Pints With Aquinas - Conservatism, Catholicism, and Good Cigars w/ Michael Knowles

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

I chat with Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire about conservatism, Catholicism, and good cigars. Knowles' Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr4kgAUTFkGIwlWSodg43QA Rosary Giveaway! First 100 new annual locals supporters (any amount) will be sent a beautiful Catholic Woodworker Rosary. Join here! https://mattfradd.locals.com/support Sponsors-- Exodus90: exodus90.com/matt Hallow: Hallow.com/matt Best Rosaries ever! https://catholicwoodworker.com/?utm_source=mattfradd&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=christmas22

G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Lovely to have you with us today. I'll be interviewing Michael Knowles from the Michael Knowles Show, maybe you've heard of it. But before we get to that interview, I wanna invite you to follow us over on locals, mattfrad.locals.com. Locals is like other social media,

but it's actually social, it's excellent, it's non-sensorial. I'm not gonna get banned there the way I might on YouTube after this interview. So please go follow us over there. You don't have to support financially to follow us. But I'm doing a giveaway this week. If you become an annual supporter at matfrad.locals.com right now for any amount, the first 100 of you will receive a free rosary from Catholic Woodworker.

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on the five ways and others, and these are all exclusively for our local supporters. Also, right after today's interview with Michael Knowles, I'm going to be doing a bonus segment where we discuss three things that would probably get us banned from YouTube. So that will only be available to local supporters after today's interview, matfrad.locals.com. Halfway, through a sentence, go. to local supporters after today's interview, matfrad.locals.com. Halfway, through a sentence, go.

So you wrote the book, which, congratulations. You need to do a book where you just have the Amazon reviews, because those are the funniest things about the book. It was a very, very odd way to get a career writing and speaking to publish a blog. How did the idea come to you? Well, you know, just a stroke of genius. I will say it's been done before.

So there's a book called Everything Men Know About Women. Sold a million copies, I think. More than I've sold. The Wit and Wisdom of the German People, that was another one. It actually goes back to 1880 in the United States. There was a five page blank book published by James Garfield and Chester Arthur which was the Republican ticket

which was called the Political Achievements and Statesmanship of, I forget the guy's name, General Hancock or something. It was the Democrat nominee. Five blank pages. So it's got a long tradition in the United States. But as a result of this, I get a show and I get the speaking career, and I come to Franciscan of Steubenville,

and I thought, wow, this is so totally different from my college experience, because my college experience, not to tell tales out of school, but everything seemed to be oriented toward confusion and vice and falsehood. And here at Franciscan, it's like sort of the opposite. The peer pressure is to be holy.

That's right, yeah. I was going around with some of the kids who invited me. I said, so what do you guys do for fun here? I said, well, you know, we have chapels in our dorms. I said, come again? Yeah, it's a great school. Now, Matt, how- Your talk, honestly, your talk was excellent last night.

I said this to you before you came in. I was... Thank you. Yeah, I was really, I was really edified by it. It was really good. I appreciate it. I never know with these speeches how they're going to be received because I try to write a new speech for every event.

And most people don't because it's a big hassle and so they give a kind of a stump speech but I just feel the speech is being live-streamed so I don't want the audience to get bored and I don't want to get bored giving the same thing and I like to take it as an opportunity but I didn't know how it would be received because the thesis of the speech is that science is fake. Yes and that's the name of the title. If you want to look up the video Neil maybe you could put a link in the description. It's called Science is Fake. Great title. I was thinking, you know, it's a little bit of a clickbaity title, though that is the thesis of the speech. But then the meat of the speech is kind of going through all of

these sort of scientific and mathematical problems and theories and really getting more into Owen Barfield and his understanding of representation and symbolism and idolatry. And we're sitting here in the Chesterton cigar lounge, so the inkling Owen Barfield would fit right in. But I had a fear with the speech, which is the title is total, you know, lowest common denominator clickbait. But then the speech itself is a little esoteric. And so I didn't I thought I might I might have completely screwed myself on both sides here. No one's going to watch it or like. Now is this a talk

you say you write it every year when you do a kind of speaking circuit with? Yeah. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. So I do, it really varies, especially because of COVID. During COVID, I had something like 20 schools that were scheduled for the year. And then after number two, that diminutive technocrat from Brooklyn shut the world down. And so they all were canceled. And so that would have been too much. And it gave me an opportunity to write a book with words. I was having a child and it was actually helpful in a certain way. Now I try to keep it to about six or seven schools per semester.

But if you write a new speech every time. But is the speech for every tour or is it for every different school you have a new speech? No, it's for every school, basically. I mean, occasionally I'll use parts of it, but I just sort of feel if I'm going to do it, if I'm going to get on an airplane and fly somewhere, I want to say something. I don't want it to just be a sort of pep rally or did you hear that crazy thing AOC said or whatever. And also part of it is because the speeches are for the people in the room, but let's say there's 500 people in the room

or whatever it is, maybe even a thousand people in the room, but online you're gonna get tens of thousands of people and they're the ones who have seen all the other talks. So just from self-preservation, if you give them the same thing every time, no one's gonna watch it anymore. I was telling you before we recorded that you have security at your talks, and I want to ask you what that's like, and halfway through the talk my wife suggested that I run up and hug that dude with the mustache to see if he would tase me or what would happen.

His bark is much worse than his bite. What would have happened though if I had have gotten up and tried to hug him? He would have killed you. Yes. So the bite is bad too. But the bark is just especially bad. Okay, so when did you start traveling with security and what was that like? What is that?

Well, I love our security agents. So it's a great pleasure to do it and we go out and have cigars and have a great time. But I think it's mostly unnecessary. It looks cool though. Yeah, it's mostly unnecessary. It looks cool though. Yeah, it looks very cool. I look much more important than I am. But I think it's mostly unnecessary because, Matt, I'm so lovable.

Who would want to attack me? I don't know. And the other reason it's unnecessary in certain places is, we're at Franciscan University. The biggest threat that I'm going to have is going to be I'm going to have is probably single girls who are going to want to hold you and not let go. I was assuming it would be some sort of stray Jesuit, you know, who gets in there and starts to attack me or something.

But I was attacked once at a speech. This is when it all started. I was giving a speech at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. This was years ago and the speech was called Men Are Not Women. I'm going to sue Matt Walsh for copyright infringement, intellectual property theft. But this was probably five years ago or so. And there was an organized protest. The kids were very raucous. But I had, because I had written my speech down, it didn't matter. They were screaming like banshees in the room, which you can't

really hear on the tape but I could just read the speech at a certain point they gave up and went out but someone tripped a fire door and I guess they had planned some stunt and a guy comes in with a super soaker filled with Who knows what it's do you say I remember this now it smelled like bleach so in the room that the people organizing the event thought it was bleach and So the cops came obviously cops were involved. I don't think it ended up being bleach it did smell like bleach then there were rumors that there were all sorts of fluids in it that no one wants to think about. Sure. You know it was not not a cocktail that one would enjoy. No. But as a result of that now we we travel with security everywhere.

Is that like a daily wire kind of mandate for all speakers when they go out? Yeah, it's a total mandate and so it can be somewhat embarrassing though because for almost three years I hosted a podcast with Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz is a very serious guy, prominent senator, presidential candidate. One time when he and I were at an event and the senator's deputy chief of staff turns to me and goes, Michael is that your detail? This army of special operators. I said yeah. He said, why do you have a bigger detail than the senator who gets the real threats? You know, I thought that's... But Daily Wire takes it very seriously, which I guess is good. If I'm gonna get popped off, you know,

I wanna make sure that it's not frivolous. I want it to be a real political attack. Go out in flames. So I would imagine all of this kind of excitement and protests surrounding your events and you as an individual is really good for business. Right? I think it was, Shapiro quoted somebody who's saying whatever doesn't kill you makes you more famous. That's right. So what's it like having to live that life and you know it's kind of like

the scandal surrounding you right brings you to the surface again as far as clicks and popularity and... Well, so there's a lot of truth to that. If people go out and have a big protest, it obviously calls more attention to your events. So you know, when that's happened, those are the speeches that get viewed the most. But you've got to be really careful not to chase that. Because if you chase that, then really you just become a performance artist. And I don't think that's particularly good for the soul. And I don't think it's good for your career in the long run. I mean, then you've, and I won't name names. In years past,

so there have been plenty of people on the left and the right who, who have done that. And they really sort of flame out. Yeah, that's what I was going to, I was going to say that must be exhausting. It's not a leap. to try to live that up, keep that up, yeah. Yeah, and also then you're just, you're so tempted to do and say things that you might not even believe just to get a reaction.

And so I consider myself one of the least own the Libs-y kind of conservatives out there. It's kind of funny because I did this joke book that was just 100% owning the lives. But I try not to do that. I mean, I probably spend half my time or more criticizing the conservatives for being incoherent and cowardly than I spend making fun of AOC or something like that. Basic fundamental question. What is conservatism?

Hmm. Roger Scruton said in his just beautifully Roger Scruton-y way, I don't have the accent, so I can't really do it. He said, you know, you would imagine that a conservative wants to conserve things. And that's a large part of my answer. The answer that you're supposed to give in the American conservative movement context is, you know, you push your glasses up on your nose and you say, well, actually to be a

conservative is to, you want to reduce the size and scope of the government, you want to cut taxes, and you want to let people do whatever they want to do. And that's what, you know, that's just silly. I mean, that's libertarianism, which did come to dominate the conservative movement for much of the last half of the 20th century. And the results have been a disaster. So I don't think that's what conservatism is. I think we want to conserve things. We want to conserve the good and the true and the beautiful. We do want to conserve our traditions. We want to conserve our way of life. We want to conserve our families and our communities. We want to conserve our very identity. You know, I think

half of my family is of the swarthy Sicilian persuasion and so food is very important to our culture, right? Food is a big part of the Italian American identity. When Klaus Schwab comes in and says, you are going to eat the bugs, you are not going to eat the cannoli anymore, you will eat the bugs. That is an attack not just on gastronomy, it's an attack on identity. And there are so many other facets of our identity, our sexual identity, our national identity, and then ultimately, of course, our religious identity. We will ground our identity either in I am who I am or we will be left with the pathetic

question which is who am I, like a teenager trying on different personalities. That's an observation from my friend, Father George Rutler. So that's where your identity ultimately has to be. You're seeing a concerted attack on that in particular. I mean, we're speaking now, hours after the passage of this preposterous bill to redefine marriage. And we knew it was going to pass because

12 Republican senators squished on it and they allowed it to get past the filibuster which meant that the Democrats needed a bare majority not 60 votes. So at the very last moment Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, I think Lankford, there are a few senators who tried to throw some amendments in the bill to not have this thing completely destroy Christian business owners and Jews and Muslims and ordinary sensible atheists who recognize what marriage is. And the amendments were all shot down. And so the amendments were shot down by the Democrats, yeah, they were shot down by the

liberals, yeah. They were shot down by the Republicans though. You know, we the liberals, yeah, they were shot down by the Republicans though. We're just always one or two votes short, aren't we? There's always that Mitt Romney out there, there's always that squish who is going to come out and prevent you from having any kind of victory. And I think with Republican senators like that, who needs Democrats? If that's what conservatives are doing, then truly they're not conserving a damn thing because marriage is the fundamental political institution.

If you can't conserve that, you simply are not a conservative. So as it feels like the left has been dragging us in their direction, such that people like Joe Rogan are thought of to be conservative or even Dave Rubin. So, you know, you talked about conserving what's true, good and beautiful, which is quite general.

You talked about marriage, which is specific. But I suppose what's something that Catholic Christians should want to conserve that would upset people who are thought to be conservative, like Joe Rogan or Dave Rubin? Well, to use those examples, and Dave in particular, probably marriage would be a good example of this. Though I tell you, I know Dave and Joe Rogan and even other people who are center left who now are views on the right, people like Elon Musk and others,

they catch a lot of flack because they hold plenty of liberal views and some of their political vision is a little inconsistent or incoherent. But I'll take it. I mean, I'm friends with Dave Rubin. I don't know Joe personally. I don't know Elon Musk.

But Dave has good inclinations. Meaning he was a big lib. He recognized something was seriously wrong. Dave has become much more conservative every year that I've known him. And I only known him six seven years now and so yes obviously there are still plenty of I think inconsistencies with his view. It'd be hard to call Dave a conservative really but when you look at this insane culture that we're living in where we are being inundated constantly with

confusion in an ID false history absolutely incoherent Epistemology ontology, I you know and and and on top of that all this insane sex stuff. I can't really blame People for falling into it, you know? And I wonder what's the way out that we're going to give people? Obviously there's the marriage problem, but take it even to its logical extreme, the transgender issue. What do you say to some poor girl who at age 16 was told, chop your breasts off, pump yourself full of poison, destroy your voice, have your hair all fall out just

Mutilate your body become sterile and then she figures out six years later. I've made a horrible mistake bless her What do we do for those people? What do we do even on the marriage question? What do we do for a couple of guys? Who have indulged same-sex attraction and who have taken on a gay identity and who have even gotten gay married? And then a couple of Years later they wake up and say wait a second. This isn't what marriage is. What do we do? What is the what is the off-ramp? I love that It's a great question because we're all victims of the sexual revolution

Yeah, even if it's just we've been inundated by porn since the time we were kids and that's affected us It's affected our relationships. And so how do we I love that? What's the off-ramp? It reminds me of a line of from Peter Crave who said when a maniac is at the door feuding brothers reconcile and so I understand there is this desire to get really clear about what it is we believe and what it is we'd like to see happen in American society what we might like to see outlawed etc but I think it is important that we we we find comrades wherever we can find them, allies. Of course, because the maniac at the door

is a really apt analogy, especially because maniacs and lunatics are incoherent, right? There is a huge gap between what they view reality to be and reality itself. And this is a problem for our culture because we're all kind of maniacs. This was the real point of my speech last night at Franciscan, which is,

we've had a total breakdown in representations. And Owen Barfield, this philosopher who was an inkling, who I played a large role in converting C.S. Lewis, and who's underappreciated, but he predicted all of this in 1965. He said, as the scientific revolution moves forward, what you're going to see is a diminishing of original participation in reality.

You're going to see an increase in the gap between the symbol and the symbolized. And you're going to see a kind of idolatry of phenomena, idolatry of matter, because science only looks at the physical world. And so obviously we see this in the way that we talk about sex, right? Sex is, we no longer talk about making love,

we no longer talk about sex really in the context of marriage. Sex is just What some piece of flesh does to another piece of flesh to titillate oneself? Yeah, and Or even you mentioned porn, you know we abstract that even further sex is the thing that we see on the pixels on the screen and And then we do something with ourselves, you know in a dark corner of our apartment with ourselves in a dark corner of our apartment.

That creates an idol. And what Barfield predicted was this would break down collective representations such that there is no unity of pictures anymore. We actually don't know what a woman is. We actually don't, people actually don't know what marriage is. And so people will each be speaking their own language of babble and that's what's gone on. So yeah, obviously it's sort of like other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play? We

all know that the conservative movement is in really bad shape. It's in so much worse shape than anybody thinks it is because we can't even agree on what the fundamental components of reality mean anymore. Yeah, it seems like there's less infighting among the left and the agenda they're trying to push than there is among conservatives. Is that because it's a lot easier to tear something down than to rebuild something?

Of course, yeah, that's a big part of it. But it's also because the left has replaced our representations, our images, our understanding of what reality means. Because it has replaced those things so effectively, they're all kind of on the same page. We are the ones who are not because more than half of the conservatives now, the majority of Republicans believe that marriage is any union of two people who like each other. This is radical.

This is radically to the left of Barack Obama in 2011. Yeah. So when you're in that place, the Libs have not only diluted themselves, they've diluted half of us as well. Yeah, man. You said something last night that I thought was really interesting and that's that, yeah, leftists get it wrong when they're asked what a woman is, but the conservatives don't get it much better. You want to talk about that?

Yeah. I mean, this is exactly on this problem that we're talking about. We've taken their premises without even knowing it. I call it the dead end of DNA. The leftist answer to what is a woman is, well, I don't know, I'm not a biologist, I'm not a scientist. It's very, very complicated. Women are so much more than just genitals and chromosomes. But the conservative answer now is women are just genitals and chromosomes. That's the same soul denying scientism

that the libs have been peddling to get us into this mess in the first place. I don't think that women are just a couple of X chromosomes. Yeah. I have a family member who has Turner syndrome. Turner syndrome is where you're a woman, but you've only got one X chromosome. She's not a woman?

No, she's obviously a woman. I know women who have had hysterectomies, they don't have a womb. Not a woman? No, of course. What is a woman? My friend Matt Walsh did this documentary, What is a Woman? That did very, very well and kind of poked fun at all these libs. The most interesting part of the movie that a lot of people didn't pick up on is that a lot of gl lib conservatives are saying,

oh, it's just, you know, breasts and a womb. That's what a woman is. But he goes to the Maasai people in Africa, and he says, what is a woman? And the Maasai people said a woman is someone who does the duty of a woman. Right? The conservative line on transgenderism so far has been there is no distinction between sex and gender. We get transgenderism because the libs tell us there's biological sex and there's gender, which is a social construct, and you can have the male gender but female sex and there you have it.

And the conservative answer has been to deny that and say, no, it's all just physical. That's not true. There's obviously gender expression. You can have an effeminate man, you can have a butch woman. There have been tomboy's for all of history. And a lot of that is socially constructed. The conservative answer, I think, is there is a distinction between sex and gender. And you have a duty to perform your gender in accordance with your sex. You have an obligation to fulfill the natural roles that correspond with your sex, because

man is not this dualistic being where your soul, which is when they talk about gender they're really just talking about the soul, they just don't want to admit it, where your soul and your body have nothing to do with one another. No, we're hylomorphic beings and our souls and our bodies are intrinsically united here on earth and so we have an obligation to do those things. This would have been commonly understood. Everyone would have agreed with this 20, 30 years ago. Now, even many conservatives, if you say that, if you give them the Don Corleone answer, you say, you're a man, what can you do? You can act like a man. What's the matter with you? You tell a woman, what are you going to do? You act like a woman. They

will back away from you. They'll say, oh my goodness, you knuckle-draggers, you authoritarian. Oh my, you sound like a fascist. I don't sound like a fascist. I sound like everybody in the nineties. How is that then not just a criticism of tomboy's? Because it sounds like what you're saying is a girl who's a tomboy needs to stop that or needs to grow into her womanhood and begin to act like a woman. Where's the diversity? Where's the allowance for diversity among men and women then? No, well, it is basically what I'm saying. It's that yeah, if you're a man and you're feeling a little you know, you want to put on a dress, don't.

Yeah. You're a woman who wants to perform your life as a man. What does that look like though? That's what I'm trying to get to. What's like the dress that makes sense to me. Trousers on men and dresses on women. Yeah, no, is that where you would draw the line then? I'm trying to get you.

No, I think women should be allowed to wear pants. Okay. I'm not going that far. But, and of course there is diversity and this is an eccentric world and that adds a lot of spice to life. But we need to recognize what the center of life is. A good image of this was put forward by Jonathan Pigeot, the iconographer in Canada who he said we've always understood in our civilization that there's weird stuff and that's kind of nice it adds spice to

life yeah the weird stuff though needs to stay it needs to well yes you look at a medieval manuscript there's weird stuff I mean there's all sorts of like you know little elves with weird things coming out of their bodies you know riding on top of snakes and stuff But it's always on the edges Yeah, it's on the periphery you go to a beautiful cathedral The gargoyles are on the top, you know and all these kind of interesting weird design. It's not all gargoyles Yeah, I was just in the Vatican last week. That would have been really weird would have ruined the church It would have ruined and actually with some of the

architecture They have done that when you put the gargoyle actually with some of the architecture that they've done. Modern churches have done just that. They have done that. When you put the gargoyle into the center of the church, something has gone dramatically wrong. And so what the Libs have been doing is they have not been, as the conservatives pretend, you know, simply censoring our speech, you know, and we're the defenders of free speech and they're the defenders of censorship. What the Libs are really engaging in is an upending of norms and standards and taboos.

And the Libs are actually the ones who tricked us into adopting the free speech absolutist position. It happened in the middle of the 20th century when the Libs launched the free speech movement at Berkeley. And people look at Berkeley now, they say, well, how did Berkeley, which is the center of the free speech movement, how did it become so absolutely full of censorship against conservatives? Because the free speech movement was never about free speech. There's no such thing as total free speech. There's no such thing as absolute neutrality in the public square or anything like that. It's never been true in any political community. Communities naturally have taboos, standards.

Yes, political correctness is a code of speech. So is chivalry, okay? And I'm all for chivalry. So what the Libs have done is invert those norms and standards and what the conservatives have done is abandon them. Can you imagine that? That conservatives are now the ones who say,

oh yes, we need social media networks where you can say anything, do anything, post all manner of obscenity and threats. No, of course, that's insane. No, what we need is to promote good, reasonable standards and to suppress unreasonable, ugly, evil, wicked, false things. Mm-hmm.

We talked a moment ago about being victims of the sexual revolution and needing an off-ramp. And that's true of people, perhaps, who are living in sort of sodomitic relationships or who have had their bodies mutilated. But it's also true for those of us who have just imbibed the quote-unquote values of the sexual revolution. How did you and your wife make the choice or did you to begin to you to live live more masculinely as it were and her to live more as a woman? Like you know what I mean?

Over time is really how it happened because I met my wife. We don't remember meeting but we met in fifth grade at a district orchestra. She was from Bedford Village, that was the nice side of the tracks. I was from the wrong side of the tracks, Bedford Hills in New York, right near AOC actually. But we met, I guess in fifth grade,

we were in the homeroom together in sixth grade, started dating in high school. I think it's now a federal statutory requirement. You have to split for college if you're a millennial. So we broke up for college, unfortunately. Got back together after college. I was an atheist, certainly agnostic, really atheist for like 10 years. My wife was raised without any kind of real religious rigor at all. And this is why I have such

sympathy for people who are looking around the world and they are kind of grappling towards the truth even though they don't know quite how to make sense of it because that was me too. And now obviously we're quite traditional and we look back and we say everything that everyone told us was wrong. Oh my goodness, everything that we were told by our teachers and by our community and by it was all just completely, completely insane. And it's that great description that, that Ernest Hemingway has of bankruptcy, right? Things happen gradually then suddenly.

You sort of go around for 10 years saying, huh, does God exist? Is there such a thing as objective truth? Should I maybe be doing good things and avoiding bad things? And then pretty soon you say, oh yes, I should. We also need to go to Latin Mass frequently. We also need to go to Confession Weekly. Burn your pants. That's right, yeah.

So was it something of a conversion for both of you around the same time? Were you both? Yeah, yeah. I reverted to the coast cradle Catholic, but by 13 by my confirmation, I was convinced God didn't exist and it was all hooey and I Were you sucked into the new atheist movement? Of course you were ashamed Why Matt would you force me to admit that on air? I was I was sucked in by the clever little barbs of Christopher Hitchens.

He was so well spoken, he was so enjoyable to listen to. I know. I saw him have a debate with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at the 92nd Y on the existence of God. And Shmuley Boteach was obviously right on the question, but Hitchens won the debate because he was just so clever. I tell you, the only time I think that didn't happen that I've seen is when he debated William Lankregg. I was shocked. I remember being afraid to the only time I think that didn't happen that I've seen is when he debated William Lane Craig. I was shocked. I remember being afraid to watch that debate because I just couldn't stand to see another Christian

be decimated by an atheist. But when I watched it, I thought, oh my goodness, Hitchens had nothing. And I thought that Craig matched him in charm and wit. I thought he was excellent. And if you go back now and you look at the new atheists who really were more of a publishing phenomenon than they were an intellectual movement. There's just like a few books that were all extremely

glib but if you go back now and watch their arguments, pretty weak stuff. They are absolutely terrible. But I was 13 when they came up. I see. It was tailor made for it. How old are you now? I am 32. I'm an old man Oh, yeah, I'm 39, but 30 So I had come to Christ when I he had came to me perhaps when I was 17 the year 2000 my senior high school in Rome

Italy I was I went there as an agnostic to party meet girls met Jesus changing my life. How did that happen? How are you? Free trip, free trip to Rome. My mum said there's this thing called World Youth Day. There'll be about 2.5 million people there. This is now her accent. Would you like to go? And I thought it was a trick question,

that maybe Rome was an obscure town in South Australia with a population of 15 or something. So I said, Rome where? She said, Italy, you idiot. Right, good, yes, I'd like to go. I've done some thinking. Wow. So I said, Rome where? She said, Italy, you idiot. Right, good, yes, I'd like to go. I've done some thinking. Wow. So I just met, I mean,

the only Christians I had met prior to this trip were those that were really intense and wide-eyed and asking you if you'd been saved, and God bless them. Perhaps a fair question to ask me, but I was just turned off by them, but it wasn't until I went to Rome that I was now surrounded by young, intelligent Catholics who were cool and normal and were saving sex for marriage,

who believed what the church taught in all of those areas. I was just stunned. Like, how do you exist? What are you? It'd be like finding a platypus for the first time. Like, I didn't think these things could exist, you know? You know, it's funny you mention that be like finding a platypus for the first time. Like I didn't think these things could exist, you know? It's funny you mention that because around 13 or so, 12 or 13, my mother I think was

trying to make a last ditch effort to veer me away from atheism. And she said, you should join this youth group at the local church. And this was, you know, I don't want to speak ill of... But here we go. But here we go. But, no, I had some wonderful CCD teachers and people along the way, but this was the most felt bannery of felt bannery churches and this youth group was extraordinarily, I guess they would call it charismatic, and it had all those sappy ridiculous hymns from the 70s, you know, like Eagle's Wings and all this, which is heretical as far as I can tell.

You are the one singing, I will raise you up on Eagle's Wings, which I will never do, I promise you that. I will never raise anybody up on Eagle's Wings. And I think they changed that pronoun because they didn't want to say he will raise you up on Eagle's Wings because that's very patriarchal. And so, you know, it really had the opposite effect. It really turned me off. I said, how, how is any man supposed to...

You thought that at the time as a 13 year old boy? Yeah. Not retrospectively looking back and finding it effeminate? You thought that at the time? No, I was so repelled by the whole aesthetic and by the soft soap weakness of that particular kind of catechesis. You know, I just, I thought this is the worst kind of worldliness. It's pop music that's worse than the pop music we're getting on the radio. It's not even good. It's not even good. I mean, to quote Hank Hill from King of the Hill, the problem with Christian rock is that it makes both rock and Christianity

worse. Oh my gosh, that is so insightful. I was so repelled by that. Now, remember there's one time, this one substitute teacher came into one of my CCD classes, and he was a smart, serious guy. And he gave, for us 10-year-olds or whatever a really good answers to all of our glib questions about the book of Genesis or something. And I thought, oh, there's something here that's intellectual. And especially if you're a precocious 13-year-old and you think that you're the smartest person who's ever lived, you know, you've got a little learning. We know some of those. We have children.

You may have met a few in your home. You know, that, the glib sort of catechesis of that era and the glibness of the new atheists, both were really formative for a precocious 13-year-old who thinks he's smarter than he is. Little learning is a dangerous thing. And I thought, wow, there's just no intellectual depth here. And my way back was this long period of steadily being convinced, wait a second, smart people believe this.

Can you break that down for us? I'd love to hear that story. Yeah, so I was freshman in college I went to one of the most liberal universities in the country. But I was randomly assigned to this roommate who remains, you know, my best friend to this day, best man in each other's weddings, and he was quite conservative. He was a cradle Catholic whose family became kind of megachurch Protestant. He was sort of agnostic at the time, but he was really taken with the ontological argument for God, and specifically the modal ontological argument for God, as formulated by Alvin Plantea, the Calvinist guy at Notre Dame. And so he presented this to me and I got such a kick.

And he's not a Christian yet, he's just philosophizing or? Well, he was raised kind of broadly Christian, but he was agnostic. But he said, you know, I really get a kick out of this argument. I said, oh. And I had this moment, like Bertrand Russell, where I said, that's the stupidest argument I ever heard.

But I can't quite say why it's wrong. Yeah, yeah. Wait a second, maybe it's not the stupidest argument I've ever heard. And that got me even more than what the argument was seeking to prove, it convinced me, oh, thoughtful people think about this. And then one of these, you know, are you saved kind of friendly evangelical guys had a free book table on campus and I'm a sucker for free books and it was all this silly kind of pop apologetics and mere Christianity and I said that that's

a nice looking cover that looks like the sort of cover a serious smart person would pick up okay so I picked it up and I read it and you know the thing about C.S. Lewis is he's so intelligent so insightful but a three-year-old could understand his prose. He's so clear in his writing. And I read that book, I was sitting out, this was summer freshman year maybe, was sitting out like true white trash in a beach chair

in my yard, in my little house in New York. Don't knock it to your tray. Don't knock it to your tray. We have a couch chair at the front of our house. We brought it out, so we were gonna go throw it in the big dumpster. And then we sat on it, we're like, this is actually pretty good. This is great, I don't care it to you. We have a we have a couch chair at the front of our house Do you we brought it out to we're gonna go throw it in the big dumpster and then we sat on it We're like, this is actually pretty good. This is great. I don't care what they say. Go get me a beer Yeah, and so I spark up a cigar. I'm sitting in the arm reading CS Lewis for whatever it was a week or two

I thought I Think God might exist and that led me to Chesterton We're here in the Chesterton cigar lounge and that led me to all sorts of other reading. And it took me from the age of 18 until probably 21 or 22 to be really convinced that God exists. Little children know this intuitively, but people who fancy themselves really intelligent, it takes them years to understand something

that is self-evidently true from the natural world. Yeah, wow, that's amazing. So were you in university at the time? Yeah. And so then what was the progression there? At that point, did you decide, okay, God exists, but I'm not sure if Christianity is true or Christianity is true, but I'm not sure about this Catholicism thing? No, I took as long a time as I possibly could, just bumping my head every step of the way. And so I said, okay, God exists, now I guess I have to grapple with this person of Jesus Christ. Because you know, God exists, and so religion I guess is good,

but why is there this person? Why's it gotta be about this person? That's kind of weird, I've gotta pray to this person. I don't know, can't we just take the person out of it? Turns out you can't, spoiler alert. we just take the person out of it? Turns out you can't, spoiler alert. You cannot take the person out of God. Any of them. Yeah, that's right.

Any of the three persons in one divine unity. And so at that point, this is probably around 22, I guess. I said, you know, maybe I should read this Bible. You know this book, the font of like all Western civilization and the most important book ever written? I guess I should read that at some point. So I start reading it. From cover? From Genesis? No, I had read the book of Genesis before. I was assigned it when I was a teenager and whenever I had this inkling that I should maybe start reading the Bible, I'd always start with Genesis. So I've read

the book of Genesis about a thousand times, but I would never make it through the Bible in a year. I'd sort of peter out somewhere in Deuteronomy or something. And so I started with the Gospels, because I said I want to grapple with this person, Jesus Christ. Okay, start with the Gospels. And as you know, it's just so obviously true. You know, C.S. Lewis has that argument, Christ is Lord, liar or lunatic. And it's so clear, even in the most spectacular scenes in the gospel, this guy is the most

sane person in the room. Whatever he is, he is not a lunatic. And whatever he is, he's not a liar because what he is saying sounds so sane, and therefore it sounds so true. And I know that I can recognize it as truth. Huh, I guess he's got to be that third option. And some doubters have said, well, there's a fourth L and that's legend. It's all just legend. But that really does not hold up. It doesn't make sense of 11 apostles going to die, all sorts of terrible deaths. It doesn't make sense 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection. That doesn't really hold up at all. And so I said, gosh, I guess this guy is who he says he is. I had a conversation. I don't

know that I've ever said this publicly. I've mentioned it, but I've never really gone into it. I had a few weeks of very intense private correspondence with the comedian Norm MacDonald. You know, Norm... I want you to take an hour to detail exactly how that went down, because he is one of my absolute favorite comedians. So he was always a... he's my favorite comedian. And I noticed on Twitter, I was one of the first people he followed when he got on Twitter.

He was, say that again, he followed you or you followed? Well, I was following him. Yeah. He, he followed me and I, and I don't know when he started following me, but I was just checking through Norm's page. I said, oh, Norm's following me. And he was following, at the time, I think, 60 people. And I thought, and I don't know why.

I don't know where he saw something. It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a mistake, a happy mistake if it was. I really didn't get it. And so the thing about Twitter is when you each follow each other, you can send private messages. But I said, I I was so in awe I've met plenty of celebrities yeah truly truly in awe of this man I said I don't want to abuse my follow

privileges here I don't want to send him a private message and one day he sent out a tweet where he said I'm just in such pain it's just so hard it's so hard knowing now that he had been fighting cancer for 10 years secretly a tweet where he said, I'm just in such pain, it's just so hard, it's so hard. Knowing now that he had been fighting cancer for 10 years secretly, I now recognize that's what he was talking about. At the time I read that as, this is an eccentric, wild guy, and maybe he's suicidal. And I said, okay, I'm going to reach out. I just messaged him and I said, Norm, I've never messaged you before because I'm simply in awe of your genius,

but if I can be of any help in what appears to be a moment of despair, please just let me know. And he writes back and he says, thank you, Michael. Appreciate the note, I'm okay, but I would like to talk because to not accept your offer would be would be prideful or something I said, okay. All right, norm what and

Instantly we're talking about religion and I haven't I haven't published these I mean when I say these were messages I mean these were they became essays that we would write to each other every night for weeks. Like 800, 900 word essays in some cases, you know? And- And was it what? You trying to convince him of something or? I didn't have to convince him of a thing. So when you say they were like essays,

what were you going back and forth about? Suffering? Well, I asked him about suffering. I said, you know, do you, Norm, do you have a view of the world, you know, that sort of can help you make sense of the suffering? He said, oh yeah, Michael, I know you're a Christian. He said, yeah, I'm,

I've just always known that the Bible is true. I've always known that Christianity is true. And he says, and you can never tell with him because you never know if he's like playing with you because he always played so dumb, but he was so, so brilliant. And he said, I'm not an educated man, which is true. He's not an educated man,

in the sense that he never had really formal schooling. He read everything. I mean, he could probably quote you Tolstoy forwards and backwards, but his, actually one of his most famous jokes is this joke about a moth going into a podiatrist. But it's done in the style of The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. A lot of people don't get that.

But you would have to read so deeply in the Russian novelists to even think to put that joke together. But he says to me, I'm not an educated man. He says, my son is much more educated than I am. He's got schooling. I don't. But I've just always known that it's true. And I thought, well, you're ahead of me, buddy. I do have some schooling and I didn't know it was true for

years. And it went on for about two weeks or so. And I kind of blew it because I didn't write our nightly response one night. I was just busy, I was traveling, whatever, and then it kind of petered at us. Sort of kicked myself for it. He was supposed to come on my book show at PragerU and had agreed to do it, but I said, okay, well, Norm, I'm leaving California, so you gotta come on this month, basically.

And he didn't drive, he was a quirky guy. He'd always send a car for him. And he said, Michael, I'm happy to do it. Can we do it on Skype? I said, no, it's not a Skype show, Norm. It's an in-person show. You gotta come in person. He goes, I can't go into a studio right now.

And I thought this was him. He sort of, he was famously somewhat agoraphobic and germaphobic it seemed. And so I just said, okay, well, Norm, whenever we get past this COVID thing, you can come on the show. then he died and I realized then in retrospect he was undergoing pretty serious treatment at right at that time but we got on the topic because this was a guy this brilliant guy who just knew

it who just opened the Bible and just knew that it was true intuitively. And I had a less intense but similar reaction which is you're reading the Gospels and it just sparkles and you just know that it's true unlike any other. I've read lots of good books. It's like that question that somebody asked you last night about you know how do you argue for what is beautiful. And Aquinas actually does that, and he actually has this very unhelpful line. He says, the beautiful is that which when seen pleases or something. But I liked your point that it's like, some things, like we can discourse about these things, but we can also look at them and understand them to be so. And something similar was happening with you, it seems like, with the gospel. It was. I love St. Thomas Aquinas' answer because it's almost like a norm joke.

It's, well, you know, beautiful things are things that when you look at them, you know, they seem beautiful to you. You know, that's kind of what he's saying, you know? But he writes it this beautiful way. But I kind of go more to the Justice Potter Stewart answer. I know it when I see it. And I don't mean to be cute with that answer. I think it's actually important that we become more comfortable speaking in that way and

thinking in that way. There was a breaking point in the really shallow pseudo-conservatism that has bedeviled us in this country for the past few decades. And the breaking point was when David French, then a columnist for National Review, defended Drag Queen Story Hour as a blessing of liberty. And so Rabbi Mari attacked him for it, said, whatever this is, we got to move past this. And it became a whole big debate. And David French's argument was, well, who's to say? Who's to say? If you tell me that I can't have a drag queen story hour

at a public library, why maybe, maybe someone will say that you can't have church on Sunday. And just who's to say, you know, one man's drag queen story hour is another man's church. I thought, no, I can say and you can say and we can all say. We all know the difference between a drag queen twerking for kids and a pastor preaching We just have to stop lying and we have to stop lying by the way if you can't know the difference between those things You certainly cannot have self-government self-government is predicated on the idea that we have reliable faculties of reason and a reliable moral conscience and we can discern between true and false and good and evil and conscience and we can discern between true and false and good and evil and beautiful and ugly we we actually can and we've we've simply diluted ourselves

into denying the the very faculties that make us human. Yeah and so when did you so you you read the Gospels and and at what point did you decide Catholicism is the ticket or was it more just a natural progression since you were raised that way? No, it wasn't natural. If anything, I was sort of... Let's see, I'm giving up on this lighter. That's alright. Would someone mind getting us one? Thanks. It's... Michael needs a lighter! I need a lighter!

Where's my... I need blue M&Ms! Thank you so much. No, if anything, the fact that I was raised that way made me skeptical of it. And the fact that I was sort of brought back into the faith by a Calvinist philosopher, by a mega church roommate and a Calvinist philosopher at Notre Dame, curiously enough, and C.S. Lewis, who was, he might have made it had he lived longer, but was obviously not Catholic. Yeah It made me skeptical I Also, I didn't get the Mary stuff. Okay, I didn't get the need for the Saints. I didn't get the need for the icons I didn't get the need for the liturgy

Now I'm really into all of those things And this is actually why I think it's important Now, I'm really into all of those things. This is actually why I think it's important that we give an off-ramp to people who have been going so far down the road of liberalism, and they recognize that something's gone wrong, but they're going 100 miles an hour. You've got to give them that off-ramp. And for me, the off-ramp from atheism was sort of paved with Protestants that led me back to the One True Church. So I did start going to church at this point. And I said, okay,

if I'm going to go to church, what church should I go to? And this was a bit of a numinous experience, a coincidental experience. I was in New York at a dinner. And the dinner was at this bar in Midtown, and they were giving away some conservative books. It was a conservative group. And you had your book by Sean Hannity, and you had your book by these other writers, where I thought, I don't know, that's okay. I've read these things before.

I don't need to get one. Then I saw this little book, and it had a very interesting cover. We can judge books by their cover. This is another thing. No, I had a hundred percent in agreement with this. We judge cigars by the band. We judge people by their looks. We probably shouldn't,

at least if we know them for more than an hour, but in the beginning, what else do you have? What else do you have? I mean, that's just what it's, you know, prejudice is defended by Edmund Burke for good reason, because you're not going to, you know, write some 50-page analysis of every single decision you have to make. You wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning. Right.

And so I see this cover, and it says at the top, All nature is but art unknown to thee, all chance direction which thou canst not see. Which is a line from Alexander Pope. Titles, coincidentally, the author, Father George Rutler. Okay. I look on the back, but it doesn't say father, it just says George Rutler. I look on the back, I see it's got a blurb by Bill Buckley, and I was the first inaugural Buckley Fellow at Yale.

Okay. And I just left college. And then I look and I see it's a Catholic priest. And then I see he's a Catholic priest at a church two blocks away. And then I see on the front flap it says, it's a wicked generation that seeks signs and wonders, but it's a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders. I said, wow, okay. And then there's another coincidence. He had left the church that was two blocks away. He was now a pastor in Hell's Kitchen at a church called the Church of St. Michael. So that's a coincidence. Anyway, I start going to church. Yeah. And it really

clicked. And this was a Reverend Novus Ordo, very very Reverend Novus Ordo, ad orientum, smells and bells. Alterrail. I actually don't know if at that time there was an alter rail, because the church was in disrepair. Father Rutler was actually sort of rebuilding the place, put a baldachine in, you know, he was- Bless him. But this thing, they were gonna sell it,

they were gonna knock it down, and he really revived it. He and the Holy Spirit revived it. But, and I thought, oh, this makes sense. And I thought, oh, this makes sense. And it's why I'm really angry at the people who destroyed the liturgy. Because I don't know if I would have remained in the church throughout my teenage years, had we had a serious liturgy. But I suspect I might've. Yeah, when we were renovating this cigar lounge,

we had five layers of shag carpet and tile over these beautiful wooden floors and an awful drop ceiling. And when we explain this to people, they say, who would do that? And my answer is the same people who invented liturgical abuse. This is wonderful. Arnold Bonini would do it.

Let's make it awful. Yes. Yes, because how can you expect people to take an hour or two out of their Sunday to go get exactly the same thing? Just slightly worse. Just slightly worse.

The jokes of the priest aren't that good. Norm MacDonald's actually better. Yeah, of course. Your guitar band is not as good as what I could be listening to, like the Eagles or whoever else, like they're way better than you. Right. Why am I here? Why am I here? You know, that the jokes by the priest remind me of a line from Father Rutner, who is very instrumental in my reversion, who he wrote, he said, in these new liturgical abuses, you see priests telling jokes like a ham actor in a dying vaudeville show,

and those priests would do well to limit their repertoire to the jokes that Saint John told the Blessed Mother while her son bled on the cross. Oof. The other thing that does is it makes the priest job a lot easier. You don't have to be funny. Isn't that great? You don't have to be entertaining. Isn't that great? Like, you don't have to be entertaining.

You just have to celebrate the holy sacrifice of the mass reverently. You just look, all the promises from the liturgical reforms after Vatican II, not synonymous with Vatican II as they would have us believe, but that occurred after Vatican II, and which were made easier by Vatican II obviously, but which are separate. The promise was it's going to bring the youths back to mass. The youngins. The youngins. Did that happen? It didn't happen.

I don't think that happened. In fact, it feels like there is an unstoppable movement towards tradition. Of course. Like the young trad men and women with their 800 children in oversized suits. Yes. At holy mass. Bre breastfeeding without shame. Oh yes. They're like little weeds that will not be stomped down. I don't think that you're going to be able

to stop this movement towards what's beautiful. Of course, I do go, when I'm traveling, I sometimes have to go to the 1970s brutalist churches with the, I try to find reverent liturgies, and sometimes I'm more successful than others. But I will also go for confession. Just if I need a confession, I'll go to the nearest church. And so I go into these churches and they're empty, and the median age is 96, and there are no children anywhere to be found. And then I go to my Latin Mass, and it's packed to the gills, you can't get a seat. You can't get a seat.

You can't even stand, often you have to stand in the sacristy. And the median age is 25 and they've all got a thousand kids. And I think, okay, obviously the we're going to win the Utes back. That part was crazy. And then all of the rest of it, the participation, we know, we're going to participate more in the mass. That's not true. The people who attend the crazy liturgies, their eyes are glazed over.

They're sort of thinking about their lunch. They're performing for one another when there's, oh, we're going to make the sign of the peace. For goodness sakes, I went to one of these parishes in LA and at the sign of the peace, people would traipse up and down the aisle giving peace signs to one of these parishes in LA, and at the sign of the piece, people would traipse up and down the aisle giving peace signs to one another. The worst is when they do the slingshot peace sign.

Those people should be immediately excommunicated. If I were Pope, that's what would happen. I assume it's automatic. I think so. I'm no canon lawyer, but I think, you know, so that you give this performance, but you're not really participating. Where are people participating? People are participating in the Latin Mass when they're focused so intently on what is happening

at the altar in this holy sacrifice. And so the participation thing, that was just totally bogus. And all of the promises that were made did not come true. Yeah, or yeah, so much so that even if you wanna find a Novus Ordo church that's filled, it's the one that's being celebrated reverently. So we have Latin Mass here on the weekends, but we also have a 10 a.m. Novus Ordo, but

it's Ad Orientum, you know, Neela, and it's like, how can we be expected to take this religion seriously if you weren't? Of course. And the thing is too, when you eradicate the the church of its traditions you invariably invent new ones. So when we lived in Ireland, my wife and I, I remember when the gifts were brought up, they brought up like a field hockey stick and a cardboard painting from the children because we offer everything to God. So it's like you still have traditions they're just hokey and not ancient or beautiful. Right, we need to get rid of the chanted curiae

and really all of the chant. We need to get rid of that. That's just, people are just doing it as a sort of rote ritual. So instead what? We're going to mumble our way through, I will raise you up on eagle's wings. I don't know.

I mean, that becomes not only a rote ritual that no one is really paying any attention to, but it's ugly. It's depressing. I think of Christopher Alexander, this writer on architecture and design, who made a simple observation that people seem to have forgotten.

Every space that you are in will either slightly elevate or slightly depress your spirits. Walmart. Walmart. I cannot go to Walmart. We're talking about this. My wife, I cannot go into Walmart without getting depressed within three minutes. Of course. Yeah.

The fluorescent lighting. Yeah. I can, I insist my wife is going to kill me because it raises our costs. Because the incandescent bulbs go out every week. But they're more beautiful. They're so much more beautiful. Michael, let me ask you, what happened to your spirits when you walked into Chesterton and company cigars? I walked in like a king.

Walking in, you know, when you would walk into the old Penn Station in New York, which we can get a little glimpse of in Grand Central, which was the other beautiful train station that they didn't tear down, you walk in, sky-high ceilings, beautiful ornamentation. You walk in like a king. When they knocked down the old Penn Station, they built this rat maze, which was the new Penn Station underneath Madison Square Garden, and you feel like a rat. And when you feel like a rat, you behave like a rat. And when you feel like a king, you behave like a king. You look at modern courthouses. This is one of the clearest examples.

Old courthouses, big, beautiful, solid, and they give you the sense, I bet even if you're the criminal himself, that there is a real solidity to the justice that is being done here. You walk into a modern courthouse, it's a little office room with some cork board on the top, and you're probably scraping your head as you walk in.

It's not fitting. Yes, it's not fitting, and you have this sense, ah, this is just little men, and what are they hiding in here? What is going on in the dark recesses that I can't see? So as you were kind of coming into the church, I mean, you'd met your wife much earlier, but were you in a relationship at this point?

We were. And I told her, she was coming up to visit New York. She was in DC at the time I was in New York. And I said, hey, I know we're gonna have this weekend. And you can see your other friends, but Sunday morning, I'm going to go to mass. She goes, what? I said, yeah, I'm gonna, I was convinced last week that it's all true,

and I have an obligation and a desire, actually, to go to Mass. Is that, you know? But you don't have to go, but you should probably, you should go, because it's all true, by the way. But you don't have to. OK, all right. And so we go to Mass, and she was freaked out.

Where she thinks, she said, I did not sign up for this. I started dating this agnostic, sort of atheist, kind of normal guy. I did not, what? I said, I don't know what to tell you. How long have you been dating at this point? Well, because we broke up for college, there was a pretty big gap in there,

but we started dating. It has now been half of our lives since we started dating because I was 16 and she was 15 and a half, my much younger child bride. And so we had then started dating again, really only, I don't know, for about a year or so or less. So it was still- I bring it up because obviously there's more involved

to you embracing Catholicism than simply, we have to go to mass on Sundays. Right. There's this whole moral component that perhaps you had to introduce her to. Yes, and intellectual component and historical component and all of it, which I had touched on a little, but I hadn't, it's not like we did this together

at that point. And so she was totally understandably really freaked out by it. I just said, look. Isn't that funny? Because sometimes you'll take someone to the Latin mass and you just expect the sheer beauty will convert them on the spot.

And you walk out, you're like, ah! That was awful. Yeah, I don't speak that language. I don't have any idea what's going on here. It's so funny though, you're thinking our crazy culture, because the reaction is sort of like I took her to, you know, a drug-fueled orgy. Like, hey, you've got to, what the hell?

I didn't sign up for this, you weirdo. Said, no, we're going to church actually. And so, but I just was so convinced. It was just so, once you see it, it's really hard to unsee it. And so I said, I don't know what to tell you. It's just, I'm the same guy, in some ways, I guess. So if you trusted my faculties of reason previously,

I still have those. I'm just really convinced this is true. And she was open-minded to it. But it was a long process. If she hadn't have converted, do you suspect you still would have married her? Yeah, because, well, it's hard to say because you grow together or you grow apart. Yeah. Right. So we have been growing together with a little break in the middle for 16 years. And so I could see that happening.

But Father Rutler who celebrated our wedding mass, he said, oh, you know, don't, when he was giving us advice on this, he said, no one, you know, you shouldn't convert for the wedding. Don't do it just to check a box. These days you can get a dispensation, I don't know, you could probably do, you could be a Buddhist or something

and get a dispensation. He said, convert when you wanna convert, you know, convert when you believe it. And which is really a smart approach, I think, because, you know, sometimes if you push too hard, people are going to be very skeptical. If you say, look, here, it's open for you. Eternal life, goodness, truth, and evil,

it's open for you if you want. Or hell, whatever you want. There's a saying, he who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. And so sometimes we can do a great job at kind of beating people over the head with our brilliant logic, but if I'm not actually bought into what you're saying that I, maybe you've won the argument, but I still can't get on board with it.

Right, right. And then there was kind of a tipping point too where, and this happened with me from the kind of vaguely Protestant view to the Catholic view, which is, okay, I still don't get most of this, but I get enough to trust. To submit my intellect. Yes, to submit my intellect to the authority of the church. And I forget who said it.

I always assume anything I'm quoting is John Henry Newman, Fulton Sheen, Chesterton or Ronald Knox or something. Worst case, St. Francis is the repository of all misattributed quotes. As Winston Churchill famously said. But there's that line, 10,000 questions don't make one doubt.

And that one sort of got me as well. That was actually, that was Norm's idea. 10,000, he said, I don't really know much of anything at all. But I do trust that this is true. Which in our highly rationalist age. But we don't know what women are or what marriage is or what sex is for. If you can't write some 100 page dissertation on this, you do.

But no, that's how you have to get along in the world. Our faculties of reason are relatively small. I don't really know advanced calculus very well. You're telling me that I need to be able to totally comprehend the triune god, who by definition I can't totally comprehend. I don't even know how they make plastic. Yeah Someone's doing it. I just don't was doing it. I know I have it But right and it reminds me of that legend about st. Augustine when he's writing day trinity's and he's have you heard this legend? I'm not familiar. I have but I'm not familiar with the story you're about so he's

He's walking along the beach. Oh sure right. Yes, there's the little boy who's taking the ocean, he's putting it into a hole. Yes. St. Augustine says, hey kid what are you doing? He says, oh I'm gonna fill this hole with the entire ocean. He says, well you can't do that you dumb kid. I'm paraphrasing the legend here. I mean it never happened. Idiot. You know, you dumb kid. And you can't do that. The whole ocean's not gonna fit in that little hole. And the child transforms into an angel and he says, that's right, Augustine, and you're not going to fit God into your little head.

You're not going to fit the Trinity into your little head. And if you could, it wouldn't be worthy of the name God. That's right, that's right. That's beautiful. When did you start at the Daily Wire? How did that even happen? And I'd love you to share with us how you've handled the kind of exponential success of the platform and being kind of

thrust into the limelight more and more. It was unexpected. The whole thing was unexpected. I knew the guys before the Daily Wire started. Who were the guys? Ben and Andrew? Ben, Jeremy, Andrew Claven. I knew Drew because I was friends with his son in college. By the way, my sister told me to tell you, Emma, she loves your reading of Claven's. Oh, thank you. You did such an excellent job on that. What was that called again? Thank you. It was the Another Kingdom series. Another Kingdom, yeah. Yeah, it was really good. My wife's a big fan too. Oh,

thank you very much. You did a great job. Well, cause Drew has written a thousand novels. He's unreal. We just bought his new book, so shout out for Clavin here. What's it called? A Turn of Mind or a Habit of Mind? Oh, Strange Habit of Mind. Well, cause when you say his new book, it's hard to know because he has like three of them

that just came out. But Strange Habit of Mind. So he was a novelist. And with Another Kingdom, he had never written fantasy. But he just said, I don't know, I just, this just popped into my head. What a guy. What a weird head.

What a weird headiest guy. No hair, it's all brains. And he wrote in this beautiful Christian story that you might not know about LA and this other magical sort of kingdom. And the reason I did that is I was an actor. I was... I didn't realize that.

I met Spencer Clavin. We were in college together. I directed him in opera. We did plays together. And had no idea he was conservative, had no idea he was Christian, and had no idea that his father was Andrew Clavin, even though I knew... Clavin's not a very popular name, but I just didn't put two and two together. I was a little bit thick. And so one day he called me and said, Michael, my father needs a little help with his communications, mailing lists, those things. I know that you're the only person I know who works in conservative politics and show business, other than my father, who is veering into this territory.

Could you help him? I said, who's your father? He said, hey, dummy, my father's Andrew Clavin. Who do you think he is? I said, oh, wow, OK. And so we and so we became friends coincidentally we were moving to LA at the same time I was moving there to do all these sorts of low-budget movies and things that are still on Amazon Prime I'm sure that no one should watch them no they should what's one low-budget film I need to look up on Amazon today to

watch it no I did I did this movie, the last movie I did, called Holly Weird. Write it down Cameron. Holly Weird. It was kind of a funny movie, it was shot on a shoestring budget but I think it's a charming movie and I'm sure it's gonna destroy my political career. But Dreams of President. That's right. But we we moved there at the same time and they were starting up the precursor company to Daily Wire and I was friends with Jeremy also through, I knew him through show business because he was running the Friends of Abe which was the conservative secret society in Hollywood. So secret that it has a Wikipedia page and that had been started by Gary Sinise and John Voight and a few other conservatives.

So I was in that in New York and one of my first dinners in LA was with my then girlfriend, now wife, at Drew's house with Ben and his wife. And said, oh, Ben Shapiro, I've seen you on TV. So we sort of became pals. And so we knew everybody. And then when Daily Wire gets started, Jeremy calls and he says, hey, can you come and basically be the pizza boy of the Daily Wire?

The real job was to help start the social media department because I had done that for political campaigns. I was hesitant to take the job. And I said, you know, man, I didn't move to LA to get a real job. I moved to LA to be a derelict actor and I can keep making money running my political campaigns and I don't need this. And he said, you stupid idiot, please let me give you health insurance. Just, who'll be fine. Who is saying this to you? Jeremy. Jeremy, I see.

He said, you dummy. I said, okay, whatever, I'll take the job. But I was still, you know, I was still, I was shooting a movie on election day 2016, went straight from the film set to the Daily Wire election coverage. And I got my show, oddly enough, it wasn't just the blank book. That was an excuse for them to give me a show. But I actually got my show, Jeremy and the co-CEO Caleb told me later, because of a cigar review that I wrote.

And actually, wow. No. Tabernacle. Yeah, it was this cigar. Wow, that's the way the world works, I guess. I said, I'd like to maybe write a little something for the website. But I don't want to just write some cheap column. I want to write a cigar review. And I'd like to maybe write a little something for the website, but I don't want to just

write some cheap column. I want to write a cigar review. And I sent it to Jeremy, and it was about this cigar, actually. But it was about more than the cigar. It was about all sorts of things relating to the tabernacle and culture and all this. And they didn't publish the review. They read it, and they said, wow, this guy has something to say. Which I found out later, and they gave me a show for it.

And, but again, the company was still so small. Yeah, and at that time, what, you had the Ben Shapiro show, it was Andrew Claven doing his daily show. Yeah, and then I was the third show. I see. So they launched, technically they only launched with the Ben Shapiro show, but Drew's show was in the works. So the company really launched with two shows.

I was the first new show that they added. But it was still a small company at the time. I remember, you know, we'd get 10,000 viewers on our shows. We thought, oh my gosh, we're famous. Oh wow, this is really working. It's a relatively small number, as you know, having a very popular show. But we thought, wow, this is amazing.

Can't get any bigger than this, huh? And then the company just took off like a rocket ship. Do you remember when you began to realize that it was happening? Yeah, I remember every six months I had the realization, whoa, because the company was doubling, it was doubling in size every 18 months and it continues to do that. Wow. So now the company is a million subscribers. Not a million listeners, we have millions and millions of listeners, but even just of

paid members to the Daily Wire, it's a million, hundreds of millions of paid reviews, all this stuff, many new shows. And wow, this thing is taking off like a rocket ship. No one could have predicted it because the company didn't make any sense it was this conservative company started in Hollywood that had a cultural focus, the point of the company was to make movies. Our day job was talking about politics but the point was not just to comment on culture but to create

culture which people laughed at. I didn't realize that from the get-go from that was always the it's not an afterthought that's what it appeared to me having followed Joel for a while that oh they're now getting able to movies now but this was the this was the plan it was always the vision in fact we got frustrated so we said we are not doing it in the first year or two of the company and we had no cash and we're not doing it Jeremy said take guys give it a minute you know I mean this takes a while to spin up something that has not existed before.

And the other reason the company didn't make sense is it had something of a religious focus too. We all had totally different religious views. Ben was an Orthodox Jew. Jeremy called himself an antinomian Protestant. That's how he defined his super duper Protestant Caleb Was non-trinitarian in his views at the time Ben obviously Orthodox Jew Claven to Claven was an Anglican sort of

Like in there is sort of more Anglo Catholic and I was Catholic And all we ever wanted to talk about was religion that's all we'd we'd argue about Donald Trump and then we'd talk about religion. And somehow it's all taken off. We all have as divergent views on even conservative politics as you possibly could have. I think every view that anyone who might call himself a conservative is represented at the Daily Wire. I'm the trad, Jeremy is this uber libertarian,

with some fondness for the Bush years. Drew comes at politics completely from left field. Ben now has a very, very broad audience that even speaks to the center. Then we added Matt Walsh. Matt has this just incredible deadpan, dry, sort of comedic demeanor that you saw come out in Walsh. I remember I wrote to my friend John Henry and I said,

yeah, I've been listening to Shapiro, but I need to give it a break. It's just a lot of negativity going on in the world. He said, oh, you gotta come over to Matt Walsh. It's way worse over here. Yeah, I know. The whole idea when the company started was Ben was gonna depress you and then Drew was

gonna- And then Matt comes in and Ben looks quite chipper. That's right. Actually. Which is funny to do with Matt because he is so funny. He is. I always try if we're hanging out, I try to say, can I get him to crack that giggle? Can I get it?

Sort of a little, huh. All right, I got him can I get him to crack that giggle? Can I get it? He was totally sort of a little, huh, huh, yes. All right, I got him, I got him. But so it totally took off. And I remember at the time we'd say, wow, if only we could get the page views that National Review has, or if only we could get the listens that Conservative Review TV has, or whatever. Fox News, oh my gosh.

And now the company wouldn't really be compared to any of those. It just does a totally different thing. How did you handle the success of it? And what's it like being you walking through an airport? How often are you stopped? Well, I obviously developed a huge drug problem. You hide it well, very functional.

So I tried to. Groupies everywhere, real rock and roll lifestyle. The thing that was really fortunate for me, obviously all those guys were established and married when they got any notoriety, which is good, that's what you want. And I was the kid, and I guess I remain sort of the kid of the company but I was engaged to be married I was

Settling down which is good. I would it would not have been good for my soul or life or career Had I had that kind of notoriety It's very important to have somebody in your life like my darling wife who can just tell you exactly The way things are isn't it? It's just good It's just and even beyond when you don't have someone in your life. Who's like Donald your hair really? You need to know one in this life. Who's you know and you know sweet little Elisa. She is that I mean she's she Yeah, she's the only person He's what? Oh

No, Elisa. You know, is that your wife? So her name is Elisa. Her name is it's very confusing. Her name is Elisa. I Oh, I see. Yeah, so and my wife have the same name with the same odd spelling. Oh interesting And and but I she's a powerhouse to Elisa. Oh, she is she's wonderful And you know, I've always referred to my wife as Alisa. I don't know why, pronounced like in Italian. But she's the only one I allowed to write my show ever. I just did, right before Thanksgiving, I just did this little Instagram video

that was a little joke on the conservative uncle at Thanksgiving, how to be a conservative uncle. And that was just an idea she had the night before. We film it the next day, and then it got seven or eight million views. conservative uncle at Thanksgiving, how to be a conservative uncle. And that was just an idea she had the night before. We film it the next day, and then it got seven or eight million views. It probably did better than the content Daily Wire has a team of writers putting out. And so her gut on this is so right, and I really trust her advice too, because she'll just, I'll come home some days and she'll say, Mac.

I'll say, yeah, what? She goes, that thing you said, it was lame. It was lame. It was weak. It was not. Come on.'ll say, Mac. So yeah, what? She goes, that thing you said, it was lame. It was lame, it was weak, it was not. Come on, come on, mate. That wasn't smart. Well, you know. I love her voice. Harsh, I know, it's amazing.

I can see how you fell for her. It's sort of like a Hispanic Hartman is how I do her voice. But, you know, she's got that real, real solid political gut. See, you really need that real solid political gut. You really need that. The other reason that it's not good,

and I always caution whenever I give these speeches, and inevitably some 18-year-old comes up to me and says, hey, how do I do this? How do I do this? How do I, you know, I just wanna pontificate all the time. I say, well, the first thing you should do is not do that. You should maybe work on a campaign. I think campaign work is really good,

especially for Congress, because it's a national level campaign, but it's campaigned at the local level. So you're going to VFW halls, you're talking to real people, you're seeing how things actually work. It's not very glamorous, they usually run on a shoestring, so you can, if you're willing to work for little money, you can advance pretty high up. And so that gives you some practical experience. And then you need to read a ton of books. And the reason for this, it's important, is if you make a big splash

with the views that you hold as a 22-year-old know nothing, and then you finally read some books, well, either you'll just be pigeonholed into that and remain sort of intellectually stunted forever, or you'll recognize that you were wrong about all those things, and then you look like you don't have any principles or know anything at all. So that was really important that by the time we took off we all kind of knew who we were. That is not the case in a lot of places. A lot of media outlets on the left and the right will just try to churn talent, you know, so they'll just

down the right will just try to churn talent, you know, so they'll just pluck up some 18 year old and then they wash out two years later. And it's through no fault of their own. It's just not a good time for them. How do you deal with criticism and angry people on the internet? It's easy to joke about, especially after you've been through this for a while,

but in the beginning, at least for me, it was quite unsettling. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I think the humble approach is to do some soul searching, like, yeah, maybe I am a horrible person. That's certainly possible. In fact, I'm quite convinced that I am. I'm just not sure I am for the reasons you're saying, but maybe you're right.

How did you deal with that? How do you deal with that now? It is sanctifying. It actually is sanctifying. I almost never block people on Twitter. I only block people if they attack my family or something. That's the reason I'm not, I'm no free speech absolutist. I have no problem with the block button, but I don't use it because it is humbling. There was a guy, some troll on Twitter, who every post I ever made, this guy would respond

and say, here's little Mikey again with his hashtag white power, racist, sexist, phobic, whatever, all the things that they call us. And, but it was so funny. The diction was so funny. And I kept reading it. Finally, I responded to him one day. I said, I know you mean to, you know, irritate me, but I have to tell you, your diction is so funny.

I really get a kick out of these tweets. He deleted his account. I was kind of upset. These are very funny tweets. And sometimes people will make real criticisms. You'll hear people say, never read the comments. I don't think that's true. Read the comments. I don't read all of them. Obviously, it would waste your whole day. But I do try to read some comments. After that speech last night, Franciscan, I scrolled through the comments just to see, and there was one really good criticism. What was that? Of my speech.

So the premise of my speech for, I would hope the entire audience has already poured over No doubt. has watched everywhere. But the premise of the speech is science is fake in that it just creates representations of the world that do not correspond as well to reality with the old ones, right?

So what it... A classic example would be to look up the scientific definition of a kiss. You know what I mean? Like that is not at all what a kiss is. And you might mistakenly believe that it is the true definition of a kiss, but human beings know different. What does that mean? it is the true definition of a kiss, but human beings

know different. What does that mean? That's the objective definition of these sort of lips slurping on each other. That's not quite it. Or what is a woman? I mean, that's the question that everyone seems to be talking about. What is a woman? The scientific answer is a woman has two X chromosomes.

My answer is a woman is sugar and spice and everything nice. The latter is more accurate. The latter tells you more about what a woman actually is than two X chromosomes. I don't know what that means. What is man's position in the universe? The ancient view is that man is the center of the universe. The scientific view is that man is this little dot on a rock circling this ball of gas in this galaxy, in a super cluster, in a super cluster, in a supercluster, in a supercluster, in a supercluster complex. Man as the center of the universe is more accurate because man is the nexus of the physical

world and the metaphysical world through his rational soul. We're the only being in this world that has that. Animals have bodies but they don't have a rational soul. That's why we don't put kittens on trial for scratching people. And, you know, ideas exist and they have great power, but they don't have bodies. Angels and demons exist and have great power, but they don't have bodies. We are that nexus. We actually are at the center of the universe. And you see this perfectly in the incarnation, right? The incarnation of Jesus Christ is that perfect meaning. And you see this in the

sacraments. So that tells you more about what things really are. And so at that point people say, well, no, no, but Michael, the difference is literally speaking, literally, man is on this ball circling in the middle of nowhere in space. I said, well, is that literally true? What do you mean by literally? And this was where the criticism came in. I said, you're saying literally to mean not figuratively, not symbolically. But there's a problem because the word literal is a paradox because literal refers to letters which are symbols. And so I really don't know what you mean when you say literally or figuratively. My view of the world is a semiotic view. I think everything has meaning. And so for you't, for you to tell me, no, no, I'm talking about the things without meaning.

Well, that's nothing. Everything has meaning. And the criticism was, Michael, you dummy, you have confused signs and symbols. And that's why your speech falls apart. A sign is something that signify, that denotes a signified. A sign has a direct relation to what it represents. That's why signs are languages in themselves, like a stop sign or like letters and words. Whereas a symbol, you see, is that which connotes the symbolized,

meaning it has a less direct relationship. To bring it to earth, a sign is commonly understood by everybody. The meaning of it. A symbol is not necessarily commonly understood. Different people can have different interpretations of symbols, which is a really, really good criticism. You get to scroll through 8,000 comments to get an intelligent one like that, though. I mean, that's a great... But the reason that criticism falls flat is because of the rest of the speech, because the premise is off.

That criticism would have been true in another time, in another place, when people had common language, when those signs of letters and words really did have a direct relation to a representative that is understood by everybody. The problem with our time is we no longer have a common language. So the word woman does not denote woman. It has ceased to be a sign and become a symbol that is now controversial. Man, same thing. So because of the breakdown of language that no longer holds up. But I thought,

wow, I'm so grateful for that criticism, because it at least made me think to work through that distinction, which I would not have given much thought to. And it actually helped me to make sense of my own thoughts. And that is true. That happened to be a beautifully written criticism. But it's true of all of them. It's true of even, hey, Nolz, stop talking like that. Stop using that dumb word. Hey, Nolz, you look like a jerk. Hey, that actually makes me think,

oh, maybe I need to button my jacket. Oh, maybe I need to. But I mean, surely you have people in your life who do a better job giving you these criticisms than having to scour through YouTube comments. Some. Yeah, I mean, is that the advantage of having a team around you at the Daily Wire who get to tell you like don't say that

Again, or are they not as micromanaging? Yeah, they're not as micromanaging and then sometimes people are wrong too, you know and committees rarely Do anything good? Individuals often have good perceptions and insights committees not so much So yeah, obviously there are close people in my life that I turn to for that sort of advice. But I also turn to the trolls on Twitter because the trolls on Twitter have no care for my feelings.

They actually want to hurt my feelings. And so sometimes you get blunter, harsher, more precise criticism from them. Very good, let's take a quick break, Neil, and then when we come back I've got some stellar questions and we might have some questions from our locals too. All right. Hey, I wanna take a break to say thank you

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I love Nashville. I did not expect myself to live in Nashville. Yeah, what was that like when the news came down that y'all had to leave LA? Oh, I jumped in for joy. By the way, do you want some bourbon or is it too early? Matt. Matt, here's the thing. For you, I will make an exception.

It's five o'clock in Rome right now. At least, yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, what are we drinking? This is from my good friend Andrew here, who's's over here and this is Jefferson's Reserve. All right Thank you. I hope you don't think less of me if I add a splash of water not at all if I had ice I'd use it Yeah, what was that like when it came down the pike that y'all had to move to Nashville It was great. We knew or did you know that you were moving and not yet know which state we had talked about moving for years

Just because we knew California was coming to an end. It will either break off into the sea or just be decimated in a shower of fire and brimstone. So, you know, good old Gamora by the sea there in Los Angeles. And the real turning point was COVID, where we said, we can't stay here. And my wife at the time was six months pregnant,

seven months pregnant. And we wife at the time was six months pregnant, seven months pregnant, and we lived in this nice little apartment and we needed a bigger apartment obviously with the kid. But it was a nice, really nice neighborhood, Brentwood in LA, where she could go on these walks in beautiful residential areas and very far away from everyone. And so she's walking one day and she's on one side of the street. There's some guy on the other side of the street, sunshiney LA, never a rainy day,

beautiful temperate, and this man yells at her and says, you need to put your mask on. This is my wife. My wife at this point is wide, well she's a very petite woman. She's at this point wider than she is tall because she's got this giant baby in her. And she's hobbling up just to get a bit of exercise. She's at this point wider than she is tall because she's got this giant baby in her. And she's hobbling up just to get a bit of exercise.

She's, what? And we never locked down. I mean, I think the company had to send people home by the law in California, but I didn't do it. I was 36 hours at home. Jeremy didn't spend one day at home. He just went back to the office. And I called him and I said, bro, I gotta come.

I can't, I'm not getting work done. We live in this shoebox apartment. I'm waking up at six a.m. to do the show. Waking my wife, I'm not doing this. He's like, yeah, come back, of course. And so we never really locked down. We said, we need, we're doing something here. This is hard to churn up a business like this.

So the options were Texas, Nashville, or Florida. That's where everybody was going. And they asked me, where do you want to go? And I said, well, given those choices, I would say Nashville. And they said, good, that's where we're leaning. I said, damn, I just ruined my negotiating position. And then it was fast. I said, because I was looking to buy a house, I said, so should I buy a house? He goes, don't buy a house. He goes, when are we going to move to Nashville? He goes, like two weeks. Pack your bags.

I was like, OK, pal. And we did. Wow. The final day, I was invited to host the Rush Limbaugh show, actually. It was the end of his, and he was dying. And so I did it. It was the last thing I did in LA.

And I was going to host it more, but I had a radio contract of my own kicking in on a rival network a few days later. So it was bittersweet, and then I would've liked to, would've liked to keep doing his show. But wrapped the Rush Limbaugh show, got in a car, went to the airport, left, and have not looked back. Wow.

And I mean, we used to live in San Diego, but is it true, this mass exodus, have you found that to be true in your own life, everyone you know is starting to move, or many of them? When I was moving out of LA, I couldn't find moving tape. I would go to the moving shops, they would say, we're sold out. No way.

Yeah, and the other thing was you couldn't get U-Hauls, because they weren't coming back. Oh. You all said people take them, that's what people take them. What an anecdote. Yeah, and so the weird thing about Nashville is, I thought, well, I'm leaving all my friends.

But I wasn't. First of all, 80% of Daily Wire moved with us. We told the staff, you can stay, you can go, but that's what's happening. 80% said we're leaving. And since then, many of my friends, either for the Daily Wire or just for other reasons, have moved to Nashville.

So we didn't lose any, we lost the beach and we lost the sunshine, and we gained the sweet air of freedom. Do you find that many people in Nashville are aware that Daily Wire has moved? Yeah. And for the most part, are they supportive or do you have your haters there?

I'm sure. Very supportive. When people would come up to me in LA, it was usually friendlies. Usually, sometimes not, but usually it was. And 70-30, in Nashville, everybody's cool. Everybody is on the team. Because the other thing is in Nashville and Texas and Florida, you'll hear the locals say,

don't you California my state, leave your values at the door. But you don't need to worry about us. Okay, the people who are moving, you're really seeing just a balkanization of the country. The conservatives are moving to the red states, the liberals are staying in or moving to the blue states. And it's fine by me. Yeah. I wanted to ask you how your Catholicism affects how you comment on the news and on politics. You know, I was reading what Thomas Aquinas had to say

about detraction the other day. And I thought to myself, isn't that 95% of what you do? Like you kind of speak ill of people, and even if you're right, how can you as a Christian justify doing that? I try not to. I'm sure I've done it plenty of times, but I actually try not to. It's very common in the conservative commentariat to just say, so-and-so's a big dumb stupid evil idiot and I hate this person and whatever.

I don't do that for that reason. It's because I just don't want to have to go to confession every day. And so... Yeah, keep going, sir. I try to take a little bit more of a sympathetic approach to these people. You know, this poor AOC is a wounded soul. She really is a wounded soul. And so we should criticize her rightly, but not be gratuitous or cruel or mean or anything like that. And do you find that's a continual balancing act that sometimes you think, oh, I went too

far or? No, I mean, I think it, in some ways I'd have a bigger show if I were more willing to call people dumb, stupid idiots. But my other handicap as a conservative pundit is that I don't really get angry. I get angry about three times a year. It happened yesterday, actually. that I've punded is that I don't really get angry. I get angry about three times a year. It happened yesterday actually. I was at TSA and I had this lighter,

not this exact one but very similar, it's a pipe lighter. So it had these little doodads in it. And the thing about pipe lighters is it's a soft flame. Cigar lighters have that jet flame, there's a soft flame. You cannot take a jet flame on an airplane, you can take a soft flame. And this TSA agent. I didn't realize that, yeah. She found my, oh and they got rid of,

my pre-check didn't go through, so I had to go in the long line where they're digging through all your stuff. And this person just wanted to take my lighter. And the guy pulls it out, this woman, she says, you can't have that on the plane. I said, I can. I'm just telling you, I know for a fact,

I've flown on this very airline twice in the last five days. That is TSA compliant. She goes, no it's not. I said, it is actually. No it's not. No it's not. Back and forth, back and forth. And she goes to the supervisor and the supervisor said, yeah, that's fine. She's so angry. And now they're just saying, I gotta get this lighter from him. And so they say, well, I'm not joking. I said, well, this, this doodad here, this could be a knife. You're kidding. It's not a knife, it's a pipe cleaner. I said, what could I do?

I couldn't break my own skin with this. I said, no, it's not. And I said, I promise you this is fine. And luckily the supervisor let me through. Oh, she did. So you kept it. I did keep it. I was not leaving without it.

I would have shut down that airport. I was not, sometimes. But so that aside, and I actually, the whole time I was thinking of the headlines on daily wire right now, NOLS shuts down airport. I was not, sometimes. But so that aside, and I actually the whole time I was thinking of the headlines on Daily Wire right now. Noll shuts down airport. Noll shuts down airport over Pipe Lider. And I was so, and at the time I was thinking

don't lose your temper, because then you will have to go to confession like tomorrow and then it's just don't do it, you know. Because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but I also don't want to offend thee Lord, and so don't get on the verge of my seat. But that happens rarely. I really don't get angry in politics.

And in conservative media, you either have to be extremely funny or extremely angry. That's usually the rule. And I say with no false modesty, I don't think I'm extremely either of those things. And, but whatever, even if it costs me some views, I am conscious of that because, one, it doesn't suit my disposition,

but two, you know, don't call another man Raka, or you'll be liable to the fire. Well, I mean, that's right. And yet I understand, I mean, I'm so glad Daily Wire exists. I think one of the things Daily Wire does is it reminds those of us who listen that we're not the insane ones who are being continually gas lit by the left.

You come in and remind us actually, no, you're right here, don't worry, you know, and here's why you're right. It's like, oh, thank God, I thought I was insane, you know? So I understand, I guess, why we have to comment on these things and I suppose what would be the justification for? Calling somebody out. Perhaps if somebody says something publicly it now is in the public domain and can be refuted publicly and also This was almost certainly apocryphal But there is this legend we have which has a lot of truth value to it, that St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, you know, goes up and smacks

Arius across the face. And I think that can be a good thing. But it was a corrective slap, according to the legend. It wasn't slugging him, you know, it was a corrective slap. And so we should give corrective slaps, and we should speak the truth in love, but we should speak the truth as well. And I think if you do so in a calm way, maybe you even laugh a little bit about it,

I think that can be pretty effective. And I don't think there's anything immoral about doing that. I mean, when Balenciaga runs an ad for their products that alludes to child pornography, I think we should say this is evil and the people who are doing this are really compromising their souls And these are they're doing really evil things. They're really good to cut it out

So how do you think you how does your Catholicism affect how you comment on politics? Just just in the way you've said it. Yes, and it broadens it out in in the way that John Henry Newman said, to read history is to cease to be Protestant. Which I try not to say on the show. I don't want to be too mean to the, you know, the wonderful Protestant listeners. Yes.

We're often doing a better job than we Catholics. That's right. Right. But what really helps there is conservatives are very reactive to everything. You know, we mock the left for calling everyone a Nazi, but we do it too sometimes. People make two historical comparisons ever. Hitler and the fall of Rome. That's it. Those are the only events that ever happened in history. The thing is people who only make those two historical comparisons don't understand those two things either. If you don't have any sort of sense

of history then you're liable to make really sort of shallow, fashionable observations and claims about politics. But if you're Catholic you know things are very complicated. So a good example of this, we're talking about free speech earlier, is it became really fashionable over the last five years for conservatives to adopt this free speech absolutist position. I did not fall into that, whereas many other conservatives did.

And I did not fall into that in part because I'm a Catholic. We have a list of banned books. I know that we mock book burning as the greatest of all evils. There's book burning in the book of Acts. People ban their sorcery books. I know that Plato advocated banning the books of his philosophical rivals.

And I know that there's a position to be... There's a good argument for restricting certain views. St. Thomas Aquinas says that heretics ought to be executed. You know, so that does not, I haven't, you know, called for AOC to be executed because of her horrible political views, but it just, it shows you that things are a little bit more complicated than whatever stupid five-point manifesto you read on the back of a napkin these days. And there's a good argument for standards

and for suppressing things. I mean, if you're a Catholic, you believe that error has no rights. And I know we're not supposed to say that anymore because we're marrying ourselves to the spirit of the age. But if you marry yourself to the spirit of the age, you'll find yourself a widow in the next age. And so an argument for Catholicism beyond, you know, the prospect of heaven and living heaven on earth is also it will

protect you from from the errors of passing fashions. Mm-hmm. Who's more likely to convert Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager if you had to put money on it? I would have said Dennis because Dennis, Dennis is... What a lovable guy by the way. I don't know anything about him. I've watched a few videos. I just think I would love to have a cigar with this fella. It is a wonderful experience to have a cigar

with Dennis Prager. One time we were having a cigar and Drew and I were trying to convert him. And he said, now fellas, I have a great deal of respect for Christians. I hold views that many Christians hold, but I have to tell you this grace thing, this heaven thing, I cannot do it. I said, Denny, what do you mean?

Heaven's your problem? Grace is your... No, fellas, you Christians have this idea that you do not earn heaven. He said, well well that's true. You know we do work to cooperate with God's grace and other things but yeah that's true we don't earn our salvation. Yes that will not work for me fellas. I am a capitalist. I believe in earning things. Okay well that's a tough one to get over. And then Ben has read quite a lot.

And when he was writing one of his books a few years ago, he got really into Thomas Aquinas. So this is good. He got really into C.S. Lewis. He got really into C.S. Lewis. What specifically was he reading in these authors? The Summa, he was reading. Yeah, but what specifically?

I mean, the Summa. Within the Summa, right. I don't remember what specifically he was reading for his book. And then Lewis, he read a lot of Lewis, in mere Christianity, but lots and lots of Lewis. And we thought, all right, Ben, are we going to get you? But I don't know. It would be difficult because Ben has a fairly rigorous and systematic religious thought. And so it's not

that he doesn't know why he thinks what he thinks. Yeah. And because there's such a cultural component to it, but we're working on it. Hope springs eternal in your breath. Well, it was great to see him have Ed Faizer on the show. It's funny for all the criticism Ben gets online among even Catholics and Christians. Here he is hiring two out and out Catholics and giving Ed Faizer a platform.

And here's the other thing. You know, occasionally we'll see some comment from probably some bot or troll or something that says, how dare you Catholics work for that dirty rotten Jew Ben Shapiro? I think, well, you know, that dirty rotten Jew Ben Shapiro has given quite a platform to Christians and they don't tell me what to say.

They never say, you know, Michael, you need to drop this tenet of your faith. I think, you know, if Ben is this great oppressor or suppressor of Christians, he's certainly not doing a very good job at it. I mean, the company is overwhelmingly Catholic and almost entirely Christian. And so I just, but the criticism of Ben really

is because he's successful. That's what it comes from. Yes, people disagree with his views. I disagree with lots of them. All of us at Daily Wire bicker all the time, but the reason he gets the hate that he gets is because he's the hot dog. Tool poppy syndrome in Australia.

If you're doing well, we need to cut you down so you come back down here with us. Good for him. I remember when he was on Dave Rubin's show back in the day, Dave said, well, I'm certainly not in the top 1%, you know, financially. And Ben's like, oh, I am. I'm super proud of that. I thought, well, that's fantastic.

Good for him. And the other thing about Ben, also because he was so grounded when he really became a sensation, it has not gotten to him. That's why he can say, oh yeah, I'm super rich now. Oh yeah, I just bought a new car, it's great, I love my new car. He can say it because he doesn't fall into false modesty. He doesn't fall into, you know, my mother washed more floors

for less money than your mother did. He says, yeah, it's amazing, can you believe this? But Ben is still a guy who carries his own suitcase, which is not true of most guys who become really big. We have some questions here from our locals supporter. I've basically moved pretty much over from Patreon to Locals. Have you?

It's been a much more enjoyable experience. Speaking of our fellow Daybruths. That's right. No, I actually love Dave. I think that's one thing, Cameron, you'd probably say of both Dave and Knowles, while you enjoy listening to them more than others, is you do have this sort of lighthearted,

you know, you said you're not especially angry. And there's a big market for that actually. Cause you don't listen to anger for so long before you kind of get burned out on it. And I just can't do it. I mean, I bet I would have a bigger show. I think, maybe not, but I think I would have a bigger show if I got angrier,

but it would just be so false. I just don't have my heart. You gotta be who you are, you really do do yeah, and there's that line from Chesterton You know the angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly right well Let's see we'll just scroll through here now. I haven't read these questions ahead of time so apologies for any that are we'll see Michael says Veritas do you think the time spent on your hair is sinful or is it a manifestation of God's glory? Well, I just reject the premise. The time spent on my hair.

I wake up like this. When I roll out of bed, I say like this. And so therefore, because it has no human artifice to it, obviously a manifestation of God's glory. Wilhelm says, Michael, do you and Matt Walsh go to the same church? Yes and no. Matt was coming to our church, wonderful Latin Mass parish in Nashville, but Matt loves to live in the hinterlands.

Matt, I mean, when we first started working with him, he was living in the woods somewhere, near an FSSP parish actually, and he was doing a show in his car. And so Matt lives, his house is so far away. And so I think often he will go to a church that's nearer to his, but, and the other problem with our parish right now in Nashville is we don't have a church, because it got blown away by a tornado.

George was saying that in my interview with him. It's amazing, yes, because George, Candice's husband and I go to the same church. Yeah. And we meet in the upper room. We meet up, it's just very biblical. Thank you, Rob. Rob has brought us some port here to drink.

Some port, did you know that I'm a port fanatic? That's exactly why I brought it. I love it, I love port. It's not true, I didn't know that at all, but we'll have some. All right. And we'll carry you back to the car. That's good, yeah.

Devlin says, I have followed Michael since he did reviews on Andrew Clavin's show. I really appreciate the work. They all do it daily wire. Thank you for your Catholic faith. Well, thank you. That's Andrew's good question. Michael says, does it bother you, Michael,

that Daily Wire Plus hosts blatantly anti-Catholic content targeted at children? I am specifically referring to PragerU history for kids episode about Galileo. Unrelated side note, well, let's not do the unrelated side because that was a pretty intense question. Yeah, I haven't seen that content, but it's curious that that question would be raised

about PragerU because I have a show on PragerU, which is also hosted on Daily Wire Plus called The Book Club, and we covered Galileo. So I did, what is it, The Two World Systems, the sort of famous Galileo book, and I was pretty harsh on Galileo, actually. So I don't know who did the video for PragerU, but, you're also not a Catholic company.

Well, and PragerU certainly isn't a Catholic company. It certainly isn't. Right. And Daily Wire isn't. I would think that like the diversity among the commentators is actually a strength of yours. Like you said earlier, you can kind of find yourself in there.

Yeah, of course. Even with Candice and her relationship with Ye and the things he said recently, I mean in some companies, Candice might be fired by an insecure boss who doesn't want her disagreeing with him. Oh yeah, I mean, goodness, the way that they handled that, all of the guys at the company, and especially Ben obviously, because he's the guy with the Yamacan, I thought was just masterful. And she said, yeah, I disagree with Candice I disagree with Kanye, but she he said the the multiplicity of views is a feature not a bug of the daily wire And so I I think yeah, I'm sure I disagree

with plenty of people who are on daily well, I know I disagree with plenty of people on daily wire and Prager you but I don't know. They let me talk. Yeah, right. They let me so I What do you want? Do you have people who try to keep their finger on the pulse as far as here's what YouTube will ban you for don't Don't trip over this wire. Well, yeah, well, we all know it. I don't need a team to tell me that we all know what that is I mean the social media companies told us that it feels like you flirt with that line frequently and I'm glad for it I'm glad you do it. Yeah, I do cuz I mean what would happen if Michael Knowles got banned tomorrow from YouTube the world would collapse What would we do it? Shapiro would have to quit. He would have to quit on a different job. He would quit in disgust at the banning of me

I Do flirt with the line more I am I am drawn like a moth to a flame to that line I had episodes of my show taken down because of the big tech censorship, especially during COVID, when some of us knew early on that it was all a political operation and that a lot of the claims that were being made about COVID were just ridiculous. And so I had episodes taken down, but people didn't tell me, Michael, how dare you say that? They would just say, okay, you got to say that in the member section because you will not be able to say it, period. That's the world we live in. And that's not unique to our times. That's been true for all of history.

Haley says, when you write, Michael, do you spend a crazy amount of time editing and whittling the thoughts down or is it generally easy to construct and organize your thoughts before putting pen to paper figuratively? I am such a slow writer so I don't spend as much time editing. I spend ages writing and I refuse ghostwriters, which is common in the industry, but I refuse any ghostwriters or even refuse much editing, though I have editors but I reject a lot of the edits because I really, I am obsessive about addiction and syntax and prose and I want to precisely say exactly what I'm going to say.

So the downside of that is my output is relatively low. I've only written one book, my colleagues have written like a thousand, but I make sure that pretty much every syllable is exactly what I want to say. Do you feel that, do you find that, do you feel pressure? Like you gotta keep cranking out stuff?

Oh yeah, you know, I totally fail at it. But I don't care. I mean, publishers have pitched me so many books that they want me to write, some of which might have been fine. But I just think, no. I have this other problem going into writing, which is that I got notoriety for a blank book.

And so I just knew. Have you been thinking, sorry. Yeah, no, have you been thinking like we need another book like this? What else can we, another blank book? Another anniversary edition, yeah. The critical Norton edition. I just knew.

AOC's brilliant insights into politics or something. Joe Biden's brain. I knew going into writing a real book, the bar would be much higher for me because the headline wrote itself, right? Noel should stick to what he knows. Go back to his first genre. And so yeah, there is an intense pressure.

But I think of a guy like Owen Barfield, actually, who keeps coming up. He didn't publish a ton. But his books really count. And I think I'd much rather write five books that really count than 20 books that are. Yeah. You know, something's come up a couple of times in this interview that I've just loved

and I'm gonna reflect on more and more. And that's this idea of giving people an off ramp, right? Like how do we love those who like us have been raised in this society? And sometimes I'm afraid that those struggling with gender dysphoria are like the children of fighting parents who are just yelling at each other, but the child gets overseen.

How do we tend to their needs and genuinely love them and seek to help them while at the same time excoriating the insane worldview? Well, they're not just like the children of fighting parents, they usually are. The children of fighting parents are kind of broken homes. And in a way we all are in this culture where the family's collapsed.

So, yes, I go back to Porsche's monologue from The Merchant of Venice, which will probably get me canceled like Kanye. There are all those accusations about that play, but she says, though justice be thy plea, consider this, in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. And so, you know, you really do have to look at that and say, there but for the grace of God go I, and try to give people, you know, the grace that you would like to see extended to you.

Yeah. Let's see here. I Am says, I don't know if it's the great I Am, but it's the lesser I Am says, I still think my favorite brand is Southern Drawer, maybe because it's a Texas thing. Have you had Southern Drawer? No. It's an excellent cigar.

I thought I'd had every cigar ever made. I'll give you some to go. Yeah, it's really good. I think it's a Nicaraguan made, I think, based in Dallas. What's your favorite cigar? What do you, if you choose? Cuban or non-Cuban? I know we're not allowed to smoke it.

Let's do both. Let's do Cuban. You know when I was here with George Farmer. I hope he doesn't mind me saying this. He was sitting there. I was sitting here. We're smoking. He's like, do you like that cigar?

Because he brought me a whole. I'm like, yeah, this is great. He's like, no, that's about $800. My gosh! I was just, I was in London. I'm like, yeah, this is great. That's about $800. My gosh! I was just in London. I'm the godfather to George's daughter. So we fly to London. And George, he doesn't really drink usually.

He doesn't. But his real expensive taste is cigars. He has only the very best and always Cuban. So we're sitting there after the baptism, after the dinner. We're sitting around and he says let's have some cigars and he pulls out Behike 52's. Explain this to me. This is probably about an $800 cigar and he pulled out however many he had three or four passes them out one for me one for him and I know that only he and I knew what this cigar was. And everyone else just smoke and I didn't give them that swish or sweet.

They probably would have thought the same thing. But to, you know, life is very short, potentially shortened by these, though I actually think that cigars have great health benefits. And we'll get back to that in a second. But I think life is too short to smoke bad cigars. Not saying that you or I should purchase

$100 cigars, but. Here's my theory, right? When it comes to whiskey, when it comes to cigars, boys don't enjoy whiskey, nor should they. But I mean like 18 year olds and 20 year olds, you know? And when they finally develop a taste for it, they immediately become pretentious and try to buy the most expensive bottles they can.

But what I think would be helpful is if we all began with really bad cigars so we could then tell the difference. Because when you start with excellent cigars, where do you go? It killed me. My first cigar was a Cuban cigar, a cheaper Cuban, but a Cuban.

And so I went in and I loved it right away. I'd never smoked cigarettes, never got into pot, but I loved cigars. And it is tough. I would be a much richer man had I not started with good cigars. I agree with you on the whiskey stuff. I don't, I'm just not sophisticated enough.

So I'll go cheap on whiskey, relatively cheap on wine. My thought is that all bourbons are identical and anybody who tells you different is just lying. So I like to buy the kind of bourbon where one liter is actually bigger than the brand, because that's their selling point. That it's a liter of cheap $12 bourbon.

I think all bourbons are the same. Well, I think the plastic, that's the higher end stuff. That's what you want. That's what you want. With the grip on it, so it doesn't easily slip out. But scotch, that's not true. I mean, Lagavulin is the greatest scotch in my estimation. It's fabulous, yes.

Someone gave me a bottle of Macallan 18. Yeah. And I'm sipping it very slowly. But I did have this thought for people who don't know anything about whiskey. Once I finish it, I've got to pour the swill into that and then I pour it to people and they'll think they're having a wonderful.

Would that be immoral? Would it be a lie is the question because I would suppose that lying is always immoral. Maybe if you didn't tell them necessarily and just said, this is really quite good. This is quite good. You put anything in a crystal decanter. Yes, and it's great That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah So health benefits of cigars I smoke Probably a cigar a day. I'm about there. Yeah, and which what what's your response to criticisms about that? Does it relax? Does it allow you to contemplate things? Do you smoke alone or do you smoke with other people?

I usually smoke in the morning. Do you I much prefer a morning cigar over coffee than a night cigar? so Usually I'm alone here. Yeah, I like it very much. I love cigars, but this is very enjoyable I mean a good conversation. I read somewhere, it was one of those quotes in a cigar lounge somewhere, that a cigar is as good as the experience you're having while you're smoking. And sometimes we can have good experiences alone. But I like it with people too.

I said probably 60, 40 alone and with people. But the cigars are very good because they allow you to contemplate eternity. There's a great song by the Mills Brothers, where do they go, these smoke rings I blow each night? Where do they fade, these circles of blue and white? Oh smoke rings I love, please take me above, take me with you. So-

Very good. Thank you. I'm gonna have some port here. I know, I've gotta catch up. You've gotta. They do that, and also, this is not an original idea, but I'll claim it for myself, I'm sure I read it in first things or something

Cigars like other forms of smoked tobacco correspond to the tripartite soul. Let's do it So the pipe as I use this pipe lighter core that I see a pipe over there nice Mirsham pipe Corresponds to the logical part of the soul, right? You see it's got the joint of the masculine and the feminine, the masculine stem, the feminine bowl. You think of the professor smoking the pipe, the philosopher, he tamps it, it's a very involved experience. The cigarette corresponds to the appetitive part of the soul. I need it now. I need it. Give it, give me, give me. And the cigar corresponds to the thematic part of the soul. The cigar corresponds to that spirited part, the chest. The cigar is frankly more about what you blow out than what you take in.

You don't inhale a cigar, ordinarily. I like that. That's why I've tried pipes, barely tried cigarettes, but the cigar really does it. I think, to quote Winston Churchill, I have taken more out of cigars than cigars have taken out of me. I like it. Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it.

It satisfies no normal need, I like it. It makes you sick, it makes you lean, it takes the hair right off your bean. It's the worst damn stuff I've ever seen. I like it. Yeah, very good. I do too. I remember the first time I smoked,

see my father-in-law was a big cigar smoker. And I remember once, love, my wife left with the kids somewhere overnight, I thought I'm gonna get a good cigar, sit out the front and smoke it. This is the first time I really smoked a cigar. I didn't realize. How old were you? Tall, 25, 26.

I didn't realize just how sick you could get from a cigar. But I now know. So now at the first hint of a head rush I put the cigar down. I've learned my lesson. I started smoking cigars at 15 down the Jersey Shore with a bottle of port and I didn't think I would like it and I really did like it and I really got into it. I wrote my college essay about how much I love cigars. It was called The Count of Monte Cristo. Oh fantastic. I found out later that the admissions department debated whether or

not to let a guy in who wrote but that's something I care about quite a lot. Started cigar clubs you know all these things and well I'm a fan of anything that forces people to sit. Even board games. When people sit down for multiple hours and look at each other and there's no screens involved, I'm a fan. Totally. And by the way, if we're debating, you know, whether it's immoral or something because it's unhealthy,

some argue, obviously not me. Let's not forget the many saints and popes who have used tobacco. Saint Philip Neary, one of the arguments from the devil's advocate against his canonization was that his body was not corrupt. You know what? Because he was missing part of his nose, part of the septum. Why was he? Because he took so much nasal snuff during his lifetime. It was not that it had been corrupted after he died, it was during his life. That's amazing. You think about Pope Benedict. I think the man still smokes Marlboro Reds. He's like a thousand years old. He still smokes.

I think the man still smokes Marlboro Reds. He's like a thousand years old, he still smokes. Fine by me. Well, I think we should all smoke in moderation. And by that, I mean no more than one at a time. Honestly, I think more than one at a time is probably excessive. Yeah. I mean, even sweet little Lisa hates it,

but she knows it is actually an important part of my day because I smoke at night and I sit out. Well, now it's freezing in Nashville, but try I sit up put your muffs on sit out and I have a book and it's I try to do it every night maybe it's more like four or five times a week but I do it it's the only time I get to read I get to think I get to look at it's a commitment isn't it you'd like that cigar you're now there for an hour hour and a half. You can't rush a cigar. Right, right. And without it too. It's important for my job in that if all I do is read the news, I'm going to have some

stupid reactive take to whatever. You know, maybe just pass this bill or whatever. If I sit out at night and I read, I don't know, whatever Dante, or I read, I don't know, whatever, Dante, or I read, I like reading poetry, but it could be stranger poetry, or it could be just some bizarre book about whatever. That will inform my commentary. These guys keep cropping up, we talk about Chesterton, or Lewis, or Belloc, or Barfield, or whoever. They have informed my political commentary

much more than, I don't know, even Thomas Sowell. I like Thomas Sowell, it's not a knock on Thomas Sowell, but they have informed my commentary frankly, probably more than Edmund Burke or people like that. So what do you do to relax then? How do you, because I would imagine in your job, Twitter is an essential part of your job. You kind of have to be, it of have to be quote tweeting people.

It's going to add 10 million years to purgatory for me. It might. Do scroll on Twitter. Shapiro told me to. That's right. And just to interject here, you're talking about cigar slowing things down. We're right at 2 o'clock.

OK, thank you. We'll wrap up here, and then we're going to do a bonus section for our local supporters. That'll be the port section. And that's going to be the port session. That's gonna be the port section. And I'm gonna ask you three questions that I think would get us banned on YouTube. So, matphred.locals.com slash support,

become a supporter to watch the video. Great. Now, obviously everybody is familiar with you, probably, who watches my show, but maybe for those who aren't, how can they find the stuff that you do? The Michael Knowles Show. For now, you've probably gotten me banned during this conversation.

You can find me on Twitter at Michael J. Nolls. You can find me, of course, at The Daily Wire, at MichaelJNolls.com. I sort of list all the stuff that I do there. You can find my books on Amazon. Again, for now, I don't know how long that's going to last. And you can find me at Chesterton Cigar Bar smoking a cigar.

And I would say, like, you know, I think it is important that people support Daily Wire. You didn't ask me to do this, obviously, but I do think it's important. I mean, whether or not you agree with everything that Daily Wire is putting out, like, don't you want to invest in a company that's at least trying to push back

and has the wherewithal to push back against the big tech giants? Well, this is, I always get him to big debates with Jeremy over Ayn Rand. He loves Ayn Rand, I hate Ayn Rand. I think it's the worst tech giants. Well, this is, I always get him to big debates with Jeremy over Ayn Rand. He loves Ayn Rand. I hate Ayn Rand. I think it's the worst book ever written. And he just adores it.

And the insight, I have to hand it to Jeremy, I have to hand it to Ayn Rand, is that you need to have money. Money talks and BS walks when we're talking about politics. Okay, and on the right, the model had been non-profit. You just wine, wine, wine, and you raise money. And then you raise money and then you lose so that you can wine some more and raise some more money. You saw a lot of this in some of the way Republicans

would raise money on pro-life issues. They usually wouldn't want abortion to be banned or often would not want abortion to be banned because that would hurt their fundraising, right? There's this horrible perverse incentive to lose. Or you'd have some cable networks that were just bundled up and whatever, they'd just give you schlock. Jeremy and Daily Wire have made a point.

We need to make money. We need to make $1 more than we spend. So when we put out movies, I did a documentary on Dr. Fauci, Candice just did a documentary on George Floyd, Matt did the documentary on What is a Woman? But we have all this content out there. And people will say, well, you have to put it out for free.

Your Dr. Fauci documentary, you've gotta put it out for free because it's so important that I say, okay you have to put it out for free. Your Dr. Fauci documentary, you've gotta put it out for free because it's so important that I say, okay, I can put it out for free and then there's no more content. You have to support it. You have to put your money where your mouth is. I do it, luckily they give me a free subscription

to Daily Wire, but I do it with plenty of other organizations. I had to negotiate it though. But I support those organizations where I want to negotiate it though. One of the books. Yeah. But I support those organizations where I want to see more of this. And so far, the business model of conservatism, especially in the culture, has worked. And it's worked beyond most people's wildest imaginations.

And so, hand over that mammon, please. You don't even need the mammon, by the way. You know, give to Caesar what is Caesar, give to God what is God. Give to Jeremy what is Jeremy. Very good, very good. Well brother, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Pleasure is mine. I wanna go for like six hours. Because I know Seamus Coughlin, what did he do, five hours? I think it was just over four, maybe four and a half. Four and a half. It was George, please. It was George that was five. George did what, 17 hours or something?

17 hours exactly, I think. That's brutal and what 17 hours or something 17 hours exactly I think that's brutal, and I'm like a little boy here What we've only done what we'll have to do is we'll have to we'll have to fly down with our equipment to Nashville and sit In George's that's a cigar man cave and have a week-long shot try to do a week-long show here We each take naps One at a time pleasure. Thank you. Thank you