Pints With Aquinas - Is The University System Dead? (Jacob Imam)

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

This Live Interview is with Jacob Imam, who was born into a Muslim home, and converted to Catholicism under the guidance of his godfather, Walter Hooper (C. S. Lewis's personal secretary). He graduated from the University of Oxford as a Marshall scholar with his masters and doctorate, writing his dissertation on theology and economics. Visit St. Joseph the Worker College at https://www.collegeofstjoseph.com

you and pray that those who watch this would not be hindered in their walk with Christ, but would be led into a real communion with him and the Holy Catholic Church. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, and pray for our sinners now and the hour for death. Amen. Looks like we're live.

Now, did it, did you have to click it or did it actually just do it? Either way, we're live. Jacob E. Mum, thanks for being on the show. Please be with you. Florida version. Yeah. So we've titled... I feel like I moved on from that little...

Florida version too quickly. That's dismissing you. Sorry. Let me do it again. Yeah. Anyway, Jacob, so listen, the thing is, mate, we've titled this something rather provocative today. But it's a serious question.

Is the university system dead? I grew up in Australia when I was 17 years old. graduated high school. Small town, South Australia, I would say maybe 20% went to uni. But it wasn't a mark of shame at all. Then I meet this... To not go to the university.

Not at all. It was like, what if you'd need to, I guess? You could do that. Sure. A way to live your life, you know? But then I met this cute American woman, and we got to talking and moved to America in 2005, yeah. And I remember just being really ashamed

because everyone I knew there went to university and I got the feeling that me saying I had never been to university was like someone in Australia saying I've never been to high school. And maybe I was wrong to perceive it that way. I think it was definitely wrong to perceive it that way but maybe I was wrong in thinking

that other people looked at me that way. But I remember just feeling like really like something was wrong with me. Then I ended up going to university undergrad, graduate degrees. We got to tell that story. real quick, and I'm sorry to force you to talk about this, but when you went to Catholic answers, they asked you to get your master's degree, right?

Yeah, I think so, and I said, I've never been to university. And they're like, well, maybe my bachelor's would be a good starting place. So that was a joy, but, you know, anyway, it's interesting because, you know, you hear all that's going on in these universities, you couple that with how much can be learned online these days, and it makes you question, what is the point of university? And there might be a number of points like go find your wife, go have go, you know, here's your

adult training wills or something like that. It's an expensive way to do that. It is an expensive way, yeah. So I guess here's the question and I'll let you take it however you want to. Is the university system functionally dead? Well, it's, does it seem worthwhile? Maybe it's a good starting point and we can ask whether it's out it's dead

later on. If it's not dead, is it worthwhile? Yeah. Well, I think look, I mean there's two major reasons that people have been telling us to go to college for so long. First, the education, that education is worthwhile in and of itself. And the second is that it's an advantageous financial option for people today, that you just cannot get certain jobs in society if you don't have a bachelor's degree, which is actually largely true. But let's consider those in turn. And I'm going to go over this really quickly because I feel like people have more or less heard these arguments. And once we

give those, then we can get into the meat of things. So is the education worthwhile in and of itself? Well, I think largely we're seeing people question the very nature of truth, but real education demands discipline and real education demands authority. There is something that is given from the higher to the lower. That is a mode of authority that we're talking about. But if you're questioning hierarchy as a whole, if you're questioning the very nature of authority and we just have this flat egalitarian worldview, then you've necessarily denied one of the principal pillars of education.

And of course, what we're seeing is that discipline and docility to authority are being given up for just student coddling and grade inflation. And rather than passing on the hard-earned wisdom of the past, we're finding professors more and more just teaching the most boring and the most insidious forms of conformity and political correctness that does nothing other than serve the great patron of the the modern university, which is the administrative state. So those are large general statements that I've just made. And obviously, you and I can name some universities that are beautiful exceptions to that rule. But by and large, that is the case. Well, what about on the side of

the financial decision? Well, it's largely known and absolutely true that the person with the average college graduate out earns the person without a collegiate degree. But that's almost a meaningless statistic because it compares everybody from engineers to pizza delivery guys. When in reality, the person that's seriously considering a good option for college is weighing that next to a career path. And once you start to compare those two things, it's not so clear. Now, I'm going to just use an industry that I know well, and that's the trades, right? And if you compare the median electrician to the median college graduate, the median electrician way more, that if you just take an average of all of the skilled trades, that person is going to

have a higher net worth until their mid-50s than the average college graduate. So there, the numbers get a little less clear. They're a little bit fuzzier there. But the main question is, is college still worthwhile? Is there a reason to preserve it beyond? the education and beyond the financial benefits. And really the answer is no. I think those are the two major pillars of consideration. But is that all that college is to deliver, right? And I don't think that we've really hit on the point of why college is worthwhile yet. So we have to answer that to ask whether or not the system is dead. And you look back, and I think this is an exceedingly important point, is that when were the first colleges and universities founded, right?

They're not pagan institutions. They were birthed out of Christendom. We came up with them. They are our institutions. If they have been corrupted and maligned in the modern era, it is something that pagans have taken from us Catholics and have corrupted. And that our job then is not to say, oh, yeah, I guess we can let our baby go. You've ruined it. I guess we have to move on to other things. No, those are our institutions. We have a rightful claim on them, and we need to reclaim them. So can you get rid of the concept of a university? Should we do that? I think that's extremely unwise for the church to do. I think we need to find reasons, the right reasons, for reclaiming them, and then we need to find new models and new systems for being able to make them a viable, a healthy, a good option for young people today.

But with all that saying, I do think it is absolutely absurd that we've, told everybody that they need to go to college. Like that just seems obviously insane to me that you don't need higher education to be able to have a good career or an intellectual life, right? We all are called disciples. That means students, you know, of Christ. That means that we all have to be students learning, but that does not necessitate that we have to have university education. Those are two different things. Basic question. What does it mean to say the intellectual life, and why is it that all of us are called to it? Yeah, that's an awesome question.

So, you know, the basic understanding of the human person is that we're soul, body, totally in conformity with one another and that the contemplative life is derived from the active life and the contemplative of life drives back into the active life. Okay, what do I mean by that? You don't have anything to contemplate unless you have lived your life. You've gone out into society.

You've had an experience with society, with politics, with economics, with family life. But you need a time to take a step back and to think critically about the world. You need a moment to be able to say, is what we're doing in society the right thing to do? Is how we are living, the modes that we've set up, the systems that we've set up, the institutions that we set up, the business models that we've set up, is that the greatest way that we can achieve human flourishing right we constantly need to do this we constantly it's like doing an examination of conscience you know in a certain sense right you do an examination of conscience so that you might be able to confess and when you confess it's not just so that you might be able to get something off your back from the past it's so that you might be

able to live different in the future the contemplative life is much like that right there's certain things there's certain goods that are worth considering in and of themselves, but as St. Bonaventure says that the contemplative life drives us back to the act of life so that we might truly be able to live differently. Is there a difference between the contemplative and intellectual life? The intellectual life is an aspect of the contemplative life. It gets a little bit fuzzy in how guys like St. Thomas defines it because there's different modes of the contemplative life. But usually that's sub-categorized under the contemplative life. Yes.

So obviously, I'm glad we said this from the beginning. It's sort of like when I promote homeschooling, and I say that most of these schools are just horrendous. I actually tell my children that those yellow school buses are big yellow monsters that are coming to eat children's brains, and if you see them, you should run away from them. But obviously there are people doing good things in schools, Chester's in academies, Regina Chaley,

and John Bosco up in Georgia, and there's good things. So there's good universities as well. oh yeah um you are the founder of a college how is your college any different right well when i was in grad school or i was it was a year that was working in dc between my master's and my my doctorate um i was chatting with a friend of mine who was working at admissions in a college in the south and he was just bemoaning his sales pitch to prospective students and their and their parents really for those two pillars that I talked about. He didn't think the education that his university delivered

was really leading them to a greater intimacy with Christ and a better clarity on how they should transform the social order. And he wasn't convinced that it was a financially viable option for people. I mean, look, today we have $1.8 trillion in debt. The average person graduates with $35,000 of debt from a private institution. I mean, this is evil. that we are doing this to the young generation, that we're sending them out into the world

financially limping with minimal skills on their own. It's shocking how many people did this in the 90s because I came from Australia to here and I was like, yeah, I'd move in a university and I've never had a credit card. Now, to be clear, I'm from a small country town, so if there are people watching from a big city in Australia, they might think I'm exaggerating.

No, I'm not. Never had a credit card. My parents told me never to get one. I have one, but I didn't then. And never been to university and I was encountering my then girlfriend now wife Cameron's friends who were like 40, 50, 60,000 dollars in the hole with youth minister degrees.

That's not all right. And, you know, you could say whatever, about whatever degree they had, but I was shocked at just how in the hole people were. Oh, yeah. No, and people will come back and say, well, look, these truths are so beautiful. You can never put a price tag on them. And I always say, well, then don't put a $100,000 price tag on them. There is no way that that is proportionally acceptable.

That is not just. that is very great response so but of course we have to take on this consideration of how do we ensure that we are making education what it should be and i'd say like three quick things like first of all we need to ensure that these beautiful truths that our tradition has spent so much effort digging up last persists goes into the future so that we might be able to carry them on to the transformation of the world into the kingdom of God. Okay, we have to do that. We have to do this in a way that's sustainable.

Otherwise, we've made ourselves actually more impotent rather than more powerful. The people that we were training up to lead the world are then actually shackled financially and therefore less free. Then you don't have the economic freedom that somebody who's outside of the debt system is. That person who's in debt,

you're constantly worrying about debt, they're constantly concerned about how they're going to make it. They're not thinking about how am I going to transform the world. They're thinking about how do I survive. I have a friend who shared with me that in a dark period of his life that he was thinking about taking his life and that the only thing that he would write on his goodbye letter was student loans. I mean, just awful, right?

Praise me the God, Jesus Christ, to save him from that. Okay, so that's the second thing. We've got to figure that out. but also another really important thing about higher education that is perhaps not discussed enough is that what it's supposed to deliver to you is a new way of living right a new pattern of your day a new order to your living so that the modes of prayer of work and of study is not just defining for years of your life but the rest of your life it's setting up as a launch pad to make you into the adult who is powerful and a leader that the world needs them to be.

Now, of course, that doesn't mean that everybody should be going into that, as I said. That means that we need to figure out a way that is a preservative of the hard-earned truths of the past that we might populate people's minds with wisdom. We have to do that in a way that's financially feasible, and we have to do it really for the formation of the next generation of leaders. And that's why we need to hold on to university. And we need to find better alternatives. And these are coming up already for the majority of the population who is not in need of these degrees, where the intellectual life is not going, the hard focus on the intellectual life is not their primary path to salvation. You know how sometimes

like a product comes on the market and you go, yes, because it meets the need that everyone's been talking about and didn't realize something could fill that. That is the reaction. I'm not just saying this because you're my friend or because you paid me to advertise you. I really am not. Everyone I tell about your college is like, oh my gosh, yes. So can you just like sum it up real quick for those watching and then spread it out so they know what we're talking about? Thanks. Thanks for saying that too. We started the college for those who are intellectually advanced in academically promising to earn their bachelor's degree studying the Catholic intellectual tradition while simultaneously training in the skilled trades to earn their journeyman's card.

Because you get paid to train in the skilled trades, our students graduate without any debt instead of up to their eyeballs in it. That's terrific. That's terrific. But of course we're comparing two things that people have really thought are kind of dichotomous, right? Yeah, the intellectual life and the manual labor. Exactly, like the head and the hands, those are supposed to be apart from one another. Blue collar, white color, that's not the same collar, man. This is why I love on the back of your sweat as it says, God became man and picked up a hammer. Yeah, the word became flesh and picked up a hammer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you might think, well, okay, that doesn't seem right, but, and I say this more as kind of an interesting intellectual thing that I think all Catholics should know is that just that the same church that founded the first colleges and the first universities is the same institution that taught the world to love labor. You look back at the ancient world like the Mesopotamians and they have this, their famous kind of version of the Bible, the Atrahasis, right? And, you know, the Bible, if you're a little kid in a Catholic home or a Christian home, your parents probably read you at the beginning of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and they are, right? But if you're a good Babylonian boy back in the day. And they were reading you the Bible. It said in the, or when the

gods rather than the men bore the load and took on the drudgery. Oh my gosh. Well, what a different concept, right? And there you find that God, the gods are not transcendent beings, but they are material and stuck in this world. They are in need of water. And so they were the ones that laboriously dug out the Euphrates River and trenched out the Tigris River. Things that in Genesis God just made, right? They're named in Genesis too, right? That ultimately they didn't want to work anymore the gods and so they made man to do that instead. And this actually goes back to their sacrificial cults where the men would have to go to the temples and bring all of this food so the gods who were hungry would eat. And of course it was the priests in the back

behind a clothing. Yeah, exactly. Right. And the book of Daniel actually talks about this explicitly, but this is a widespread Mesopotamian phenomenon. If you go over to the Greek world, it is really more or less the same that you find a society that hates manual labor. You find at certain points in Athenian history that there were laws on the book forbidding citizens from engaging in manual labor. Those same laws were on the books in Thebes and in Sparta as well, that somebody would have to be out of manual labor for a number of years before they were able to interact on the political forum, in the political forum. Athens actually grew into such hostility against manual laborers at one point that they had to

change the laws on the book and say that citizens could not deride one another for the work that they did. It became that aggressive. But Athens, perhaps most famous, son, Aristotle wrote in his politics that the life of a tradesman is ignoble and inimical to the life of virtue. I mean, that is, you know, pretty aggressive philosophical language. And his argument was relatively simple, right? He said that, well, one, he has multiple arguments. One is simple. One is not. One is that the labor is always the one that's making something for somebody else to use. That he who makes the flute is not usually the one that plays it but is something you do something for somebody to use or for or to make or something to be used well obviously using the flute is greater than

making the flute playing the flute yeah enjoying that is the end the final cause it's the final cause of the flute right that that that in a certain sense that manual laborer is just you know a material cause enabling the player the efficient cause to achieve the final end, like the actual music being played and enjoyed, right? So there's one argument. Another is that he saw that the world was made by God, who for him is really more, I mean, philosophers who will disagree with this, but made by kind of a supercomputer, right, who doesn't have interactions with man.

Nobody will disagree with that part, at least. And that that is perfect. And therefore, in the mode of making, you're changing the world, right? If you're going to make this table say, you have to cut down the tree. You have to destroy the tree, right? You are, there's a tragedy in all of making, right? So there is this great problem philosophically, as well as culturally, that the Greeks had with manual labor. And the Romans really just picked that up.

Elysius, Dionysius, Gellius, they all talked about periods in Roman history when citizens were not allowed to gauge in manual labor. Cicero pretty much quotes Aristotle's politics verbatim when he says that the life of a craftsman is vulgar, for there's nothing respectable about his workshop. So the Greeks hated labor and the Romans hated labor, and into this Greco-Roman world, the word became flesh and spent most of the years of his life at the carpenter's bench. He's Jesus Christ's life as a craftsman, as a carpenter, was like political dynamite going out into the ancient world. And it was a scandal for the Greeks. I mean, you look at the Kelsis, who origin was debating with, and he used the fact that Jesus was a carpenter as evidence that Christianity could not be true. Like, there's no way that somebody who was a carpenter has a claim on truth.

right this was a complete tectonic shift in the ancient world the fact that christ literally came in the form of a slave as a maker right to remake the world college of st joseph dot com it's in the description below everyone who's watching please click this link and check it out it's so brilliant so people are going they're getting a i mean i've spoken to your students and they are like it's intense like y'all have a high standard and they say that with Fear and delight. Yeah, but I love that. So at the same time they're getting an education They're also learning a trade from which they're making money in order to graduate debt-free Why the heck has nobody done? Maybe people have done this. Have people done this? Why haven't I seen it if people are doing this?

Nobody's done this model before. This is new. I don't know why I think I got a couple of reasons one is that we largely don't think too highly of the trades today. We've taken on more of the pagan disdain for the trades rather than the Christian celebration of it. Why? Well, I think we, the more that we move away from Christianity and into a post-Christian world, the more that we're going to be thinking more like pagans. I think that's just a general thing. But actually, can I maybe take two minutes to give you like a real theory on this? So obviously there's many, many massive social things that happened over the last 500 years that kind of brought us to the way that we are. I'm just going to more or less randomly pick a place to start.

And that's in 1903 with the publication of shop maintenance by a guy named Frederick Winslow, Taylor. Now, Taylor was kind of the studs. You know, he won the U.S. Open doubles in the 90s. He got fourth place in the Olympics for golf. I mean, this guy was amazing. And then he gets into efficiency protocols as a process engineer. So in coming up with this method that became so dominant in the American economy. He went into a, you know, again, let's take the example of this table.

He watched a carpenter go through the whole process of making a table, everything from chopping down the tree to milling the wood, planing, joining it down, making the right cuts, gluing it together, sanding it, finishing it. And he's saying, if we split all of those different tasks up and give different people each of those tasks, then we're going to be able to produce more of these tables in a faster manner. And he said, everybody should do this. No, I believe it was in 1908 when Harvard created the first MBA program, and they dedicated the first year of their curriculum to Winslow's method. And about six years later, Ford, who I believe never went through this program,

but was very taken with Taylor's method, nonetheless, created the assembly line, right? So this is, you know, the most monotonous, the most toilsome of jobs, right? Where somebody was just putting on the same screw into a different car every single day. And this was a huge problem for them, like, it's just spiritual. like psychologically. I mean, it's just defeating. Who wants to do that work? That's like most mind-numbing thing ever. And when work is truly supposed to be something that aids to our contemplative life where we're creatively figuring out solutions to transform the world and lift it up into the social life of man, you get almost none of that enjoyment because there's no

creative capacity allowed, let alone enabled in that job. Okay, so who would do that? job. Who would take it? I mean, who could he hire? Well, he had a huge problem hiring. In fact, when he was trying to get 100 new people on the assembly line, he would have to hire 963. Wait, wait, how does that math work out? Because 863, on average, would quit soon after being hired. Nobody would want to do that job, right? So he ultimately managed to make it through this, that hurdle, by paying his people more, speeding up assembly lines, and then ultimately, when people thought, well, I don't need any more money than you're giving me, bringing advertising into the fore. Matthew Crawford has written brilliantly about this in his shop class

as Soulcraft. Advertising was a hugely important point in this transition because if you're already making enough money, then why would I stay late? Why would I work harder? Why would I give you more hours than I'm doing? It was only if I'm enticed to want to buy more things. You're kidding. No kidding. You're telling me that advertising was in large part a result of the need, yes. Because of the, what do you call it, that Ford created the assembly line? Yeah, yeah.

So that's absolutely a big part of it. There's much, there's a very, I think what's his name, Bernays? It's bananas to think that advertising was ever invented. I know, totally great. Because I suppose in some sense it wasn't. In the most basic sense, someone is always trying to sell you their wares. Or their body or something. It was actually, this is no joke, and I wish I were familiar.

I think the guys is Bernays. Maybe your boy can fact track me on the name, but he wrote this book called Propaganda. Yeah, I'll look it up. Yeah, and the third. Well, you got a computer right there. And he was an important voice or an important figure during World War I. Why? Edward Bernays?

Yep, that's it. 1928. 1928, great. So he was an important voice during World War I. one to help sell U.S. bonds to help the war effort. And so they created all these campaigns, all these marketing campaigns to encourage people to buy these war bonds so that America could win, right? Okay, well, what happens when the war ends? Well, he takes his techniques learned on that public market there for the state and then brings it into the market, into the private

market, helping corporations advertise to sell more products, right? And then World War II comes up, he goes back into military advertisement, and then war ends, he goes back into the private sector. And there was a massive group of these people, but they called it propaganda. And that didn't have the negative connotations that it does today, right? But it was a way of propagating the felt need for these products, these felt sense of need, right? But also we have the, you know, the dicastry for the propagation of the faith. I mean, it's the same idea, the same word. That's our propaganda department, right?

Now it has such an evil and negative connotation that it, again, just did not have at the time. So there's a number of different parts of this history, but its invention, marketing's invention or expansion, the scientific field of marketing really being developed and created over the course of the 20th century that helped us move into mass production in a way that America just had not seen. Of course, then we offshored all that, and that's a different story. But I think when we think about, just to bring the thread all the way back to our conversation, when we think about manual labor, we think about mind-numbing work. We think of work that's not creative, that's not really fully human as a result,

that's not meant or intended for the most rational and penetrating of minds. And so we make this false dichotomy between white collar and blue collar, when in fact, that's absurd. Well, I think one of the reasons we look down on manual labor or have at least done so for the last 50, 100 years, is that it didn't make as much money, typically. That's true, too. But I think today where it's crazy, man, I've been thinking about this lately, just to go off on a bit of a side tangent. I've been thinking of the internet as like a different world. and most of us live there most of the time now and coming back to the real world

is like is like showing up in a town that has been abandoned and everything sucks yeah like you go to buy a plane ticket or to get aboard a plane or you go to a restaurant and it just feels like service sucks everywhere

it feels like we live in an abandoned world like either i mean stubenville has a lot of beautiful things to it but it's mainly the people and not the things but many people abandoned subvenville right when jobs went overseas and the town collapsed as it were the world feels like a collapsed town because we all live in the internet world right always in our phones always i look forward to flushing that thought out if you've got thoughts on that help me do it because do you get my main point i think so everything is worse. All service everywhere is worse, as everybody asks for tips. Now, the point I want to get to... That's a great line, by the way, yeah. A great what? That's a great line. Yeah, as everybody's asking for

tips. But the point I want to get to is, okay, we've all rushed into internet world, and so all the money's an internet world. We don't need you. No one's doing youth ministry anymore. Like, and this sounds cynical, but it's not. Like, people who love Jesus Christ and want to make him known, no, they can have not only a bigger impact, but can actually make money for themselves and their families if they start an Instagram account or a YouTube account like I have or something else. They know they can do that, so they do that. But as we've fled into internet world, the real world is falling apart, and we actually need someone to fix our toilets and the hole in the roof or to put a new roof on or to fix the swimming pool or to build us a bookshelf. And so just when everybody's rushed into

internet well to find, you know, an income, many of the needs still exist. So I would think that over the next 20 to 50 years, if you want to make a ton of money, just to put it cynically, you should become a carpenter or an electrician. Am I right? I don't know. I mean, you're the one who runs the school. Yeah, let me flesh this out in a couple of different ways. So one, generally you're right. Look, we don't know how far AI is going to take or all the jobs that it's going to displace. We don't know the effects of the technology that we produce. We never do for any technology,

but it always transforms the environment in which it was born. All technology does that. But think also about this. The further you run away from technology or away from the screen principally, the less that it can do, right? So I remember hearing back in 2019, Elon Musk saying, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to automate everything, you know, he's saying this to everybody. And then somebody brought up the skilled trades to him and goes, that might take a while, you know.

The further you are away from a computer, the harder it is to be displaced. Okay, so that's true. There's a number of reasons for that. It's not just because you have hands, but also because you have to come in and troubleshoot a different situation every single time, right? In the skilled trades, rather than just the assembly line work, there is a creative capacity because every situation is fundamentally different. and there's a different way of doing every single job. So there's room for artistic expression in every single endeavor. And this is why during the Middle Ages,

and you can look at like St. Bonaventure's reduction of the arts, the theology, he doesn't make a distinction between art and building. He puts them in the same category. Okay, so there's one thing there. The other thing, when you were bringing up the financial, benefit to it and the degradation of the world around us. It's interesting to note that there is this quantity crisis in the trades today. And this Fox News is huge on this. Like everybody's talking about it. Three people are retiring from the skilled trades for every one going into them.

There's 550,000 unfulfilled apprenticeships across America today. These numbers are dire and they're not good. And in fact, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the administration is thinking about calling a national crisis on this. It's so bad. Okay. So there's a quantity problem in the trades. But even more so, if there's a quantity problem, there's a quality problem in the trades, almost necessarily, right? And I talk to, you know, GCs all the time, every day almost, right? General contractors. General contractors, thank you. And they just are struggling to find people that will show up to work on time and in the right state of mind. But, which is funny to say, Right. But that is just like the lowest. I mean, you're just talking about a body at that point. You're not talking about somebody who's a true master of their craft that's thinking about composites and materials that's doing research to figure out what's best, right? There is a massive leadership vacuum in the skilled trades today. If you look over at like say mathematics, a different industry, right? Everybody looks to MIT for the standards of research, for the standards of pedagogy, for the direction that they should be taking their lines of inquiry. Like we have a

leader that's guiding the way for everybody else to do. Arizona State looks at MIT, right? There's no leader in the skilled trades today because we have not taken advantage of the creative aspects of this and the things that we're building are just worse and worse and worse. So we used to build houses that lasted hundreds of years. Now the average lifespan of a house, you know what it is? No. 50 years, right? Firefighters. They've done a ton of research on this because their life is at stake. in legacy built house, older method, utilizing older methods to build homes, they had 29 minutes

before a flashover event, you know, when everything bursts in the flames. It's less than five minutes today, right? Our quality is plummeting. There is so much room for real leadership to take, to take on a worthy project. I mean, we're talking about the protection of our home. I mean, the protection of our families, I mean, a home is a place where you cultivate and nurture your family. What does that do to the people who have to live in those? places what does it do to their spirit it's sort of like when you uh you go to a restaurant or you go to a hotel and you have breakfast and you realize everything is fake here like right even the eggs are made with powder what do you think i am i'm serious i know you are yeah offensive and the the

the yogurt is filled with dye and shit and sugar and what do you think think of me right but it's almost like the buildings in which we live that we're being in if we can even afford the buildings that have created at sub-pa. What does I say about who I am and how I should live? Churchill said that we first form our buildings and then they form us, right? I mean, look at a civilization that worshipped a carpenter. Look at the Middle Ages. You know, plenty of problems. I'm not trying to put just a purely golden lens on this. But look, we still go to Europe to visit these gorgeous buildings, right? And that was during an era, again, when we worshipped a carpenter when we sent our brightest and our best into the skilled trades that the habits and

exposures of our everyday life were nurturing to us when food that we produced was nurturing to us when the sites that we had that the beauty that we beheld was nurturing to our souls right and we understood that as being fundamentally important to the nurturing of our humanity yeah that's right yeah and they're relics of the past now it's it it is i mean europe is done it islamified uh the churches have become relics libraries man i don't mean to be so depressing but you go there and it's you can't pray in them it's just people walking around talking taking photos eaten yeah and we church we we christians we abandoned our churches as well God, in heaven. It's a sad state of affairs. Save me from my depression, Jacob. Tell me something good.

At least they're still there, you know? I mean, I think we've come through a very radical phase in our American history, Western history, where we've just said, you know, to each's own, you just be a good citizen, I'll be a good citizen, we'll just get along. You kind of hold your religious beliefs. Personally, I'll hold mine privately as well. We'll just get along, right? during COVID, something changed, right? I mean, there was, I remember at, what is that stadium in Seattle, the football stadium, it used to be called the clink, maybe it still is, shows how out of touch with things I am, but there was a big sign in it during a game that said, wrong is wrong, right? And they're talking about, like, masks and COVID shots and all that stuff, right? Wrong is wrong. That never would have come up in the 90s.

Wrong is wrong. I still don't even know what that means. What are they trying to say? Yeah. I never saw it. You're right. Yeah. So they're saying, like, you have a duty and a responsibility to wear a mask.

You have a duty and a responsibility to be vaccinated. You have a certain standard of living that you must uphold for the sake of our social order. Wow. Wrong is wrong. Right. Which is very different from right is right. You know, but something changed, something snapped. And we all are now recognizing that we do.

need to have something to hold on to that is going to govern and steer us. We all need a lodestar to guide our movements, our actions, right, our behavior in society. I think this is an opportunity for us Catholics to speak with authority, the authority that Christ gave us, right? He spoke none of the scribes did, but with real authority, to say, no, this is a Catholic universe. The cosmos is Christian, whether you like it or not. and we must conform to the life of the God man, we have to start speaking with authority again, not forcing it, not shoving it down people's throats, but proclaiming the truth with the power that it really does have.

Yeah, that's beautiful. It is true. I mean, it is easy to get depressed at the state of things. Even within our own church, perhaps we see real or perceived corruption in the ranks, and it's like, but yeah, I mean, there's also this gigantic enormous return to tradition. In every respect. Isn't that funny? Like the Catholic land movement.

Why is that a thing? Yeah. Why are people flocking to the traditional Latin Mass or just traditional litigies or traditional prayers? Why is it that nobody wants guitars in their mass anymore? Like four people. Four people want guitars in their mass. We will buy you. And they're all female and their names to Tanya, Debbie, Barbara and Karen.

Why is that? that's it's almost like it's I I know it sounds like a tangent but it's interesting that call and like the carnivore or paleo or keto movement like what is it that's happened to us that we all went we need to and maybe some of these things will be rethought but yeah why is it we're all returning to the way things used to be well because at least whether or not we have good reasons for for doing so like the positive motivations like oh that's It's more sane. That's better over there.

And for these reasons, we can at least say that what's going on now does not work, right? And so the return to something else, to something older, really just, I mean, not like carnivore is traditional, right? I mean, people will say it's Paleolithic or something like that. Yeah, right. But no, that's a novelty, right? Yep. But just something else, we're desperate to try anything else because things are not going well now, right? And a lot of people have found success and happiness in those transitions.

I do think, you know, we were talking on the way over here about the transformation of the food industry during the 20th century and that there's just almost an over artificialization. Like man is too involved in a natural process, right? Here, let me go on this tangent. Like during the Second World War at the beginning of that, the state had the feet about. 400,000 soldiers every day, right? Whoa, yeah. By the end of the war effort, I mean, not too many years later. Just in America, you're referring to?

Globally, actually. Yeah, soldiers globally. Like, the soldiers that we had to feed. Yeah. Right. That number went up to 11.6 million. That is a massive lift, right? America was feeding 11.6 million people.

Yeah, and so the government had to create these contracts with the food industry to be able to achieve that. So they had deals with Hershey's and Nestle and Mars and Kellogg to be able to produce food that they could ship overseas, right? And so they found ways of taking cheese and making something like cheese. It's not cheese anymore, but it's a lot like it, right? Or to put in preservatives that would have a long shelf life and could withstand, you know, all the, all the dangers of pesticides coming in, right? So that was a huge, huge. achievement and when they were one that I'm sure at the time seemed like a terrific idea and was a terrific

idea for that time it was necessary in the state of war right you know what is it necessity is the mother of all invention yeah in war you have more necessities than you ever do right and so it that is the time when why most of the things that we use around us has a military origin right we can get into that but that's certainly the case in food give me five the computer the cell phone GP D-S, duct tape, WD-40. Perfect, go back. That's impressive.

So, yeah, wartime, it makes sense. War time, it makes sense. Okay, what happened? Two atomic bombs were dropped, and the war ended suddenly. Okay, you have all of this food that had been produced that now people don't need. So that's one problem. There's a second problem.

The U.S. never wanted to have to go through a lift like that again, going from $400,000 to $11.6. I mean, thinking about all the factories and the industry as a whole, all the capital expenses that had to be produced in order to feed that many people. So what do they do? They transformed those contracts that they had with these companies and standardized them. So that became the predominant food in our grocery stores today. So when you see, you know, I remember this as a kid like seeing, you know, guys in the Middle East eating Pop-Tarts. I thought, oh, that's so nice.

They got a taste of home selling their mouth. No, no, no, no. They're not eating the food of civilians. We're eating the food of soldiers. That is the transition that's happened and that we now live in a mode that is fraught with necessities that are not truly needed, right? That we have placed ourselves in the dire situation of a soldier. Give me something. We don't have the homemade meal for mom. The soldier can't afford that. I mean, he's away from his family. He's away from those that he love. We've taken those on and placed ourselves in the situation of a soldier, which ultimately is easier for us. It's comforting for us.

Those are all things we want for our soldiers, right? Ease, comfort. They need to have food and easy access to it, quick access. They can't be making meals all the time, right? We've taken on that efficiency, that robustness. And of course, we've done that not just with food. We've done this with our main digital technology. I want to move on to those other things, but this is where we're fat-sick and dying, because we're eating food that isn't food, or food that's like food.

Right, and the more that we take on the tools of the soldier, the more that we take on the context of war. Show me how. Okay, so the more that we, so let's take another example if I can. So Hitler built the Audubon, right, so they get across Germany as fast as possible. Eisenhower was amazed by this. And so in 1956, he creates the inner. state act that created our highway system all across the United States. He did so so that we could get from one side of the United States to the other as fast as possible also for bombers to be

able to land in case of a crisis, right? Okay, that was built for a military need to quickly as fast as possible get across the country. Now we use those all the time, constantly, every day. Wow. Our pace of life is now that of the soldier in crisis. okay we're not in crisis but now the pattern of our life is like the soldier that's in crisis you don't think that has any psychological effect to us at all

we all know the difference between walking around a downtown area in maybe a European city if we were blessed enough to be able to go there or a little town in America versus living in a giant sprawling suburbia exactly right totally different when you have much more stressful and you don't have the serendipity of bumping into your neighbor

and saying hi how you doing and stop it and chat and getting the notes one another in an organic way, right? We now are, you know, facing one another and you just wave on the way, but the car is the perfect protection. It's a private space out in public, right? Where you're driving through and you get to have the temperature however you want, when you listen to whatever you want, your mode of life there is more individualized rather

than out with your neighbors bumping into them walking along in lockstep, right? It's very different. Okay, so I think that's a pretty clear. example on it. But of course, our food is that way, too. You know, I was just at a talk by Professor Mike Foley, and he was saying that from, I think if I'm not forgetting his statistic, right, that from the 1980s to now that the family meal has dropped down by 30%, or maybe he said the 30% of families have one meal together a day. Anyways, it was a drastic decrease. I mean, what a difference when you know, I mean, that that is like a true liturgy, the meal together

that binds the family together. Now, if you're just tossing a couple bagels, you know, into the toaster and grabbing them, putting some ham and cheese on it and going back to your room, you don't have that thing that binds you together. You're like this soldier away from your family, right? Whoa.

But Chesterton said, like, the true soldier, the good soldier, excuse me, is not the one that hates what's in front of him, but loves what's behind him, right? Well, what happens now when we don't have a clear enemy in front of us and we've been in this state of the soldier's life for so long that we don't really know who's behind us. That also has a massive, massive effect, massive change.

So how does it make us more like the soldier? And what do you mean by that? Do you mean isolated? What do you mean? Yeah, isolated. Yeah, that the soldier loves his family so much as to leave them, right? Whereas we've adopted so many of these technologies

that we didn't mean. That have come downstream from the military. Yes, and have been brought into a commercial context. Right, because then you sell it to the public. Exactly. Super glue, you know, another great example, right? You know, it was made during the Vietnam War to hold up bullet wounds, right?

And now we use it for arts and crafts, right? Maybe that one is a little bit further afield. I mean, a lot of these technologies are awesome. They're so cool, right, that we've come up with them. But we don't know, we don't understand how much they start to replace our dependency on other people. I remember my dad, he was in the Navy,

and he said that the ship had one copy of the Lord of the Rings. Oh, wow. And there was a giant list of men who get to read it next. And in a way that might sound like, well, you're kind of going off into your room, isolating yourself.

And I just thought, what a wholesome activity for non-Christian sailors. Like this is how they lived. Whereas today, I don't know, but I would imagine if you spoke to folks, they would say they would just sort of trot off to their rooms. You see that more and more, don't you? Like I remember just being, I used to work in a copper mine in the outback of South Australia. This is before people had phones, certainly smartphones. So we'd all go back to the room and we'd talk and we'd read magazines and we'd have coffee and, you know, the talk wasn't necessarily wholesome or stimulating or anything.

but at least we were there with each other. Whereas now I imagine if I went back to that same room, it'd just be everyone on their phones. Yeah. And I guess the point we're saying to, the point isn't advancements in technology have no benefits or no blessings. The point is simply, for every advancement,

there is a necessary poverty. And you don't know what that poverty is maybe until your ankle deep or knee deep into it. I think that's right. Yeah. And of course it's not this, you know, it's the admirable sacrifices that the soldier makes should not be the standard way in which we live our lives say that again that the admirable way the admirable sacrifices that the

soldier makes should not be the standard mode by which we live our lives all right so how see i go on these you go just to give maybe to the ground this into the biblical narrative in some way um you look at the sweet genealogy in genesis four where you find the the line of cane producing all this really cool stuff, right? I mean, they're, they're developing agricultural techniques, metallurgy, music, and then you look at the line of Seth, the chosen line, where Noah comes out of, and ultimately the line of cane is destroyed in the flood. And the line of Seth really produces nothing impressive, right? You have the two lineages, and they're going through. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But of course, Noah invents the coolest technology of all, right? I mean,

He creates the arc, right? Okay, floods over. We're in the antediluvian time. What happens? Nimrod builds Babel, right? Yeah. And he builds Babel and he builds a city and he builds with brick and he builds it and ultimately to entice the gods to come down.

Let us build a structure so that we can ascend into the heavens. Okay. Let me try and reduce all. all that really, really quickly. The first, the word for city is a word that's used for a walled city, right? It's protected. It's what we, in English, call a metropolis, right? A mother polis, right? Why do we have the cities historically? Well, that's the place of greatest protection. You flee behind the city walls in case you're under attack. You find the doctors in the city walls in case you have an injury. You have finer arts and luxuries like the symphony, you know, music in the city.

It's a place of maximum protection. The walls are like the mother's womb, right, that you go under to be able to be comforted, right? All those are great things, right? The problem that you find is when you are always assuming disaster. So it's to live your life perpetually behind those walls. You're infantilizing yourself. It's emasculating, right? I think there's a problem, too, that's, again, not foreseen, and nobody chose this, right?

where we just realize at some point we've chosen to protect ourselves constantly and continually and with the result that we've infantilized ourselves, that we're not going out and building the rich communities, which is the stronger support against disaster than any technology ever could. But is that a diatribe against technology? Of course it's not. Noah built the ark. The ark was needed at some point, right?

But it's not needed all the time. We're not in a constant state of a flood. yeah I know that this is my thing that I always talk about so you can just ram into it and change the topic if you like but it is it is interesting I think of my dad you know he worked at a lead smelter and he was off at 3 30 and he drove home and there was no way to get a hold of my dad I mean well that's not true you could call the phone that was on the wall but no one did that you weren't expected to do work at home. And on the weekends, there was no real option to work. There's no option to work. Right. Right. So in a similar way, like you were saying, like these things are good in times of war, but the civilian ought not to act as if he were at war. There's something kind of analogous happening where it's like, you know, the civilian shouldn't be working when he's at home. But now the house has become the workplace. Like this is an example perhaps of where we saw an

advancement and when this is nothing wrong could go you know this is perfect i can now work from home right right remember we said that was cool yeah and now we're like i don't know if this is good that i'm working from home because now everyone expects me to be on call 24-7 and now i'm in this kind of hypervigilant state has my boss texted me called me am i supposed to be god almighty there has to be a place where you don't exist in that state of fight or flight or this wonder whether or not someone's written to me. I need to respond to them. Like, this is why last night people were trying to get a hold of me. I laid my phone in my computer and their office went home. And I woke, when I came in the office with you,

I turned on my phone. I felt great anxiety, actually, because there was like 10 people who had texted me and I'm aware that they think I'm ignoring them. And I get all nervous about that. Say, like when you picked up your phone, you just immediately zoned in. And of course, that is the fight or flight response. It's like, oh my gosh, I have to focus on nothing else. Like, this is what it is. And that's all of us. I mean, we all do that.

But we have to sometimes stop and realize that that's actually a product of what we've produced in the social order that we have knowingly or unknowingly chosen. And this also goes back to the concept of the contemplative life, right? Sometimes we need to take the step back and analyze what has happened and what should be done. And how do we, and then begin to think, how do we go back? back into it, transforming it to make it more human. So I love that you're talking about what to do on a macro level. And your college is, in a sense, doing that.

But I mean, and maybe you don't want to go here too quickly so we can hold off if you want. But like, what do you do privately? Because it's, I go on these ideological benders. Like I hear a talk like this. I'll set my car on fire, break my phone, and I'll live in that state for four weeks. And then I go, well, obviously, I got to get a bike car, you know?

I don't know what that is in me. I'm very, I guess, passionate in that sense, but you don't seem like a depressed guy, and yet you seem to have, you seem to see how things have gone, and they're not, they haven't gone as well as we might like to think they've gone. So how do you, on a personal level, not live as someone constantly in combat? Oh, I think I do a good, good bit, but, you know, there's certain things that we've chosen for our family to do. So, like, we don't have Wi-Fi at our house. Yeah. We have this aluminum roof that's like a fair day. cage so I can't make a call inside my house. That was not purposeful, by the way. That was just a

serendipitous, you know, thing. It's really awful during the winter, so I have to stand outside and make a call. But, you know, those things have started to take away the distractions of the outside world so that I can focus on, you know, my family and in times inside it. We don't have a television. We have a lot of really great books. You know, these are just like little checks that we've done. I mean, nothing, nothing impressive. What's difficult, though, is the world moves on. I think what I found, though, is I'm so regular with that that people know, for the most part, that they can't get a hold of me at certain times and hours, and they've kind of gotten used to that. And I guess that's another thing is that I am, for the most part, and this is not totally true, but for the most part dealing with the same team every day. And so they start to get to know me and who I am, and I get to know them and who they are.

And so there is, even though the team is constantly growing and we're, you know, a fairly not a small company anymore, that it's still. a company of knowledge of personal knowledge and friendships so that helps. Can you say something about how you train your students to respect what this thing is?

In other words, I presume I don't know, but I presume you're not letting people show up to class in their pajamas and calling you Jake. So what are you doing to sort of instill a sense of respect not only for you as their teacher who they ought to listen to

but for what we're doing here at a college, what sort of things do you implement and why are those the things and why are they helpful? Yeah, so we're dominantly male college, right? And so we, almost everybody's a guy. We've got two wonderful women. They're extremely high performing. They're brilliant.

They probably will listen to this, which is too bad because they're going to know how much I think of them, how well I think of them. I usually hold back some affection, but they're really amazing people. What we have realized that when you have a whole group of guys together in particular, that it easily can devolve into botchery and bestiality, right? I mean, guys together.

Explain bestiality. People think something very different. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I don't know. But that you just start to leave your reason behind. It's all about pumping up muscles, loud voices. yelling screen, whatever. And so the traditional response to that is actually, I mean, this is funny, used more here in a monastic setting, which is military-like in some regards, is having a strict understanding of hierarchy and order. Those two things are so important to understand. Again, going back to the nature of education, that authority and docility to authority is necessary.

So everybody calls, we make everybody call their, those in authority above them, sir, right? or doctor, right, they have to, if they're not showing up 15 minutes early, they are late. So I come to the class, 10 minutes early, everybody's sitting down already. But if they're not, when someone shows up five minutes late?

Well, you know, if it's a repeated action, then it's, you know, we talk to them, right? But for the most part, once that is a standard and an assumed standard of the culture, then they don't need to do it. They just feel like ostracized if they're not doing what everybody else does, And they are encouraged by the good culture to be raised up into the people that they should be.

And this, of course, is an ongoing process. And speaking of the habits that you form so as to leave with a new life, I mean, that's what we're trying to achieve with them over four years, right? But they're getting it pretty quickly. Is there any kind of dress code? Yeah. So there's a uniform for the construction company that they have to wear. There's a certain way that they're allowed to cut their hair to keep their beards.

There's a certain way that, or standards generally. You know, it's not everybody has to have this, the crew cut or whatever. You know, you have to wear, you know, the minimum business casual to class every day. But a lot of people realize that is the baseline and not the top. So a lot of people come dressed like me. And you follow those who are above you. So the suit and tie is natural because you see the guy in front of you wearing or the jacket and tie is natural. It's like good peer pressure, huh?

It is. But it's raising us up. And, of course, you only have real freedom if you have real order, right? I mean, the classic example here is a pianist, right, who sits down and there's a certain way of holding their hands and a certain way of playing each chords. I mean, the kid, like Blaise, my five-year-old, does not have great freedom at the piano, right? The master is. And it's because there is an ordered way of learning and playing that she can then have greater. creative capacity than the person without that order is able to have. But that's true of the

standards of life too, of even making your bed, as Jordan Peterson famously said, that these are not just good habits to get into for the sake of having regularity. They're habits for launch pads for more creativity. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. Hey, everybody who is currently watching in the live chat, we would love to take some super chats if you want to send them in, if you have a question for Jacob? Let us know. Investment joy says, ah, the college he represents is in Steubenville. I unknowingly drove by it last week. Yes, it is in Steubenville, Ohio. We should have said that. I had the opportunity, says Christian, to have a rep from the College of St. Joseph come talk to the seniors at the Chesterton Academy of Orlando. They were quite impressed.

yeah you're getting a lot of applications we are yeah turning away people we have a 25% acceptance rate right now for the last couple years is that is that quite low for university standards yeah good for you yeah that's nice huh and so what is it you're looking for are you looking for talented people are you looking for people with good grades what are you looking for yeah absolutely so we we are looking for people that should go to college, right? So our average standardized desk score right now, I think is about the 88th percentile. I think it's about 26% of our students

scored above the 95th percentile. I think 12% of our students scored 99th percentile. I mean, these are clever people that are searching for education that is not accessible to them online either. I would say this is true, right? you know, there's a lot of great content out there, but to be able to take the time over the course of a year to really slowly get into a subject and ask dynamic questions, to take an argument

from September through June, I mean, that is a long argument. That's a nuanced argument that you're receiving, that you're working with, you're grappling with. I don't think that's, not only is the posture of an online education welcoming you into that sort of. of nuance, but I actually don't even think it's quite possible either because of the lack of information. But let me, let me, this is Mike going too far afield, so stop me if you find this boring. I also, just to just like keep ranting against online education, I think that the invention of the screen is the worst thing to bring into education. And here's why. That the screen is designed to change. That is its function, right? Yeah. It's supposed to be able to put on there

whatever you want, right? Well, at that point, you've habituated yourself to two things. One is the projection of your will upon something else, right? Instead of the reception of something into your own soul, you put your soul into something else. That's one. Two, the difference between a screen and a page. So if I'm reading a page, it's... Perfect example. Yeah, exactly. I can, no matter how hard I look at it or how many times I tap it, it's the same, right? The other thing is that the movement from cause to effect is minimal, right? I mean, to be able to press a couple buttons or like flip something on the screen,

that's minimal input for a pretty substantially different output, right? That's not how life works. Usually it is monotonous in the grind that ultimately leads you to master. right that leads you to a place of greater power right and you have to realize that there's not a quick fix and a and a hack to all things and that hard work and that longstanding determination is ultimately the way to the greater perfection of your soul which is what we're after right and so that i think is very dangerous to bring into a classroom setting or to have that be one of the main technologies that you use in your mode of learning.

So we try and get away from those as much as we possibly can. Nate Bagazzi, you know who that is? Someone just told me about him recently, and I could not understand how it was. I had never heard of him. He's like one of the best stand-up comedians. Oh, yeah, I've ever heard this guy, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd recommend him for what that's worth,

know that he needs me to recommend him, but he has this excellent joke about how he'd be the dumbest time traveler ever. There's a point to what I'm saying. that he'd go back in time, be like, oh, wow, in the future we have phones in our pockets. Oh, really? How do you do that? I mean, I don't know. It's not a do with satellites?

What's a satellite? It's like up high and it's metal. I don't even know if you're from the future. Who's the next president? I mean, I don't know that either. And the point in saying that is, the point in saying that is, you know, we do consider ourselves. so much more advanced than our forefathers. And yet the things that we say that we know, we don't know,

that it's not within us, you know. That's why I cited that little poem to you this morning because I was proud of the fact that something beautiful was now in me that I knew as opposed to you flitter about on Twitter or what have you. And then it's not in you. You don't have that. It's so how, yeah.

So there's a famous Islamic philosopher named Al Ghazali who I think is St. Thomas stamping on him over there in that picture? He is. Or is that Averro? That's not Al-Ghazale. That's Averroes. Yeah, Averroes.

Yeah. I think it is. I mean, maybe he's not standing on Averroes in that one, but there is the confounding of the philosophers. I think Averroes is under his foot there. But these are the Mohammedans tearing up their fake bastardized scriptures. It's amazing. In front of the Dominicans, who are the sheepdogs of the Lord.

That's amazing. Which is why the sheep dogs are attacking the wolves beneath. you see it's so cool I love it see them stopping up there this I don't know no one else can see this this is very depressing

for people they want to see this but anyway but yeah well there's a great story I'm going to say something positive about El Ghazali

that he was traveling one day and his his caravan was overtaken by bandits and he had all of his books he was moving

I think the Baghdad or something like that and they took all his book and he says please take everything but just leave my books. They're like, what is in there? He goes, it's like, all my thoughts are in there.

And they start mocking him, all these bandits, you know? Just like, what? You don't keep your thoughts in your brain? And they just start mocking him just ruthlessly. And it's like the summit to all their mockery saying, like, what, like, how is it that you don't have a brain in your head? They just said, yeah, go ahead. We'll let you keep your brain, man.

And he was so humiliated by this that he ended up dragging his books back to where where he was trying to be and then spending the next year memorizing everything. Really? Isn't that great? Yeah. I'm nervous that maybe I misunderstood. Is this, this is the one you're thinking of here? Well, I just didn't know who the lamp is right in my...

Yeah, I'm just not sure if I got that right about it. But anyway, yeah, it's amazing. I think it is even Sena, usually, that usually Thomas is on, actually, yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, good. All right, everybody. This is fun. Let's see. Ah, let's see.

Someone says, handful of delicious black pills and insights. Jacob is great. What's a black pill? I think a black pill. It sounds evil. So a red pill is sort of like awakens you from your slumber so that you can see things clearly. I think is what I mean.

A black pill is like, I want to kill myself and everyone around me now. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah. I didn't mean to do that to that guy. Okay, good. But it is interesting. Like, it is what I said, right? Like, how do you see that?

and then be okay. Well, I mean, this sounds so, like a platitude or something, but it's just not true. That it is one. This is one of the fundamental joys that we have that Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death,

that we are in power, right? and that that is our joy and our source by which we transform, that which is around us, you know, and that we've been tasked with us by the church, you know. Vatican too, and its doctrine of the laity, you know, tells us what we, laity, are supposed to do, right? That is our task to transform the social order, right? And he asks, okay, well, what's the social order, right? Well, it's really all the things that the friars give up, right? They take a vow of poverty.

We engage in profitable economic activity. They'll take a vow of chastity. We get married and have children. They take a vow of obedience and re-rule the political order in a way that they don't. Of course, we're still governed by the evangelical councils of poverty, chastity, and obedience. But they are specifically to govern us in the mode of transforming them, right? That is the lay genius that the religious do not have and are not called to. And so there is something joyful and wonderful to know what we are actually called to do. and in the process of doing it, right? And so even if, you know, for the most part, we're making just a tiny dent in the overall effect that we would otherwise like to have, there is something that is wonderful in trying to do it. The other thing I like to think about too is we sometimes

are of the impression that unless I can help bring about a long-term change, you know, in society, then all of my efforts will be for naught. In other words, if it lasts for a few decades and then it all collapses and things get worse, than what, like, I've just wasted my life. But that's not at all true. I mean, look at the revitalizations within the church from St. Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avala, John of the Cross.

I mean, the people within their world were saved through their sanctity. And that'll do. And if they were to see ahead 100, 200, 500 years and think, well, look, Europe's collapsing, you know, the Muhammadans have taken it something. They would be wrong to think that. They would be wrong to think that their efforts were for naught. I think that's completely true. I do think, however, that we defeated Christendom before. There was ever an invasion that happened. Yeah, right. Tell us why, I agree. Well, first of all, the liberalism and the Reformation, two different things, right, were internal heresies of Christendom.

nobody, like, came in and invaded us. Those were not ideas from the outside coming in. When they did, we have the glorious stories of Lepanto and... Exactly, yeah, exactly. When Muslims did come in and try and overtake our civilization, we won. We held them back at Vienna. We held them back at Lepanto, right? But we made the Reformation happen through disobedience, right?

We took on a heresy of liberalism rather than understanding humanity to be fully social creature that is supposed to be moving into heaven, we've said to each his own, right? We've taken on these heresies ourselves. And obviously, the saints, they're searching for two things at once, right? One is their own sanctity, right? And the second thing is the sanctity of those around them, right? Those who are generations later are not those around them, right?

you know and that that we have a duty first and foremost to those who are nearby right and then those people have a duty expanding onwards so they can't take responsibility for what they did not affect right so anyways that might be too technical of point or no i don't know if it is but let's can we speak as some hope i mean you just did but i mean we were just at a coffee shop today and a couple said that i think they said they're converts yeah they are because of pints were not because of of pints, but pints helped or something. And I know there's all sorts of beautiful work going on in the world. When there was another person in there too. There's another person who said the same thing. Yeah, yeah. And because of pints. And it's not a Catholic shop. We're at. It's kind of like a

tranny approved shop. It was a coffee shop that we were at. So it's not like it's a Christian store, but this is happening more and more. I'm encounter. And I'm sure you are too. People who are encountering you. They've read your work. I just think it's so cool that you have a doctorate from Oxford. I just want to throw that out there so you don't have to. Thanks. Yeah. Was that hard? I just enjoyed my time there so much. Yeah, I really did. What are the Dominicans like there? It's total studs. Yeah, I just earned with them for a while, actually. Yeah, they were, they were a gift to my soul. The point, the very basic point is there is this beautiful revival taking place in culture as people seek to live like humans again, eat like humans again,

worship God as if they were humans again. This is happening. There is this pushback against the screen, and the screen isn't the enemy. Of course. It can benefit us in many ways, of course. But there is this pushback against it, this desire to read books the way humans used to and things like that.

Like, there's good things happening. Yeah. Yeah. Can I tell my Carlo cutest story? Oh, yes. You know, because it kind of maps into this. So I have to say that, like, when I heard this guy was beatified, and, you know, his, like, icons were coming out with him with, like, an apple there.

The apple that was eaten by Eve with a bite out of it there in the icons. It's just like, oh, my gosh, this is horrifying. I don't know if I'm ever going to intercede to this person. Yeah, those images have been terrible. Yeah, they've really been awful. And then I had this, you know, situation that kind of, that occurred, that I just had this acute, one day, just acute. anxiety because of it and it was it was kind of an internet quote unquote issue right um or or at least an online issue right and and i thought well you know it's i can't intercede the saint peter he never

would have understood something like this like who is there that i could talk to and i and i and i said well i'm going to intercede to the guy i said i never intercede to and i as soon as i asked as soon as i asked him for help that acute pain just left immediately and i thought after that i got to figure out who this guy really is. So what did you do to figure that out? Well, I just started to look at his life and everybody says that he's like... On a screen?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carlo Acutus. He was born in 1991, which is a big year. One year after my sister. When were you born? Should I actually say?

I'm not going to divulge that information. No, he... You're roughly the same age. I'm just about the same age as St. Carlo. Which was a point of connection. he was born the year the internet was, you know, disseminated, right? That also was in military technology, right? Eisenhower started the group that first started doing that research.

Anyways, so he, and everybody, you know, calls him like the cyber saint or obviously the millennial saint, but I think just as important. Actually, perhaps, no, I'm going to go take that back, more important than the year of his birth. is the year of his death, 2006. Okay. I just want to go married. Ah, good year. Okay, why is that?

Well, because the transition from an internet that was principally text-based and research-based really happened around that time. Google bought YouTube the month after he died, right? Yeah, imagine like the internet without regularized videos. YouTube existed before that, but it didn't blow off until afterwards. Facebook, right, came, was dropped publicly in December 2007, right? Of course there was social media before. You remember like MySpace and all that stuff, but that was like nothing, right?

That was almost a supplement to your social life and real life. Facebook shifted your social life to being online. A lot of people will say that Steve Jobs was an inspiration for St. Carlo, and I just assume that to be true when they say it, right? But he missed his most, Steve Jobs' most important invention, because it wasn't until 2007 in January at the Mac World Expo that he took that sleek, shiny iPhone out of his pocket for the first time, which is the expansion of the internet into every nook and crony corner of your life

so that you're in bed with the internet so you wake up and you look at the internet that did not occur that was not in his lifetime 2007 is also the time when the watson center at ibn's watson center produced really what is the first um uh i i i bought which ultimately grew into what we now know is chat, GPT, that's that form of technology. That big data was invented, really, that year. That was also the year when Satoshi Nakamoto was said to have started to work on Bitcoin, right? I mean, most of us now struggle to imagine an internet without AI, right? But could you imagine what the internet is without all of those things?

I mean, that is insane. Like, we would say that's not the internet anymore. We don't know what that is anymore. He never knew it. yeah you know you could say that i mean could you just imagine back in 2006 like what our attention spans were like you know how many more books the average person read you know and and they wouldn't have been e-books because amazon's kindle also came out in 2007 right i mean we were then forced with the page and not the screen as a principal content of our knowledge and when we did bring up the internet

again it was research based it was text based right his website that he built for Eucharistic miracles is almost the perfect example of what the internet was like, right? You are reading, you're studying, you're not being wowed and mesmerized by that. There's not these massive platforms that are then trying to keep you on, that are, that are, that are, that is their main goal, your time and your exposure to, to advertisements, to purchasing, right? That just was not a thing at that time. not to nearly to the degree that it was, and it was hardly a thing, you know, if at all, right? I think of St. Carlo as the perfect patron of the Internet because he demonstrated to us a mode of

utilizing it that was supplemental to our lives rather than a replacement for the lives that we were leading. You know, and he saw, you know, things coming down the pike that weren't as good, Right. I mean, his, you know, he liked playing video games, his mom said, but his mom also said that he limited the amount of time that he played them to an hour a week. And he was playing like Pokemon, Super Mario Bros. Like things that we would say are more or less like toys for kids. Rather, I mean, it's so far away from Fortnite. That's so far away from Call it Duty, which are, I mean, they're cartoons. They're not like real life. They're not platforms that are trying to. extend engagement endlessly, and to be the platform for our social lives as well. This is very different, and still he saw there is an addictive dimension, even in those games. This is very far from saying that he's anti-technology, but he gives us a glimpse of how we can reorient ourselves towards it. So I got a question, I'm so glad that we've talked about your excellent college, but you

a 25% intake. So what do you want people to know? I presume you don't want people to apply because you have enough people applying. No, I want more people to apply, right? I mean, we want to grow from where we are. What's your goal? What's your hope with the college? We're never going to be large, right? So we started a sister construction company, college construction, right? And I'm very proud of this construction company. I think it's going to be a huge gift to us. And I'd love to tell you about it if you want. But if you think about a 300-person college, that is tiny, right? I mean, it's minuscule, right? Compare the other universities out there. That's probably as big as we're going to get. Why? Because a 300-person construction company is ginormous, right? We started this

construction company so as to be in maximum control of our students' training. I mean, it's through that institution that they are going to be paid to continue on with their apprenticeships. while in Stevenville, Ohio, and in Weirton, West Virginia, we span the river on both sides. That is, you know, that is something that I see as kind of a natural cap on our growth, right? But I really hope that this is a model that other people can take to be able to rethink what we can offer to the young people today. Are you going to try to franchise the college? I don't know what we're going to feel compelled to do by St. Joseph, but this, yeah, I mean, it really is his college. So, but if someone comes to you and says, like, we want to do what you're doing.

I'd be happy to help them do that, you know. I mean, my time is pretty limited right now, but I would, I would love to see them do it. You think, like, Harvard doesn't franchise, right? I mean, they set a model for everybody else, right? I'd like to be more. of that Harvard and less of the McDonald's. Yeah. Yeah. Jenny, Janine, sorry, says, can non-Catholics attend the college?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we will take your application. We'll consider it. What did you say you were going to talk to me about? You said, if you don't mind, I'd like to assist a company. Oh, the construction company, yeah. So this is kind of fun.

I mean, it's maybe getting to much of a nerd talk, but on construction, but I'll do so quickly, is that, you know, I mentioned some of those stats about how bad buildings are getting today. Yeah. That we're seeing issues with mold today in our buildings that we've really never seen before because there's not a, the breathability,

like the houses don't breathe in the same ways. We're seeing, obviously, just the issues of replacing natural methods of air conditioning with artificial ones. No, I think we should have, AC units, absolutely, but why did we give up on considerations of airflow, the direction of, the orientation of how a house should sit these things? What about all the different methods that are out there, you know, that are beyond just standard siding? You know, what about, you know,

timber framing? What about mass masonry? What about stone building? What about cordwood building? What are vernacular modes of building, like local ways of building that are going to decrease costs over time and increase aesthetics here and now. So we're actively trying to figure out what should be preserved from lost building memory and then also developed and cultivated with new methods as well. So we're actively researching these things. And it's kind of like the liturgy like ever ancient, ever new, right? So that we're trying to breathe ourselves into a heritage that we are not.

giving up easily, right, that we're holding on to our patrimony, the methods that our forefathers taught us and not just trying to reinvent the wheel. I mean, the phenomenon that you and Dr. Kwasniewski talked about earlier this week in the liturgy is something that has overtaken all of society, right, that we've just given up on what our heritage is, not just in the liturgy, which is the most important, right, but also in building, also in food, also in family life, also in the academy. I mean, we can just keep naming these things, right? I mean, again, like the professors are just making up ideas.

They're troubling gender. They're talking about LGBTQ things. They're creating more disciplines of study that never were, right? Are those actual developments or those changes that are being made, right? I mean, obviously for that one, we can give an answer. But we have this problem of patricide in our society. where we are killing our fathers by means of eliminating the goods that they gave us. And we have to be docile children, pious children to,

we need to be truly patriotic children again. It is funny how going back to being human is almost always the best response like we've been talking about the food we eat. Yeah. And then when I grew up, window, to quote Nate Bargatsi again, I have more in common with a pilgrim than my daughter. Oh, Jesus. It's just like, you know, and like I grew up, like, the windows are always open so you can get fresh air in. Now it's like, oh, that was so stupid, mum.

Like, my mom thought that as to in the air conditioner on. Right. Right. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah. Wow. Right.

Yeah. And instead, yeah, we've taken on, we've let, you know, our faith kind of transform over the last several decades in being more of a thermometer than a thermostat to, you know, take the analogy going. It's that, well, how about we just take the standard that our holy, canonized forefathers gave us and move with that into the future rather than letting it go to the way. That's clearly happening. Yeah. But it's going to happen awkwardly, don't you think? Totally awkwardly. Because it wasn't ours. Like the heritage that was stripped from us, we're now trying to reclaim.

We're reclaiming something that wasn't given to us. That's going to look weird. Super weird. Yeah. We will be clunky. Yeah. But I guess so long as you're not, what's the word the kids used, LARPING, live action role play, you know, which I always think is a cynical jab at people

who are genuinely trying to reclaim. I mean, they might be dressing up like Pokemon, but who were genuinely trying to reclaim something that it wasn't theirs, because nothing was given to them. MTV was given to them. MTV, Playboy, that was given to them. Yeah. I'm sorry, Jacob, I'm really depressed.

Well, what else do you want to talk about before we wrap up? Ishi of Arabia says, does Jacob think there will ever be a switch to universities being a place of learning? learning and not liberal indoctrination once more. I think we have to found them, right? I mean, if I can be trying to be gentle with this point is that there's a lot of good universities out there that are preserving the hard earned wisdom of the past and bringing it forward.

But what we all need to do across the spectrum is to find ways of changing our business models to make that more accessible to students, to ensure that college is not a financially crippling extension of adolescence, but is by means of teaching them both active and contemplative lives or modes of living, a true emergence into adulthood where they can go into the world sprinting financially with real skills and with real friendships and with real virtue and with an luminous faith that's going to enable them to do, to make the transformation that the church is calling us to make. And so I think it's hard to get large institutions. to change and to make those, you know, agile shifts in their models.

And so I think that what I hope to see, and it's hard, I will say, is that new, that they will make those transitions. And they'll see that as part of their evangelical duty to come up with something new and something better, and that we will get new institutions as well to encourage it. And that we can do it without judgment, but in fraternity. with one another too. Ish says, I'm going to be honest. I learned more on YouTube about theology than my bachelor's and master's degree in theology.

I think that's sadly true in a large part for many people, and that, but that is because professors did not take advantage of the time that they had. There are many problems in the academy today, and let me just, you know, on the academic side, even in good institutions. And let me just say this, you know, again, gently said a lot of professors see their task as a job rather than as the work that they are vocationally called to do. So they clock in, they give the lectures that they've given the same lectures they've given for the last 10 years, they clock out, they do their grading, and they just take advantage of the abundant time off, right? You find that there is not the

There's also a real problem between the animosity that plagues a lot of colleges and universities between the faculty and the staff, that the faculty don't feel valued by the staff and the staff see the faculty as lazy, right? I mean, these are like classic, anybody that knows university politics will say, oh, yeah, that is an issue. And that just cannot be the way that we need to come to terms with this by saying, no, what the faculty is achieving through their contemplation, our sense. society does not appreciate enough, that they are giving, they are preserving, actually truly

handing on the gifts of truth that we have, that we need to be able to live well and to know what makes life most human. We need them. We are tremendously indebted to them. And they cannot take their aristocratic life, and that's what it is, for granted, right? Whereas just they get all this time off to contemplate and to think, and they're not taking advantage of it to do the hard research necessary to continue to bring to light the luminous truths that we so desperately need. We need, as professors, to keep our languages alive to continue to dig deep into things that have long been buried, that they might be a joy in an inspiration and a transformation to us. staff needs to recognize how important that is to and help them and encourage them to achieve that

and that professors need to be teaching out of their research as a continual mode of transformation from themselves and that research is transferring them and enabling them to be more subtle and dynamic and accurate with what they're teaching so that they can deliver the truths with more wonder and with more precision. And they cannot also let students get away with being lazy, being phone addicted and computer addicted, but to hold them up to another standard that the university used to be kind of paramilitary in orientation because they saw that this, what they were doing was so important. And just as a military guards a nation from external attacks, so the university guards it from internal attacks, from ideology and propaganda that is

washing away our intellects and our minds, and that instead is preserving them, leading them further into what must be known to lead a nation. That is not being found. And so just as much as our model is being, is, is, is transformative in a certain way. We're trying to just dig back into what once was in another mode of thinking about it, that we don't have to reinvent the wheel here, that we need to take on what Christians, the way in which Christians have researched and studied and taught in the past, and we just have to do it.

Are people required to have any training prior to applying to your college? say in woodwork or plumbing? No, you can come in. And have you had men come in like that and women? Oh, yeah, yeah. At least half, maybe the majority. I mean, I wouldn't imagine people would apply to your school if they had absolutely zero interest or skill,

natural basic skill in these things. Yeah, you need the, I mean, people need to know, and our students, for the most part, we've vetted them for at least this, namely, that they understand that it's a grind, you know, going to work. using your body day in, day out, and that the trades are not just this romantic option,

like being the gentleman farmer, sounds so nice and quaint and wonderful in this opaque technological age, right? That they know that this is hard work and that they're getting into that and are dedicated to it. And that's worth more than any, for pre-taught skills could do.

Do you have holy mass every day or every week? We really try, integrate our college into the city itself. So rather than being bubbled off and separated, we're completely integrated into town. So our students, our parishioners at the local parish, where there is daily mass, right? They're living in our homes, right? And they take care of the utilities and the taxes. But there's not a big rent check that we drop on them every month as well because we expect them to help maintain these houses too. There's no cafeteria or meal plan because we expect them to walk to the grocery store and to learn how to cook themselves.

I mean, this is not a school where we try and give them everything that, from, you know, one direction downwards, we were really trying to raise them up and having a real responsibility. You're a real adult. It's not an extension of adolescence. Yeah. All right. What else you want to point people to will bring up before we wrap up? oh everything yeah oh here we got some questions do you mind yeah let's keep going yeah just a thought that american families have reduced the number of children they have due to the crippling cost of higher education sad side effect yeah one thing they say and i don't know how much this is going to resonate with people but i find it very interesting like studying economics and such that um you know what happens

whenever there's like a bubble that bursts in, you know, in the market, right? You know, dot-com bubble bursts, right? You know, housing market bursts, right? What does the government always do? They toss a whole bunch of money at it, right? They try and rejuvenate economic activity in those very industries so as to get people back working, right? Well, what happens in higher education every year, right?

Well, it's just a constant flow of money going back. back into the university system. I mean, this is why student debt grows up every year. It was $1.5 trillion last year. It's $1.8 trillion this year. They just a constant amount of money tossing it into the system. Okay, what does that enable? It enables the education bubble never to burst, right? The regular demand is not felt with regular market stresses because the government keeps tossing money inorganically into the industry, right? So why is it, when will we see a bursting of this bubble? Well, it's really when the generation, in the first generation, that graduated college

with massive debt, and this is like the turn of the millennium, that's when that happens, with massive student debt, are still in debt by the time their 18-year-olds are thinking what to do next. And they're going to say, I'm still paying off my loans. It was not worth it. you should do something else. And when there's enough people saying that, then we're going to see a massive decrease in student population across the United States.

We've already started to see this, a million less since COVID, right? Because who wants to go to college just for, you know, be looking at a screen? Evan Leary says, seems to me apathy is a huge problem in every part of our culture because we've been taught that nothing really matters or has inherent value, whether a baby or a family or doctrine or thought. I think he's right. Other than cost, asks Patrick, in what sense are universities dead?

Plenty of STEM scholarship is better than ever. As a counter-example, why is STEM mostly ignored in this conversation? Ah, great, great point. Yes, I'm thinking here largely about the humanities when I'm making these critiques, right? I think our critiques of technology can be applied to make more dynamic the consideration of going into STEM and what you're doing within STEM. So I would provide that as a consideration of also why the humanities are necessary for STEM, right?

But university education, is it, you know, once was, is holistic education. University. Yeah, exactly. To bring unity out of diversity. Precisely, right? That you can't really be a good engineer if you don't really know the Gospels, right?

You can't really be a good scientist or mathematician if you do not know Plato. These are huge shortcomings because you don't understand really why you're doing what you're doing if you don't have that training and that knowledge that you're just going to continue to make things one after. I mean, I was talking to a friend in grad school or acquaintance in grad school. and he was talking about designing AI robots. It was like really cool, but totally reminded me of the Terminator. And I kind of brought that up to him. It was like, aren't you worried about that?

And he goes, oh, I don't know. Yeah, I actually am. I'm terrified of it in all honesty. But, you know, it won't be my contributions that really do it. I'm just going to get it to the next step. And it was just like, holy smokes, man. Like, you were responsible in the little part that you did, right? Um, and it's like, anyways, it was kind of, it was kind of like a shocking conversation because he's not really asking why he's doing it. He's just asking how can I do it. Yeah. Right? The why is the humanities. The how is the stem. Okay. And we need both to go together. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. One last pitch for St. Joseph College. Please do it. Do it hard. I'll judge you how well you've done.

Thanks, Matt. No, that was me asking you for a pitch for St. College. Oh, oh, how hard. I thought you were saying that that was a pitch. Maybe I could just repeat that back. Do it. Do it hard. I'll judge you. How hard you do it.

All right. Well, look, I gave you this shot. I hear it. The long and short of it is that college is not for everybody, right? That not everybody needs to be going to college. I would encourage those who are not finding the discipline that they, in the classroom as a vivifying and innervading point of life. But if that's you, where you have found your soul jumping up like St. John,

when you learn something new and that you understand innately how that begins to completely transform how you think and thus how you think, how you behave, then we want you to have the power to take the beautiful truths from the ivory tower and to be able to instantiate them in the world. We want to give you the skills by which to do that. We want to give you both the education of the head and the hands. And if that is intriguing to you, I'd ask you. That's pretty pretty good, A-plus.

Marcio says, thank you to Matt. I fell in love with my faith again years ago. I'm a Catholic painter. check out my painting of Carlo Acutus adoring the Eucharist on my Instagram and tell me what you think. If it's good, would you send it to me? Can we ask this guy to send it to me?

We're going to check it out right now. That's what we're going to do because that's the beauty of doing things live. Here it is. Okay, so this is him. I'm on his Instagram account. Oh, wow. I haven't seen it yet, so I'm only reacting to that's reaction.

Hang on. Wow, he's very good. Very good. I'm looking at it, wow. Sorry, I know you can see nothing right now, so this is very boring for you, but I don't care. Don't bother me. I'll sing a song.

Yeah, like, that's quite beautiful. The next McDonald's. You can see that, right? Yeah. Oh, that is amazing. What a great painting. Look at that. Oh, wow.

Holy smokes. oh that is so neat what are unveiling it's beautiful that is Jacob thank you very much for coming on thanks man it's fun man

yeah old times sure is god bless everyone thanks to being here check out st joseph college of st joseph dot com again there is a link in the description

to see the great work they're doing over there and john you can click stop whenever you want unless you're not there anymore Thank you.