Yeah. I think Trump will win this election, Trump or Biden? Sitting from where I'm sitting, I don't see how it's possible that Trump doesn't win it. Yeah, I think Trump will win. I mean, we'll see. It's a long way to November still. Well, here's a question.

If Trump wins or if Biden wins, what do you think the fallout might be for the country? Either way, have you given that much thought? It depends on how close the election is, and it depends on how much furor there is about its validity. Yeah, right. The part of the problem in the United States is the margins of victory are so small that any degree of corruption makes everyone instantly skeptical and like there's no shortage of corruption. Trump's targeted accusations about having the election stolen were not well specified in my estimation, but his sense that he was the victim of a conspiracy, it's like well obviously just

the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story alone probably cost him the election. That was appalling. I saw your interview. I think it was an Australian lady. Yeah, Miranda Devine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She doesn't exactly have an iron in the fire. Yeah. You know, no, it's absolutely appalling. And obviously Twitter was conspiring against Trump, clearly. So was Facebook, so was Google, and they still are. They're woke to the bloody core.

So the notion that Trump is promulgating that, you know, he was the target of unfair manipulation, it's like absolutely, And on a scale that was unprecedented. Like, I never saw that happen to a president in my lifetime, not even to Nixon. So, you know, so that's rough. That's rough. And, but the part of the problem is margin. The elections are so damn close that it doesn't take much corruption to skew it. Have you got to meet Trump? No. Oh, I met him.

I met him in Kentucky. What was that like? Um, it was very brief. Well, the event was very interesting. I was there for the Derby and I was up. There's a glass cafe above the Kentucky Derby grounds. There's about 150,000 people there. It was the first Derby after COVID and, uh, Trump was, everyone knew like the whole crowd of 150,000

people plus the 300 or so in this restaurant they all knew Trump was going to show up in the afternoon it was like just bring that to your mouth a little at Mark it was like being in Rome I imagine or being around the Kennedys back in the 1960s like the place was just buzzing he's so famous like it's just an insane level of fame right because well he was a star, and that's not an easy thing to pull off. And for quite a while, and he was a real estate magnet, that's also quite difficult. Then he was president and ridiculously controversial. Like he's insanely famous. And you could just feel that emperor-like worship in the air, you know, and this is actually I think a flaw in the American political system because in

Britain the Queen bears that she's a figurehead. She's imagine there's four branches of government executive legislative judicial and symbolic The president bears the symbolic weight in the US. It's not good because that tilts the polity towards well towards deification of the president. That's why you have the First Lady. It's like what the hell's that? There's no First Lady in Canada. Nobody cares who the Prime Minister's wife is and that's right. That's rightly so. It's like the First Lady. Well that's the Queen. You guys don't need a Queen, but you want one. Yeah. Right. We're the blessed mother.

Yeah. Well, that's a better substitute. Yeah. All right. So you're at this Kentucky Derby. You're feeling the energy. Yeah. Well, I had flown out that day to do a talk, a convocation somewhere, and I came back just as the air space was closed. And then I made it to the the derby like with about 10 minutes to spare before they locked it down. The army was everywhere, the place was just buzzing and Trump strolled in it was like well that much fame gives people a tremendous charisma you know and it's a lot for one person. It's a lot for one person. I think he has a good family and thank God for that.

And he seems to have managed that well. And I know people who know him and they have faith in him privately. He's a bully and a very good one. He's an unbelievably sophisticated 13 year old bully like his ability to wield a nickname is unparalleled no one can he's great he's great at that and so and that's a real superpower although and it's it's a mixed blessing because he's a 13 year old bully you know I'm not trying to reduce him yeah being a 13 year old bullies kind of handy when

you're dealing with the dictator of North Korea. You know, you want that kind of playground unpredictability. It's like, don't fuck with me. You don't know what I'm capable of, you know, and a more sensible person, you could argue, hasn't got that, you know, and so I don't know what to make of that. There's that trickster, disagreeable trickster, disagreeable trickster element to Trump that also gives him that vicious sense of humor. He's insanely funny. Oh, he is. I have a book, which I love.

It's a library edition, beautiful volume, called The Collected Poetry of Donald Trump. And it's all his tweets, typeset, beautifully. And they are hilarious. Like he's got a barbed tongue, man. He's a viper. Well, the other thing is, you know, people keep talking about his temperament

and how stupid he is. This is what people say. I've never seen him lose his cool in any of these interviews. You don't do what Trump's done and be stupid. Like, first of all, so I have a friend for whom he built a multi-million dollar building in Chicago, and he finished it below cost and on time. Well, there's no more corrupt industry than construction,

especially in Chicago or New York. Well, Trump played that successfully, and he built those buildings. You know, and my friend told me that Trump was there every week walking through the building checking things out you know and he was successful at that and then he was a reality TV star for a long time that's not easy yeah right so he's got that showman element that's really integral to American culture yeah you know you saw that on display in the Elvis movie for example with what's his name Colonel okay I didn't watch that oh

it's great it's great it's great his name, Colonel. Okay, I didn't watch that. Oh, it's great. It's great. It's great. It's a great American movie. And Colonel, I don't remember the name of him, his manager, but he's a real charlatan, a showman, almost a psychopath. And yet he made Elvis. Like it was this weird, this is part of American culture, right?

There's that talent and ability combined with this entrepreneurial showmanship and Trump has that you know and that's a that's a power too. So did you get to shake his hands? Yeah. Did he know who you were? How did the conversation go? No no no no I don't believe so. It was very brief yeah and so I've been trying to finagle him onto my podcast and I've made contact. That might actually break the internet. Yeah, well, the thing is I don't think he'll do it. And the reason for that is he doesn't have anything to gain. Yeah.

I don't think. Has Rogan tried to get him on? Cause that would break the internet. Yeah, that's for sure. I don't know. You know, Joe tends to veer away from the political and I can understand that too. You know, I've had political speakers on my podcast

and usually it doesn't work well. It's brutal. Yeah, they don't get many views generally. It's like they have a script. It's like they're reading from something. They're not a human being whose flesh and blood, they're an algorithm. That's the political voice that turns toward the worship of the golden calf at the drop of a hat. Which is why people like Trump, because you get the sense that even if you don't like him, he seems like he's being honest. Yeah, yeah.

As opposed to Mike Pence, when he got up and would start talking, you're like, you were made in a lab. I don't mean there's disrespect to him. Well, I guess I do. That was a pretty disrespectful thing to say. He came off very. Yeah, well, Trump has that unvarnished element,

and that's also something that's very appealing to working class people. Right. Because they he doesn't talk down to people. Yes. He's very good at that. A lot of people talk. Yeah. We talk. Yeah. Well, and he's got that gift of spontaneity. You know, he doesn't craft his speeches. And of course that makes him a bit of a loose cannon, but people like that for the same reason. They like these long form discussions. It's like, well, we know you might be deceiving us but not in a practiced and calculating way, right?

You know, maybe some of your personality flaws are leaking through, but at least that's kind of like honest deception. I thought when Trump won, I thought, well, they preferred the spontaneous lies of Trump to the calculated lies of Hillary. You know, and that's very cynical, but there's still, there's something about it that's accurate. Yeah. Yeah, wild. And I would like to say a few things in Trump's favor. Please do. A profound favor. No wars on Trump's watch. Right. He got no credit for that. That's a big deal. We've had plenty of wars in the interim, and God only knows if we're in the middle of World War III. We certainly could be.

Right. Right. And God only knows where it's going. And so, and then the next thing is, Trump managed the Abraham Accords. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, he should have got a Nobel Peace Prize for that. Obviously. It was the biggest move forward to peace. It's even held through the Hamas crisis. It's a bloody miracle. You know, and if Biden would have had an ounce of integrity on the foreign policy front, he would have rewarded Trump for the Abraham Accords. Maybe Trump would have just rode off into the sunset if he would have got some

due credit and they would have brought Saudi Arabia into the fold because that was on the table. I know that for a fact, right? And so Biden, nope, there was no way they were going to give Trump credit. And so they didn't pull the Saudis in and that was a big mistake, a big mistake, right? And maybe this whole catastrophe that's emerging now is a consequence of that. So I'm very unimpressed by that. And Trump should have got a Nobel prize. Christ, Obama got a Nobel prize for what? Peace prize for what? I think if he would have had, he should have refused it. Well, why did he get it? Cause he was the first black president.

No, that's not, that's not a valid reason. Trump and his team brought about the Abraham Accords. That was a major league accomplishment. Everyone said that was impossible. The State Department fought it tooth and nail. The same offer was there for the Biden team and they refused to act on it. So that was a major league daring move and it paid off. And God only knows, you know,

it might establish the basis, you never know. If the Iranians can be pushed back into their thuggish prison, maybe that'll establish the basis for a concord between the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews. That's what the UAE is hoping could happen. I'm totally out of touch with Canadian politics. So what's going on there?

Someone told me to ask you that. They said they like when you talk about your friend Trudeau. Well that Canada is in the state you get in when you elect Peter Pan to be your leader he's uh I believe that I think he's an incompetent narcissist I think every single word that Justin Trudeau says is a lie I think every single gesture he makes is a lie it's all performative he was a drama teacher part-time drama teacher he was completely and utterly unqualified for the job. And he could have taken it and thought, well, I'm an idiot, but you know, I have a name and I could buckle down and learn,

I could apprentice myself, I could surround myself with great people, and I could grow into the job. But that isn't what he did. As soon as he got elected, he picked a cabinet that was half women, even though 25% of the elected officials were women. It's like, well, you didn't pick the best people then buddy. It's 2015. It's time for half of the people to be women. That's the level of thinking he's capable of. And he scuttled the Canadian economy. We're about as productive now as Mississippi. Right, we were at parity ten years ago with the US. Our housing is twice as expensive. We have far more immigrants entering the country than you do with your open southern border, right?

We're slated to have the worst performing economy in the developing world for the next 30 years. He's scuttling the energy industry. He refused to deliver natural gas to the Germans and to the Japanese when they came cap in hand asking and turned all that money over to the Middle Eastern tyrants and the Russians. Right. What else? He's produced the most totalitarian legislation that Canada has ever seen.

He scuttled the Constitution. He stole Canadian's bank accounts during the trucker convoy and acted unconstitutionally, which the courts have already decided. His energy minister, Stephen Guilbao, is a delusional nature-worshipping activist and has been since he was five years old. He's at war with Alberta, which has like the third largest oil reserves in the world. Saskatchewan has the largest uranium reserves. Canada could be insanely wealthy if we weren't childish beyond belief.

So is public opinion turning on Trudeau? Oh yes. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in all likelihood he'll be scuttled, his party will be scuttled in the next election next October. But he'll hang on till October 25th because he's made a devil's deal with Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the Socialists, a man too stupid to even negotiate for a cabinet position despite having formed essentially a coalition, which is also unheard of in Canadian, in the Canadian

political tradition. There's never been a coalition, which is also unheard of in Canadian, in the Canadian political tradition. There's never been a coalition like this. And anybody with any sense who forms a coalition as a minority party leader gets a seat at the table. But Singh, he's a Rolex wearing, what would you say, tailored suit socialist. You know, I don't know what sort of creature that is. I have a Rolex and I wear tailored suits, but I'm no

socialist so, you know Tasteless it might be but it's not hypocritical. Well, I want to ask about it who gave it to you Oh, I have this suit company LG FG. Okay, this guy your company Oh, no, no this no no there they they they came to me two years ago with an offer They sent it to me by PDF. I said we want want to make you a dozen suits, one for each of your rules. They printed the rules underneath the collar in the back and they made these suits, each of which was tailor-made for a rule with a lining that reflected very creatively done. Very, a lot of work went into it. It wasn't a casual offer. Right.

And I looked at it, I thought, well, that's fun. Crazy suits, like very, well, like this one. Blue and red. Yeah, that's one of them. Yeah, yeah. Sheep, wool on one side, goat on the other. Yeah, so that's fun. We were shocked at how much effort they put into it when they arrived.

I was playfully surprised. Dimitri, the guy who runs the company, he's a lot of fun. He's daring and You know, he has a he has an eye for what he's doing there's a marketing element to this and it's successful But that's fine. He doesn't push it. He plays nice and he's he's been fun. He doesn't push his luck he He made an offer to me, which was entertaining and playful. And it's been a very good thing. It's been fun. And he makes me these like crazy suits and I,

he sends them to me and I think there's no way I'll ever wear that. And then I wear it and I think, I kind of like it. Yeah. Well, you don't know yourself. You don't know yourself. What does Tammy think of the suits. What was a first reaction? She's on board Michaela was kind of skeptical of Demetri because there are people who come around who are looking for things, you know And so Michaela's got kind of a snake eye for that sort of thing but but she's she's come on board and The thing the thing is it also was appropriate because when I went on tour

The first time I bought some very expensive suits and I thought I'd was appropriate because when I went on tour the first time, I bought some very expensive suits and I thought I'd always dress formally when I was a professor compared to most professors anyways, not as formally as I dress now, but in that vein. And when I went on tour, I thought well, I'm gonna put some real effort into this, right? Because well, I'm gonna talk to 350,000 people and like let's not take that for granted even a little bit we're gonna put everything we have behind this and make sure it works, so I bought these suits and Then people started showing up at the shows in suits like 40% of the audience Thank you for doing that. Yeah important that men take themselves

Seriously, and all these young guys come and they tell me often on first suit I've ever bought. And they like, they're standing up and they look like men instead of like 10 year olds that have been inflated with a bicycle pump. And so... That's good. Yeah, well, it's true. It's true.

Well, talk about the importance of a man dressing as well as he can. Because I mean, I live in a pretty depressed area here and it's quite sad to see so many people in the grocery store wearing pajamas And I got to presume they have something else to wear, but they think it's acceptable to wear pajamas pajamas to the airport Why is that a bad idea? premature It's antisocial Yes, really like literally it's antisocial. It's like who, you know, your clothes aren't exactly for you.

Yeah. They're more for other people, right? I mean, they're a symbol of respect. That's why I brush my teeth, right? For the sake of not just me and my hygiene, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a gesture of respect. I mean, my father, who's still alive, he was an elementary school teacher and in the 60s and the 70s and he

always wore a suit and I asked him one day, why do you wear a suit? He said to show respect to my students and so when I began my work as a junior professor, well I started dressing rather formally when I was a graduate student. It kind of put a distinction line between me and the undergraduates who are you know not much than me. And plus I was experimenting, you know, I knew there was something to the formality because formality has been dispensed with in our culture. And so that's a value that's been left on the table to be despoiled.

And so you can just pick it up and carry it away. And then I wore suits, like I said, as a professor, which was also very helpful. It was a nice demarcation line. And I had no behavioral problems at the university ever with my students, ever. Cause they knew. You weren't a peer, right?

Well, they also knew like I had zero tolerance for that. Cause any trouble in my class, you're gone. And if I never see you again, no problem. This is not the high school. Yeah. Right. Right. And even with grading, like many professors were overwhelmed with requests to upgrade grades.

Very seldom happened to me. It was partly because I announced in class, I said, look, if you have a complaint about an essay grade, I'll remark your essay. But I tend to err in the initial grading on the side of generosity. And you can be very sure that the next time I grade your paper, it will be with a very critical eye. And you can be very sure that the next time I grade your paper, it will be with a very critical eye. And so that was usually enough to dissuade the narcissists who like to leverage. That happens a lot in universities.

Professors face a lot of pressure now from the kids with whom their peers to, well, I just need another 3%, you know, because of some goal. It's like not helpful. Not helpful. Men dressing well takes themselves seriously, helps other people take them seriously. Well, there's also some, like, well, you want to look like a two bit slob? What are you announcing your moral superiority?

I don't give a damn. That's your announcement? I'm above it all. Really, that's why you're dressed in tracksuit, because you're above it all. In crocs. Yeah, you really look above it all really that's why you're dressed in track suit cuz you're above it all crocs. Yeah, you really look above it all buddy Yeah, you know so no and I think the title turned in that regard because we've taken idiot casual to its ultimate degree And so the aristocrats will start dressing again, and then it'll you know trickle down trickle down

Yeah, a lot of men watch this show and a lot of men have asked me in the past How do I know when she's the one how do I know if she's I should marry her well because she says yes You know backward question, let me out let me tell you this anecdote I moved over to America started dating my wife got cold feet was nervous prayed for signs got none of them And then I called my mate in Australia, and I went mark. I want to marry her I guess but I'm just bloody afraid he cut me off. What the hell are you thinking about you idiot? She's better than you anyway, right right and he said you need to propose before she finds that out So yeah, I'm right that night. No kidding. No kidding. Well, look I was on tour a while back and for three nights in a row the same question rose to the top of the electronically submitted questions

How do I find the person that's right for me? And I I tried answering it the first time it wasn't happy with my answer and then it came up the second night I didn't try it the third night Tammy asked me and I thought oh, I know what's wrong. It's a stupid question That's not the right question. It's like what the hell makes you think this is about you Like first of all, you think this is about you like first of all you're lucky someone likes you second here's here's the question how do I put myself together so that I'm attractive to someone yeah not how do I find the person who's right for me like if that's your question you're not going

to get an answer because it's the wrong question okay it's like put on a suit buddy try to look like like you got something going for you. You know, think hard about what you have to offer. If you, if young men did nothing, but think about what they had to offer, there would be women lining up to be with them. So it's the wrong question. It's a hedonistic question, self-centered hedonistic question. What about the man who's dating a woman and he's, he just, you know, so he's, he's putting himself out there. He's doing his best, but he's still like, here's mine.

Are you attracted to her? Yeah. Like, do you want to have sex with her? Yeah. Like that specifically. Yeah. Do you respect her? Yeah.

Not necessarily in this order, would she be a good mother to your children? Do people you respect, respect her, like her? Because you might be caught up in a cloud of lust and all sorts of passion. But what would you say to the man of goodwill who's like, I don't know, should I propose? Should I not?

Well, it's like... Okay, we can think about this practically first. Let's just think about it practically. You've got five chances in your life. All right, right. Well Let's say you you need this especially true if you're female It's a little lap milax or on the male side because we don't face a biological clock. That's quite so stringent. Okay. Why five? Well, maybe it's seven and maybe it's three. It's like five will do. Why? It takes a year to get to know someone. Okay. Okay. So let's say you start when you're 17. Okay. And maybe

you're hyper attractive and you can just line them up one after another, but that isn't how life works. Well, if you have a relationship, let's say that lasts a year and it breaks up, there'll probably be a recovery time. And then there's going to be some search time and there better be because otherwise you're an idiot. You just jumped out of one frying pan into the fire, right? So let's say two years to assess someone described satisfied, you should thank your lucky stars. You know, and you should get the hell on with it. There was a Canadian priest, Father Bob Bedard, who once said, since discernment became fashionable, no one's made a decision since. Yeah, right.

I really like that. Yeah, yeah, well, it's the same with children. And then act, yeah. Yeah, well, it's like, when's a good time to have a child? Well, that's a stupid question. There's never a good time to have a child. Yeah, well look, are you ready for marriage? I'm not ready yet. I'll be married 18 years. Of course you're not married. Ready, right, exactly. Well that's another indication of the necessity of faith, is that you have to leap into the abyss. do that all the time and you leap into the abyss well

with what certainty That's your faith. And what and what do you have faith in? Well, you have faith that if you abide by the spirit of The God of Abraham, let's say that you'll make the most of the mess And that's the best you have that's the best you have, that's the best you've got. Like you're out there contending, right? You don't have a... I know I said people need a vision and you do, but fundamentally you're in the wrestling ring, right? You're contending and you want to contend in the proper spirit and that's what you've got. You've got the opportunity to contend in the proper

spirit. That's what you're doing in a marriage either connecto. That's Eve Means beneficial adversary. It means martial partner in playful combat, right? It's a challenge. Yes, right and so that's I think that's another thing I would say that that you look for an mate Is this someone who pushes you to be better than you are and I don't mean I'll hear a nice this over you, right? you to be better than you are. And I don't mean tyrannizes over you, right? Inspires you to be better than you are and pushes you to. Sees what you could be. Yeah, right. Right. And is in love with that too. And not in a delusional manner. Right. Final question. I need to let you go. You've been so generous with your time and I'm grateful for

it. How did you propose to Tammy? Can I ask? Oh, three times. Oh, yeah? And then she asked me, ha, that was funny. What? Yeah, yeah, well, the first time I proposed to her, I was about 23. Yeah.

And I wrote her a letter. She was in Ottawa and I was in Edmonton. And I was thinking about going to Ottawa for a scholarship, which I didn't get. So that didn't turn out. And I wrote her a letter. And at the end, I asked her if she would marry me, sort of as a joke, joke.

And that didn't work, you know? So that was the first time. Did she respond? She responded, she wanted me to come to Ottawa. So that was good, but it didn't occur. The second time I was at a New Year's Eve party was about 26 probably probably back in Alberta. We got together at Christmas and I knew when I saw her again that I would ask her to marry

me and so I did that in a playground on the swings at like one in the morning after New Year's party and she said yes and then She moved to Montreal to be with me she didn't live with me, but she moved to be with me and we were sorting things out in a somewhat fractious manner and because we had our differences and Push came to shove and she asked me to finalize the marriage agreements on February 29th by chance, which is Sadie Hawkins Day. So that was funny. It wasn't planned and that's what happened.

Fantastic. And so. Well, I appreciate it. God bless you and thank you for being here and talking to me. I've really enjoyed our chat. Thanks for the conversation and the invitation. Yeah, I'll keep an eye on see what see see see what transpires in consequence of this. When does it come out? In about a week.