Pints With Aquinas - Homesteading, Hunting, and Raising Good Children w/ John Henry Spann

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Buy Your Shirt (with a random guy): https://www.catholiclofi.org/listing/buy-modest-mussorgsky?product=46 Contact/Book John Henry here: [e-mail] John Henry's Radio Show: https://thequestatlanta.com/honest-to-god/ Resources: @Homesteadyshow  https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/everything-i-want-to-do-is-illegal_joel-salatin/274148/#edition=4909983&idiq=10326674 Good Pictures Bad Pictures: https://www.defendyoungminds.com/product/good-pictures-bad-pictures  

Hey everybody, before we jump into the podcast, I wanted to let you know that if you become an annual supporter over at matfrad.locals.com support, you will get a free pines with Aquinas beer Stein, you just pay shipping, you'll get access to our free courses, you'll get access to our post show live streams that are exclusive to our local supporters. spiritual direction with Father Gregory Pine, as well as our free quarterly newspaper sent to your door. It's called The Jill, and we even pay the shipping on that one, no matter where in the world you live. If you're interested in getting these perks, please go to locals.com, sorry, matfrad.locals.com slash support, and sign up as an annual supporter to get those perks.

And you'd be tremendously helping us as a ministry. Thank you. Do my hands. You're live. Yep. That's why he said ready. We're talking. Yeah, I get it. But like I can hear it.

There's a thing. Did you ever watch Wayne's World as a kid? Yeah, he'd be like that. It's already on Garth. Ben Baron, who does my little AM show. Whoa, hey, you did say that at the beginning. Sorry, go. Oh, are we like, who does like my little AM show. Whoa, hey, you did say that at the beginning. Sorry, go. Oh, are we like- Ben Barron, real life.

Who does like my little AM thing, right? He always does the same, the quiet on two and one and then- Yeah. I don't know if he got it from Wayne's World though. Yeah, no, I think it's just a standard procedure. So can we address how I sent a bunch of pictures to, I guess Thursday and your assistant. Yeah, I asked you for a headshot.

And one of them was a joke and now there's a picture of me that what I can't run for governor. Right. It looks like I'm in blackface, but I can explain the picture. Sure. I feel like I should. Yeah. Since this is going to be immortalized on the Internet. What's difficult is why you give me the finger up? Because you sent them, but Matt went to Fordham to me and I only got the one that I put in there. So so to be fair to me, I did use the only one one that I got and we changed it now so no one can see it

They're just hearing you talking about blackface. So that's okay Let me send it you can put it back up it's in slack It's important to me that they realize the context that's back for that. Yeah, yeah, it's not blackface. It's orc face I was an orc for my kids summer camp where I hit children as an orc is really cool actually big shit I was hitting children good not like face not by I really wish we could stop anything else you want to say You brought it up. Did you find it? Yeah here? It is on the screen right now over your face Can you just we'll just talk to this can I just have that picture instead? It looks it's to come up soon. It's a little, it's a little behind.

Yeah. It's a little delayed, but it looked really, really good. What does, my Orc costume? The quality of the Orc costume. Yeah! Shut up, isn't that cool? That's amazing. I mean, you look, there's like,

it's all belts and blue jeans. Yeah, it was funny. Cause we usually ask our guests for a head shot and they usually send a respectable head shot. Melanie asked me to send a head shot. So Melanie writes to me she's like I'm sorry what is this? she found it funny the other one was you laying next to a dead deer. Well she said a high quality headshot and I don't have any high quality picture or headshot. Somebody took it with a nice cell phone then I mean then.

That's good. No but it was a killer camp I know that's not what we're talking about but my son did this summer camp this year and it's basically Lord of the Rings, except it's Catholic and it's for a week and they live outside, they don't go inside, they don't bathe, they live in tents. This year? I want to go. It's already over. They do it early June in Georgia, right? Jasper area and it's called Camp Atlantis and it's amazing. That's awesome. And they fight like they're high school kids and adults like dads will come and dress up as they're not called orcs I think for copyright reasons, but and there are big battles with foam swords and bows and arrows with foam tips on it It's really cool. Yeah, that's great, and they know it's fake

But then they like you can see the kids faces change to own I know when you when you're dressed like that charging at them and I mean you hit them like you actually hit them You don't hit him in the head and stuff. But yeah, yeah, it's intense Yeah, and do they know that you're gonna dress up the dads are gonna dress up some of the kids The kids have done it a few times. Yeah, cuz that's gonna be quite frightening. Yeah, just give it that photo Yeah, I'm scared just looking at the photo. Well, and it's I mean they do like smoke bombs and all this stuff in the battles It's really neat and it's all about brotherhood and they're marching together But they have Holy Mass every day and they pray the Angelus there

They've got this great prayer routine led by a group of priests that do a killer job with all these high school and college volunteers It's amazing. Um, and do we still want to do a Pines of the Aquinas hunting trip to Africa? More than I want to take the next breath of air. 100%. And I think you can justify that. You know what I mean? Because it can't just be like, hey, you guys want to go on a kick-ass vacation with me? I mean, maybe you could. You kind of just did that to France. I did just do that. So never mind. Yeah. Kick-ass vacation to Africa with Pines.

That'd be good. Hunting. I'll give a talk. Yeah Whatever you need. Yeah circle life or God. Yeah, the killer like a three-minute talk Hey before we go any further I want to say Something about Exodus 90 because they've got something coming up that people might be interested in and I want to talk about how you And I did exit Exodus 90 as well. So there's this thing called St. Michael's Lent that goes from the 15th of August, and it's 40 days to St. Michael, the Archangel's feast day.

And this is something that was actually kept early on in the church. St. Francis of Assisi and his followers, for example, kept it, and it's been forgotten about, really. So if you're interested in kind of kicking your own butt as a fellow this summer, being more committed to prayer, here's what you've got to do. Here are the things. This is easier than what we did at Exodus 90. Pray 30 minutes a day, commit to a holy hour twice a week, observe Wednesdays and Fridays as a penance day. And that could

include cold showers, but you don't have to do cold showers. That was the worst part. Yeah. You could abstain from meat, that that kind of thing and then abstain from internet browsing and unnecessary mobile device use abstain from video games And then make a morning offering and practice a daily exam and so it's not terribly strenuous But it will especially if you're committed to it take your spiritual life to the next level Exodus 90 you always do it with at least one other fella, and they've got an excellent app that helps you communicate So go to Exodus help me out here Exodus.com slash Matt and sign up over there and look forward to the 15th of August again is when it starts. So I don't know, summer, you let

yourself go a little bit. You told me not to do this, but I'm going to do this because before we were on air, you seemed nervous. I'm a little nervous. Don't be, don't be. I forget what I told you not to do. No, but you said, you were like, you remember we did Exodus 90? Are you like, did you have any issues with that? Because you didn't want to say this and then just crap on Exodus 90 for 30 minutes, which I'm not going to do.

And I wanted to make sure that I, what I'm about to endorse it a little bit, right? And I want everybody to know that it's not fake and that if I were going to crap on it, out of respect for you, I would just shut up. Because I'm not shutting up, I really like it. I think it's great. We did it together. I have never done an Exodus 90. We both did an Exodus 27 or something.

Yeah, it was just the Exodus 90. And I crushed Exodus 23, I think it was. Cold showers were the worst part for me. Those were the toughest. And I always thought it was gonna be the bourbon. I thought it was gonna be not getting to watch YouTube videos or some crap like that. It was the cold showers. but at my school where I work

there's a lot of men a lot of fathers and a lot of the high school boys who are just much manlier than I am who obliterate Exodus 90 every year and it is amazing while I've never completed it anecdotally I big big thumbs up what an amazing call to strengthen our so if I ever did do it I think the thing that would be good for me about it is just the fact that I committed to something for 90 days If they let girls do it I would say nothing but terrible things about it for and They've made that stand, but why? It's lame like and I'm sure there's no but there's definitely like a philosophical reason for that

About I don't know male exclusivity of things right I don't I don't think I'm smart enough to really dig into what it is But the Boy Scouts the military fire departments yeah cops Those should be male only and I don't I feel like you say that and then somebody might say oh he's whatever in the comment section, but I Feel like I don't even have to defend that because and then somebody might say oh, he's a whatever in the comment section But I feel like I don't even have to defend that because that's so obviously self-evident, right? You disagree with that. No, I agree with what you're saying. Yeah, I mean I Mean, I agree especially what you're saying about the military and things like that

I suppose there's certain jobs at a fire department that a woman could do but don't involve the firefighting right, right? There's a job. Yeah, don't involve the firefighting. Right. Right, if there's a job that's like, take notes about the fire, which is a big part, I was a firefighter for a couple years, right, there is a big part of that, then that's great, but obviously, women shouldn't be sacrificing their bodies and lives potentially to save

strangers. Yeah, of course. Obviously. But with Exodus 90, I'd be open, but I respect the fact that they've made this decision. I could see them coming up with like a Sister no pun intended like program sure that has different types of things that they do But it was interesting I asked him about that and said we just don't feel called to that great And I love that because they could make more money by doing that and they just decided not to There's some and I've heard like of some little offshoots of exes night

Yeah, yeah women that change it up a little bit and I think I think that's great I think women should do these like types of things but just differently than males because we're different. Yeah, right I think so. That's what I am attracted to you're also not allowed to look at pornography or masturbate during exes night Yeah, that's your rob banks inside of trading. No. No Inside a trading no no did you get that was the difference do you see that mean that I sent you a long time ago? No, it's in Indian or What is a Hindi or something right? But it's translated and it's called an a not ideal boy

And it starts off with him like not washing his hands after goes to the bathroom But then it slowly goes down into like stem cell research and like sponsoring coups in third world countries. But it seems like like it's all I don't know. It seems legit. I don't those are not ideal. Yeah, not ideal at all. Seems like a picture taking it like a community center or something of a poster. Since you brought up Indians, what's with the shirt? Oh, no. So I don't watch the NFL. I don't like I don't watch any kind of professional sports anymore I bought this shirt after the name change because I dislike Native Americans okay not their culture just no just them personally yeah no no obviously this that's not true but I but I got it because it's a it's a it's just

a stick in the eye I I'm obnoxiously contrarian in a lot of ways and it's once again just apparently ridiculous right it's obviously ridiculous that we're changing the names of all these now I don't I know so little about NFL or any of that stuff I actually don't know what they changed their name to I didn't even know they changed their name quite frankly what I know they changed their name to the defenders commanders something like commanders commanders the commanders which is lame sorry I'm being given instructions to

reconnoiter myself to yeah, and I Don't know that the Braves will be next the Chiefs the Indian Cleveland Indians change their names, too I don't get it and I've been discussed a hundred times and everybody listening probably already has heard it But I get it's just it's lame and it's boring and I feel like wearing this shirt Bothers the kind of people that are worth, that are worth bothering a little bit. Do you ever have people who are actually bothered? Mostly they come up and then give me like an ironic, like, Oh,

you can't wear that shirt anymore. A one time, I think I sort of had a, no, still wearing that shirt, kind of comment from somebody, a friend of a friend. Uh, and that, but that was the response. Yeah, it's because I don't like Indians. Because that's what they're inferring, but when you say it, that's so clearly not true. Obviously not true. Right, right.

I was saying the other day to one of your friends who was here that I hope that in a thousand years America that we're remembered as a vicious warlike people so that we can be the mascot of lots of high school football teams. We won't be that. In the distant future, no. Johnny masturbated to his phone in his mom's bedroom. people so that we can be the mascot of lots of high school football teams. We won't be there. In the distant future, no.

Johnny masturbated to his phone in his mom's bedroom. Why bedroom? Basement? Damn it! I feel like that's not a great name for a team, but here we are. Here we are. It's the best we can get. I do think we're going to eventually get down to the lowest common denominator of all sports

teams and it's going to be like the Atlanta human beings playing the Memphis athletes. Or just colors. You know, the Atlanta Reds. Blue team. It's kind of racist too. Oh, that's right. The whites? No. Can't do colors. Numbers. The Reno Blacks are playing the MLB today. That wouldn't work. So, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on honest took about Catholic homesteading right right right? I actually am interested in this because I don't think you grew up doing that kind of stuff

No, I grew up in a in a town In a rural area right, but it was a larger town Maybe 17,000 people America's that you've never been and it's bothered that bothers me. We're gonna do a turkey house me, too Yeah down there, but I was surrounded by a lot of this right and it seemed accessible but i didn't really also didn't have much of a drive to do it uh and then i went to college and met my bride we moved back to my hometown and there was no catholic community there unfortunately very little right there there's a catholic church there with a wonderful orthodox priest okay sorry let me go off on one thing real quick that's the whole point of the show tangents. We should have called it an effort. He's African like he's from Africa, right and

They're almost all amazing right these priests from Africa, right? We evangelized right the third world or whatever you want to call that right and now they're coming back because we can't produce our own priest But he like a lot of these awesome priests is pushed to some far-flung church out in the middle of nowhere. Because he doesn't, he has to, he's got heavy accents and stuff like that, but he's a great holy priest, right? And so he's pushed the periphery somewhere. I think that's lame. I want them to take all the, all the African priests, all these, all the good ones. And yeah, they all need to be at the chance. And push out the priests who say, call me Frank to the periphery. Right. They should be in Kamchaka. They need to put To say call me Frank right to the periphery right they should be in come Chaka

They need to put those out in the middle of nowhere speaking of can Chaka What is can Chaka come Chaka on the risk when you're playing risk? It's like north. It's like Siberia Alaska up there kind of area Come Chaka is where the bad bishop in the show the the young pope is sent, which you need to see. Just the first season. I didn't see the second season, but I heard it was terrible. The pope is Jude Law, same hairline as you, right? You made that joke, so I felt like it's okay for me to make it. Yeah, yeah. Totally. And he's supposed to be kind of the bad guy, but he's he's amazing and you root for him the entire time before we get to the

Homesteading let's do this first and you know that are still my ideas, but I want yours to Tomorrow Pope Francis dies the conclave meets a week from now. John Henry Span is called to the throne Okay, it lead me through the next couple of weeks and just generally through your pontificate. So I am yeah Sorry, can you you you gotta keep that mic a fist away from your mouth. Sorry. Yeah, am I good? You can hear.

Yeah, cool. This is good? Thanks. Okay, so I am, so I've been elected pope. I find out right now, like, because I'm a nuncio or whatever. That's right, you get a text. Oh, I get a text.

Maybe a call. Hey, this is the nuncio, papal nuncio. Emoji, you're the pope. Instagram direct message. Pray, pray, pray, hands. All right, so I think I don't appear yet. I have to go squirreling away for a while before I make my, right before I, over St. Peter's, right,

and give an actual audience to everybody. I think Francis is, he's staying in like the humble little apartments near there. I immediately get rid of all that and go right to the Papal Palace. Here's what I do. Here's the first thing I do before I even get on a plane over there. I call the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC and I say, I don't ask, I say I'm going to be there in 45 minutes with a hammer I'm gonna break the papal tiara out of that and I'm gonna crown myself because I'm the Pope Yeah, right. And so I put the tiara on yeah, I don't take it off. I fly to Rome. I go to the papal palace

Like in first class, I presume they're paying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah with your papal tiara Asking for shots of bourbon One more thanks, sweetheart. And I don't know about the name. Either based on the young pope, either Pius XIII, but probably for like, evangelization reason, or at least for like, Apologetories of Peter II, right? I'm sorry, I'm still seeing you like, walking out of customs in your Washington Redskins shirt and your tiara. Although I suppose you would have a chartered flight, wouldn't you?

Like a private plane? No, no. Economy. No, first class, first class, but on like a frontier airlines. Yeah, so I do that. I go to Rome, I go to the Vatican. Hey guys! but nobody sees me for a while because I like that mystery, right? And I love John Paul II, but one thing he did that I don't think was great for the papacy as a whole was that public face and almost celebrity status of the Pope. I think that's kind of gross. I think there's a place for it for sure, but we see in Francis who is not doing great in regards to public face and some confusion and some of those things right? So I probably hide for a little while But then I make a couple of like I think about a leak like some videos like

Yeah, yeah, so that like on purpose Maintaining the facade of this is a closed off thing, but like you guys need to know this stuff is happening They planted a tree during the Amazonian Senate. Yeah, they planted some tree and it was kind of weird Yeah, I'm not super but I read about it enough to be like all pagani It seemed kind of pagani right in circle of life Gaia earth water I would leak a video of security camera footage of this and make sure those security cameras set up And I would have somebody go before the video right is all stay you poop yet I'm both and you still go put right now. Yeah, I'm still wearing the t-shirt

Okay, and I have somebody go and kind of break up the roots around it so that the security camera footage could just be me walking Grabbing it by the trunk ripping it out of the ground throwing it with it with my back to the camera for the sake of prudence urinating on that tree. Okay But you're not coming out onto st. Peter's to no yet. No, there's a leaked footage build up To build up from what I actually stand on st. Peter's and I'm gonna If I if I do the st. Peter's thing, I feel like I'm gonna steal what you said yesterday Okay, so I don't want to yeah, I'll let you so what I would do This reminds me of this lady. We all through my pontificate. We're on day like three.

No, you tell your thing. All right, we could match each other's timeline. So we'll go back to you, right? But before I get to that, I was talking to a woman in Louisiana. She said that her son said to her, if they asked me to be Pope, I don't know if I could do it. And she's like, nobody is going to ask you. Anyway, if they asked me and I said yes, I would show up, I would walk through the doors, I would never speak in my pontificate. So I would ask you, because you'd be the cardinal that I invite over with your beautiful kids that can roll skate around the palace, and I would tell you to say the following, kneel! And then I would bless them. You mean as opposed to like the Pope Francis, please

pray for me? Yes, the opposite. Okay. Everyone has to kneel down and stay kneeling. Right. And anyone who isn't can get out. I would bless them. Are you whispering in my ear and then I, how's this work? Yeah. The only things that I would say would be like official blessings, the holy mass, and my homilies would even just be taken directly from the church fathers. I would try very hard, I would fail on day three, but I would try really hard not to speak during my pontificate. If I'm going to say anything, I would bring up beautiful papal encyclicals throughout the centuries and tell the church to study them. Why? Because what have I got? I've got nothing to say. I've got nothing interesting to say. And there's been way too much talking in this pontificate,

it seems to me. So I would shut my mouth and then tell people, tell the church to study these writings of the saints. And I'd invite you over, and your job, and the next thing I would do is I would make every cardinal and bishop proclaim the church's teaching on homosexuality and the things that they don't want to say, I know they don't want want to say and when they don't do it I'll send you around the world Personally defrocking I want you to strip them naked I want you to be hiding in the wings not at holy mass that would be inappropriate But somewhere just to come out and just to strip them which would be harder than it seems because they're probably wearing a belt Sure t-shirt and who knows what kind of wear

Maybe none right and you just make them naked. And then so that's, and then what I feel like that's a step after that. Are they flogged? Are they, they're physically defrocked is what you're saying. Yeah. We'll start there. Just physically defrocking. So I don't think I would even start. Sorry. Yeah. I have a question. Yeah. In this scenario where you're Pope, can I be press secretary so I can bully the media? In this scenario where you're Pope, can I be press secretary so I can bully the media daily? I feel like I wouldn't even give them something that they had to... I wouldn't even throw out a doctorate and say you have to say this, you have to affirm this teaching. I think I would... I think

Hitler's would roll on day one and they would be replaced with just people that I knew... one and they would be replaced with just people that I knew like here's what I would do. I would get rid of 80% of the Western bishops for sure right and I would replace them all with people I knew up to the point where I ran out of good solid men that I knew and then I would walk through Africa at the equator and the first Catholic man I say you're a, you're a bishop. You're a, you want to be Bishop. Here you go. Literally just passing out like a staffs, croakers to all of them. I honestly think that might work. I would be presumably your cardinal. I would hope I can carry them behind you

like a big pile of croakers. Yeah. Yeah. I honestly think that and that's tongue in cheek, but I really do think that you would have much better odds of finding holy orthodox good men walking through Africa at the equator than wandering the streets of the Vatican right now, unfortunately, right? Yeah.

So that's like week two, because there's some logistics in there, right? I don't know I have the I have the opposite inclination like I want to say things But I think that speaks to my own arrogance right I want to I want to proclaim things I want to stay on the balcony and give teachings and all of that But I don't know exactly what I would say. I feel like I would I would bargain hard with the Italians I want the Papal States back. I think it's ridiculous We don't have a seaport. I want one of those Yeah, we need a seaport. I think Florence rightly belongs to us too and the whole of Rome, right?

What about if you gathered up the German bishops and tied their hands and then push them into the Tiber and said Say hello to Pachamama While you're down there. I unironically think that Vatican black sites for some of these perverse priests who have done these terrible things should be a thing. And for those not aware, what is a black site? CIA black site would just disappear people. Yeah.

Right? But they're under my Thor. I'm the Pope in this situation. And I think if you were executing them, which I think is a totally valid thing for doing horrible things to children We should take a page out of the Gospels and tie a millstone to their neck and drown them in the Tiber but in a spot that's only like that that deep So you have to work on the logistics, right? But what if they lay on their back with you said me down So why is it that I said what if they lay on their back with you said me down?

I gotta be great So I flip them over presumably the millstones quite short if it was long they'd be able to turn right yeah Yeah, yeah, I want them to be able to turn most of the way It's hard to just use words to describe that we would we test it out on a number of Perverse yeah terrible men first. So that's like now we're on week four, maybe? You got anything? What's here? No, these are great. I don't know what else I would do. I would honestly, though, I would bring over people I knew who were holy. Like I'd bring over Sister Miriam James and a few people like, please counsel me. How can I serve the church?

Yes, and part of why I wouldn't speak is I know that anything that would come from me would just would soil Yeah, but that's not true like you would speak I probably would because of my arrogance, but I would like not to I would need a lot of good people constantly telling me I should not talk. Please do not do that. Yeah The first time we brought this up, I like how you phrased it because you show up in Rome and you say to somebody, I'm going to need the papal tiara. And he looks at you a little confused and then you yell run at him. I just I love it. I stutter. I love the idea of being in the Vatican and

hearing about all the rules of the Vatican and then just say, well, who is the Pope? Oh, because of the crown on the shirt. Yeah, it's me. No, I just think that would be beautiful. I'm really, I mean, maybe I'd say one thing. If I walked off onto the balcony, it would just be. This is this is difficult, right? Because we're doing both. We're trying to say things that are funny, but we're also like meeting certain things. Yeah. But I think just repent and believe in the gospel. And then I'd shut up and turn and walk back in. And then you can be like, oh, right.

I can't look at drill sergeant to everybody down there. Here's what he meant by that. I I think and this is not me trying to be ironic and funny. I think Some martial I think a reinstatement some martial order would be a beautiful thing right I want when Boko Haram Kidnaps a convent full of nuns. I want some Vatican Knights Templar whatever whoever they are right it'd be a new thing. Make a new thing.

To go in there and freakin' stealth bombers in the middle of the night and kill them all. Also on camera, if we can get some of that footage leaked, I love the idea of there about to be a religious execution in South Sudan or something, and so they're live streaming it, because that's what they're gonna do. And then you just see the bushes, like little cracks of gunfire and all these guys dying and they're

helping these people out and then that'd be cool and then do you walk on with your tiara? I don't have to be there, it'd be cool. With the shirt and tiara. I come strolling out of the jungle. You're welcome I say directly into the camera. You're welcome. And you wink. No but I think there's something to be said for those martial orders It could be and there's a big humanitarian aspect or whatever But I would also take that new statue that put in st Peter's square that big boat of like the although set it on fire. I would set it on fire Why why do you hate immigrants met? I don't hate immigrants, but I hate that There's no way out of that what nothing. I just I hate them because I am one and I hate immigrants, but I hate that there's no way out of that. What? Nothing.

I just, I hate them because I am one and I hate me. Oh, that was a good way. It comes from self-hatred, thank you. No, but it's because, right? Oh, it's ugly and garish. Well, but it also is saying that it's bringing up all these social issues as the church's primary responsibility. And that's not the church's primary responsibility.

It's saving souls, not. Yeah, which certainly involves loving our neighbor and caring for immigrants and all that. But that's not what the ship means. That's not what that statue means. Yeah, I see what you mean. What it means is this watered down social justice, right? I don't like putting any adjective before justice, right?

I think we've talked about that before. But that's, I don't know, the message is not, you should love your neighbor, right? Because it's good for your soul. It's what we're called to by Christ. It's the same thing. It's yeah, it's like the Trojan horse, right? It's like Black Lives Matter. It's like, that's not what that means. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of, unfortunately, we, we, we will have an, a conversation with a friend of yours the other night at your party, great party, by the way.

Chester? No, no, not Chester. I didn't know what he was going to say. a conversation with a friend of yours the other night at your party great party by the way sister no no Didn't know what he was gonna say and what he was He was a professor at the university, but he was saying about Yeah about the the church. I don't know if you want us. No. No well. Let me yeah Yeah, I don't know Sorry, you mean Michael Scanlon Teddy McCarrick, but he was at my 40th. Great party, by the way.

Jumped out of the cake. No, but what we were what we were talking about, sort of the church's comfort with the modern world, which has gotten way too comfortable with the world in the eternity. And that is our friends. Right. That was it. I think that's how he phrased it. Right. The world being our friend.

And that's I think of that when I think of the Miraculous Medal prayer. So around the miraculous metal, it says American seed without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. But the full prayer is, and for those who do not have recourse to thee, especially the enemies of the church and those who recommend to thee. But I think if you were to say to any given Cardinal or Bishop, like who are our enemies?

I think a lot of people might be reluctant to respond to that. Yes, but we have enemies that's right Admit the Mohammedans in some circumstances and Modernists and the LGBT stuff. Yes with enemies and we want to reconcile them to the church so they can be saved But what the church has done it seems like in the last I don't know hundred years 70 years or so is It seems like in the last I don't know hundred years seventy years or so is view itself Like a part of the modern world right like an apparatus similar to like a big charitable organization Yeah, the church has always been a big charitable organization, but that's not the point right We're not an institution that exists with the modern world right we are contrary to it

Like ontologically we're supposed to be right. Yeah, I think that's I think that's why we have all these issues and why I can't have conversations with somebody who is, who I'm seeing at mass without being worried about, oh my goodness, are you going to be offended by me saying basic teachings of the church? Homesteading. Homesteading. Yeah. So you didn't grow up homesteading. I didn't.

Do you mind if I smoke a cigar while we... No, I'll do the same thing. First of all, let's address cigars. I don't know if you know this, but some people say tobacco is bad for you. Nah. If it were bad for you, then... It wouldn't taste that good. Yeah, you'd think a lot of people would have some problems, but I've never heard of anybody having any medical issues. Everybody says that smoking is good But you mentioned before Before we were on that you would have people who would today We're gonna have people who like it you sit there, and you moralize us about pornography while you smoke Listen on second. I don't even get that yes, obviously yes, that is what I'm doing right yes correct And obviously these are bad for you, right?

Sure, yeah, you tobacco can give you cancer, right actually I'm not even say they're bad for you These can be very bad for you right they can cause horrible health problems I don't even understand this is delicious. Why would be listening to your show though and think that pornography and Cigars in the same ballpark I say something so something I say a lot to my to people who have criticized the way I raised my kids right because I I let my kids do my son in particular do lots of things I told you lived in a tent for eight months right he goes out and he swims across the Etowah River in wintertime and what because it's cool and

that's neat he's's 11, right? So some of those things are dangerous But what I always come back to is I don't care that much about physical well-being For myself or for my or my family the people I love I care a whole hell lot about moral well-being Because that's more important and that's rightly ordered. I'm not worried that my son is gonna end up, you know Breaking his leg or whatever. I'm worried that he's going to become hopelessly addicted to sin and go to hell. Right?

And yeah, you can be worried about both, but you should, it's disorder to be worried about both in the same degree. Right? I'm reading a book by Mathias Schaben right now, and he's talking about how we do not desire grace because we do not understand its importance. And he said, you know, like if you were to fast for 24 hours and in exchange get a chest of gold, no one would say, well, isn't that hard? Or why would you go through all that? Sure.

But we're unwilling to say the smallest prayer for the smallest grace, which is infinite, almost infinitely more than. I agree with that. And I don't, I don't understand grace like I should. Right. A hundred percent. Like I know it intellectually, but I, even then I fail so much. I think an analogy that helped me recently is like grace is to the soul. What, what sun is to the earth. Like it has to be given to us. We don't have it by nature. Only God has grace by nature.

And that just like life can't come from non-life, so our dead separated souls cannot become glorious in the sight of God unless he divinized the soul through grace. And anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about either. I know something of it, but I know I should love it a lot more. So here's what I was going to ask. So something I bring to my spiritual director a lot is how I've always been pretty solid in my faith from an intellectual capacity. Not always, but ever since my conversion, right? I get God. I believe he exists wholeheartedly and I can philosophically argue about it and all this stuff. But that's nowhere near as important as that heart connection, right? Knowing as, I guess, knowing he's real verse believing right the actual It's kind of like I've heard someone say like I know that there are like rings around Saturn

Hmm, but that does nothing for my life right so concerned about that. It's great that I know that God Exists, but God doesn't want me to he doesn't exist so that I can win arguments on the internet So he doesn't exist so that I can like I don't know pat myself on the back for this intellectual achievement Right he exists because he loves me and he wants to be with me forever in eternity and I but I Don't I have a much harder time identifying with that God, right? But you've talked about this for quite a while like ever since I've always I've always sounds like you've grown in that I think slowly. Yeah, I think it's very and why do you think had that? Because I think I may be more emotional by nature than you. And so from the get-go, I had this... my conversion experience was a very profound emotional experience in prayer.

And I think it's temperament, right? I think, like you said, you're a more emotional guy, because I didn't have a... I didn't have an emotional sort of heart ascent to our Lord for probably a decade after my conversion. And I knew, and I knew I should, right? And it's still a prayer I pray every single morning. Part of my morning prayer is, I love you, help me love you, right? I believe in you, help my own belief, right? Those sort of things that are just,

like I get it, I'm ascending to all these things, right? Because I know that they're true, and love is a movement of the will, but help me, help me to love you, help me to feel loved by you. And it's a lot of prayers prayers I identify so well with the parable of just knocking on the door and eventually the guy will come out and I felt that incremental and I mean we can get into my I'd prefer not to but in my

childhood and past and all of that things that I think make it harder for me to have a have a connection like that an emotional connection but yeah feel like I'm rock and rolling in a good direction. Homesteading. Homesteading. What if we just never talk about it now? We just say it every seven or eight minutes. It's like a chapter break for every next thing

we're gonna talk about. I love that. Oh, he will love it, yeah. Who? He's our timestamp fella. So homesteading. I didn't grow up doing it, but I grew up around a lot of sort of the

rural everything, right? And then my wife and I got married, moved back to my hometown. I was a firefighter down there. And then we moved up to Atlanta because of lack of Catholic community and we moved to a apartment. It just the sterileile horrible suburban sprawl nothingness of modern everything right in Western cities. We weren't there very long and we moved to a cul-de-sac kind of neighborhood that was just as bad as the apartment except we had a yard right in terms of like it being real right it was a fake place it was a place that we were talking yesterday about how something I say all the time is I like people sound like they're from somewhere.

I also put like places that look like they're somewhere, right? And if my suburban cul-de-sac neighborhood could be in, I don't know, Georgia or Minnesota or Lisbon or you know, anywhere and that's boring that's uninteresting so anyway I was getting sort of just claustrophobic there and I was being whiny sort of about how I want some space babe and we you know I just feel like I can't stretch my legs the HOA just told me that I couldn't have chickens so I ignored that I had chicken piss off the front porch in the back

yeah I didn't know we so we we did in the back. Yeah. I did ignore. So we did have meat rabbits and egg birds, egg chickens at that house, built a fence. Right. Another business. And we had like rows of corn and tobacco growing like in my backyard. Yeah. But I felt claustrophobic. And we watched Food Inc. or one of those shows about how awful factory farming is in general and Decided like this is you know, we don't we would only be a part of this anymore than we have to be

With animals in particular. I felt like I wasn't being a good steward of God's creation By but I'm not knocking people who buy their food from the store. I'm not saying you suck We were just able to do this So anyway, my wife is hearing me whine and complain about this every day and then I come home from work one day And she has real estate listings printed out on our dining room. What a woman she is. Yeah, she's amazing I'm desperately in love with you Angie if you're listening, which you will probably at some point. I love you. I don't deserve you I this side of heaven you're all I want. Oh, sorry big fan big girl. So Yeah, she laid out real estate listings. We went that weekend and within two weeks

we had bought 12 acres of raw land in North Forsyth County and Couldn't afford to build a house on it because we spent all of our money on the land slapped a double-wide trailer on that bad boy We lived there for seven or eight years remember. I hoped you move in remember you had all that furniture in that Garage and your neighbor's property and me and Andrew Yeah, okay seven or eight years. Remember, I hoped you'd move in. Remember you had all that furniture in that garage in your neighbor's property and me and Andrew showed up? Yeah, did you really? Yeah. Okay, cool, thanks.

It's a while ago. Tell the goat story. So one of my favorite John Henry stories is I showed up to see you, I don't know, maybe we were gonna go do something, and I think you had a goat by the back legs, like, hey Matt, come here. I'm like, okay.

And you gave me some sort of device to wrap it or rub a band around it's testicles banding yeah and I remember you kept saying make sure the testicles are in make sure the testicles are in because I got the sack get the nipple too that was a really important one so I kept pressing around it's sort of ball sack to get the ball in the rubber band and then let it go. That was a fun experience. It's really hard to do it by yourself though. So I appreciate you. I appreciate you being there. Yeah. But so we bought this land and I didn't really

know what I was doing. That's the beauty of YouTube, right? And just, I knew some people we, I talked to some people who were doing this and we started with chickens, which are a gateway animal, right? And then we increased, if you can gonna have chickens might as well have turkeys. Yeah. Can I have turkeys? You just have some ducks over over there and then people pay a lot of money for peacocks Let's bring a couple peacocks. We have peacocks and then over the years we had pheasants and Bees and goats and you know dogs cats kids. It was fun

How's it go because you seem like the kind of fella who would take to that more than your wife? How did angest okay? So my bride grew up very wealthy in the North DC suburbs and she moved from a very nice house driving like a Mercedes as a 16 year old to a double-wide trailer on the side of a mountain covered with fallen goat testicles and chicken poop, right, just littering like Easter eggs throughout the yard. And has never once made me feel bad about it. We're building a house right now because right now everything it sounds like, and then I said I wanna do this,

and my wife said, yeah, and then she did that, now I'm doing that. Like that's not what it was. We're actually building a house right now, and I'm super passionate about it, not because I care at all about this house, but because my bride really wants this house. It's almost done. It's super cool being an end November so

But what we're doing now is a bigger version of what we started there and the goal is to raise 100% of our own animal products and we were about there. I mean we yeah, we were there for meat, especially We had to we saw to buy milk, but we knew the cow that it came from For meat especially, we still had to buy milk, but we knew the cow that it came from. But for meat, we were 100%, but I wanna be in a couple of years back to where we were at the old property, which we sold to buy and build on the new property, and do 100% of our animal products.

And it's super doable. Like that's the thing that I'm always, I always try to tell people. I didn't know, people, it's like a branding thing. People think I just innately knew this, or grew up this and I did not YouTube is your friend. Mm-hmm and Community is your friends, right? I built so many great relationships learning how everything from fencing to I don't know Where to buy good feed to pest control stuff and it's it's fun and it's speak. It is a lot of work It's a pain in the butt and it's so worth it especially with kids if nothing else if you don't

Even if you're a vegetarian get a bunch of animals so your kids have a bunch of chores And so their life can be grounded in real things Right I'm big on that. I think we talked about a lot last time I was on but this idea of Having real problems in the real world with real things is so important. Yeah, not YouTube locked me out and I need to verify my password. Right, and not like, oh I beat this game, I've been trying hard, and I'm not crapping on videos, that's fine, you can play video games, whatever. But getting so much of your life and your sense of self and accomplishment and everything tied up in fake stuff, it's just boring.

I'm not even going to say it's evil. Like it's just boring. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost worse than evil. I mean, a lot of people, I think, try this and then realize this was a terrible idea. I actually prefer living in a town by a community and I want to buy my products, if not from the store, but maybe from friends like you who do it. So I mean, that that would be my if I ever did it, that's what would happen to me. I would have this great idea. We get super into it. We'd go out and I'd like I don't like this at all.

I don't think maybe I would. But I actually really like living in a city. Yes. On a street with a bunch of people I know who hang out all the time. Steubenville and sort of the small town atmosphere, I think is, it's right there. I mean, I think it comes down to temperament, about which is better, right? So the rural lifestyle or the small town, I think those are both, they're tried and true

because we've been living one of those two ways since the agricultural revolution, right? And then the advent of big cities and everything, like big cities on the scale they are now is like a industrial revolution, post-industrial revolution phenomenon. We had big cities, but not like we have them now. Big cities that are so disconnected

to all the inputs of that city. I was reading something the other day. In an average city in the United States, there's three days worth of food for all the inhabitants in the city at any given time. Because none of those inputs are produced there. They're all inputs. So they're coming from outside, trucking into the city.

And so, if the system or whatever falls down, in three days there will not be a scrap of food in the city. Isn't that interesting? That is fascinating. Yeah, and that's clearly broken. That's weird. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you said this last time. It was a good point. You said that Steubenville is less real than agrarian living, but way more real than suburban living. What did you mean by that? Yeah. I mean, I guess if I'm saying real, like rooted in not nature, but our nature, maybe.

Actually you can make it- Walk friendly towns and neighbors who you know. Yeah, you can make an argument that that is more conducive to human nature than agrarian living, right? Because I'm out there and unless of make an effort a concerted effort To see people I don't have to see anybody I could totally be a hermit if I wanted to that's my plan if my wife You know dies or leaves me and my children run off I'm just gonna lock myself in my house and drink myself to death over the course of a long weekend

Great plan. Hope that it happened. I hope so too. Yeah but uh No, I think that this is think that this is good because unlike the neighborhood, right, you do. You have friends, and it's purposeful too. Studentville is purposefully like this, right? You didn't just move here and then try to cobble together community. You said, no, there's a community growing here, a Catholic community. I want to be a part of it.

I want to invest in it. Right. And people will accuse you of it being a bubble. That happens with my school a lot our school is a very tight community of you know, a few hundred families and It is we get it the word cult gets thrown around the word bubble and what I always come back to is no No, it's called a community and it's worked forever for 12,000 years this is how we've been living as humans around people who share our basic values and our faith usually right and loving and helping each other. And in a rightly ordered society,

right? Once you leave, you know, our situation is a school, once you leave that school and you go out in that community and you go out into the quote unquote real world, which is faker than the community you're actually from, God willing, you're going to either return to this one, find a new one or create a new, a new community because it's how we're supposed to live. I don't know why that's controversial. That's a good point. The modern cosmopolitan man about world like jet setting around the world and not being, you know, not having deep connections to the people who are geographically close to him is disordered and

weird and that's not okay. What do you think about a family who chooses to buy a camper van and travel around the country? I think that sounds great for a summer. Yeah, but I don't think that's a it's a fun vacation But I don't think it's I don't think it's right because I don't think our hearts are oriented towards that something that I'm gonna butcher I don't know it might be Esalen But basically what he says is if people were doing if people were living this way or enjoying this thing or whatever 200 years ago and they're still, and it's still working today, it's probably still gonna be working another 200 years and 200 years after that.

I think he's talking about media, right? He's saying like if people enjoy a work of art, write a piece of music or a play or something, if they enjoyed that 100 years ago and they still enjoy it today, it's probably got a lot of staying power. Like Dumb and Dumber,-tested right exactly watch that recently We both have both of our boys. We introduced our boys to dumb and dumber for the first time

Can we just do that for the rest of the show? Gulls huh well see you later That was planned or if he just walked out and said that and what's funny about that is it's very difficult to say why that's funny. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense I think it's because it was this like cockeyed optimism. Yeah to a couple of cynics Yeah, yeah, who were totally uninterested in yeah him or anything. Yeah Cynicism are The fact that we're so cynical as humans I think is is also part of the the disorder of of all of us

We were talking. I don't know if it was on the show or not, but about how Everything I the older I get the more mature I get rather right everything that 99% of things that I used to think were cheesy. Yeah, I realized no I'm just cynical those are actually wholesome and it's beautiful Yeah, right that summer camp that is right up the road that we go to now every single year. Catholic family land. Cheesiest thing in the world. And by cheesy, I mean beautiful and wonderful and exactly how, you know, what it should be.

Right. Feeds my soul is amazing. Thursday, can I ask you a question? Because you're of a different generation than us. And I wonder, I'm hearing Gen Z people say wholesome a lot, which is interesting to me. It seems like we're, we're so bombarded with sexualized content and swearing and evil that it's almost like this new, nice genre that we actually give credit to. Wow. That's just wholesome.

Or am I off? I'm sorry. What was the question? Why does your generation say wholesome a lot more these days? Like that's a very wholesome movie or a wholesome video clip or do you think I'm wrong? Maybe I think people Have you been noticing that yeah, I think so where it's just the word wholesome. Sorry Thursday. We got a reaction Yeah, I'm thinking that just the part was so like we're so steeped in like gross garish

pornographic Backstabbing condo. It's probably just that that it's it's the that the the truly like beautiful things are rare And so they're they're recognized quicker and more easily But my point I suppose is it's not coming from Christians necessarily. It feels like it's coming, you know? Yeah, but there are... I remember seeing a video game reviewer who reviewed... There was some...

What game was that? It was really popular a few years ago where you would build a little campsite and like fish and it was just so wholesome. Animal Crossing. Yeah, yeah. And I'm just, I'm interested in this idea. Yeah, I think, I mean, like, I mean that story I told you before the show, but the event I was at this weekend, like that's like, I don't think you have to be Christian or even believe

in anything at all to realize that that story was like a wholesome moment. Right? Yeah. You know, I've seen it misapplied a lot too though. I see a lot of it's two men living in a relationship of sodomy Adopting a little girl and it's the video of them showing off Oh, it's so wholesome and those are hard because there's a wholesome element to it of this Yeah, this girl who's an orphan or whatever is going to be loved But yeah, and then I I feel like I'm the big angry But yeah, and then I I feel like I'm the big angry

Not who's gonna push. Well, actually there's no hole just true Like I'm not backing down from that that is is not wholesome. No, right that is evil that is disordered So I don't know but it's interesting like when I was I've said this before when I was in Africa I just noticed this lack of cheese factor like the Christian songs and the Christian the way people talked There was no sarcasm. I think sarcasm cynicism and cheese is somehow linked and I haven't figured out how I Probably mentioned this before but I would disagree with that Assessment of Africa in regards to the white Africans there They seem to be just as cynical as I am like South Africa where we were We were staying that lodge. Yeah. That's true.

And there were families there. Yeah. And I'm watching these white African kids, who are just as African as the Africans, right? They've been there since the, what, 1600s or something, right? And they're on their iPads and they're making little comments and I'm having conversations with whatever and they're sexual and you window and stuff. Okay. It's gross.

Yeah, it is gross. But then we go to the skinning shed. Yeah. Right? And all the little kids run around in their Spider-Man pajamas pajamas like playing with hearts of animals and like laughing and this actually happened for those At home we yeah, I shot a deer buck. No, I didn't I shot a water buck We dragged it onto the trailer and drove it back to the skinning shed we're like zebras and all sorts of things are hung up and there's rivers of blood and

Little black African kids and Spider-Man shirts. So like, and we both said they have a much better childhood than most children in America. But then the kids who are a hundred yards away from us staring at their screens all day in the most beautiful place of God's creation, right? That's what was that juxtaposition. Because I'm not saying it's good, but I'm saying I get it. I get it why we have Our our teenagers our young adults right now like yeah You want to disappear into this digital world that makes sense because have you looked at the world you live in once again?

You're living in this cul-de-sac cookie-cut or nothing neighborhood or apartment in some big Drab city or whatever it is like obviously you want to escape right that makes sense to me even though that's disorder You shouldn't escape by staring at a screen, but I get like obviously you want to escape right that makes sense to me even though that's disorder you shouldn't escape by staring At a screen, but I get why you would want to But then you're in Africa that is beautiful. You remember just the visual beauty of everywhere There was no way you looked where there wasn't beauty even even when there was death even when there was you know physical dangers there was still this beauty to it and

Yet we're still choosing because the allure of these damn phones and screens are so strong that it's pulling them away from that which is a great segue back to homesteading. Homesteading. Right? Like do it. The mucking out a disgusting goat stall, right? There is beauty in that because it is work and it is real and it is grounded. So if someone wanted to get in homesteading, obviously they're going to buy some land. Well, not necessarily. No, you can do it on a half acre. All right. Yeah. Well, that's good. That's the first myth that kind of bust. And then what, what might homesteading look like on a half acre?

My first, my first piece of advice is, uh, take a picture of yourself flipping the bird, put it in an envelope and tape it to your HOA directors front door. Okay, not really don't do that That's that's crass, but no if you're living in a small area seriously the HOA's I think are gross But if you don't have an HOA that's gonna be put a lien on your house But you can yeah, you can do it on a very small scale In fact, I would say start at a very small scale because I know a number of people who have jumped in like you were Talking about yeah and said I'm gonna buy

Acres and I'm gonna grow everything now get four chickens Okay, right get four chickens build them a little chicken coop and take care of them you get eggs, right? You get three four eggs a day. It's great, right start there And then if you like it grow a little bit and build them a little chicken coop and take care of them you get eggs right you get three four eggs a day It's great right start there, and then if you like it grow a little bit and then grow a little bit I don't like plants Not like just in general. Yeah, everybody hates plants I'm a vegetarian not because I give a crap about animals. Just really hate plants No, but I don't like plants. I like animals. I like livestock. My wife likes plants

She does the garden. She has her little garden She enjoys that and sometimes she asked me to help weed or something like that and I do it But I don't I don't enjoy that. I really like the animals so I put a lot of time and energy into the animals and But we've grown organically and slowly and even though we've done it all before with this new place that we're starting out Which is it's it's 15 acres. It's on a river We have access to hundreds of acres that are owned by friends and I want to get into that in a minute too, like community around us.

And I'm still going to start with about 25 chickens again and maybe a dozen turkeys, right? And just slowly get the feel of it, right? And because it is expensive, there's a lot of upfront costs, mostly with mostly one-off costs, right? You have to buy the structures the handier you are the better learn how to make stuff out of pallet wood That's another great piece of it. What is your friend? You can make anything out of pallet wood, okay? And it's cheap and I'm not good at it. I'm still not to a point where I can make anything pretty Yeah, I mean lots of stuff that's functional. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know I'm gonna

Share something that's gonna sound like a tangent, but it's not I remember I had an old website called the porn effect if you remember back in the day and someone had approached me and offered me quite a lot of money and That never went through and I think my friend and I were talking about how that was a good thing Because if I had all if you have a lot of money you can make a big mistake quickly Oh, that's interesting And it's kind of like what you're saying if somebody's very idealistic about starting a farm and they have some money Go out by 28 because they invest a lot of things into it and then they might realize it's a mistake

whereas if you just start small and grow that it also won't be as overwhelming and What would you do you think a lot of people are? Who get into this or like what would you warn them about being? Idealistic about what this farm life might look like? Because I think that's a big obstacle. So I'll give you an example. That sends people back into the suburbs. We always had to get a farm sitter when we would go out of town. Right. We always had to get a farm sitter who would just live there.

It's been a night there because you had morning. Everything can run fine for weeks if you just have somebody who can handle about where we were, about 30 minutes of of morning chores about 45 minutes of evening chores everything was fine right so we'd had to pay somebody to stay there and we had this girl who was the daughter of a dear friend of mine she was older she was graduated from college and she said oh I want a farm I've always wanted to I'd love the idea right and it was beautiful right and and we said great so just stay here yes late farm crossing.

Yeah, yeah. The video game. You can stay in the house and then go do whatever you want to do during the day, go to work, but just come back here and do your chores. And she calls me three or four days in, bawling her eyes out because one of my chickens had its throat ripped out,

but it wasn't dead. And it was flopping around the yard and trying to walk. And she said, I don't know what to do. I call my boyfriend, I call my dad, I can't. But it wasn't dead and it was flopping around the yard and trying to walk My boyfriend I call my dad I can't and I okay so go inside go inside Turn on the TV play for us. Yeah, don't don't worry about it And I called my neighbor Bobby who this was the conversation. I said hey Bobby. I'm sorry to do this Dog got out one of the chickens. It's bleeding over the backyard I'm not home, and he said Well, I'm on the way back from a revival so I got to get changed, but then I'll grab a shovel and head over He did he walked over there

Like in his overalls chopped his head off with a shovel dug a hole dumped it in yeah And then went knocked on the door and said everything's's fine, back here, to this sweet girl. So, yeah, that would probably be my big piece. It's not green acres, it's a lot of blood and poop. It is, yeah, death and it's real, right? It's a really great way to teach children about sex and death, too, growing up. I'm not saying that as a joke, right?

But my son and my daughters, there's a lot of conversations that have been very difficult with some of my friends' kids that's not difficult. Real conversation I had with my kid one day. Dad, look, the goat's trying to give that goat a piggyback ride. I said, oh, no, they're having sex. He's trying to get her pregnant, right? It's called sex. And you see, his penis is right down there. And then, yeah, oh, wow, is that how it works with people too? Yeah, it's a lot like that. Okay, great.

And then we built from there. He's 11, so we didn't stay with, it's exactly like goat sex. And with death too, and these animals that you hand raise. We just keep going back to that well. Keep bringing, you remember the goats like that. All right. No, that's good.

But yeah, you hand raise these animals and then they die sometimes because things die, right? Yeah. At my grandfather, God rest his soul, right? My grandfather's funeral, he was one of the only practicing Catholic members in my family. When he died, we were at his funeral with all my children, they were much younger, this was probably five years ago, right? So my oldest would have been six.

And I had an aunt come up and sort of, while my kids were there, in hushed tones say, what do they know, how much do they know? Said, well, we told him that he died, right? He's dead. Is there more to tell them? Yeah, like what's going on? But they was, and you know, I'm not making fun of her, but that was little kids, you

know, do we, I know they understand death, they understand life, they understand where it comes from, they understand how things die and they understand that those things are necessary for us. I think that's cool. Okay. That's really interesting about that kids. Because you help when we came over to your house that time to kill a bunch of chickens, you had this conversation with Liam that I really appreciated.

Yeah. Yeah. The idea that once again, going back to being stewards of God's creation, but what we're saying when I take a chicken, right, and my goal for all the animals is long, happy lives, short, happy deaths, right? And I would, I did this with all my kids at least once. And I think you got, Liam did it one time because he was over there. And I said, this is a good chicken, right? We love this chicken. We've taken care of this. We don't make fun of the chicken We don't this is not a what's about to happen is not something that we're supposed to laugh at or jeer at or whatever We're not supposed to joy in the fact that it's gonna die because there's a little bit of suffering involved in this death

Yeah We're gonna try to minimize that suffering because we're saying that its death is required for us to live, right? So we're appreciative not in some native American, like we're all in this together to say, no, this, this is a, this animal exists as part of God's creation and it's a good thing and it's death is worth it for us. Right. And we have to respect it. And there is a help, unhealthy strain of sort of hippie dippy earth

worshipiness in all of this. It's really interesting when you get into the sort of self sufficiency movement, whatever you want to call it, where you'll have people who will drone on on some very like paganistic, Gaia worship, Native American, like really weird this chicken. No, we're not, we're not, they're not.

But that doesn't mean, so I'm sorry, so I feel like sometimes people want to go in the exact opposite direction to show how not that they are Yeah, right which I get but to the point of like it's a funny thing. I would kill all these turkeys No, no respect that appreciates death because death is required for our life Even if you're a vegetarian, I'm kind of what you are things have to die all the time for you to survive Yeah, I think it's a good lesson for kids and it's also good lesson for me, right?

you have a lot more onus in what you're doing when you I Think you're I think you appreciate it more right? Yeah, so I like that like sex and death, right? That's the beginning and the end Yeah, you came into existence and how you go out and so it sounds like what you're saying is this Mm-hmm. Yeah, you came into existence and how you go out and so it sounds like what you're saying is this Farming life can help you understand the reality of life and dirt and soil and blood well It's crap. It's farming. It's hunting too. I would my another big piece of advice. I'm just giving pieces of advice on homesteading is Don't raise things that you can go in the woods and kill without a lot of effort right so here's an example this year I I and kill without a lot of effort, right? So here's an example. This year, I didn't raise chickens

because we're in this rental property while we build out our new farm. And so I didn't have any chicken for the first time in a long time. We ran out of all the chicken that we'd killed and frozen last year, and I couldn't raise chickens. I'm on this rental place.

I'm not about to put in the time and effort to build everything there. And so I decided I'd never duck hunted before I said I'm going to be a duck hunter and I was a terrible duck hunter I did not shoot a single duck in Georgia and I had a friend who ended up calling me and said I'm going to Arkansas you want to come with me and shoot ducks and I went and I have enough ducks to keep us going hopefully until next spring when we'll get chicks again at the new place but the most the easiest one to understand

is deer, right? I don't raise cows. I don't like animals that can kill me on accident. That feels sort of emasculating, but I don't really, I'm kind of scared of cows. I had a friend growing up who got ribs broken by a whole state, like a dairy cow, like the pretty black and white ones.

You said like big? Kick it or? He got pushed in like in the corner of a stall. She had a calf in there. And for whatever reason, she just got angry and started shoving him into the corner and a stall, she had a calf in there, and for whatever reason she just got angry and started shoving him into the corner and it broke some ribs. And then I have another friend,

or I had a friend growing up who had, was bigging the horses, had a horse bite and rip off the lower part of this poor girl's face. Yeah, just randomly. I'm not saying I hate horses or I hate cows, but they freak me out. They make me uncomfortable, especially with little kids. I'm just not worried about that.

I don't wanna worry about that. And so I hunt, I hunt deer. And deer me out. They make me uncomfortable, especially with little kids. I'm just not worried about that. Yeah. I don't want to worry about that. And so I hunt, I hunt deer and deer are plentiful where I live, a little bit of time and effort and you can shoot deer. Plus I enjoy that. I like sitting out there in the quiet and Tell me about the first time you ever shot a deer. Oh, okay.

Cause it was this your first major hunting experience killing a deer or was it some of the animal? Yeah. Do you remember? Yes, I do. Cause I was, I was an adult. I didn't kill it as a child. I was married, so maybe 22, 23.

And my father-in-law had a ton of deer in his backyard in a suburban kind of area. And his friend was a big hunter, and just sort of, like he knew I was sort of interested in that and providing my own food. And he said, hey, my buddy Gary said he'll take you out. You want to go out? And we went and we sat in sat in the blind and then dear Von are the big camouflage temp on the back into their property for about four hours of nothing and

then leaves crack and About four doe female deer walk in and they're big where they are we have much smaller deer in the mountains where I'm hunting but big deer probably a hundred and 50 pound doe comes walking through and I was I was hunting with a crossbow and I shot it and it runs off and It crashed. I didn't know what a crash was. I didn't know that it like piled up and had fallen down And I tried to stand up to go because you're supposed to wait for a little while and I stood up and my legs My knee you were shaking this adrenaline. I guess was an adrenaline dump that happened and it was a dough You know today is one of those do that I probably wouldn't I wouldn't shoot her right because I like to hunt

I like the bucks. I like the big guys There's another tangent there about how trophy hunting people attack get trophy hunting. That's a good discussion but I I still feel the exact same way. Now after I've killed a hundred or so a year, I still feel the exact same way. Even if it's a dough, even if it's just if it's not some big beautiful buck I've been searching for all summer or whatever. Yeah, I still get that same. Yeah. And you got that when we were in Namibia. It was wonderful watching you react that way. I wish I could react that way. I didn't.

With the wildebeest? When you shot the wildebeest? Yeah. My legs turned to jelly. They always do that. They shake. I said I was out there that last day out with the teenage boy who was with us. And I said that to him. I said, hey, this is weird, but like, I can't walk right now. Like, I need you to help me get over there. And he said, okay yeah and we have since talked he's actually on my property the other day yeah great guy and he's a great guy gosh and it was one of those yeah I literally had to support him to get up

close because I wanted to get up close to it faster because it was down but I wanted to make sure it was down do many people have that reaction I don't know I mean you hear of people talk about buck fever yeah it'll happen like before and they'll get shaky it always happens to me after every time I don't know. I mean, you hear people talk about buck fever. Yeah, it'll happen like before and they'll get shaky. It always happens to me after every time. I don't know. So it's almost like to put it in a crass way. It was like chasing that high. Like you enjoy that. Obviously, it's the whole thing. But yeah, but that's definitely a part of it. And I don't want to pretend like it's all just this really important spiritual experience.

No, I also really enjoy it. Yeah, I really like to do that. And I feel like as a man in particular, that's rightly ordered. We are predators. Did we talk about this last time when my son shot a deer and Ed, I don't know, but one of my favorite, I have many favorite memories of you John Henry, but one of them was you on all fours because you saw a bit of blood and you picked up a leaf and you were licking the, licking the blood off the leaf.

And I just, well, I was... Yeah, and I'm not... Just to clarify, not because I'm a crazy person, because it was fall, right? That's when deer season opens and there were a lot of leaves that had red tints in them and so I was licking it to confirm, oh, that's salt, that is blood. That is blood. That's not just a little... And we got so excited. That was wonderful.

Yeah. Well, we went... My favorite part about that trip with your your son is like We looked all over the place for that deer and we really did We ended up going to get breakfast right and just like we'll take a break We'll come back and then we searched I was getting super depressed and upset And then we found it because of the high where he had hit it high It wasn't bleeding really good like the blood was all in the body cavity right it wasn't spilling out so it's hard to track and

we ended up having to use hoof imprints right the deeper hoof imprints from it running away versus all the other ones but we're just here sort of daintily walking and we found it 20 feet from the side of the road yeah just laying over there and then we pretend like we didn't yeah and told the boys what if we look down here do you see any maybe look for blood? I don't know yeah, you found some great. Let's Well that was great. That was really I really enjoyed taking young people hunting Because once guy never did it when I was I was younger with a cabin that I have up in the mountains There is like it's built to help like young boys in particular shoot their first deer and there's nothing big. There's nothing fancy

You're not going to get a big wall hanger out of it But you're probably going to see a deer and you're probably going to shoot a deer and It's done in a place. I'm not the end-all be-all of hunters, but it's done in a way that I think is Is respectful and and rightly ordered but not that weirdo guy. Uh, yeah worship garbage Why is trophy hunting a good idea? Oh, great question. Um, it has become common in like hunting circles to say I'm not a trophy hunter,

right? Right. To make it very clear. Like I'm not a trophy. I don't trophy hunt. I hunt because of the food I hunt because of what, but uh, conservation or whatever. Not to have it shoulder mounted. That kind of thing. And I always I try to really boldly say a lot. I'm absolutely on the center trophy hunter Yeah, right. I'm gonna eat every piece of it right I the dogs get the bones of the deer that I mean everything just about all the organs everything except for like

Intestines and that just attract stuff where we're gonna eat all of it But I am a trophy hunter I look for the biggest one I look for the biggest male That's just a track stuff where we're gonna eat all of it But I am a trophy hunter I look for the biggest one I look for the biggest male Because he is beautiful and I do want to hang him up on my on my wall also It's harder, but he survived that long for a reason But if you're talking about from a conservation standpoint why is trophy hunting a good idea? There's a different model

between North America and Africa, right? So, and I'm sure that, I don't know what the Europeans do or the South Americans or whatever, but the North American model of conservation, which is what we use, was heavily, we use hunting as a huge part of the whole conservation process.

And, you know, every state is different, and a lot of times, different regions of the state are different in regards to what you can kill and when you can kill And how many you can go Georgia? We have a really kind of wide open compared to most places I get ten doe tags two buck tags two gobbler tags and two black bear tags every year just by virtue of By my big game license, so I pay 70 bucks. I can hunt all those things and small game with daily limits and all that stuff And it is the reason why?

deer exists still in North America, right? There were, in the 1920s and 30s, there were almost no deer in Georgia, almost none. There were a couple, I think, in the Okefenokee Swamp, and there were some up in the mountains, right? But they had all been hunted, right? If anybody's got a grandfather, great grandfather who lived in the South, south right in the early 1900s

They and they were hunters. They were not almost definitely not deer hunters right there squirrel rabbit quail the small thing Okay, because they'd all been shot out Since we settled right however many 300 400 years beforehand and it was the hunters that brought them back Literally physically brought them back in that deer were captured, right? In Wisconsin. Who will live here now? Yeah, and New York and all these places and deposited here.

And instead of them being seen as purely a food source, they were seen as a, they were made desirable through this idea of managed hunting, right? And you get one deer tag every year back then, right? When it was, right? In some places you didn't get any deer tags or it was a bi-yearly sort of thing, right? And the idea was we're going to give value to these animals.

Yeah. Right. Now let's take that over to Africa, right? And I'm sure we got into this last, last time I was on, but the animals were just, I mean, we're almost gone, right. Throughout large swaths of Africa. And what happened was the locals for good reason. We're, we're shooting, we're shooting and eating them, right. Or they were shooting them because they were pests and they were getting into their farms or like in Namibia, which is desert, the Kalahari desert, right?

You have very limited grasslands for your cows to graze on and your goats and whatever. And it's a real pain in the neck that a bunch of gimsbuck keep walking over here and they're the size of your cows and they're eating all of this stuff. And so what they've done is they have said, no, no, no, these animals aren't pests.

These animals are a commodity because here's what's gonna happen. And you can think I'm a jerk or whatever for doing this, for being a hunter, but some white dude from Georgia is gonna come over, pay a bunch of money to kill these things, right? You're gonna get all the meat from them anyway,

local village in this area, right? So we can only eat, well, you can't import meat back to the states, right? So you're gonna get the animal anyway, you're gonna get all the food from it, and you're gonna get the animal anyway, you're gonna get all the food from it and you're gonna get money To help right offset the cost of the damage that that's done and as a result they have for it It's all the place where it's been outlawed. We were talking with really our guys at Rwanda

Um, he brought up some country where they would where elephants became almost extinct because trophy hunting was that lot Yeah, yeah And so there's no reason to protect them right I can I can, I can make money from their skins and their bones. And then also there's no incentive from private companies to fight the poachers. Right. Yeah. Why do I care? Those animals are just messing with my livestock or overgrazing my fields anyway. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a, and it seems counterintuitive. Something I always try to throw out there is like I Will have a who gives more of a crap about animal contest with anybody right? I'm a big believer in conservation I give a lot of money to conservation groups

I'm super into it, but I hold what sounds at first like a contradictory opinion But it's not right that I can both love the species and still kill the individual Yeah, and like I don't't wanna make any bones about it. I have a right to do that. I have a right from my creator to kill and consume and eat animals. Nature exists for us. It's a ridiculous modernist heresy,

the idea that nature is a thing that exists that we're not apart. Nature is for us. God gave us nature. The only reason nature exists in whatever you want to call it, the cosmos, is for us as God's creatures. As soon as you build a town, you've messed with nature. You've messed with the animals that once lived there. I remember Louis talking to us about how rhino tusks ought to be able to be traded and sold. And when you say that to someone that sounds horrible until you realize that

their horns grow back. It's keratin, it's literally the same thing that your fingernails and hair are made out of. Right, so if you allow the trading or the selling of rhino horns then you take really good care of those rhinos and you want them to be plentiful so that you can sell their horns. It's like having a goose that lays golden eggs. You take care of that goose. There's a rhino farm in South Africa right now that has millions upon millions of rhino horns, literally under lock and key. I'm sorry, not millions of horns, millions of dollars worth of horns under lock and key because they can't sell them right internationally, but this was a South Africans idea

Was I'm gonna lobby and lobby and lobby and hopefully eventually get the market open and then flood it with these totally renewable resources Right these these rhino horns that come from run as it will not die They get it shaved and you'll see rhinos sometimes like we didn't get to see any when we were out there but a lot of times in Places where they like like Namibia where we were where they allow rhino hunting You'll for the sake of not having poachers come they will dart and cut the horns off of their own rhinos Because they'll then grow back Right just to keep the poaching pressure off of them because they're not gonna shoot the rhino for the no horn

It has yeah, I think the horns are worth like a quarter million dollars a poppin. Yeah China. I think primarily as an aphrodisiac. They're like a is that true I think so look that up. I don't think it works Thursday. It shouldn't work anymore than careful They're biting your fingernails works, right? I'm opening this because I asked my local supporters. They had questions especially I'm interested Okay, thanks. I'm interested about What do you say Yeah, I Trust you. All right. I got I got an article from the Scientific American titled the hard truth about the rhino horn aphrodisiac market

Wait, did it so I just make that no I found it this morning and when you guys talked about it I was like that's this is perfect. That is morning and when you guys talked about it I was like, that's perfect. That is awesome. You know what that acronym is like? Yeah, minor attractive persons. Yeah, so it's Millstone Attached Persons. That's good. Yep.

I thought you might like that. I am going to just quickly, yeah, thanks to my local supporters who want to open it up because people probably have more questions about Homesteading. There's Superchats too, but I think you should probably preview all the super chats we have. Sure. While you're doing that, I'm going to talk about the crusade I'm having for myself against cursing right now. Me too.

Are you really? Are you trying really hard not to? We failed desperately this past weekend. We have together. Well, and you're a, you're an occasion of sin in that regards. You too for me. For me, because yeah, yeah. And I think I told you this story when I was visiting a couple weeks ago But I never really thought about it right about cursing I've always struggled just with a with my mouth right and not saying filthy things but saying bad words right in particular And all occasional off-color jokes and things like that. I'm gonna put that in a different category though

I don't know why I can't defend that but uh and things like that. I'm gonna put that in a different category though. I don't know why. I can't defend that. But in regards to actually not saying curse words, and it was because I was at, I've got a wonderful new spiritual director, my old spiritual director, he dumped me because he went to a, he became the chaplain of a school and his superior said, now you're only having directees who are these new students, right? And so I had this great new spiritual director and I, you know, my spiritual direction It used to be for like an hour a month and now I go in and it's supposed to be an hour But we talked for three hours then we as okay. Well, okay, let's actually get to the spiritual

I just really I love this man and I love my old one, too but this this priest is just something else we connect really really well and I Had just did my confession right before I leave I asked to do a confession with him. And I, you know, I kind of front load all the big stuff, right, all the things I'm really struggling with and whatever, I go through all of that with him. And then at the end I sort of throw out, oh, also, yeah, I cursed, right?

I embellished this story a little bit, I felt like that was dishonest. Those things I consider quote unquote little things, right, things that I don't believe are mortal right, but that I need to work on and sins of omission all of us and We finish and I'm leaving and he gives me a hug or about to walk out the door And he says can I bring up something from your confession? I say oh, yeah I just did spiritual direction with you for two hours. We went through everything, but yeah, you want to bring something up

I was not excited, and he said, you don't curse, do you? And that dagger to my heart has affected me more than... He believed all the other things, all the mortal things. Cursing, right? That's not... But, because the way he said it was, like, when your dad's disappointed, like, you're too good to curse. Like, you shouldn't be cursing, right? And it really, like... We ended up having a great conversation with about it the next month that came in there about just the purity of things that come out of my mouth in regards to making sure that everything you say,

nothing leaves your lips but the truth and nothing leaves your lips except for like blessing. Yeah. Yeah. And curse words just didn't great the man. And he said, that is one of the, he said, one of the, one of the biggest indicators of your spiritual wellbeing is what drips from your lips. That's right. And I say this as someone who enjoys Frank's speech. I think it's, that's what I enjoy. I enjoy frankness. And that's often communicated with unguarded speech.

Yeah, that's interesting. That distinction is interesting. Yeah. But I'm with you. Like I don't want to swear either. And I do. And the men I respect a great deal. Right. Don't curse. I feel the same way. Or if they do, it's extremely rarely and it's intentional. Okay. So you're stealing my point. But yeah, exactly. That's what I was going to say too. I had a, it was a principle that I worked for a decade ago. And the point he said was, it was just a practical one, there's no moral element to it, but he said, if you curse all the time, then you don't have any words to really emphasize it either.

I was like, that's really interesting. If you never curse, and then all of a sudden, you run into the room and say, pepper a curse word in with a we gotta get outta here, everyone all of a sudden, their hackles go up, and this is serious, oh my goodness, you never talk to that. I think that's interesting Yeah

No, but my uh This is a total non sequitur But just to anybody if you don't have a spiritual director get a spiritual director I've grown confession is fantastic But we meet we need it and I'm not gonna pretend like it's not kind of therapy in some way It totally is yeah, and you're not too manly or whatever to need to talk to another man. We were talking about masculine intimacy the other day. And it's so... You referenced that, was it people in the civil war who were running back and forth through each other? Yeah, I got my hands on Thomas Jackson, Stonewall Jackson's, a bunch of letters that he had

written. And the way he talked to his male friends is there is an intimacy there that is beautiful and so lost. Today is mocked because the prevalence of homosexual glorification. Right. Right. And it goes, and I think it goes back to that cynicism and all of that, right, where our men are given the option of, well, you're going to be effeminate and this sort of this

hollow-boned effeminate pushover of a man who's very immasculine, not even feminine our men are given the option of, well, you're going to be a feminine and this sort of this hollow bones effeminate pushover of a man who's very Immasculine not even feminine really but more masculine than or you're going to be a masculine on this other end of the spectrum You're gonna be this machismo douchey like Andrew Tate kind of guy and both are just equally Evil, I mean there's gold mean like with everything, right? But I think that male I think a lot of the problems we have not all but a lot Right come down to the lack of intimate male friends. I want to say intimate I'm obviously not talking about and the fact that you even have to say that right right illustrative of where we've got buried ourselves into 100% yeah, and so I've tried to do more of that

I probably have a half dozen friends, you're one of them, right? Where I will end phone calls with, I love you brother, talk to you soon. Right? And I've even gotten like looks at from well-meaning, right, people at, you know, lesser, more acquaintances and friends and stuff. Like, yeah, I do. I love him. Right? Not just as a movement of the will, like I love everyone because I've decided that I do because Christ calls me to. But I love- I'm affectionate towards you.

Right, I feel affection towards you. Yeah, yeah. Know what you mean? I think that's important. I texted Ryan Foley the other day and I said, you're one of the best people I've ever met in my life. Yes.

Well, I was, it was you. I was writing you a letter. It was the best letter anyone's ever written me, by the way. Thank you. Stop, that's not true. But I appreciate it. It was the best letter anyone's ever written me, by the way. Thank you. Stop. That's not true. But I appreciate it. No, it was true. It was true.

Yeah. And, but it was one of the, I said, I want to purposefully, like unabashedly say, like, no, that's how I feel about you. Mm-hmm. And, yeah. So. Yeah. Let the awkwardness fall on them, if it will. But yeah, we have to reclaim that. But that was interesting that you talked about these men who are writing in a way that would make us kind of blush today.

And I told you I was reading the Brothers Karamazov, and you have and you have Ivan or Dmitri rather jump up and tell Alyosha like, of course they're brothers, but I love you. I could kiss me, kiss me. And, and to modern sensibilities, that seems a bit strange, but again, it's only because of what we've done to ourselves. I remember being in middle school or high school, I guess high school. And there are all these pictures of George W. Bush. He was in Saudi Arabia, and it's a thing over there He's holding hands with some sheep, right or whatever they call it And they're just like walking around holding hands, and it was the funniest most ridiculous thing And now it's still funny and ridiculous in hindsight just the image

But um but the idea was no this was a normal thing inside right this man is my friend And so we hold hands in public because we like holding hands I'm not advocating that we hold hands in public because we like holding hands I'm not advocating that we hold hands in public but I'm advocating that we should live in a society where if you see two men Physically touching one another you shouldn't assume they're homosexuals. Do you ever watch that movie Luca? No, it was a maybe dream dream works. I don't know if it was a Disney movie Yeah, it might have been Disney anyway doesn't matter So Luca is a story about a boy who meets another boy this other boy is like some mermaid Or something that can come on land sometimes and looks like a regular boy

And it's this beautiful male coming-of-age movie about this friendship and everyone tried to make it gay I read so many articles I mean there was a point where if you googled it because I was trying to read reviews before I let my kids watch it because I don't trust any of the garbage that comes out of Disney or any of that and When I would type in Luca, it would auto fill like gay love story. And so I watched the movie because I was worried. And I would not put that past them. They're doing that. And now there was nothing to even denote any

sort of romantic anything, but there was this male intimacy that reminds me of the relationship between Sam and Frodo and the Lord of the Rings. Yeah. Yeah. And he, he kisses. Doesn't Sam get kissed on his forehead? I hope so. It's just a beautiful masculine relationship where two men were fighting something real together. I'll talk Lord of the Rings all day long. I did.

I've got my little AM radio show. Let me pitch that real quick. Yeah. So I've got a little AM radio show. I don't pay the dime for it. We'll put it in the show notes probably. Can we do that? Just the YouTube channel? It's it's honest to God and it's once again dozen listeners probably but on a radio

And we do we've got a podcast. That's just the recordings of it and it's so much fun because I get to moderate I'm not the host. I always say like they could do the show without me fine, right? But I get to moderate and I just get to sit and I get to ask people questions and just poke and poke and poke and we did a Lord of the Rings episode that I had no idea was gonna go like I thought they normally just give me a random sampling of four twenty thirty somethings right sometimes college kids sometimes young adults but they did their homework and these people were so into it and the intimacy between Sam and Frodo was a big part of our discussions

and it made me appreciate Tolkien in a way that I never, plus it's cool because you can say, I can't say anything, like I've had a couple of episodes scrapped because they were a little too, whatever, and I'm not attacking the people who run the show, right? It's for AM radio that comes at four o'clock on a Saturday like I can't be sitting there talking about we should We should throw pedophiles into the Tiber River. I can't I can't do that on the show But we should but it is fun. It's been a lot of fun having having that little little monthly

I go in twice a month and shoot three episodes back to back to back. It's awesome. Just neat All right Let me let me get to cut some of these questions out to get to all. That's awesome. Just neat. All right. Let me get to some of these questions. I don't have to get to all of them, but Eddie says, John Henry, looking forward to your pontificate. Not sure if you remember me, but we met at AFC last month. I wanted to ask, what's a good way to get started hunting with my kids if I've never

hunted a day in my life? My oldest is five. We live in crunchy suburbia. Thanks brother. Cool. I don't know what state you're in, but I would, I'd figure out what the state laws are. The United States has got more wildlife management areas than anywhere else in the world, right? You personally, Matt, that was Eddie, right? Eddie, you personally own hundreds

of thousands of acres. You just own it with all the rest of us, right? That you can walk on and you can hunt. There's some out west, but in every, even the states, like here in Georgia, within an hour of Atlanta, there are thousands of acres that you can just walk onto whenever you want. And you can shoot animals during the seasons. They'll have different regulations, but most of them, they don't apply,

they don't require you to apply for anything. And it's harder, it's harder hunting than in like private land, right? Because you're competing against anybody who wants to walk out there. But if you want to get out in the woods and be guaranteed to have a wonderful day in God's creation and the possibility of killing something,

go to one of those. Are there outfitters in Wyoming, Montana? Yes, yeah, there's outfitters. Let us know in the comment section below if you'd be open to John Henry and myself Leading a hunt that's the best idea. I've ever heard about how many men will we take I? Don't know it depends on what we're what we're going after right so but there's a ton of outfitters out there a varying Prices, right?

There's no below if that interests you yeah Yeah, it's a I've been out to Wyoming on an outfit hunt for pronghorn before that was fantastic There's nothing beats like going with somebody who knows what they do. Yes Yeah, and the outfitted hunts are great because it's not it's all it's always private land You're guaranteed most of them are like not they won't say you're guaranteed to kill something, but I say guaranteed shot opportunity You're going to see animals. You're gonna be right in front of them and they're still wild like you get down to Texas and some other places They have high fenced hunts, which I am against. I don't I don't like that You've got animals chained to the ground

Not quite, but not far off KR 4 1 2 1 says What what does the division of labor look like between you and the wife on the homestead? Awesome question. Also are the kids involved? Awesome question. Yes, so the kids are as involved as they can be right? I my wife is giving birth to number five in about six weeks super excited about that up to my 11 year old son Who is now at the point is the coolest thing? You know how when your kid is little you're trying to be a good dad So you bring them along with you to do all the chores and all the stuff and it makes everything last

So much longer right, but you still just do it because you're a good dad or you're trying to be. He is now at the point where not only is he like doing all the things and he's good at it, but I just love it. I love him being there and all things. So once again, that's like a whole rant, but to answer the question, our division of labor looks like this.

My wife does pretty much everything that is inside of the house, right? In like the domestic sphere. And that's not to say that I never do dishes or I never sweep the floor, but primarily 90% of it unless she says, hey, can I have some help? Or I see that obviously I need to help pick up some slack here because she's busy doing something else, right? She does all of those things.

I do the stuff that is outside. And in a normal situation where you're not living on a homestead It sounds like what I'm saying is I go to work and then I come home and I put my feet up And that's not what I'm saying I'm saying I get up in the morning at 5 o'clock and I go outside and I do all the stuff with the animals, right? be it collecting eggs or mucking out stalls or Helping a goat give birth. I've done that before as a surprise in the morning. All the upkeep, trapping nuisance animals, all those things.

And then I kill the animals, I process the animals. This has been sort of our unspoken rule. She wants the animals to not look like the animals by the time, she wants them to look like they kind of came from the store. I've got a giant deep freezer and so she doesn't like to be outside when the deer is hung upside down from a tree while I'm gutting it and pulling everything out and so I've got the big meat grinder I grind

everything up I put it in the freezer and then but she does all the cooking and all of that did it take you any time to get used to the gutting and the blood and the pulling out of organs no so, so I've been asked that question a lot. I was a firefighter before this and before I got an education and so there's a lot of blood and stuff involved in there. And the only thing bodily that ever bothers me are needles going into my own arm and childbirth of humans. I don't mind births of goats, right? But when my son was born he Like my wife has just pushed a human being out of her body, right and I'm trying to be a good husband I'm down there the receiving end where you're supposed to be like I was told I was supposed to be and I'm not kidding

This doctor Indian fellas holding my brand new baby and he looks up at me Ignoring my wife who just gave birth And he says I think you need to sit down sir and as a nurse like lead me over and Sit me up because I don't know what it is So now I do not I do not stay at the receiving end if I can help it I don't stay in the room like she usually has birth tourism like her sister's there friend is there or something I really like the 1950s I should be smoking and drinking a bourbon in the waiting room, but now she has babies in my bedroom So yes, it's harder, but I've got a better excuse to because I'm normally occupied with the kids

What was the original question? Well? I wanted to say though I don't know when we went hunting I had to push myself into what I found gross Which is why I cut that particular appendage off that particular gigantic animal sure I think even as I began to do I can do It if you want to I know I need to do this. And so I think that was part of it. I imagine that would be part of people like myself who don't like the idea of pulling organs out. You have to just do it and stick your hand

into a warm animal. And I think that's a temperament thing too though too, because when I killed my first deer, that doe I was talking about earlier, I, like we show up and you usually field dress the deer if you have a long way to take him. We probably had like a quarter mile or something to drag this deer out. And so you, you remove the stuff.

You're not going to eat anyway to make it easier to transport. Right. And we slice this thing open and I just shove my hands in there and I'm like pulling and ripping and the guy who had been doing this, I don't know why that doesn't bother me. Like it bothers some people, but it's sort of like, you should use probably use gloves. Are you okay? And I'm like, no, it's actually really warm warm in here i like it because it's cold outside and

i've just never had an aversion to blood or or guts yeah yeah not saying that makes me a macho macho man i'm just saying like i don't like it except for needles don't give me a ivy freaks me out um okay uh erin says any advice for homesteading light, not buying land or farming full time, but canning more growing food in backyard. There's a little more. That's a little more my speed financially a hundred percent. And that's a, that's a really good point. You can probably everyone listening to this, everybody who will listen to this can do a little, can like take a small step and it's worth anything. Any steps that you can remove from you and your food is a Good just to give you an example. We bought a beehive. Yeah, you know, it's it's I was really proud of that

and it's Peter my son he'll go out and he'll lay by the beehive and he'll hold the bees and pat them and So just being able to twice a year get a big Lot of honey has been really great. And it's something like you should be proud of. You say to your son, you know, this is wonderful. This is our honey that we harvested. The funniest thing that your boy did last night. He was doing it was a magic trick.

He would walk up to me. You have to spend the whole thing. So he comes to you. He walked up with me and hold his hand out. There's a dead fly in his hand. And he said something about, I can make it alive or bring it back or something. And he sort of pops his hand up in the air and the fly flies away. And I think at first you're like, okay, I'm sure it's dead. Yeah. And he keeps doing this and it's clearly a fly that is dead in his hand. And then he throws it up

and takes off. And finally, one of your friends who was there said, okay, but like, see it, like, how is this happening? And he said, I made the legs go away. I took his legs away. Yeah, I took his legs away. So he plucked all the poor legs off, all the legs off his poor fly so it couldn't move. And it looked dead, but it could fly,

but it couldn't turn itself over. But anyway, back to the original question. Yeah, there's always something that you can do. Remove barriers between you and your food. Your food comes from the ground or comes from another animal, right? And we're all pretty removed from that in modern society unless we purposefully separate.

So yeah, canning, my big one is always chickens. I really, everybody can get chickens unless your HOA is very difficult. And even then, get chickens, my big one is always chickens. Everybody can get chickens unless your HOA is very difficult. And even then, get chickens. Screw them. Don't get a rooster. They'll never know if your neighbors are cool. But remove those impediments in whatever small way you can.

And I think you'll appreciate it. And then if you don't ever do anything else, great. But it might spark something. Chickens are a gateway animal. Alyssa says, and I'll take a swing at this and then you can as well, advice for talking to middle schools about pornography when the students range from very innocent

to already looking at it. So I'm gonna address this from a parent perspective, not a school person perspective. You can do that since you do that. So if you're a parent, I think you should be speaking to your children about pornography from the age of six and the reason I say six is that that's usually the age that they have some access to a device of some kind maybe an I hope our computer your kids

not to give them access to a device at six but maybe a grandparents house like it's it's interesting how parents and ruin your relationship with your parents for the sake of your kids souls I. I'm sorry, that might be too radical. I hate screens are awful for our children. And if your children don't have access to a screen until they're eight or ten, then maybe then is a good time. But given that we're speaking generally, I think six is a good time to speak to your children about pornography. And the way I did it, and I would recommend it, and I've done this before, and my book, The Porn Myth goes into this at greater length, is to say

pornography is pictures or videos of people showing parts of their body that their bathing suit should cover. And if anybody ever shows that to you or if you see it, you know, maybe on a screen or in a magazine or anywhere, you should always tell mommy and daddy and we would help you. You wouldn't be in trouble. Something like that. Just like you talked about the goat sex thing earlier. People who are just joining have no idea what we're talking about. It's like goat sex. Yeah, it's just like goat sex. You don't leave it at that level, but I think that's a nice place to begin. speak to your children about sexuality and so you be the educator, you be the authority that they then see the perversion against the truth that you've just shared. But anyway,

what would your advice be? Yeah, please let me speak to that. I'm super passionate about this. I made the mistake in a big talk I was giving one time to a group of parents where I said, I'm super into pornography. I was up with no kind. And then I sort of veered off and I didn't realize the talk was over. So I wanted to make it really clear that when I said I'm super into this what I mean is pornography is a scourge and I want to address it and I don't think it's addressed enough. Your advice you gave me forever ago with my son Henry was just practical stuff you can go on Amazon right now and buy good pictures bad pictures. It's excellent book. Yeah, excellent. There's nothing explicit There's nothing dirty and it's but it uses the real words right about what pornography is same like you were doing But if somebody's not as comfortable or doesn't is worried about how they're for me like that. This book is read the book

It's so great beautifully illustrated read it to your child and it opens up great discussions You put a link to that Thursday good pictures pictures, bad pictures, porn proofing today's young kids. It's on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. Don't buy one, buy two or three and give it to your friends. But it's a fantastic book and it starts the conversations without being explicit, but still using the words. It still uses the word pornography. It still uses the word addiction. So use all of that stuff. My take on talking to people about pornography and I once again, I think this is,

I honestly do think this is a gift from God that I've never felt awkward about it. I teach a theology in the body class. For parents, yeah, the younger the better. I think six is probably a solid starting age, but what I see and what I'm begging you not to do, or if you're doing this to correct it, are parents who say, well, my kid is homeschooled, or my kid goes to this really great Catholic school, or whatever it is. And also, I'm kind of not comfortable talking about those things with my child, because maybe I struggled with it, or my husband, or whatever it is. But you do not assume that because of your environment, they're not going to be exposed. Every one of your children will be exposed to pornography. Every one of my children will be exposed to pornography.

It's so sad, it's so awful, but it's true in this gross pornified world that we live in But if you tell the story first, they're going to believe you right? I I talk about it with I teach ninth grade as well And I always talk as an ancient history class, but on Fridays we talk about stuff I think we should be talking about and I always talk about about pornography. And every now and then, I'll get an email from parents about exposing their children to these concepts or whatever. And my response is always, it's more political

than what I'm about to say, but this is your job. I don't want to be the one who tells them this, right? But they need to hear it from someone who's going to tell them the truth first. And if you haven't done it, I would rather them hear it from me than hear it in the locker room or on the phone or whatever it is. So, yeah, please talk to your children and fathers talk to your sons. When mom talks to your son and maybe when they're six, this is different.

But when mom talks to your middle school son, it's that's worse than useless. It's not that you're not wonderful mothers, right? And I'm sure you're an incredible mother, but the boy needs to hear from his father. This is disorder. This is not masculine. This is going to make you less of a man and less of a father. And we have to do that. I don't care how uncomfortable you are. Also, don't give your kids phones, please.

Please. And to that point, it's OK being uncomfortable and still doing a thing. In fact, that's the only way to be courageous, right? Yeah. Yeah. I saw a meme the other day that said, courage is knowing that something hurts

and doing it anyway. And stupidity is the same thing. And that's why life is so hard. That was funny. That's awesome. But yeah, that's good. And I would also say, if you're a middle school teacher, check out Fight the New Drug. My friends run this wonderful website. It's non-political, it's non-religious, and they have three little videos called Heart, Mind, World if memory serves. And each

illustrated video, it's very beautifully done, is about two minutes each and it talks about how pornography affects the brain, the heart, and the world. So you might look to that and even play that for your middle schoolers. If you've got a bunch of middle or high schoolers and you want someone to come and tell them all the things that are true but you're uncomfortable doing it, you should do it. But also I'll do it. I'll put my email down there. John Henry Spann booking at Gmail. I come and say awkward things so you don't have to like that. Yeah, there you go Let's see how Ryan asks How do you respond to the idea that homesteads are a mitigated form of surrender and retreat from the mainstream culture? Oh, okay. Wait, so the idea is like you're retreating from we need you here and you're just leaving everybody. Yeah. Yeah, I hear that

I think it goes back to my What I said earlier about how bubbles are usually just communities and they're rightly ordered. I don't say that we should, I'm not advocating for living like the Amish. I'm not saying build a compound, stay on it, never leave and indoctrinate your children to think exactly like you and only talk to people who believe the same thing that you believe, right? We're not supposed to do that. Christ doesn't want us to do that. But in regards to family life, I do think it's super conducive to having a rightly ordered family, right?

My kids are not released into a neighborhood to hang out with people who I don't know, whose parents I don't know. I control who's around my kids and I I had a years ago a father who was was explaining to me why he was going to send his daughter to you know insert large public or Catholic school here when she went into high school and I Said nicely that she's going to be eaten alive and he said no She's going to be a light of Christ to them and I said Politer than I'm saying right now, but no, she's not. If you're lucky, if you're lucky,

she's going to be a social outcast and she's going to keep her head down, right? And she's going to be a weirdo, holy girl, whatever, in the corner. But that's probably not what's gonna happen, what's probably gonna happen is she's going to sacrifice her goodness and her virtue and everything that you've tried to inculcate into her

since she was an infant that you held in her arms because she wants to be loved and she wants to be accepted. Not because she's bad or you formed her poorly, but because she's a human being and that's what we do. Right? And yeah, so that's all in my, my, my pitch. It's okay. It's okay to be part of a community that is not just feet first in the whole world, right? We don't have to be Amish. I love Erin's response to this fella. She says mainstream culture sucks and we should retreat from it and a visit to evangelize. I agree with Erin. Yeah. We can be in the world but not of the world. We don't have

to totally... yeah. A couple of people have this question. Brendan asks, what's your best advice for starting a homestead on a single income while striving for a large family? Thank you and God bless. When we started, I made $52,000 a year and my wife stayed at home. And to this day, we don't go on vacations that we pay for, right? Every now and then we'll piggyback with a parent or something. I don't make a lot of money. I've never made a lot of money. We don't go out to eat very often. We drive very used cars We are on some terrible Christian sharing health plan. I'm not saying they're all terrible, but ours is just like we've made lots of

Sacrifices because it's worth it. I'm currently living in a 900 square foot two-bedroom one bathroom house and it's worth it. I'm currently living in a 900 square foot two-bedroom one bathroom house and We're building a new house because we got fortunate with selling selling some property But I think that We all myself included want so desperately like I was saying earlier about being accepted right by society We want to do all of these things that everyone does at least that's what we perceive the keeping up with the Joneses mentality things that everyone does, at least that's what we perceive, the keeping up with the Joneses mentality. And I think it's very doable, especially if you start small

and then scale as you can income-wise. That might be too idealistic, but it's what I believe. No, I love it. It's a really good point. We often think, how do I want my life to look? And the way you want your life to look might be something like homesteading, which looks very different, but it almost like we want to keep that and

keep the other thing as well as opposed to realizing like I like what you said you're on a double wide trailer right we were in a way for eight years that yeah while we were saving up fortunately that land appreciated in value and now we're actually building a house we're building a very modest house it's a two-story you know four-bedroom house my kids will never have their own rooms. Yeah. I want to go to a break soon and then come back. Did you have that thing lined up the stream soon?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could you just- I slashed in, could you see that? I'd like to ask you about that Thursday. Tell us about this series. So New Paulytie, Jay Givamom, who's the president of New Paulytie, has been on the show a couple times.

They, their podcast is series on different topics and they have one called Good Soil, that is on the philosophy and theology of different aspects of homesteading. So they have episodes on milk, episodes specifically on chicken. Is this Jacob? Well, Jacob doesn't, it's Mark

and then the Doherty's do the podcast, but it's his, yeah, his think tank. Yeah, so Mark Barnes and the Do but it's, it's his, yeah. I'm sorry. I love Jake. Yeah. So Mark Barnes and the door, these do it together. And the door, these are a self-sufficient homestead pretty much in town here. So if anybody's interested in really deep diving into like the Catholic theology and philosophy of each of these aspects, and also some of the practicals of like why milk has to be pasteurized and why, like it's super hard to find raw milk even if you know people who you know can get

it for you and Good soil from new parties great series on that. Thank you. Thanks so much. Keep it a link to that man Yeah, well all right. Yeah, and I'm glad you said the thing about the non pasteurized milk, too Because this is and it's gonna sound radical, but it's really not if you think about it. I think Something that's been really helpful with us and what we've done is ignoring Bureaucratic nonsense right which is illegal right and I'm kind of I get really legal reasons John Henry's He's doing this in Minecraft yes, so

Yeah as a joke we we have partnerships with a lot of people around us jokingly, and we exchange things, and even though we're not USDA certified or whatever, I won't name any of them as a joke, but yeah, that's something that you can absolutely do. Once you take cash out of it too, I believe a lot of the legal issues disappear, right? I'm a big believer in bartering with your neighbors and things like that. Yeah. So this is the thing, actually I won't talk about that

By milk at these farms they say for animals only milk everybody understands that pets only milk tastes delicious and is better for you Well, I grow I grow tobacco Yeah in Minecraft In Minecraft, do you think you could send some to my to my to my server? Yeah Yeah, I get my new server set up in November, but in the following spring I should have some good Minecraft tobacco Okay, making your own alcohol and bartering and things like that. Yeah, I love it Let's take a break and then come back and keep chatting maybe bust open that bourbon. Sure Any sinner is capable of being a great saint, and any saint is also capable of being a great sinner. The secret therefore of character development is the realization of this power that there is in each and every one of us.

For good and for evil. For good and for evil. The good Lord would have us lay hold of what is worst in ourselves. Do not think that people who have virtue and kindness and other great talents just came by these things naturally. They had to work out them very hard. Any sinner is capable of being a great saint. And any saint is the realization of this power that there is in each and every one of us, for good and for evil. The good Lord would have us lay hold of what is worst in ourselves.

Do not think that people who have virtue and kindness and other great talents just came by these things naturally. They had to work at them very hard. I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a Any sinner is capable of being a great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner. A great sinner.

That work? Yep. It's online. Do you see Thursday? Nick, you can see it. It's just Thursday. So we want to let people know that we have a store, catholiclofi.org, and we now have these brand new t-shirts with someone.

I don't know who it is. Yeah. It's a, I don't even know why we did this know why we say it's me in 30 years living in student. Why we did this you don't know So this is a deep cut pints with Aquinas tea and if you want it, it would support our show Catholic low fire dot org will put a keep it a link directly to this We've had him ready to go for a while We just haven't published him because we wanted to get him in first and mine came in before Matt's and then we'll make this Promise to you that if you tweet it or Instagram it and just tag us we'll share and oh boy That's a promise Matt has made now. Okay. This is the first time I've been in this chair on live

Somebody else is running the cameras. Yeah, you like it. Is it good? It's a good fun It's kind of therapeutic isn't it put the head No Put those headphones on and you can hear what everybody else is hearing like what it sounds like yeah I don't know they don't do that cuz we gotta get back. Yeah, you should come talk about homesteading alright But anyway, thanks to this day buy your shirt buy a shirt with this weirdo on it I don't even know who it is They even know how it got here really

Terrific like smoke now. Oh nice. You didn't have to pay extra Are we still doing questions we can we get a ton I want to do whatever you want to do I'm gonna do night. What do you do? Oh? You can eat sushi okay when we drop a friend off right yeah a friend well done. Yeah, I was good I'm gonna set the name yeah But when we drop him off all you can eat sushi, and then I don't know we can fall asleep watching a horror movie again There's actually a lot of fun yesterday. Here's what we did we got Really subpar Chinese food you talk that place up. It was really bad. I didn't like it at all and then we came here

I talked it up. I said it was MSG and you went yeah That's what I said you talked it up And then we we ate it and I drank bourbon and we watched army of darkness and we both fell asleep Yeah, which was really nice. I noticed you were falling asleep and then they gave me permission so I took the cushion and laid down. I don't know if your listeners know this, but 90% of any like idea to do anything after about 7.30 that you've ever had involves you doing that thing for about 15 minutes and

then telling me that you're going to bed and then leaving me alone in your house Or studio or something. I know you say that and that is true But I would say that 90% of it not 90% But I would say 50% of the time you're also falling asleep in a chair. I am a we're all men I'm the best sleeper like you are an amazing sleeper. It's I'm very jealous. Did you sleep well last night? Yeah It's incredible. Well, I could lay down on top of this table with a live stream going right now And I got eight hours of sleep that will be a bonus for our local support us Matt fred dot locals com I'm curious

It shows you how inform these folks are huh He says very nice things and you local just put him in the just put him in slack or I was saying a nice thing about I can scroll through yeah if we get the live page you're doing better the live page yeah you just like him to me and I'll decide, yeah. Let's see. No, I was talking to you, I want to finish this sentence. Oh, I didn't hear you.

I said to the local supporters, Matt says really nice things about you in his personal life. I feel like anytime I've ever supported somebody, I'm always like, they just view me as like red meat numbers and whatever. And now like literally in spare time, he will say, they're so great. Like I just, isn is this amazing these people So well, here's a great thing that happened the other day Kyle Whittington Who's one of my local supporters? We started a slack channel for our local supporters only they can join and he did this thing for my birthday

Sorry, sorry. Thank you. This was over. I was 40 years old yesterday Which is a very high number and so he did this thing Did you see this is Matt McCloskey as well? Which is a very high number and so he did this thing did you see this is Matt McCloskey as well They they started this fund to raise money And then all of that money was donated to children of the Immaculate Heart who helped people involved in sex trafficking So and they gave me a card with piss fingers on the front and then when I opened it up it was over $3,000 that they had raised. Does everybody just know who piss fingers is is that like a recurring thing on the show? It's like it's the same joke as whoever that thing is that we don't talk about.

OK, that's fair. So that's that was funny. I just remembered while you were talking, I was looking at my phone after ranting against the horrors of modern technology. A big shout out to Daniel from St. Michael's, who I ran into at the student Atlanta conference. Yeah. A couple of couple of weeks ago. He told me, yeah, he student Atlanta conference. Yeah, a couple of couple weeks ago. He told me yeah

He was just an amazing guy. Yeah Erin says I'm so glad I'm not there Erin's the really hilarious one and she always makes great comments I love with Erin like with me. Yeah, she's a woman. Okay, cool, but really funny. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who jokes about oh Oh dear, we can't just go into this comment cold. Please watch the full context to understand this joke that all of us are joking about. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who jokes about assassinating certain German bishops for the good of the church. That's obviously a joke. She's joking. She said it's a joke. John Henry, did you see that meme I made of Matt and the no,. So can I tell him what it is? Quick.

So he took this picture with his, with his daughters, with his shotgun, where he's got the straight face. He's holding the gun and I cut him out in Photoshop and then I put him in the background of the German Bishop. If you still have it, slack it over to me. I'll show John Henry. Maybe we can post it on the video. I know we're doing questions, but why? Why is it the German? Is it because that's the

cradle of Protestantism? Is that why the German bishops are as disordered? Because it's also a funded. It's a state funded church in many ways, isn't it? I was at CFL a few weeks ago talking to a German woman who was was just bemoaning the state, the state of the German bishops and I didn't know this it's illegal to homeschool your kids in Germany you know that it is illegal and the Catholic schools are state funded and as bad or worse than the public schools is what she was saying. Gosh. Gallin Gallagher says John Henry what did your career path look like leading up to working at Bosco was working at a Catholic school?

Something you had planned on doing for a while or something the Lord led you to that's a great question So I graduated I went to college a Pseudo-pagan like I wouldn't I wasn't like worshiping the Norse gods or any but I was just like this self-worshipping gross person but very interested in philosophy because of a Presbyterian minister that had taken a liking to me when I was in high school. And I was probably set on the Christianity thing by the time I went to a Catholic college. And then I had this sort of actual conversion once I was there. And I, but I was wife shopping.

That's why I was there. I wanted to meet a woman who, even when I was just a pagan, agnostic, what I didn't have the spine or testicular fortitude to call myself an atheist, even when I was just a agnostic, whatever, I always wanted like, I wanted to be married. I wanted to be a husband. I wanted to be a father. Like I was always on my heart. And so I graduate from Franciscan University, actually, with a BA in history and a wonderful woman

who I could love and honor all the days of my life, right? And so I didn't care about the history degree at all, so I got done and I went back to my hometown, and I was a firefighter, right? Loved it, but there wasn't community. It was a great, we had great community, but we didn't have Catholic community. We had good Christian friends,

we had good Protestant friends, all of that. Sorry, I'm spitting. But we were in this, we had a conversation, my wife and I, one day after going to daily mass and there were maybe six other people there. The average age, including us, was probably mid-80s, right? And we came home and my bride just said, we don't have community, like, we need community. And I liked the idea of being a teacher, but I'd never seriously thought about it. So I sent an email, this was in September, so a terrible time to look

for a job in education. I sent an email to every Catholic college or every Catholic high school in the diocese of Savannah, where I was living at the time, Savannah, Georgia, and the Archdiocese of Atlanta, that basically said, I have a BA in history, I'm interested in working at a Catholic school, what can I do? Between now and next September, or now and next August, or whatever, just what can I do to sort of move towards this track?

And two people responded, right, out of all the schools. I think I just sent it to the front desk, like I didn't know what I was doing, just whatever email I found. And one was the president of Blessed Trinity High School in Atlanta, Roswell, Georgia, who has passed now. His name was Frank. And he was the principal of the school, right? Big deal. He spent, he wrote pages like this great like, hey I love that you're trying to do this. Honestly, here's what would happen.

Now, practically, you better learn how to coach something of your history teacher and all this stuff. Right. It was really great. I really appreciate it. And the other one was from a woman at Holy Spirit Prep in Atlanta who said something along the lines of actually we had our seventh grade, our seventh and ninth grade history teacher was in a car accident And she's going to be gone for a few months You want to come up and interview for the position and I went up and I interviewed for the position and I signed a contract Making $80 a day indefinitely until this woman came back really not a good decision, right? Like from a financial standpoint. Yeah, and I moved my my wife and I moved up to a little bitty apartment up there She was pregnant with our oldest then yeah, and I loved it

Yeah, I loved working at that school and I've been in Catholic education ever since I went from there to an administrative role I was a principal at another Catholic school and Lots of lots of great school Holy Spirit We aligned pretty well well mission-wise, but there's a lot of problems with archdiocesan schools, from a Catholic mission, and I didn't wanna work at a school,

I'm not saying this about any of the schools that I've worked at in particular, because there were wonderful people there who did wonderful things for sure, but I wanted to be at a school that was purposefully Catholic in all things, right? And I ended up almost thinking that education was not going to be the place for me to do that. And I applied to a number of different schools when I sort of came to a head where I was

not going to be able to keep working at this one school and not Holy Spirit. And yeah, I didn't think it was going to work. And then Bosco offered me a job and I took a severe pay cut to come work at this really wonderful. I remember you doing that. And after the pay cut, you're saying I've never been happier. It's the best. And I still feel that way. I still make no money and I love every second of it. Got a couple of super chats here.

CM says, hi, by the way, thank you for the super chats. Very kind. Pushing back on your comment about military being only male. Yes. People think that the military is ground pounding Navy SEALs. Not true. I'm a weapons officer. My job is sitting at a computer for nine hours on a plane. Majority of military jobs are like this. That's fair. So, yeah, let me qualify what I said then. Maybe I should say combat troops. I think I said earlier,

and this might be a better picture of what I mean, that women should not be in a position where they're sacrificing their lives and their safety for the sake of others in a real way. Right, of course I don't have an issue with women doing behind-the the scenes stuff that involves sitting at a desk and whatever, but they should not as disordered to put our women in harm's way to protect us as a nation, right, as a people. Here's a practical question from Catholic Armory. What are best tactics for keeping deer out of your garden other than at the point of a gun? So I love the fact that they're called Catholic Armory.

Is that the name? Yeah, I like that. Yeah, you've got a position in my pontificate But uh also we need to reform the Swiss Guards Maybe they can help with that. Yeah, we have a Swiss Guard who's a local support do it Yeah, I don't dislike the Swiss Guards, but I just I think it's just a ceremonial role. I would love this a lot of it Yeah, to have their cool how Albert or whatever it's called called but also like a like an Uzi and they do carry guns Yeah, so they have the I think that's more the ceremonial. Yes, what would be even cooler than them having Uzis is if those Swords were actually sharp. Yes, and they were as lethal with them as we are with guns somehow

They carry sig p3 22s all of them like the ones in there they're like ceremonial colorful outfits I think it's required to be on them because it's their standard issue. I know the ones in the black suits definitely do that's their standard issue sidearm cool Anyway, sorry back to the question of deer Guns obviously those would be my first one, but also a dog. We have never had problems with deer because I have Pseudo outside dogs, right? And I've heard everything from mothballs to Irish spring soap, right, is a deterrent.

Like I don't bathe with regular soap the month before hunting season. I only bathe with the scent-free stuff. I have no idea if it's actually true or not. But having outside dogs has been super helpful. We'll still get problems with rabbits. We'll still get problems with squirrels. Okay, last year I harvested like five gallons of walnuts.

Right, have you ever harvested walnuts? Never. Okay, so black walnuts are called black walnuts because when you're harvesting them and you take the hull off, it stains your hand, like stains, there's no washing it off, weeks. I had to wait until all my fingernails had grown off, right, grown out and been able to clip away the black. I looked terrible, I should've worn gloves,

that's what you're supposed to do, I was in a hurry. I thought, ah, that's kinda cool. And regretted it for the next month and a half. But very time intensive, of soaking and then de-hulling, and then letting them go out to dry. Every single one of them was eaten, or was stolen by a squirrel. And yeah, one day while I was at work. No, no, actually it was worse than that, it wasn't every single one of them was eaten, but or was stolen from by a school and

One day while I was at work. Okay. No actually was worse than that wasn't every single one there was one left like it was a message My woods But no I really do that I know that's not that can be frustrating I wish that there were a fix all and I've heard like I said the soap the mothballs But a good dog to just bark and run things off Colin Carr, what a guy He says what are your thoughts on getting an RV and moving it onto raw land? My wife and I sometimes feel like that's the only way we could financially make it work

But worried that's in too deep for lifelong suburbanites like ourselves And then he says John Henry's conversations are my favorite and honest to God is fantastic. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I think that you so when we moved on to this new property, we're sitting on two acres right now that we're renting while we build out this house about a half a mile away in a very rural area. And we had explored all those things. I what I wanted to do, I wanted a tiny house, right? The unit behind the car, I wanted to just park it on the property in the middle of the construction site,

like often our yard, where it will become our yard, sort of our pasture area, so that it could be up close. And I was so gung-ho about it, I was like, yeah, it's gonna be awesome, we're just gonna hang, we're gonna hang it, we'll be right there, we'll be outside all the time, what do you matter that the house is small? Well, instead, we got this very small rental house,

it's 100 years old, it's fallen apart. It would be so cool if I owned it, but I don't own it, so I don't care, and I'm not fixing anything that breaks because I don't own it. But it's a small house, like I said, 900 square feet, two bedrooms, bedroom for the kid, bedroom for us, bedroom for the kids and for us.

They're all horizontally on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed, all my girls are with my son above them in the smaller Yeah, very little house on the prairie and that's why I went I was like, this is gonna be great I'm gonna be just like Laura Ingalls man. We're gonna spend all this time just in nature and it does got a great yard and My wife was like, I don't know. This is not great. We're gonna be on top of each other I homeschool the kids three days out of the week and Right and we have totally flip-flopped opinions. Now I'm pulling my hair out because we're on top of one another, and the wife is like, isn't this lovely? Isn't this lovely how much family time we have? But if you can

do that with the RV, especially, I would say just don't financially sink yourself into something. Once again, don't buy 20 acres of land. Buy two acres of land in a fairly rural area that's flat, nice, and good enough, and then you can have an RV, and then if you come into money, build it up. Just not having that pride in where you're staying, that was something that I had to overcome, not because of my own,

I didn't grow up in a giant house or anything, but because I kept comparing myself to the standard of which my wife was raised, right once again my father's my my father-in-law Is very wealthy great big house all this stuff and that was just never gonna be in the cards for me and so Yeah, when I when I got the double wide trailer, and I would not have admitted this at the time But I almost needed my wife's permission like no you're like this is okay like you are this is you are providing for us And since I've I think that's a lot of maturity of

overcoming that pride and yeah everything yeah yeah how did you meet your wife first question and then how did you propose to her hmm okay it's a great question and you know the answer so yeah but it's so terrific I'm so my wife my wife and I started dating in college, right? And we started dating because you ever see the movie Deliverance? No, not yet. So deliverances came out in the 70s, I think it's basically a bunch of guys going on vacation in the north Georgia mountains and they meet a group of like backwards hillbilly inbred murderers who are trying to kill them and

sexually assault them. It's a really scary movie. And so there is a guy in the movie who's like sort of this inbred looking banjo player. That's his role. I'm not attacking him. That's what he's supposed to look like in the movie. And he supposedly worked at a Waffle House and Ella J. Which was maybe a 30 mile Walk from the college that we went and so me and a group of people had decided we were going to walk We all had cars. We thought it'd be cool a walk and hitchhike Through the mountains to make a pilgrimage to this Waffle House in hopes of seeing this guy from this movie that came out at The time like 30 years ago. Is he moving too much is that way? Sorry

So look yourself. I invited my wife Who is then just a girl that I barely knew I met her at the gym, and I thought she was beautiful She is my wife is gorgeous. I don't want to just go up, but yes, my wife is objectively Beautiful and it was mostly because I wanted to hang out with this pretty girl, right? And so I invited her and for some reason she said yes. And she thought there was like a plan. Like we had no plan. We just knew the general direction of LJ. We're going to walk and hitchhike. And we made her the Waffle House and he wasn't working there because of course

he wasn't. He probably didn't even work there. I don't even know why we thought this was a thing, but we had brought a tent just in case we couldn't make it back. And so we ended up camping on the side of the road behind Ebenezer Baptist Church on The North Georgia Mountain somewhere, right? Oh and a side story on that So I was so we're camping back there and I think like, you know gumballs like a gum tree have the spikey gumballs They were falling in the woods around us is what I think is what it was actually making this noise But we're in this tent this big group of us is under this tent, and we're hearing all these pitter patter noises,

and I think that there's a murderer outside, right, or something, right? Because we've been talking about deliverance this entire time, you know what I'm saying? Like it's happening, right? And so I'm trying to be the man. I am a man, and I will protect all of us, right? And so I literally, I think I said, one, two, three,

and I unzipped the tent, which is hard to do dramatically. It's hard to look brave. One, two, zzzzz. One, two, zzzzz. Oh, and scrolling outzip the tent which is hard to do dramatically and I run out and there's nobody there but there's a car parked in Ebenezer Church's parking lot just like a little sedan and I had like my hip had been bothering because we'd walked forever that day and so I come limping out of the woods up to this car have I told you this story? No. So I come limping out of the woods up to this car. Have I told you this story? So I come limping out of the woods up to this car and I look in it and there's a girl in there.

There's this sweet little like 17 year old girl who's in there. And what I wanted to say, what I was trying to convey was, hey, we've been hearing noises, we're camping over here, we just wanna make sure everything's safe. Like, have you seen anybody? What I say as I'm hobbling towards her out of the woods is And she looks up is it are you alone?

You own and she gives us my boyfriend's coming as she rolls up her windows and speeds away So that has nothing to do with it anyway at this trip I asked my wife out on a date and we dated for two weeks and she was the worst girlfriend I'd ever had your girlfriend your current wife was the worst girlfriend. I'd ever. Your current wife was the worst girlfriend I'd ever had. Why is that? And she would say the same thing about me. What made her a worse? So like what I should say is like, well I was immature and selfish and I was, all of that is true, but we just weren't compatible.

I think we had really immature understandings of what our relationship was supposed to be, colored by just bad experiences. I had lived a very secular life. My wife had made bad decisions as well. And we just weren't like, we weren't what we wanted the other person to be. We were mutually selfish and bad people. Not bad people, but we were just colored by bad habits and mindsets. And so we broke up after two weeks. And as an arrogant, just obnoxious ass of a man that I was at this time, I made a point of immediately having another girl

to go out with, right? And so this lovely young woman, I took out on a couple of dates, mostly just to bother my wife. Like I was part of, in the back of my mind. Yeah. And yeah, it was terrible. And I don't know why, because I genuinely was like,

glad we broke up. But I also just wanted her to know, like I can, I can have a date by Freddie. I don't need you. Awful. It's awful. And so I take this girl out and there's a big winter formal coming up. Right. And I asked this girl, this other girl to go with me to the winter formal. And we go to the Winter Formal, because I'm an immature and disgusting 19-year-old

with all these issues, I get drunk, disgustingly so, before this Winter Formal. So I show up, intoxicated, with this beautiful girl who just does not deserve this, right? This, me, right? She was much too good to have anything to do with me and I'm hanging out I'm dancing I'm making a fool of myself and I see my wife walk out the door to go on to the balcony of where

this formal is being held and I decide I'm gonna go have a hundred cigarettes at this time right I walk out the door I'm talking to my wife on this balcony yes chain smoking cigarettes just to everyone, I've abandoned my date to go follow my ex-girlfriend onto a balcony in a pretty small school. Like there were maybe 100 people at this dance. So everybody kind of knew what was happening. My guy friends are all like coming out and trying to subtly be like, what are you doing?

Like just telling me I'm a terrible person over, and they were right, they were totally right. This was not okay for me to do this. And I'm trying to person over and they were right. They were totally right. This was not okay for me to do this And I'm trying to for whatever reason get my now wife to say like we shouldn't have broken up I still know what or just for my own whatever and she never does you know my wife my wife is is small and meek and not like abrasive there's not choleric in the slightest right and I Think I was trying to like say you should just like if you just kiss me

Like you'll you know, you'll know that like you love me and this would like it was awful It's disgusting and what she said to me and I still I still tell girls the story because I think it I think it would solve A lot of problems. She doesn't she never says like, okay, maybe we can work. Maybe I can fix you like clearly you're broken Let me fix you right. She never says that ladies never, never say that. Uh, never say that in your brain. What she says was, Hey, Lent's coming up. Yeah. Lent is, is right around the corner. Why don't you get your crap together and then ask me out again? Like, like right now I don't want anything to do with you. You're disgusting. But maybe if you work on yourself separate from me, I'm not going to go fix yourself

and then ask me out. How did you take that? Oh, it crushed me. Yeah, it hurt really, really bad. But for whatever reason, you didn't try to make excuses. And what did you know? I don't, you know, I don't, I was really intoxicated. But I, yeah, the Easter Sunday asked her out and I gave, I stopped a lot of like womanizing in particular and just, yeah, just all, I didn't heal the brokenness. We still dealt with that for a long time, but I think it was her saying, you're not good enough for what you want. Right. And I realized like nobody had ever talked to me like that. Like, I, I, I'm fantastic. You're clearly the problem. No, but,

but she was totally right. And it made me take a, like a hard look in the mirror and, and, and then we, we started dating. We dated for about a year and I had a really big change a profound change through this wonderful woman taking a stand and saying I'm not here to fix you grow up fix yourself and how did you propose I proposed to her on that balcony where I had drunkenly tried to get her to this time I was even more hammered. My school shut down, so I graduated from Franciscan, but I spent the first three years right at a small school in the North Georgia mountains called Southern Catholic College And it was shutting down like abruptly. They just ran out of money

We got an email like over spring break said hey We're gonna be open for another week to get your stuff out and you got to go And I really wanted to propose to her there because our whole story was tied up in this little Catholic college that failed It's actually a Coptic convent but uh and I wanted it to be there because that place was really important to us and God like He did not fix me there, but he Shined a light on my brokenness and helped me acknowledge that I was broken and it

started this conversion that is in some ways right obviously continuing. That's beautiful. Yeah. That's beautiful. Matthew McCloskey who's the general manager at Chesterton's and a wonderful fellow who helped us learn how to roll cigars yesterday. Did you bring yours? I didn't. Did you bring yours? No I didn't. Mine was Yeah, yesterday him, me and our friend Chester rolled our own cigars from scratch. His was so good. It was beautiful. Yeah. I don't know what mine looked like. It wasn't good. Anyway, he wants to know what's your opinion of aliens? Oh, great question. Great. So I'm talking in August with Dr. Thigpen about aliens.

I had him on the show to talk about. Did you? Talk about aliens? Yeah. So he was a professor of mine in college and then we became dear friends after college. He just like pursued me. He was just like started saying,

hey, we should get lunch, we should get lunch. And then I did and now we like gone over to his house for saunas. He's such a great guy. Yeah, he's such a good man. Yeah, we were talking about this in depth the other day with another one of your friends. Yeah. What are you doing?

Yeah, he has somebody whose name they asked not to be mentioned. Oh, yes. Yeah. Especially in the, I will go into that whole story. I thought you meant you and Paul Thigpen and a friend of mine. No, no, no. I misunderstood. Yes, yes, yes.

But aliens, I think aliens, I'm not going to say I think they exist, but I don't think there's any theological issue with them existing. And I argue that if they do exist and and they're persons Right, they're capable of an abstract thought. How would we know that their persons I wonder? So, okay, so I can flush that out right so we had a friend who said that The incarnation would not count for aliens unless we could reproduce with the I don't think I hold that position but I But I would say if they're persons that they're capable of abstract thought then yeah We have a I view aliens the same way that I would view Like the discovery of the new world and all of a sudden there's these people right the Native Americans are here

And they're clearly persons, but we didn't know they existed We had no idea and I don't think that if they look different than us, like if they're genetically different from us, it doesn't have anything to do with their personhood. Now, what you said, a shout out to Space Trilogy, right? C.S. Lewis, it's like what if they're not fallen, right? There are all these that could happen. My assumption though would be if we find aliens,

they're going to be non-persons, but if they're capable of abstraction abstraction then we get to convert them. Yeah Good, that's your thoughts on aliens I'd eat one you would you I mean they were non-persons Yeah, I would I think that would be really cool if I were the first person to eat an alien and even if I died Uh-huh, that'd be so cool. That'd be great for the rest of my life. I mean, I'd be dead You know, I mean like my Titus to us, John Henry, what are your top three favorite books? Okay. Out of the ashes. Anything that's on

It's a wonderful book. Yeah. One of my top three. I like how he didn't say like, I'm not gonna put them in order. I'm just gonna Endurance, which is the story of Ernest Shackleton when he gets stuck at the South Pole. It's this great true story of heroism. He saves all of their lives, none of them die, and they're stuck for months and then might be years. Did he write the book or did someone write about it?

Yeah, but it's just a historical adventure thing, but it's all true, it's really cool. And then, it seems cliche, but I think Lord of the Rings. No, it's gotta be. My son is on his first independent read through of it right now. I've got to figure out a thing. I want to give him a thing. He wants a snake, because you did that.

Thanks for setting that standard. Yeah, but he's not getting a boa constrictor, but I want to give him a thing. He saved up and bought Sting on Amazon. That's beautiful. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, Lord of the Rings, Endurance, and Out of the Ashes, I think that's just sort of my off the cuff topcuff top three now. I'll let you respond to this does John like Oh

John who's John John Henry double name does John like I only see that because you are the one who doesn't like that You made me seem like a jerk to my local support What I don't like is when I introduce myself and I say, Hi, I'm John Henry. And they say, John. And they usually think Henry's my last name. So I'm like, I'm that Fred. Great. But I have to.

So I've started saying John Henry, double name. Right. Oh, I see. That works. Oh, it doesn't. Okay. Well, Johnny 6 7 6 7 lowercase G says, does John Henry like or recommend any homesteading YouTube channels? And he's got a couple here.

Homestead is a really good one. Homestead is a really good one. I like those guys a lot. It's a husband and wife. I don't know if they're Christian or not, but they have a whole lot of kids and they seem to be very like moral, like they'll get into some moral stuff occasionally just in what they're saying. They don't have any episodes on it, but they're a wealth of information.

They have a podcast that they're not super active on, but it's great. And then Joel Soliton, anything that Joel Soliton does. If you're able to look these up and put them in the description, homesteading. Homesteading. What are you doing? Like the word home and the word steady.

Homesteading. Yeah, but one word. Okay. And then Joel Soliton's everything. Read his book. He's got a great book called Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. That is a wonderful title. He's got a great book called everything. I want to do is illegal

Excellent yeah Christy's it's a wonderful. Yeah, Christy G says I'm a mom of 13 five boys eight girls god. That's awesome. Yeah back in 1996 we bought a five acre lot on a lake in Canada where we lived for about five years We moved to the US when the two oldest boys were 11 and 12. With their experience chopping, splitting wood for our cold Canadian winters, they put a group of teens slash grown men to shame when these men were having issues smashing up a huge cement step. Our boys asked for a turn and chuckling. The men passed them the mall.

Mall, M-A-U-L. Yeah. A couple of swings between my two sons And the block was lying in pieces and dust was settling around the embarrassed face. This is a very well Dust was settling around the embarrassed faces of those slash me slash teams uber proud mom moment Yes, that is a nice like uber proud mom moment Yeah, that's beautiful. That is a that is a nice like Sort of side benefit of homesteading is that you can you get all these great skills that everybody wants

Yeah, there aren't practical. Yeah ways to use them unless you're living this certain way. Yeah, no I love that Foraging is something that I'm big into that my kids do a lot of yeah, they told you this we've started Fairly regularly having my son 36 hours where he doesn't eat any food from the house right so dinner one night until breakfast the day after the following day and Lots of clovers and berries and doves and all that stuff. It's fun. It's good skill What do you do? I know you said you don't go on you don't eat out not often. Yeah, what are you doing? Do you do? Do you have date nights or how if not date nights? How do you and your wife get time? So my wife and I have date nights we're something that I didn't mention earlier, but I I think is really important information and all of this is

Where we're building right now the reason we sold our old place to build this new place is because we have Three other friends who are all building on what was once the same plot of land, right, that was sliced and diced and subdivided. And so we have a really, we have people who are very close, but they're not neighbors in the traditional sense, right? There are a quarter mile that way and a half mile that way, and you can drive your little ATV up there, you can go for a walk over there and all of that. So they're all building building we're all in the process of building right now And they've all moved fairly close by while we're building so we have free babysitting almost all they all have a bunch of kids And they're super sweet

Yesterday or day before my wife is going to a wedding I told you this and she got a flat tire of course she did right which it hurts me so much when something Wrong is happening with my wife that I can't like Help in any way with and so she's calling me But by the time she was calling me She was already at one of our friends house who came over and picked her up Took her to the house took her to the wedding and then drove her back to the friend's house where the husband had Replaced the tire and had everything ready to go and so we have a lot of people nearby that

Help us with those things and we have enough we go On dates. I don't know not as much as we ought to but yeah, maybe once a month or so on average I'd like to push back against the need for a date night Really? Okay. Yeah, why not? I just feel like that's been popular enough for a while that it's now called a press against that Let's try I think no I I think it depends on how you define date That's right date night does not mean go out to dinner and a movie necessarily. Yeah, it can mean You're going for a walk. My wife is pregnant. So we go on walks every night We've been doing that lately to just walk around the block

Yeah, and it's been lovely when my wife and I got married and had no money We'd go on date nights to Costco and eat the samples for dinner. Awesome. Just walk around Costco talking and then leave with nothing. I Really like that I I I also take I have three daughters and a fourth on the way and I take I try to take them out I try to make that like a regular thing and that's like ice cream or go to the park one on one time because so I'm an only child and I'm terrified that I don't think this is rational right I'm all about big families have lots of babies. It's the best advice I can possibly give you, right?

Get married too young, have more children than you can afford, and don't take your education too seriously, I mean, like really, I think that. But I just wanna make sure that they get purposeful you time a lot, or regularly, not a lot, but as often as is practical. And I talked about this the first time I was on this show, but I always bring it up One of my favorite things I do that is not my idea was a man much smarter than me who told me to do this

Is every night I bless my children and it takes about two to five minutes a piece But it's just one on one and it's a blessing But then it goes into affirmations and all this stuff where I give the God hold you may keep you all the days of your life, and then I just tell them that I Give you the blessing out loud right now, but I have no authority actual bless anybody I'm just gonna tell you what I would say to my daughters So it's got hold you may keep you all the days of your life You're a princess of heaven you are a daughter of God your true home is in heaven

And I love you and I'm on your team and I'm so proud of you and even when I am mad and even when I'm difficult Like I love you. I am yours. You are mine, right? I and then I do litany of you are beautiful and kind and smart. I'm so happy I'm so glad that God gave me you sorry not not gonna cry on your show, but I get I love it And they're precious my son who's 11 and at the age where he's feels like he's trying to get a little little cool Yeah, we'll still say when I drop him off at school Because in the mornings, I just do do the normal God hold your Mary keep you He'll say dad you forgot to bless me or he'll come get me at night to say dad

We're going to bed. Can you come in and bless us and I try to make it individual I don't want the other kids to hear what I'm saying to this kid in particular because they're all a little different, right? And for my son, I don't know why I started doing this But always say on the last one gonna make you all days like I smack him and the head thing it gets it in there better That's good. He'll get mad about that too. He'll say that in the morning. So dad you didn't you didn't smack Right. I was thinking to your point about how we bless and curse our children as parents the authority We have as parents and here's what I mean You know, I'm a 40 year old man and my parents opinion of me still matters and how they we want this

and and and parents opinion of me still matters and how they... What do you want this? Can I have yours? You want me to go smoke it? And... But what's funny to me is like your parents opinion of me doesn't matter at all. Like I don't care at all what they think about me. It'd be nice if they liked me. I don't care at all. I wouldn't have any psychological damage if they curse me. My mom likes you. That makes you feel good, but I don't care that much. Whereas of course we have a great deal of respect for the thought our parents have of us, which is I mean, which we kind of should. I think that's right. Right.

And so it's like a father's blessing is powerful is all I'm trying to say. That's beautiful that you do that. Well, the idea, too, is that. They I want to set this standard now so when they're 16 and mad at me and I'm a terrible guy because I won't let them go out at 2 o'clock a.m. to a rave in the woods somewhere so whatever it is right that I'm gonna do it and even though it's rote and they've heard it a hundred times they're gonna know like and this is coming and even though I'm so mad,

he's gonna tell me he loves me so much over and over again. And I do it when I'm angry too, which is hard. That's very hard, yeah. It's very hard. And yeah, pulling back, so the anger thing, because I struggle with anger, I'll get mad, right? I'll get mad and I wanna yell and all of these things. And a big part of, once again, like just maturing

is learning that that's not, is that you? Oh, I'm sorry, that's my bride right there calling me. You can answer it live if you want. But a big part of that anger that I've talked to my friends about is admitting, first of all, admitting that you're wrong and then never, like, being able to remove yourself in the situation, even though you know it needs to be addressed right now, but you know that you're this this anger is overcoming your rational faculties. And I screw up. We're all all our kids are gonna have wounds. All of them are gonna have father wounds. Like you're not a perfect dad. I'm not a perfect dad. But not blessing them when you're angry Is because it's the that juxtaposition between who you are and who you're being seen as right now like the ogre dad who just lost

His temper and was an idiot and now we're gonna move into prayers like no I'm gonna double down just be an asshole not to pray. We're gonna go to bed You're you said something to me a couple years ago that Was was really great for my family rosary. So we do rosary every night, right? No matter what we do rosary and We didn't do that until we were asked by some friends of ours who? The wife is pregnant with her 10th and 11th right now So big family and they invite us to we were over at their house They invite us to say rosary with them and we said yeah great and we sat down and it was terrible all the kids

And they're like climbing over, like putting their butts in each other's face. One kid like farting. And it's just like, it was awful. It was just chaos. And it was so good, right? And when it was over, I was like, oh, I can have a rosary that sucks.

I can do that. Yeah, I totally listened to my kids fart and fight with each other. And then halfway through the helm, he was like, shut up, stop, stop it, get down. Right, and all this stuff. And it's almost like they gave me permission for that. Yeah.

And so that's when we started doing it every single night. And then, no, we had started doing it earlier, but that's when it became easier, right? And then you said, and I don't know if this was an original thought, something to the effect of the rosary should be like a warm hearth for your family. And now the fact that my little...

I think it was Escribber. This idea that the family just naturally gathers around it. It's this, yeah. But that's taken a lot of the pressure away too from like the fact that my daughter is, she's thumbing through a book or drawing a picture, right? My five-year-old is just scribbling and she's clearly not paying attention to the rosary. My other child has gotten her third glass of water. Yes. Yeah. Everybody has to poop when the Rosary starts. It's all okay.

But they all want to be there. Right. And I'm not saying, get over, get over it. It's your decade. It's your decade. Like I'll even sometimes say to a child who seems like they're struggling, I'm like, Hey, if you want to go to bed right now, that's okay. And they don't. So I'm like, okay, well you can stay here and pray too. But. And I do that because yeah, you shared that with me So I appreciate it my they'll even get upset if their decade like if they were gone when their decades Then somebody else started praying that yeah, it's cool

Yeah, it is funny when you see kids getting angry with each other like hail or they'll go instead of hail Mary Holy hail Mary idiot. No one said that but that kind of mentality is there even that's okay, right? I read a meme the other day. They brought me great comfort. It said when God put a call on your life He factored in your stupidity. I like that doesn't that keep a tremendous joy. Yeah Yeah, good stuff What else I don't know what you got well I want you to tell us the bear joke as we, as we wrap up. You stole the bear. I know I stole the bear joke, but you tell

it. Maybe I don't want to tell it. He knows the bear joke. You don't like the bear joke? No, but see you today, Thursday, he's going to tell us the bear joke. It's going to be so perfect. It's going to be its own clip, which we are going to call the bear joke. I'm not clipping this joke. I'm going to have to do it. Does Thursday not like the joke?. You don't like the joke What's wrong with the joke? The joke is fine. It's not good. Yeah, okay. All right. It's not good content. It's my worry great content It's great content. It's great stuff. All right Agree to disagree. You want to hear a joke? Oh, yeah, what do you have a joke? Yeah, yeah, I got a better joke. All right So bear yeah walks into a bar, okay He walks up to the bartender and he orders a drink and the bartender he looks at him and he says

You know, I can't serve you here bear. Okay, he walks up to the bartender and he orders a drink in the bartender He looks at him and he says You know, I can't serve you here bear The very looks at me says why why can't you serve me? Is it because I'm unbearable The barters what no stop is it because you can't bear to be around me and the bartender says stop making no It's not a bear pun. It's not a bear pun I can't serve you here because last Thursday you came in here You ran up almost a $400 tab and you walked out drunk I shouldn't let you drive I can lose my license for that you grabbed one of our waitresses on a rear end

That was so inappropriate you you got in a fight with Norman over there by the jukebox you gestures and Norman sort of waves you made a fool of yourself man I can't have you in here you owe me $400 I never want to see your bear face again bear and the bear sort of turns around and huffs he says fine throws his arms up in the air starts to walk away and the bartender he says he says wait stop bear stops and he sort of sheepishly turns around and he says, hey man it's it's not my business bear but you've been coming in here for years and I've noticed changes in you man. You used to come in here with a lady bear. I saw a wedding ring on her finger. I don't see her anymore and I don't see that ring on

yours and I've seen the kind of guys you're hanging out with the parking lot kind of guys that we wouldn't let in this bar Right. I've seen the things you're getting into I've seen you get angrier and angrier whenever anybody takes your stool, right? I've seen you drink more and more and more Right, and then I've seen you run out of friends to call to pick you up right and The Bears says what do, what are you talking about? Can I just get out of here? You told me to leave your bar.

And the bartender says, I wanna show you something. And he reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulls out a coin about the size of a 50 cent piece. He lays it on the table and it says seven years on it. And the bartender says, it's my seven year chip. Alcoholics anonymous funny right bartender alcoholic but I've been clean for seven years man and I see what it did to my life and I see it happen into you man I I haven't talked

to my wife in years we're still married because I can't file the paperwork man but I haven't talked to her my kids haven't returned my call since last Christmas okay my life fell apart because of this addiction and I see it happen into you too bear I see that same thing going on in your life and I care about you because I am you man I've been there bear and the berry just looks at him and he thinks he says like what what do you what do you want me to do right and the bartender he says I tell you what I want you to do You know that that diner up the road The bartender or the bear says the one on seventh of McCulloch. He goes no pass there. All right couple blocks

He says the the one that does the the pancake. Yeah. Yeah said here's what I want you to do bear tonight I want you to go home Don't have a drink 7 30 a.m. meet me at that diner. I'll forgive your $400 tab, and I'll buy you a cup of coffee. And let's just talk. What do you think about that?

And the bear kind of takes a deep breath. He's looking at the ground. He raises his eyes up, makes eye contact with the bartender. He says, maybe I will. Maybe I, I won't. But I think I will. Maybe I... I won't. But I think I will. And the bartender, he says, great man.

What's up with the big paws though? And the bear says, I don't know. I was born with them. Get it? Going into the paws? You get it Thursday. I get the joke. It's not funny.

That's a great joke. It's one of the best jokes I've ever heard in my life. It's not funny. It's a great sort of the best jokes I've ever heard in my life. It's the moth joke right? It's the moth joke. Yeah, it's fantastic So a couple of things we want to do right now We are going to do a bonus livestream over on locals Matt fradd dot locals comm where John Henry reads and answers your questions He doesn't know he's gonna do that. Yeah, he's going to. It's going to be fantastic. So be sure to go over there. Matt, Fred, local's dot com.

Another reason you should become an annual supporter over at Matt, Fred, dot locals dot com as you get a beer stein. You just have to pay shipping. We send you that. But then you also get access to these courses that we're doing. So in August, we are Father Damien Ferentz, who has his Ph.D. in Flannery, O'Connor and Thomism is going to be doing a five part master class on Flannery, O'Connor and Tomism is going to be doing a five-part masterclass on Flannery O'Connor.

We're going to be going through it as a community over there on Locals. Videos are really great. He's like recorded them in front of a whiteboard. He's as I say, given you reading assignments. He knows more about Flannery O'Connor than anybody I've met. The only way to get access to that is become an annual supporter over at matfrad.locals.com We really appreciate the support because it helps to keep doing this stuff Any final thoughts? Don't give your kids phones seriously. Hey, that's just my thing. Let's do it. Talk to your kids about porn. Don't give your kids phones

It's okay that they're gonna be weird than being if you're in an environment where they're gonna be weird Which I hope you're not but I understand that's how some people got to be It's okay them being mad at you and them having less social contact with with their peers is a lot better than them being hopelessly addicted to pornography or have their self-esteem ruined by social media and They will thank you. I promise their souls are way more important to the inconvenience and the uncomfortableness and I'm sorry for just like bring it all back to that stuff but that is no we've been saying this for years yeah that is

my when I first started saying this like ten years ago speaking on pornography I was looked at like a complete moron right what's interesting though is today I think I've been vindicated you know A lot of people realize that this is just a bad idea. Yeah, it's a it's rotting rotting our young people souls and what is not a good enough excuse to not do something about it, right? Not talk to your kids to not prevent them from having access to these things. What's not a good enough excuse is like it's really uncomfortable or you don't like talking about that stuff or the school that they're going to is going to handle it for you know they not and even if they are they're gonna do a much worse job than you are So do it earlier than you think and be strong love your kids enough to make them hate you for a little bit

And I'm gonna wrap I love that quote you said earlier about Get married too young have more kids than you can get off from like Tucker Carlson or That wall sure somebody like that. Yeah, but it's true I guess the best advice for a young man a young woman too, but alright So we are currently people are filing into the live stream over on Matt frat dot locals calm bring your most offensive questions Okay, because we don't get kicked off locals. We do get kicked off YouTube if we say things like what well I can't say those things, but we do not get kicked off YouTube if we say things. Like what? Well, I can't say those things, but we do not get kicked off of Locals. It is a free speech platform.

And so I'm gonna make it only for, well, yeah, I'm gonna make it only, no, I'm not. I'm not gonna make it only for supporters, but it will be on that platform. Mattfrad.locals.com, go over there right now. We're about to start another live stream. God bless everybody. Sweet, thanks.

Adios.