Pints With Aquinas - Modern Art, Pornography, and Redemption (Andrew Klavan) | Ep. 526

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Andrew Klavan is an American novelist, screenwriter, and video satirist. He is known for his political and cultural commentary on Daily Wire's The Andrew Klavan Show. 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 College of St. Joseph the Worker – Earn a degree, learn a trade, and graduate without crippling debt: https://collegeofstjoseph.com/mattfradd 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

Pines with Aquinas is brought to you by Truthly, which is a ground-breaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith. Start your 7-day free trial today when you download Truthly on the App Store. Coming soon to Android. I think the major event of the last 500 years is the loss of faith. It's the disenchantment of the world, the loss of faith in God. And so all our art speaks about it. And what happens to the female body is that it disappears. It first becomes nude, that's the first thing. It loses its majesty.

It's instead of being the Virgin Mary, the Virgin Mary becomes humanized, which is very, very beautiful. And then over time, as the idea of God disappears, you get the impressionism and the abstraction where we cease to trust our own perception. Our perception becomes a lie, an illusion, which it would have to be because we perceive

ourselves as selves, right? And that, as you say, the creature disappears if God disappears. And so it must be an illusion that we're a self. I'm just an animal, I'm just a machine that's sitting here and AI can replace me and all this nonsense that we believe. And that is all in the paintings. It's all in the paintings. The female body specifically falls apart. By the end of it, you get Jackson Pollock's sprinkling paint and as you say, it represents the time so

it has some value. It shows us to ourselves. But when we see ourselves in that, we should be horrified. Instead of giving the guy a million dollars, we should be going to a collective psychiatrist and sort of curing this mental illness. Andrew Claven. Andrew Claven. Andrew Claven. Daily Wire commentator. Best-selling novelist, screenwriter, and cultural critic. Claven exposes the moral decay of Hollywood.

That's the issue. That's why art is so bad now. It's because they can't write women as women, so they can't write men as men. Each story that's a true story is a mirror held up not just to nature, but to our nature. As material reaches its peak, which I think was probably in the 90s, zombie stories became huge. The stories of men are meat. We eat them. You know, that's what it is. We're just steeped in sin. I mean the world is steeped in sin. And I noticed that when Christians reach that point, sometimes they lose their joy. Why is it

that I write about dark things that my perspective has gotten even darker than it was before I was a Christian and yet I've also gotten more joyful in that piece. Because horror seems to be the most exaggerated example of portraying evil. What's the line? That attitude that you are here to cause excitement and even eroticized excitement by the suffering of others is something that I think it's not art and it's repellent. So when you write a story in which it's really just a pure pleasure, you're lying. And art can never lie. Art has to be true. If it just becomes physical, then what's the

difference between that and porn? What's the difference between having sex with a million women and watching porn? If you don't individualize the person you're making love to to the point where you give them your life, essentially, then you've actually lost yourself. You know, you disappeared. I loved Game of Thrones, and it was the first few seasons as HBO's trick to keep you watching.

They would explain something, and while they were explaining something, two naked women would be having sex. I think that's intrinsically evil. I don't think there's any situation in which that's acceptable. I understand they're explaining something to naked women would be having sex. I think that's intrinsically evil. I don't think there's any situation in which that's acceptable. I understand they're representing something, but it's a false representation. I think it is corrupt. But still.

Thank you so much for watching Pines with Aquinas. Before we get into the interview, I'd like to ask you to please consider subscribing. Over 58% of people who watch this show regularly are still not subscribed. So please do it. It's a quick, free, easy way to support the channel. We really appreciate it. Andrew Claven, thank you for coming back on. It's a pleasure. It's great to see you again. I wanted to tell you this because I thought you might be flattered by it, but in a way that's actually genuine. My last, the fella who worked with me up in Steubenville, Josiah, wonderful fella, would be the first to say doesn't like Daily Wire. Yeah,

conservative guy, but like doesn't like Daily Wire, doesn't like, you know, the takes of the hosts most of the time. But he was like, Andrew Clavin was the kindest person who ever. Oh, that's nice. I meant to be cruel, I just forgot. Yeah, yeah, that's nice. Bring that bring that in a little bit I know this is your first time using a microphone You said a fist Yeah, thanks for coming on how many of these bloody things have you done so far? It's been a lot and it's back, you know, I've been traveling at the same time

So I it's like I'm operating on very few hours of sleep. Yeah, I'm just waiting for that one interview This may be it where I just like completely incomprehensible. We were speaking before we hit record about what the mean things people say. And one of the things people often say to me is, hey, you look exhausted. And I'm like, I feel fine. I slept great. I just look like this now. Well, congratulations on your new book. I read it. It's called The Kingdom of Cain, Finding God in the Literature of Darkness. I just want to quote, I did this last time. I read something from you because I think you're an excellent writer. Listen to this, listen to this. You may have heard it. All right, it's two sentences for those at home. Listen to this. Who has not seen,

who has not heard, who has not despised the sleek, slick, smarmy, ever so fashionable nihilism of intellectual elites in love with the trill and ant-tick of their own debauched philosophy as they theorize to atoms the simple sacredness of human life? Just an example. I guess. I mean, you said I was kind. You're really good at it. Yeah. That doesn't sound that kind.

Alright, let's jump into it. Why did you write the book? You know, I think there's a lot of different strains for why I wrote the book. Two big questions came together. One is, I'm constantly being asked, I constantly get this letter, you call yourself a Christian,

and yet you write about such dark, and I think, being asked, I constantly get this letter, you call yourself a Christian, and yet you write about such dark... And I think, well, yeah, and it was one of my big fears when I actually realized I was becoming Christian, that I would lose that edge, that view of life, you know, that's realistic and basically deals with the things that people do. And the other strain of thought was there's a moment, if you're truly a Christian, you truly follow some version

of what you read in the gospels. I don't care what denomination or what, you know, but if you follow, you start to realize the world is a very dark place. I mean, it's a really dark place. And all those like buffoons who get up and say, we're standing on Native American land. And you think like, so give it back. And it's like, no, no, no, we can't do that. But we and say we're standing on Native American land and you think like so give it back

I say no, no, we can't you can't do that. But we'll pretend we're gonna you know, because there's we're just steeped in sin I mean the world is steeped in sin and I've noticed that when Christians reach that point sometimes they lose their joy, yes, and I have found that that hasn't happened to me. In fact, my attitude toward life has gotten much darker, and yet I have gotten much more peaceful. And I thought, well, that's an interesting question. These two things are kind of related. So why is it that I write about dark things, that my perspective has gotten even darker than it was before I was a Christian, and yet I've also gotten more joyful in that piece.

This is what you say, you say, quote, they become so pessimistic they cannot tell the difference between a good day and a bad one, because every day takes place on the planet of our sins. Yeah, and it's like, and you know, I'm sure you know a lot of people who's like, it's the end of days. And you go, really?

Because it might be, but you know, I mean, we're not gonna know until the last minute, but it might be the end of days, but it's no worse, it's the end of days. And you go, really? Because it might be, but we're not going to know until the last minute. But it might be the end of days. But it's no worse than it's ever been. And it's actually better in many ways than it's ever been. And yet, and yet, you look around, and there's a lot of dark stuff.

And everything we touch is stained with sin. And so I started to think about the fact that there are certain murders, certain famous murders, that have been made into movie after movie after movie, and movies that have inspired other movies, and novels that have inspired movies, and novels that have inspired other novels,

and philosophy. And I thought like, I'm just gonna write about those and see what it is that artists do that makes those stories revelatory. Because if I had to mark the beginning, and any journey you can mark a number of beginnings, but if I had to mark one of the beginning points of my turn toward faith, it was reading crime and punishment when I was 19, because it erased the idea that morality is relative. When you get to that scene, that axe murder scene,

you think like there's no planet where that could be good. That's an evil, you know, no matter where you are, no matter who you are, no matter what you think, that's evil. And so that was kind of once you got to that place, it's the only leap of faith I ever took that, you know, there is such a thing as morality. And once you get there, you're stuck with God. You're gonna wind up, it took me years to get there, decades to get there, but still. And so I always joke, if I went into a Christian bookstore today and said, can I have that book about the axe murderer

who gets saved by a prostitute? Yeah, I don't, police, you know, security, you know. And so I wanted to write about like why it is that I feel that delving into the darkness actually can restore your faith and what it is about art that that brings God out and everything, I think. Yeah, I want to give people a disclaimer. This is not a book for the faint of heart. This is not a book to hand your teenage child without reading it first. I mean, it's really dark. I mean, there are some things in there that wow. Although by the faint of heart. This is not a book to hand your teenage child without reading it first. I mean, it's really dark. I mean, there are some things in there that wow. Although by the end of it, I think the last third of it is, I think a little different

than that. Yeah. Okay. Let me start with a more general question. I'm actually interested. What is art? I think it's something that rational beings create. What else? What is art? I think it's something that rational beings create. Yes. What else? What is it? Well, it's also a way of Transferring the inner experience of one human being to other human beings I mean that's that's basically what Tolstoy said He wrote a little pamphlet called what is art and yeah And and he said it's a way of transferring emotion from one person to another But I think it goes beyond that because when you say emotion, it's not just feeling things,

it's the entire experience of being alive, which is not a scientific experience, it's an actual spiritual experience. And we live in this world where we'll say things like, I have an adrenaline rush, meaning I'm excited, as if the chemical we're causing the emotion, which is nonsense, it's obvious nonsense, Yuval Harari, the darling of Davos, you know,

the intellectual, he says, the only thing that ever makes us happy is basically a feeling inside us. It's not that you won the baseball game. It's not that you found true love. It's not that you got a promotion. It's this feeling inside, it's this chemical reaction. That's garbage.

That's silly thinking, you know? And so I think that what art does is it takes this indescribable feeling. I can't tell you what it feels like to fall in love or to be out in the rain. I can't tell you what it's like to do anything. But I can tell you a story or write a song or paint a picture that communicates that moment to you. And in doing that, I think you actually take up the work of creation from God in the same way a mother does when she creates life. I think that that's, you know, it's obviously

a poor imitation of that, but it's still the same kind of enterprise. It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis said about friendship. Like a friendship is formed when one man says to another, what, you too? I thought I was the only one. Yes, yes. And so it's kind of pulls us out of our solipsistic caves to realize that other people experience the terror and the beauty and wildness of life. And so, I mean, it's so, I mean, especially at three o'clock

in the morning, if you can reach for a book and just feel like you're walking with somebody that you love and you're, you know, it's just, it just ends that solitude, that horrible solitude. One of the things you say early on in the book is that to turn away from the dark aspects of life is to turn away from a great deal of life. Yeah.

And you know, the Bible has a lot of awful things depicted in it. So if your objection is you ought not to be reading something that contains serious sin, well, the torture and crucifixion of the God man is the top among them. There's a big one. There's also adultery and all sorts of things happening.

Incest, rape, everything. And I actually did get, one of the times I got that letter, you call yourself a Christian, but somebody says, I'm just gonna stick with the Bible. Good luck to you, my friend. It's way worse. Stuff I wouldn't put in my books. But a question I have is, I mean, what makes,

let's use horror, because horror seems to be the most exaggerated example of portraying evil. What makes certain horror books or movies cross that line into garbage or cross that line into, you know, a serious Christian or not to be actually, and maybe you disagree with that. No, I don't agree with that. Okay, so what's the line?

Well, the story I always tell about this when I was in, everything in Hollywood goes down to the lowest common denominator. And when I was in Hollywood, I realized because of the movie The Ring, I realized that ghost stories were going to be popular. I love ghost stories. I knew do too. You write very good ghost stories by the way. Mediocre, but thank you. I like them very much. But anyway, I saw The Ring, I thought my career is made. I'm going to be selling ghost scripts forever because that's what I like. It was PG-13, it was not very bloody,

a lot of scares but not really. So I started writing ghost scripts and they became, I was very successful selling them, none of them got made but I was selling them like crazy. And when you do that, people start to call you in with stories that they wanna tell and ask you how you would tell them. So they'll say, we have the story about a ghost

who does this and I'll say, well, how would you do that? And if they like your take, they hire you and you make good money that way. So they called me in for one of these things and the guy said to me, we have a story and we wanna hear your take on it. I said, great. He said, a woman gets kidnapped and she's tortured.

And I said, yeah. That's the story. I said, you know, and this is literally what I said to him. I said, when I see a woman being chased across the screen by a guy with a butcher knife, I'm rooting for the woman. And it was like, thanks, don't let the door hit you all the way out. That attitude that you are here to cause excitement

and even eroticized excitement by the suffering of others is something that I think is, it's not art and it's repellent. The only time I've ever seen it where it was art is in the Marquis de Sade, and that's because he was saying, I am an atheist, this is what life is to me. And I thought, that's true.

If you're an atheist, that is what life is to me. And I thought, that's true. If you're an atheist, that is what life is to you. And it's power and feeling and sensation. And that was another step on my way to God when I thought, yeah, if that's what atheism is, I'm out. But I have felt that numerous times. I hate watching movies like Friday the 13th. But then you have a movie like Halloween that's in that genre, it's actually highly intelligent.

And it's not like that at all. It's really about the dissolution of the community. And so I think it's the sensation of sexual pleasure at the suffering of others. And I don't wanna say sexual, I wanna say erotic. And I think that's how you know. So back to what we said earlier about what art is, and then you said this example of a guy tortures a woman in a room at the end, and you said that's not art. Why isn't it

art? It's art. It's art because in real life, we live in a moral universe. We live in a universe where there are consequences for what we do. I'm not talking about, oh, you go to hell, God doesn't like you. I'm talking about what happens to your soul, how you deform your soul with hatred, with violence and all that stuff. So when you write a story in which

it's really just a pure pleasure to do this, you're lying and art can never lie. Art has to be true in some sense. There's certain horror, I mean, I was introduced to horror way, first of all, here's a good argument, I think, all right, let me just back up. Cause I know we had a lot of Christians

who watched the show, obviously, and many are gonna take issue with horror at all. I think here's an argument for why horror can be legitimate. So low bar here for people, right? You would say something like, if all horror stories, let's say, were intrinsically evil, that is to say, they can never be produced or read, then something like, sorry, I should have written this down,

but something like Hansel and Gretel, right? Which is one of the most horrific tales I've ever read. And if you don't think it's horrific, you're not paying attention. Certainly it was maybe when you were five. There are other movies like The Quiet Place. There are, you know, so what is horror? Horror kind of produces a strong feeling of dread or fear.

Right? You don't think that things like Hansel and Gretel and The Quiet Place and Dracula are intrinsically evil. Therefore, you can't just write off the entire genre. You have to kind of say, okay, fine, maybe there are some instances where it's okay. I mean, there are people who will bite the bullet and just say, no, all of it's wrong. But I mean, if that's a good definition of horror, that it incites a strong feeling of these things, the passion of the Christ, okay, that might be a little too strong borderline example, but there are others that we would all agree are good movies,

but they do incite a strong feeling of fear or dread or disgust within us. And so that's why I've always really liked horror. I was introduced to it way too early. I think I was 13 years old and I was watching all the Halloweens, all the Freddy Kruegers and all that, but I've always loved the strangeness of horror. Yes, the eeriness of it.

The eeriness is what I just kept coming back for. And the whole argument of this book centers on the idea that in performing an act of creation, you're performing an act of love, and that makes you creating beauty at some level. And the perfect example of this is Macbeth. Because if there were ever a heart, it's got demons, it's got witches, it's got Satan, it's got everything. Murder, betrayal, sexual confusion, it's got everything in it.

Including nihilism, including the most beautiful nihilistic speech ever written, right? Life is over. To be or not to be? Right. And it's gorgeous. I mean, you finish with it and you think, that was wonderful. I mean, that was wonderful. There's an old superstition to even mention it is bad luck in the theater because it,

I think because it's so packed with evil. But when you watch it, you think like, oh my God, I know something now I didn't know before and what you know is a moral thing. And my argument in the book is in doing that an artist is imitating God because this is a world that has gone terribly wrong, and terrible things happen in this world. And our faith and our trust is not really in justice, and it's not entirely in mercy, it's in beauty. It's in the idea that in the end, when we see face to face the design,

we'll go, oh, that was beautiful. Because no other argument holds together. I mean, this is, you know, in Brothers Karamazov, when Dostoevsky's Ivan says, I don't care if there's a God, I'll accept that there's a God, but he can't make it up to me that children suffer. That no heaven is gonna make it up to me

that children suffer. And heaven is going to make it up to me that children suffer. And my answer to that is, your mind is too small to know the beauty that can be made out of even this. And the example that I end the book with is the Pieta, which is the most beautiful statue ever made, in most people's opinion, and certainly mine. And it's a statue of the worst thing that ever happened. It's a mother losing her child. it's the world losing its God, it's a terrible sin, a terrible crime and injustice, a horrible sacrifice. And yet you look at that and you think like, oh my God, I'm in

the presence of almost perfect beauty. And if a man can do that out of that moment, what can God not do out of this? I wonder if it's like we have an, maybe when we have an immature view of Christianity, we seek to create immature art because we figure that Christianity, as we understand it, can't actually handle the great evil that all of us face in life. And so a lot of the movies and things that like,

like God bless those people, right, who put out God is not dead videos, I'm sure they had the greatest of intentions. But to me, it was like the movie form of the debates I have in the shower with atheists, where I destroy them. You know what I mean? It's like, it was just, no conversation's ever gone like that, and so you kind of make Christians

look triumphalist, but then you send people out into the real world and they're faced with maybe more sophisticated objections, which Christy actually can handle, but you weren't even given that. And I wonder if the kind of art that you're talking about, Christianity is big enough to handle the horror and evil of the world. It always did before when Christianity was at its height, which is somewhere in the Middle Ages into the Reformation, in that period of 300 years, say. The art was incredibly gorgeous.

I mean, your cardinals are sitting under one of the greatest paintings as we speak. They're in conclave under one of the greatest paintings on earth, that Sistine Chapel. But it's filled with horror. It's filled with nightmare. I mean, truly monstrous, terrible horror. This might be a good objection, so it's just to insert real quickly, if a Catholic's watching who has total,

is wanting to say that horror is always evil, then you're gonna have to throw out the inferno, because that is the most terrifying thing you could ever read. Yes, and really horrific. I mean, and you know, even in the man who's possessed in the graveyard, you know, where Christ comes, if you read it closely, that's a ghost story.

I mean, there's a guy in a graveyard walking around full of demons, you know, and who's on, my name is Legion. That's a terrifying thing to say. Yeah. And so, look, it's part of life. The God we believe in, the God I love is here, now. He's, you know, this is the world that he saves. And it's not Candyland.

It's not only if you're a good boy. I mean, if they were only a good boy, we'd all be screwed entirely, you know? It's this world that we, all of us wrestle with things. All of us have done things that keep us up at night. You know, every one of us, and if we haven't done them, we've thought them yet. Yes.

And so, it is this world, and if an artist can take that world and make it somehow resonant with inner life, it becomes beautiful on this other plane. And I don't judge any work of art that's a work of art. What I hate is lies. When I walk in and I see a movie or read a book and I think, that's just not true. I mean, I actually hadn't experienced,

I love mysteries and thrillers. I hadn't experienced one, so I was reading a novel, got to the last end and realized that it was actually a wicked, it was actually leading me into kind of the world of this bad guy, this child killer with pleasure, you know, and I threw the book away, finished the book, threw it into the garbage and then actually had to wake up in the middle of the night, take it out. Thank you so much.

No, I'm good. Thank you. Take it out of the garbage, carry it outside and throw it. I do not want that thing in my yeah And yet and yet I've read books with far more horror in them than that that I thought were beautiful You mentioned the quiet place was I love that that was one of the last movies. I really loved and that that moment which is one of the most frightening moments in film of That woman giving birth while death is all around her to me that was if you know I hate movies in which women beat up men and women cops chase men down things that

can happen here, but the idea of this woman who is utterly vulnerable and forced to a level of nobility by sheer terror. I mean I was I was twisted like a pretzel as I it in my seat, you know, I was twisted up. And at the end I was like, that was great. Did you ever watch the movie by Shyamalan? Is that how you say it? Yeah, Shyamalan, yeah.

Shyamalan of Amman away. What's that, it's called The Beach, is that the movie? The Beach. Where they all go to this beach and they grow old rapidly and they don't know what's happening. Oh no, I've heard of that. I've never seen it. Please watch it. Really? I was on a plane flying back from Europe

and I was moved so desperately. I was crying like an idiot. Really? You know when you don't wanna cry? No, that's not what I meant. Sometimes you want to. You're like, this feels good. I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Yeah, on a plane, you're like, this is just embarrassing. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I still wanna try to tease out when it becomes, because there's horrific things, and we can portray them in a way that gives glory to God. We don't have to just talk about the nice things that happen, because clearly not only nice things happen, and yet I'm still conflicted. Like when I write my little horror stories, sometimes I don't think it's simply a matter of, well, good has to win in the end. Because sometimes good doesn't. Sometimes good doesn't win in the end in a certain situation. Things just suck and that's it. Yeah.

But your stories pull out this uncanny thing that is very real and the reaction to it, which is sometimes fear and sometimes glory, I think that's a very real thing. And if you tell the, look, if God is real, then reality will speak of God. It's not just the heavens that declare the glory of God. It's everything, you know? And so I think that this inner life,

why would you say to anybody that the parts of the inner life that are horrific are not parts of your communication with God? That's not true. You know, the comparison that I make, and I have a sort of slightly long-form theory about movies like God is Not Dead, which actually give it more credit than I wanna give it, because I don't like those movies,

but I think they've created a Christian audience, and I think that will eventually make better art. But if a woman watched romantic comedies, and thought this is what love was like, she would really have a terrible time in dealing with what love is actually like. And if you watch God is Not Dead, and you think that that's what life is like

when you have faith, you're gonna have a terrible time when you meet the atheist with a perfectly good argument, or just the injustice of life. You know, I think, you know that line that C.S. Lewis says, we don't have to be worried about showing children dragons. They know there are dragons. And I think that that's true of everybody. We all know there's real horror.

And that thing of everything happens for a reason and he's gone to a better place. I mean, there's no problem with God is not dead. He gets hit by a car. Everybody goes, well, at least he believes in God. It's like, could we cry? Could we call his wife? Could we not mourn for death, which is so horrifying? I just think it's fake. It's fake. And I don't think my faith is not fake. My faith is in a real world, in a real God in a real world.

You say, it is here and now that we are commanded to make what we see into the beautiful, not in a better past than ever was one, not in a future utopia, there will be none until Christ returns, and not in the dreamy warmth of some hymn-singing Christian tale that flatters believers with a happy ending. There are no happy endings, not in this, the only life we know, and I see what you mean by that, no happy endings, no innocent cultures, no righteous people, no better yesterdays or tomorrow. There is only this life, this moment

in which we must cultivate the peace, amen, that passes understanding and grow the creative joy that is Christ in us. We have only one sinful self to love, only sinful others to love as we love ourselves. There is no one to point a finger at who is not our own reflection. And then this is very much from Brothers Karamazov, right? There is no one to forgive but everyone being responsible for the sins of others, the sins

of the world. Yeah. Because, I mean, I'm sure you see this stuff all the time. I see it on X where people just unleash in the name of Christ this hatred on people. Yes, of course. Think like, dude. I have repented of that. I mean, I've gone to confession because there's been times on this show that I've like called out somebody.

And I get, right, if something is public, okay, presumably you can now address it. But what I was repenting of was the fact that I didn't need to call it out and that I took a sort of sick delight in it, right? That kind of like in the Brothers Karamazov, the author, when he talks about the trial, was talking about that kind of feverish excitement

over the death of this man and the son who may have killed him and that thing, I don't wanna be part of that. And you know, there is this thing like, ideas can be so repellent, you know, that you have to fight with them. You have to say that idea. Yeah, oh, 100%.

But I was joking about this on my podcast the other day was that these anti-Semites show up because of stuff I've said and they just scream at me and they have bots and all this stuff. And I just, and I said, you know, there is this little mean streak in me that enjoys watching them turn their souls into something damnable. I know that's wrong, but I have to admit, I think. But really what I wanna do is just,

what I really wanna do truly is say, stop, don't you see what you're doing to yourself? You're not hurting me, you know? I mean, I'm gonna still be loved by the people who love me. I'm gonna still have the life that I live and the God that I love, you know? But you're doing to yourself, you're not hurting me. I mean, I'm gonna still be loved by the people who love me. I'm gonna still have the life that I live and the God that I love. But you're just turning yourself into something awful. You're not gonna do that.

Yeah, that actually would be a good premise for a horror story where someone kind of engages in something that makes them increasingly ugly. What was one of the stories, I suppose, in this book that you, by the way, I was really shocked at the thread of events that led to each story I had no clue. I know that's so I you know, right that was the most fun part in my naivete I just thought okay crime and punishment came out of nowhere

Yeah, nope same thing with psycho and but what maybe since I'm sure you've talked about all of these things on a million different interviews Is there something about one of the stories that that you really kind of passionate about talking about or that brings you brings you joy? So you don't have to repeat the same thing you've said in eight interviews I mean there was something very beautiful in the first Chapter which is called crime and punishment about the chain that goes from this murder in France By a guy who then became a celebrity, you know He was a celebrity because he said I don don't murder because the world is unjust. And that intellectuals fall for that all the time, every single time. And Dostoevsky read

that and was dealing with certain ideas that were kind of in his society. And he invented a character who said, well, a great man, he was basically thinking about Napoleon, a great man is free of the moral law and can do whatever he wants. And he commits this axe murder. And the rest of the story is, well, no, you're not actually free of the moral law and can do whatever he wants and he commits this axe murder and the rest of the story is well no you know you're not actually free of the moral law. Nietzsche then comes along and actually creates that philosophy saying God is dead therefore we must become God therefore we can get rid of this ugly Jewish Jesus thing where we have to be nice to nobodies you know and the the ubermensch, the Superman,

can now rewrite the moral law. And that inspires, in the 1920s, that inspires these two kids, Leopold and Loeb, who are very wealthy Jewish kids who get into a kind of weird homosexual folly, they're really sick, and they decide, well, because we are Nietzschean supermen, we are going to commit a murder and get away with it.

And of course, the morbidly funny part of it is they commit this horrifying murder, and within weeks, they're arrested by the Chicago cops, who are no geniuses, right? They're just like the Ubermenches are. And this becomes, the Leopold and Loeb, which was called the crime of the century, it was the early 20th century,

becomes a dozen movies. They're still making movies about it today. So there was a movie called Compulsion, which was based directly on it and written by a guy who covered the story. There's a movie called Rope, which was based directly on it and written by a guy who covered the story. There's a movie called Rope, which was a play that was written by the guy who wrote the play Gaslight, which is where we get the word gaslight from.

He wrote two great thriller plays, one is Gaslight and one is Rope, in which these two kids at the beginning kill this guy and put him in a trunk and then have a dinner party. Everyone needs to go watch this movie. And it's a good movie, right? I watched it about three years ago. I you're gonna you're gonna think this is crazy I'd never watched a Hitchcock movie in my life until at three years ago

Wow and I thought well I have heard of it I'll just try it and you know my stupid sort of modern ignorance just assumed every movie that was made before dumb and dumber wasn't any wasn't worth watching it I could not believe how excellent it was I did think the speech at the end was a bit sanctimonious and too on the nose. And the speech in the play is so much better. The speech in the play, because there's a guy in the play who's kind of the hero, I guess you call him, he's the protagonist.

And in the play, he's this kind of fop, but he's been in World War I and he has all these kind of sophisticated notions. Well, you call it murder when one man kills another, but when I go to war and we kill an entire manhood of one nation, kills the entire man, then we call it war and it's noble. He's got all these things.

And then he sees the body because he's kind of the detective and he uncovers the body and he's completely transformed. It's a great speech. And he just says, he says, you swine, you swine. This was a man. This was a person he loved and laughed, he lived and thought it was good. And you took that away from him and everyone who loved him, and you're going to hang.

It's great. But in the movie, in the movie, they make him, he's Jimmy Stewart. And he sort of says, I never believed in any of that. But he believed in all of it. He says it in the movie that he believed in all of those things. And he won't take responsibility for it What Hitchcock does because Hitchcock is a very visual guy He adds a piece of business where it Stewart went up with blood on his hands

And so he's sort of saying, you know, you may think you didn't do it But you did but but still a speech is sanctimonious and it's yeah It's where the the one in the play is just you can't not work. It's it's so good But then but that has been made, I mean, there's a picture called Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock, which is based on that. There's a TV show called The Sinner, where one of the episodes is based on the Leopold and Loeb case. If I could think of them, there must be 10 at least movies that are based directly on the Leopold and Loeb case, because there are other movies that are based directly on the Leopold and Loeb case because there are other movies that are kind of inspired by it, because it speaks to the loss of faith.

And one of the things about Nietzsche is Nietzsche was right. If God is dead, then everything else he says follows. What he meant by God is dead was that we've lost our religion, but he didn't believe in God, so he just thought that it was a fantasy falling apart. But everything else he says is true. If there is no God, then the rest of it follows. And so the story is so compelling because it basically projects what is happening in our society onto the screen and into this compelling story in the same way that materialism, when as materialism reached its peak, which I think was probably

in the 90s, zombie stories became huge, the stories of men are meat. We eat them. That's what it is. That's why Hannibal Lecter is so compelling as well. And so each story that's a true story is a mirror held up not just to nature, but to our nature. And I think the major event of the last, let's say 500 years, is the loss of faith. It's the disenchantment of the world,

the loss of faith in God. And so all our art speaks about it. All art speaks about it. And it's not the only thing it speaks about, but it's the major thing it speaks about. And yet if you take a university class at a great university university in great literature, if the word God is mentioned, it's probably in the book itself.

It's not the teacher because they don't teach that. They say, oh, it's about, you know, it's this sexist or it's feminist, anti-feminist or it's, you know, colonialist or whatever. They are their bugbears. But every one of them is really written about our relationship with God and what's happening to it because that was the major event of the last 500 years. One of my favorite lines from the Second Vatican Council, I think it was in Gaudium et Spes, it says, when God is forgotten, the creature itself becomes unintelligible. That's right. That is absolutely right. That's the last chapter of this book. I mean, the

last chapter of this book is what happened to art. It's a tour through a make-believe museum using real paintings. And what happens to art and the body as we lose our faith, you know? Talk about that, because we've all seen that kind of abstract art. Now, I don't want to immediately write abstract art off. Sometimes I'll see some paintings

that you sure you could mock and say a two-year-old did it, but sometimes I think it's good for people, experimenting, whatever. But you know, we've all seen, ah, ah, this is a much worse place because this thing is in it. So how do we get to that? I think that the retreat into materialism, which is a real thing, and I think we're all,

we're not free of it, even though we're believers. It infects our minds. The retreat into materialism is a retreat into mental illness. To look at the world as if it were just objects, and what they call scientism, the idea that everything could be figured out in a material way, is mentally ill. And I think all of us partake in this mental illness.

And so if you look at it, and since art is the conscience of our kind, art represents the collective conscience, it plays out in art. illness. And so if you look at, and since art is the conscience of our kind, art represents the collective conscience, it plays out in art. So you start out, I start out in this museum tour with the creation from the Sistine Chapel, you know, and it's this incredible thing, but inside of God, God is kind of shaped in this robe that is both in the shape of a brain and of a womb, and it's in the shape of both. And you can chart it and I can show it to you and all this.

And in that womb is Eve, and she's not born yet. She's just in his imagination. She's just, and as he's giving life to Adam, she is waiting in the imagination. And what happens to the female body in the course of the next 500 years is that it disappears. It actually disappears. First it becomes abstract.

First it becomes nude. That's the first thing. It loses its majesty. Instead of being the Virgin Mary, the Virgin Mary becomes humanized, which is very, very beautiful. And then nudity comes along. And I point out that Shakespeare has a little passage where he uses classical art, art about class nudes in classical subjects as pornography.

And what he's basically saying is, yeah, you think it's real noble art, but it's actually pornographic. And then over time, as the idea of God disappears, you get the impressionism and the abstraction where we cease to trust our own perception. Our perception becomes a Lie an illusion which would have to be because we perceive ourselves as selves, right? And that as you say the creature disappears if God disappears, and so it must be an illusion that we're a self I'm just an animal. I'm just a machine that's sitting here an AI can replace me and all this nonsense that we believe and

That is all in the paintings. It's all in the paintings. The female body specifically falls apart. And truthfully is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith with clarity and confidence. Whether you're navigating a tough conversation, deepening your understanding, or looking for daily spiritual guidance, truthfully is your companion on the journey. It's like if ChatGPT went through OCIA, got baptized and made it its mission to proclaim the truth of the Catholic Church. But Truthly is more than just a Q&A tool, it's formation in your pocket. Take audio courses on topics like the Blessed

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Start your seven day free trial today. Download Truthly on the App Store, coming soon to Android. By the end of it, you get, you know, Jackson Pollock's sprinkling paint. And as you say, it's not like it represents the time, so it has some value, it shows us to ourselves. But when we see ourselves in that, we should be horrified. Instead of giving the guy a million dollars,

we should be going to a collective psychiatrist and sort of curing this mental illness. And it ends with a blank canvas, you know, that hilarious, it was hilarious. They gave this guy money, like $80,000, something like that, and said, we want you to paste this on a canvas and to show us the world is materialist. So he handed in a blank canvas and he called the painting,

take the money and run. And he said, my work of art is I took the money. I just thought, good for you, son, you know, finally figured out modern art. And so, and so it takes me back at the end. It takes me back to the Pieta. That's where the book ends, is with the Pieta, because here you have the ultimate female figure,

basically at the ultimate moment of her passion, I guess we would call it. And it speaks of everything, and yet it speaks of how even the horror of life is beautiful. Yeah, we call it Good Friday. Yes. In another one of your books,

it was a Cameron Winter mystery. There's this excellent line in there that I read it, and it's always stuck with me. He's talking to his therapist, I believe, you can correct me if I'm wrong, and he talks about his fornications of the past, and he said something like, they were just shapes to me, something like that. And it seems to me that for all of its exposure,

pornography doesn't expose, it actually suppresses the subject and leaves us with the shell. It's poison. And I think that's a good distinction, perhaps, between, say, the body being depicted, say, the Sistine Chapel or some other painting that's done beautifully, is that there's an inner life to the subject that you're drawn into. Whereas the last doesn't want that. Like, I'm not interested in your feelings, your inner world, your freedom. I just want the body.

So it seems, I think that's, again, this is difficult to kind of spell out because a lot of this is subjective, but I would say that if a fella went to the Sistine Chapel and did in fact lust over Michelangelo's nudes, that wouldn't be a sign that Michelangelo's nudes were pornographic or that what he painted was wrong. It should set off alarm bells that there's something profoundly wrong in the individual who sees them as such. That's right. I mean, you know, speaking of that form thing, there was a, there's a show on called White Lotus that I've just watched about these rich people who go to different hotels in each season. Okay.

And it's, it's, it's very clever, very clever show, but it had a speech in this third season. Sam Rockwell, one of my favorite actors, the speech where he says I you know I went to Thailand that took this one took place in Thailand and I just slept with and I he said I've always had a thing for Asian girls I just slept with Asian girls and then he goes on unrepeatable you know obscene speech. Yeah, he said then I start to think because all he was just having sex and he said I started to think what is this this? Why do I care?

Because her form is the opposite of mine. It's just a form, these shapes, why is it a shape? And then he says, I think I wanted to be the Asian girls. And he ends up, of course, having gay sex and having people watch her. It just gets more, and I thought, that's a great speech. You talk about an obscene speech that's also a great speech because what he's saying is, if you don't individualize the person you're making love to,

to the point where you give them your life, essentially, if you don't do that, then you've actually lost yourself. You disappear, because we're all looking for something that's inside us. We're all looking to fill some thing inside us. And if it just becomes physical, then what's the difference between that and porn? What's the difference between having sex with a million women and watching

porn, which is ultimately a form of impotence, you know? Yeah. I wonder if we disagree on something. I'd love to kind of tease it out. Have you heard of the language of intrinsic evil? This is what the church teaches, that it just means that there are certain things, certain objects chosen by the will that cannot be remediated by intention or circumstance. And it sounds like you agree with it because earlier on you said there's no possible universe in which bringing down an axe on an old woman's head could be justified. You can't say, well, you know, his intention was to free her from suffering or the consequences were that her sister, let's say in a different world, became rich and people benefited.

In fact, that is actually one of the things that they talked about at the pool hall before he makes the murder. If you remember, he tries to justify it saying that she's something of a leech on society. So there are certain actions that are always and in every instance wrong. Like killing wouldn't be, killing humans wouldn't be an intrinsic evil, but murdering the innocent intentionally would be. So I think that pornography, and I love talking about pornography because I just find the subject so fascinating. It's a fascinating subject.

It's fascinating because I don't know how to define it. I've tried and I'll give you mine in a minute, but you can look at pornography from different angles, say the production, the distribution, the consumption, the performing in. I think pornography is something like material the production, the distribution, the consumption, the performing in. I think pornography is something like material which depicts erotic behavior and which is intended to be interacted with in the way a man might interact with a prostitute.

It entered the English language in the mid-19th century to mean just that, a sort of pornographia, the writing of the prostitutes, so that a man or a woman engages in pornography in a sort of sexualized way that leads them to climax. I think that's intrinsically evil. I don't think there's any situation in which that's acceptable from any angle. But you know what's really fascinating? I've shared this on the show before, so people will forgive me, but I hope you'll find it interesting. A man can look, think of a situation where a couple go to an Airbnb and they're out on the back deck and they've had a couple of wines and they make love. And okay, and let's say there's a camera and it's filming it. And so now you have a filmed sex act, which is not pornography. And then let's say you've got a fellow who owns the Airbnb, he pulls up his computer

because there's an alert and he's now watching a filmed sex act, which objectively isn't pornography but could subjectively be that to him, but not necessarily. So like to stretch it and to say it even more aggressively, a man could watch child pornography and it be a good thing. What do I mean? The police officer who, I'll say it really quickly, right? Who views child pornography for the sake of identifying a victim and a perpetrator. So there's this distinction then between what we could say watching and then maybe consuming, like interacting with the material, the way in which the producer or distributor intends it to be.

All right, so I'd love your thoughts on that if you have them. But I don't think it's ever okay to watch pornography. And so I would say things like, I wouldn't say that Game of Thrones is pornography. From what I understand, I've never watched the show. It's an excellent, complicated, sophisticated story, but clearly contains pornography. So I think it's always wrong to consume that. But I don't think you

think that. I think maybe you're okay with watching, I'm not saying you delight in it, but that it's sometimes morally acceptable to view or to portray sex acts graphically in books or movies. That's what I picked up from this, but I can't tell. Well, yeah, it's such a complicated thing. I have a lot to say about it. I do have to start with one story. When I first moved in with the girlfriend who is now my wife of 50 years,

we had this little place on a narrow street in Manhattan, and across the street, this beautiful couple moved in and started making love next to an open window. Damn it. Come on guys. We need a blackout curtain. I'm thinking unbelievable this is unbelievable and they were gorgeous. I mean she was unbelievably beautiful and my wife came in, my soon-to-be-wife came in and I said this is filthy this is really obscene. And she looked over my shoulders. She said, we do all that. And I said, well, it's not when it seemed when we do it, because it's happening. It's internal. You know, what we're doing is, is, is not just a

flesh on flesh. It's actually soul to soul, you know, And that may have been the case. Well, I don't know what you were looking at. I don't want to know. No, what I'm saying is to me it was pornography because I was just watching forms, shapes, but to them it wasn't. You know, that's what my wife was saying to them. It may have been the greatest love of all. They may still be together and you know, have a dozen kids and all this. So, so that's, that is one place where I think the pornographic lives. I'm always a little, I'm always a little worried about the word evil because there are some some things in life that are so- Oh, I wanna talk about this. Okay, there's some things in life that are so,

like I would say pornography is always corrupt and corrupting. But that's what I think evil is, and so do you, which I was really pleased in your opening chapter. You and I agree on what evil is. It's parasitical. It doesn't have positive sort of energy. It's the absence of something that ought to be there. Right, but-

So corruption, that word corruption means just that, right? Right, but I guess what I'm talking about is in the same way I would use the word art to mean craft at the highest level, I think of evil as the lowest level of corruption. Yeah. And I think, in other words, if you steal a stick of gum, it's different than shooting a guy in the head. Definitely. Yeah, unless you do both. Yeah, then if you do both stick of gum, it's different than shooting a guy in the head. Yeah, unless you do both. Yeah, then if you do both.

The gum wasn't worth it. So when it comes to art, I loved Game of Thrones. And it was the first few seasons as HBO's trick to keep you watching. They would explain something. And while they were explaining something, two naked women would be having sex. No, absolutely no worries.

They call it, what do they call it? Sex position, because it's exposition, expositional dialogue explaining the story, and then they just have these two women banging each other for no reason. And at one point I was watching it with my wife and I turned to my wife and I said, "'Put your shirt on, sweetheart, I can't hear the dialogue.'"

You know what I'm saying? So I found that exploitative, I found it wrong, I found it difficult, but I knew it wasn't going to do anything to me. I mean, I know myself well enough at this point that like I said to a friend, you should be watching this. And he said, I can't because I get addicted to porn. I said, then you shouldn't be watching. You need to know yourself. Yes. But I guess, I guess for me, I thought, you know, I love stories so much and they mean so much to me and they do so much good for me that I thought like, all right, I get

it. HB, I get it HP. I know these guys, I know the people. I know what they're thinking. You know, it just didn't bother me in that way. And I've seen very, very few nude scenes that were necessary. I mean, yeah, I mean, I can count them. Yeah, okay. You know, yeah. And to your point, you know, maybe I'll watch a movie with my wife and something will happen, Right. I, I'm like, okay, cause I, I need to do that. Yeah. She doesn't need to do that because she's not consuming. She's watching. There's the distinction.

I remember one of my mates from high school, he went home after school and found his mother, had found his porn collection and was cutting up the, you know. So this woman's clearly not guilty of consuming pornography even though she saw exactly what he saw. It's something about the reduction of the human person to an object for my selfish gratification. So yeah, all right, keep going. So, and I think it's very, very different in novels

than it is in movies and when Alfred Hitchcock said the 2 things you should never film he filmed both of them, but he said to things you never film a prayer and sex and he didn't say why but my conclusion was he meant because their internal acts and when you show them, yeah, you're not sure and this one might probably the movies in general by the way the moment when 2 people fall in love is almost always represented as a sex scene in modern movies.

And you think like, well, I sort of see that in terms of storytelling, but in terms of what I'm watching, it's corrupt because that's not what happens when you fall in love. It's not always the moment that you go to bed. In fact, hopefully it's much later than that. But still, I understand they're representing something, but it's a false representation. I think it is corrupted.

In books, you can write the inner life of somebody. And one of my many run-ins with Christian readers was in a fantasy trilogy I did called Another Kingdom, where at one point the hero becomes corrupt. And I had described him using his power to bed a starlet he's become a Hollywood famous Hollywood producer and he uses to bed a starlet he talks about what bliss it is to have sex with this woman,

you know, and they were furious, I know that's what it's like to be correct, you know like in other words, you wouldn't do it if it weren't less yes, you know, it's like yes, so I, and I thought it was, and I thought there was no, at no point was he separated from the moral order. At no point were you thinking, you know who does this well?

Martin Squasez, because he's at least a lapsed Catholic. He may actually be a believing Catholic, I don't know. But he made a movie called The Wolf of Wall Street, which is so riddled with sex. Yeah, so I couldn't watch it. I hear it's great. I'm sure Leo DiCaprio is brilliant. And Margot Robbie is in it naked and she is mind shatteringly beautiful. At the end of the movie, all you can think is I never want to live that life. I never want to live that. I'm so glad I haven't lived that life. Because he's just, I don't know what he does. He infuses it with the kind of death that redeems it.

Yeah, I get that. I can see that. Yeah. I think I've been thinking about this a lot, right? And so, yeah, so let's, I just want to say something about evil again, because I know you say evil, people think all sorts of things, right? They might think of like a cracked porcelain doll face, or they might think of a clown that has a dagger. No, no. By evil, I just mean the absence of a good that ought to be there, or privation. And so we could talk about physical evil and moral evil. Both if a rock lacks sight, this isn't a natural evil. If a man does, it is a natural evil, but not a moral evil. But in every act of moral evil, I would say that you could point to there being

a lack of virtue that ought to have been there. Like if I abuse my children, there's a lack of paternal affection and protection that ought to be there. So that's what I mean. So I'm not, yeah. So it's maybe more of a kind of like, in the philosophical sense of when I say that pornography is evil, I think there's a lack of a good that ought to be there. But so someone might say, all right, Matt, like you say that pornography

is intrinsically evil, and so therefore you shouldn't be depicting it. But you know, there's other things are intrinsically evil, like killing the innocent. And yet you're okay with that being in certain instances, right, depicted. Depicted. So what's the difference? Like you show that and here's why I think, here's what I think the difference is, because I've wrestled with this for a while. I think it's easier for whatever reason to watch an intrinsically evil act such as the murdering of the innocent without committing an internal sin. You know, I can see there's some separation

that still exists. That that is a lot harder to keep distant when I'm watching a sex act. It's something a lot more visceral or it just it's very hard to watch it without consuming it in a way that I think watching a murder in a movie or reading about one in a book is without engaging it. Yeah, because I mean you could you could think of a snuff film, right? So if there's a movie where someone's actually being killed or even you know, it's we're depicting it such that maybe I killed this person even if it is acted out and if that's the entire point of the movie I would say well that should be condemned. So anyway, those are some thoughts.

Well I do think you know that I was I told you that story before about the guy pitching me this story about yeah but those were things that were being made at that time they were called torture porn and it wasn't it wasn't pornography per se but it was people being tortured throughout a long period of the movie for the excitement, the excitation of the audience. And I tried to watch one once because I was out in Hollywood and I thought I keep hearing about this. And I literally could not watch it.

I mean, I just thought, you know, it was girls with beautiful bodies taking off their clothes and then they would cart them off. And I just thought, I'm sorry, I'm not doing that. And that was a sense that like, somebody was doing something evil to me, you know,, I'm not doing that. And that was a sense that like, somebody was doing something evil to me, you know, and I wasn't gonna participate. Now I won't say it explicitly

because I don't wanna divulge personal information, but you do in this book, you talk about, you know, watching certain things that you went down that rabbit trail, it's raining. But we've got really good microphones, so hopefully they won't hear it. So, but I mean, are you of the opinion that no one should ever watch pornography

and my yeah good okay cool me too i mean i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i I mean, can I tell that if you want to you're welcome to of course, I just didn't wanna know I mean, I wrote this book I think it's one of my best books called the Empire of Lies and It's a book that virtually ended my career in the mainstream because it's got a hero who's a conservative Christian And and one of the things he is escaping from is a life of sadomasochistic sex What kills me about this is one of the reasons I started writing about the subject of sadism was because the Marquis de Sade had convinced me not to be an atheist. I was reading atheist stuff and I came upon his work and I thought, yes, he's the only honest atheist I've ever read and that's hell, you know, what he's showing is hell.

So I would use that as a reference point in my work. So he's a Christian and he used to be involved in the sadomasochistic relationship. Now what's funny about this is when I handed it into my editor, he's a Christian and he used to be in involved the sadomasochistic relationship. Now what's funny about this is when I handed into my editor who's absolutely convinced I was writing about myself was going like I have nothing about it so I'm going to look it up yeah, and of course you look it up on the Internet you watch start watching the stuff and

because sadism is the soulless of male sex and others is a certain kind of aggression and now sex and we talk about having conquests you know we talk about we even use the word for sex is an insult as something I'm going to do to you know, yeah, that's it's like almost the worst thing you can say to somebody whereas you know it's actually something theoretically a woman is

supposed to enjoy if you so you know so I started getting caught up in this stuff and I was watching it and I. It was humiliating even to me yes, it made me feel like heart horrible and then I would stop yeah go back to it now. Now, I mean I personally know the experience I was exposed to porn at the age of 8. I had a steady diet of it. Yeah, so I you know, so I'm not you're not alone everyone is many people have been exposed to this stuff and it's I know the feeling of like

hating that I felt like I loved it. Yes, you know, hating myself for that too and that's all and wishing I were better and hating that I wasn't yes and and and also you know you sort of convince yourself that no one can see you as if that matter. Yeah. And the thing about it was when I write there's always a bit of method acting involved I can get into the character all the characters and but I was really into this one I got really connected that he wasn't it's

funny was much more stayed than I am he was much more of a businessman and kind of a straight arrow than I have. But I got I really melted my mine did a mind meld with him and when the book ended It was easy for me to kind of pull away, but I felt like crap and I I write about I came home I said, oh, I love this. I have the best wife in the world. Yes, slow this down for me This is a great story Like I am so crazy about my wife. It's's embarrassing I like I always love these guys who say you're a wimp if you try to please your wife, I think like

well, the lines with pictures of women because I just love this woman she has taken such good care of me and I always left you I say she treats me like a king, but it's just a clever way of getting me to worship the ground she walks on and and I came home and I said to her I'm done I'm never writing another novel that's not worth it. It is you know that's a dead form, you know nobody reads them anymore and I'm you know, and it's killing me and it's absolutely destroyed. She said she said that's nice to

sit down to eat your dinner. I come home. And I think, and that, you know, if you compare that to porn, I think you get the whole story. Yeah, this idea of a lack of a good that ought to be there, it's sort of like why drunkenness is a bad idea, right? Because we eradicate our rationality. That very thing that distinguishes us from the beasts we choose to lower ourself and even the sort of slurs We use against each other

You know carry this connotation, you know, if you call someone a pig or a dog or a chicken Yeah, you know you're saying that you're less than you should be. If I if I call a chicken a chicken That's not an insult, right? You know and and the material the the point I make in the introduction of the book is that the materialist idea is that that's really who we are and everything else is a construct on that. That was the Freudian idea that we repress our sexuality and then we build from that repression, we build this bridge of civilization. And I think it's just the other way around. I've been talking a lot lately about my friends at the College of St. Joseph the Worker, you

know, Jacob Imam, Mike Sullivan, Andrew Jones and company, the guys who started the college that combines the Catholic intellectual tradition with skilled trades training. Well, listen to this, they're growing their program and are looking to connect

with experienced Catholic tradesmen to hire as instructors. So if you are an experienced carpenter, plumber, HVAC technician or electrician and wanna help mentor and teach future Catholic tradesmen, go right now to CollegeofStJoseph.com slash careers to connect with the college and see how you can become part of something truly special. And if you're watching or listening and know a tradesman who needs to hear this message, please invite them to reach out to the college. Again, that's college of stjoseph.com slash careers college of stjoseph.com slash careers. Thanks. It's totally the other way around because I've totally indulged all of those vices and never felt good. Yeah, never. And you can say, well, it's just because you have this Christian guilt complex that you have to overcome?

I only have so many years left. I can't keep playing this game Yeah, it reminds me of when I was 17 years old my mates and I would go to Adelaide the big city We came from a small country town and we would sneak into these strip clubs and they would let us in So I guess we weren't sneaking. They just wouldn't check our ID And there was a fella who would never come in with us. His name was Aidan and check our ID. And there was a fella who would never come in with us. His name was Aidan. And I felt very threatened by that. Yeah. Because I'm about to do something very sort of stupid and effeminate. And I said, you think you're better than us? And he should have said, yeah, definitely. But I remember he would say something like, no, I just, I

just don't think it's really manly to pay a woman money to pretend to like you And then I said go to hell you friggin idiot, so I won the debate yeah And then when one point and acted like an idiot, you know, it's but we we kind of get it. I yeah Yeah, there's nothing mass know about it. Yeah, and and the and the joy of actually living the other way is so intense, you know, that, I mean, I think, I mean, this is in paradise lost. There's an intensity to the joy of physical abuse in the moment. You know, uh, that that is intense, but over time,

having been faithfully married for so many years years, you start to realize oh my God become something it's actually actually kind of like you know which is what you're saying that about yourself that's really a stretch in on the. Yeah, like I you know it has been faithful, I've become a faithful person and I I can look at my son and my daughter and they know that they're looking at they're not looking at a secret they're looking at the person that I am and he

thinks I want to gift, you know, it's insanely good, you know, and and you wrestle with that when you're young because you still have that you know that you still got the sap flowing in every girl walks by think like I you know, yeah, very too young or whatever you know. But then you start to think like I mean really the change for me was the day I, you know, did I marry too young or whatever? You know? But then you start to think like, I mean, really, the change for me was the day I thought, you know, I'm going to stop resisting adultery,

and I'm going to start becoming faithful. That was what I figured out. I thought, I'm going to become a faithful person. I'm not going to say I'm- It's not about a repression. It's about an investment of energy into something. Yeah. And it was transformative.

And I just think it's so obvious when we actually love that we actually are hitting our real selves. I mean, that, that humility, that compassion, that connection with other people, so obvious when you do it, like, Oh yeah, this is great. This is what I, yeah. Yeah. Masturbating to your laptop. Fine. Yeah. Protecting your wife when someone breaks into the house or just, or just, you know, just being okay when she's in pain or sick and you can't come together and you show like, I love you. Like, what can I do to help? Yeah. You're like, Oh God,

let me be the, let me be the person my dog thinks I am. That old joke. Hey, I want to tell you a story which I think you're going to freaking love. This is a man called Alessandro, I forget his last name. There was a young Italian woman, she was 12 years old, her name was Maria Garetti. She lived several, I think hours south of Rome. Her father was poor, they had, I think, six children, and he had to, he sort of lived with a landowner, farmed, gave him the producers payment, and then whatever was left over, he could feed his family with.

All right, he dies of malaria. And so the mother takes over the farm chores, and Maria, who was, I think, 11 at the time, took over cooking, taking care of her siblings. Well, the landowner had a 20-year-old son who would always make crude jokes to her and things like this. And one day he comes in with a knife and says, you're going to have sex with me and she refuses

and he stabs her I think nine times and six of the nine stabs actually went through her body. The other three didn't because they hit her, and the steel thing, I think it was something to sharpen a knife on, actually dented on her spine. So she's lying there and she's dying and he goes off to his room and shuts the door and she gets up and she unlatches the door and she's there to call for help. He comes back and stabs her a few more times. All right. So she goes to hospital and she's dying and she says, I forgive Alessandra. And he goes to jail for 30 years he's sentenced. He actually blames her. He's like, I was protecting myself from her. No, no one believes you. So he's in prison and he was so violent

and so filled with hate that they put him in solitary confinement and isolation for a long time. It was during that time he had a dream of Maria who appears to him and she's holding flowers, the number of which times he stabbed her. And she says, I forgive you. His entire life changed. He's let out three years early, which didn't happen back then. And he goes to Maria's mother and he

asks for her forgiveness. But here's what's crazy. When this all went down, the mother was actually kicked out of the place and all of the other children, I think five other children maybe had to be put up for adoption. So he doesn't only kill this daughter, he destroys the family. And the mother says to him, Maria has forgiven you, God has forgiven you, I forgive you.

She adopts him. And actually it was Christmas Eve that he went to her house and the two of them went to midnight mass together. Maria's mother went to the canonization of St. Maria Garetti. Here's what's really cool. This fella becomes a lay Franciscan in a monastery and lives out his life in repentance. I wanted to give you that. That's a photo of him. And so this fella, Alessandro, is up for people are trying to promote his canonization. And I just think that's an example, right, of a story that's deeply evil.

And yet, it's almost like how Christ descends into the depths in order to redeem it. As a storyteller and a story like this, you go so deep that you just want to throw up and then somehow good comes out of it. And it's also, you know, it's funny in this story, I mean, this story itself is a story of redemption, which is beautiful. But even in a story that has no redemption, the storyteller is the redemption.

Because he is the mind that's over it all. And that's why, you know, the thing I always cite is that speech in Macbeth. It's one of my favorite speeches where he says, life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Now, somebody actually once on a panel I was on, said, well, Shakespeare was a nihilist

because he wrote this. And I said, Shakespeare wasn't a nihilist. I said, Macbeth was a nihilist because he had separated himself from the moral order. And if you go back over the play, Shakespeare shows you Macbeth and Lady Macbeth doing the opposite of creation. God pulls the rib out of Adam and makes a man,

and Lady Macbeth pulls her femininity out of herself and turns herself into nothing, into a mad woman. And that emptiness of separating out of creation, separating from the moral order, makes life meaningless. You know, Macbeth is right, it's meaningless now, but it wasn't meaningless when you started out. And so the beauty of Shakespeare's mind, and Shakespeare is the writer most often compared to God

in his relationship to his work, not like he was a God, but in relationship to his work, he works very much like God, because he lets each person do what they're going to do and live out their nature and and I think that that's just an incredibly beautiful thing to do even though you know it's no happy ending to make that I mean I guess the bad guy loses in the end, but only in the

last scene, I mean it's it's not that it's that he's living in a more world. He's living in the moral world, the real moral world. And I think when you that's the thing that you're looking for when you say when you stop watching art and and I think like that's it that's it. I mean this is Woody Allen has been in this lifelong fight with dos deyeski because you know, and he keeps making crime and

made crimes and misdemeanors. And then he made Matchpoint, which are almost the same movie. And in Matchpoint, the guy actually plans his murder in keeping with crime and punishment. That's how he gets the idea, which is very funny. That's a very funny idea. He reads the book. It's like, I gotta give that a shot. Probably finish the book. It's not supposed to be a guidebook. But in both of those, the murderer in the end says, I don't feel anything and it's all chance and who cares? And I think like, yeah, that's not the way that really happens.

I've known murderers, that's not their lives. Their lives are not, oh, now I'll just go on and everything will be fine. Something died, they killed something in themselves. And so I appreciate his work. Woody Allen? Do you know why I don't think he I appreciate his his work you know what he are yeah you know I don't think I've ever watched a Woody Allen movie when I think of Woody Allen I just think of a pervert maybe I'm wrong and I just suspect that his movies are filled with sexual perversions that I don't want to

bring into my brain but if I'm wrong correct me yeah most of the time you're wrong okay good I mean he's a very his great creation is his character. Kind of neurotic, that's what I understand. He kind of represents that New York character, you know, and it's like, and it is, and when he's funny, if you ever want to read- What's his best movie? You know, it's not his movies that are his best thing. If you go back to his first book of essays in The New Yorker, it's about this thick, it's about a hundred pages. I quoted him this actually because he does an imitation of the Bible that is as funny as anything

I've ever read and it's just... What's it called? Getting Even. It's called Getting Even. And man, that stuff is funny. I mean, that's one of the funniest books ever. And writing a funny book is really hard. I mean, it's like, and then his movies, I like his movies, they're entertaining. And he comes up with really interesting plots that other people have stolen, but you know. I suppose there's artwork that's perennial and then artwork that kind of makes sense for the time

but doesn't last. And I sometimes feel this way about Monty Python You know when I watch certain clips of Monty Python, they're hilarious. Yeah, or when I watch their movies, you know, okay They're really funny. Yeah, but then I'll watch other things. I'm like I just I get it. I maybe they lived in like a An uptight culture and so being absurd was funny But I don't like modern people don't find that funny now. And I think it's cause they were responding to something then, maybe you disagree.

No, I think humor, you know, you know, Douglas Adams. Yes. So he and I became not friends, but we became, yeah. At the end of his life, he moved into my neighborhood and we had him to dinner a couple of times. And we, you know, we chat and and I Want tell me about him because I mean listen, I I read his book when I was young Oh, yeah, and of course, he's an atheist and so there are things I would take issue with that is such a funny book

Such a funny I played the audio tape and it was read by Stephen Fry Yeah, excellent narrator, right? Beautiful voice. And my son was probably 13, 14 at the time, pissing himself laughing. I mean, and I just, such a funny, all right. So this is amazing that you knew him. So there's a famous line by a famous critic

whose name just, it's getting late, and his name just went out of my head. But he essentially said what is usually quoted as, the Shakespeare's tragedies are greater than his comedies because tragedy is greater than comedy. And so Douglas and I got into a conversation about comedy and why it doesn't last, why comedy doesn't last. And he was arguing that no comedy lasts longer

than drama and all this stuff and I quote this line and I said Shakespeare's tragedies were better than his comedies because tragedy is better than comedy. He says Shakespeare's tragedy is better than his comedies because Shakespeare wasn't funny. That's good. Okay. But it's a good point. I mean, is it Steve Martin? You go back and watch his early standup stuff. You might find it funny because you live through it.

I saw him in the theater when he was perfecting that and I was devastated, it was hilarious. But people don't find that funny right now. I mean, why? What changed? What's different? Why does comedy last for a season like that? But then there's other things

that I think will be funny forever. And maybe I'm wrong, but I mean, because it's more general to human experience. Like I think Seinfeld, some of his jokes might not work forever, but some of them are just so human that I think they'll always be relevant. So too with Jim Gaffigan and others, Brian Regan. But maybe I'm wrong, you know,

I mean, because maybe in 20 years they won't be funny. But why, has he used a lot of visual comedy that people don't use today? No, but I think you hit it on the head there When you get what you have to get human nature. It has to be it has to be something essential about human It's true of drama too. You know you have to I was walking down the street in New York once 57th Street very beautiful upper upscale Street and I saw a crowd of people looking in a window and laughing and you know, these are sophisticated New Yorkers This is absolute midtown sophisticated New Yorkers. This is absolute midtown, sophisticated New Yorkers. And they're in stitches. So of course,

I go over and I look and it's Charlie Chaplin. And what he's doing is, I think it's from City Streets or I can't remember which one it's from. There's a nude statue. It goes back to what we were talking about before. And he's pretending to admire it, really staring at her backside. And it's pretending to admire it, really staring at her backside. Yes, yes. And it's funny. I mean, it's- What year was this that people were looking and laughing? It was like the 19-

I know Shapiro makes fun of you. So the third, yeah, the 80s, okay. 1980s, yeah. But it's still funny. I watched it recently. It's still funny. And it's just because it's so human, you know? And it's like, it's simple

and it doesn't depend on the times. Listen, this Douglas Adams notwithstanding Shakespeare has some scenes that are really funny and still hold up and you can read them and they're funny But you have to get past the language and all that stuff Yeah, I don't know like I think I don't know if you ever saw Unfortunately, they made it into a bad movie, but the play of funny thing happened on the way to the forum I've seen it. Oh, it's a man. It's funny. Yeah, I'm very I'm very ignorant of movie. Oh, yeah movies in general Yeah, you're gonna have to come with a list

I mean you do some excellent reviews on your show sometimes on YouTube about and people yell at me about this But you know they give me the names and I react to them and people say well Why did you leave out this? I think I didn't leave out anything. They give me, you know, the way we do it is they give me, they make the list and I just comment because I've seen everything, you know. Have you come up with it? My wife and I said recently, we should come up with like a hundred films that we should

try to make our way through chronologically. I don't know if that's a good or bad idea, but. I could do that. You know, the AFI has one, they're the American Film Institute. Unfortunately, they always get weighted toward modern films, and I think the peak of the movie industry was 1939. Really? Oh yeah. And what was it there that was...

1939, the ten biggest box office successes with the ten Oscar were also, this is not quite right, but it's something close to right, were also the ten Oscar nominees, there were also ten classic films not quite right, but it's something close to right, were also the 10 Oscar nominees. There were also 10 classic films. It's just amazing. It's like when that, art is at its peak when the popular art and the great art are the same art. Like that's Shakespeare, because the people went, the nobles went, and it's also the greatest stuff

ever written, you know. And let's see, it was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Oh gosh, now I'm, and let's see was Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Oh, gosh. Now it was so many good movies. Every movie was great. The Wizard of Oz was one of them. Yeah. Compare that to today. I know most movies like I have kids who I love and I want to take them to see movies.

Last two movies we went to see, honestly, all I want to do is sit next to them. I like them. I want to be close to them. No, so that's why I go to a movie Yeah, I just endured the Minecraft movie and the America Captain America latest movie and it was both like cold pizza Yeah, it's fine. It's infantilizing too. You know, I don't know why those superhero movie I mean, you know, there's the old movies even the bad ones are adult No, and they're and they're really good. It's Casablanca 1939. No I mean, you know, the old movies, even the bad ones are adult, you know? And they're really good. Was Casablanca 1939?

No. Yeah, I watched that. I liked that. Everyone made fun of me for not having watched that. So I was like, well, I better watch it. And it was good. Yeah, I love that. But the Hitchcock is what I watched when I was just stunned.

Have you seen, how many have you seen? Most of them, I liked back, is it back window? Rear window. Rear window. I like that Everyone tells me that birds is good. I didn't love it No, and everyone tells me that I think you did too that vertigo vertigo. I love I need to watch that again Yeah, because I love the fella who's the Jim Jimmy Stewart? He's terrific. Yeah, obviously But you know his older films his black and white films are also excellent, you know speaking

Yeah, we kind of touched on this, Jimmy Stewart, in his excellent movie, the Christmas movie. It's A Wonderful Life. It's A Wonderful Life. I found it so liberating when he came home and just lost his shit, and yelled at his kids, and yelled at his wife.

You don't see a lot of that today. No. But I looked at that and I'm like, I've definitely done that and now I feel less alone. Yeah. And I've apologized for her as well. But to see that in the context of a loving family, whereas I don't know if you see a lot of that today.

It's like if someone's a good father or a good husband, he doesn't tend to be a. I remember a movie with Diane Keaton where she had a baby and it was ruining her business and all this stuff and it ended up with her both having the baby but also having a business. And I thought, this is crap. I thought like in an old movie she would have had to choose. You know, she would have chosen between the baby and the business. And that would be the right thing to do. You have to pick one, you know? And like, I think that that's how we got infantilized.

Yeah. Is there any good movies that you've watched lately? You're like, this was good. You know what I've started to watch, what I've loved is that show from Apple TV, Severance. Yeah, that's good. Have you started to watch it? Have you watched both seasons? Yes, yes. Is the second season great?

I haven't watched it yet. It's good. It's good. It's not great, but it's good. And it has great stuff in it. Any other good movies? You know, I like the movie called Black Bag. It's not a great movie, but it's a Stephen Soderbergh spy movie.

Yeah. And what's funny about it is it's real old Hollywood. It's very glamorous. And, you know, the dialogue is kind of silly, but it's very good. And I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie.

I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a good movie. I think it's a Steven Soderbergh spy movie. And what's funny about it is it's real old Hollywood is very glamorous and the dialogue is kind of silly but intense and all this. And it looks like it's a complex spy movie, which it kind of is,

but it's really about the sanctity of marriage. And it's kind of beautiful in that way. Like about halfway through, I thought if this is gonna be about spies, it's bad. If it winds up being about this marriage, it'll be great. It's funny you say that because I think one of the best movies that portrayed the beauty of fidelity within marriage was Fargo. Yes. What a gorgeous relationship that was. And that one line where she says there's more to life than money you know. Yeah. Such a great line because she's such a simple person

and like these guys have killed and butchered people, and done all this stuff. There is a story that's full of evil. Isn't that beautiful? It's so beautiful. But I thought the bit that almost made me tear up was the way the husband got out of bed and made her breakfast.

So you gotta need a breakfast, because you're pregnant. Yeah, yeah. I just thought that was like, another, I remember watching a movie, and again, you're an expert, I'm an amateur, I don't even know the names of movie stars, but I watched it and I thought, that is what movies are supposed to do. That's why people love cinema, whatever.

Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, I think that's what it was called. That was excellent. Yeah, very, very Christian-infused movie, too. I wanna tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you

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There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. Hello.com. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com. What other books are you writing? Are you done? No, I'm still writing the Cameron Winter mysteries. I think the best one is about to come out. You're not just saying that so people buy it? Or both? No, it's really good. I mean, I had a great year. Last year, I wrote this. I finished this book.

It took me two years to write. And I wrote this Cameron Winter mystery. And at the end of the year, I was a babbling idiot, but I was really happy with what I'd done. I was just so tired. And is that the end? So sorry, back to the Cameron Winter. Is this the end of the- No, it's only five. I want to do 10 of them. I've written six. I'm working on, I'm sorry, I've written five. I'm working on six. And will it involve his therapist again? Yeah, yeah. But it's also, it's really interesting because I really do feel like the work you know he's a very old-fashioned kind of detective on purpose but he's living in a very modern world and I think that that's kind of

interesting and it's also interesting to watch a guy try to become a good person because I feel like the idea of a good man you talked about that with Chandler yeah what's his name Raymond Chandler yeah and mean streets Philip Marlowe. And I think that that's the issue. That's why art is so bad now. It's because they can't write women as women, so they can't write men as men. Will you do another series, do you think? Like a different... I think when I'm finished with this, I mean, if I'm still alive, I have other things I wanna do.

There's a whole lot of other things I wanna do. I'd love to write another book like this. The idea of looking at art as an expression of our relationship with God is virtually, I'm virtually reinventing it. I mean, I don't know anybody else who's writing about it. And I think I really wanna do it because it's writing about it. And like, I think, like, I really want to do it because it's true, you know, and people,

I get these comments from Christians, they're not that many of them, but they always drive me a little crazy. Like, they'll say, why do I have to read about this drunken poet? Because, you know, he brought the moon out of the sky, that's why. Which, what does that mean? In the Truth and Beauty, there are all these poets, and they're all nuts, and they're all, you know, why do I have to listen to this stuff?

And I thought because they showed us something that nobody else, they created a beauty that wasn't there before and like, you know, a lot of nicer people haven't done that, you know. Now, so how do you not end up creating a sort of American version of the office where it goes on way too long, but then you have to pretend that no, from the beginning we had this all planned. Right, I mean I planned this out pretty well and like, cause I hate that. So you know where it's going, these 10 books.

The thing about Severance is it should have ended on this season, it should have had two extra episodes and been done. Oh it's not, they gotta keep going? They were doing one more season. And there is this thing in TV where as long as the money is flowing, they keep making them. The British are much better about that or they used to be the end this and the English office yeah have you ever seen anything so

funny hilarious I mean that's hilarious yeah not like Jesus oh my gosh that dance he does yeah Ricky Gervais is so freaking funny. He is really funny. Very. Yeah. And even his atheism is funny. Like he can make me laugh at believers. Yeah. He's just funny. Yeah, I do find his atheism sophomoric though.

That's just think, golly, like you're great, but dude. Comedians, they all wanna be philosophers and they all make bad philosophers. That George Carlin, he was like, he has that famous routine about the words you can't say on radio. And it's stupid because you think like, no wait, words represent something. Obscene words represent something obscene. There's a reason you can't say them.

You can say them over and over again until they seem meaningless, but they're not meaningless. There's a similarity between the philosopher and the comedian. They're both looking at human nature. Like what comedians do well is they say something like, do you see this stupid thing about me? The stupid thing about me? That's you. That's right.

That's what's great about it. And philosophy also kind of like looks into human experience. And they start to think that that has this kind of inherent wisdom, which it actually does. The laughter is the inherent wisdom, you know? It's like with poetry, it's not what it's saying. The beauty is the wisdom. I've shared this too many times I'm gonna do it again kind of like your uh trump montage. You keep playing. I could have Are you done with that every time you say no, we're done with that. I can't tell

But you said that before you played it. So I keep feeling led on Um Seinfeld has this great line He's like if you're with a woman, you're dating her, and she goes into a porta potty, if she comes out and says, you know, it's not that bad in there, do not marry that woman. So good. Yeah, comedians have saved the country as far as I'm concerned. They like the last people who've just finally said, I'm sorry, I can't make a living if you don't let me say the unsayable thing, you know, and it's like it broke the grip, I think of it, but you know, it did help break the grip of like this horrible, abusive censorship regime

that was coming down on our heads, you know, and like, that feels like it's evaporated, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, to speak too soon. No, the only way you'll be speaking too soon if there's literally like a military takeover of the country because these guys are bad They you know, they this is the thing about Trump, you know Trump has all kinds of flaws I've never denied his flaws. I've never said like oh, it's okay that he calls people names I don't feel like that at all. He's so much better His names are funny. I mean, I don't know how he gets them so good. He is really funny and he's like a really good bully. Like he's good at being a bully. Not that

it's good to be a bully, but he's good at being one. He also has a, like he did that thing about they said who should be the new pope and he said me. And I just roared with laughter because that's a joke about him. You know he's making a joke about himself, you know. And it's like everybody says, oh that's you know, that's uh. And that himself, you know? And it's like everybody says, wow, that's, you know, that's, uh, And then we were all outraged, especially the leftist media that want to slaughter children, make the little sisters of the poor pay for abortions and now you're upset. No, and they're upset because he makes a joke. And it was, it was a funny joke about him, about how proud, you know, what an ambitious guy he is. But, uh but but yeah, I'm like delighted those people have been crushed and they I

I'd like to back over them a couple times before we drive on into the future Andrew I love you and I'm glad no, I'm so grateful for you. You're your Friday shows Really the only ones I watch anymore because I just cannot keep Shoveling into my head the horrors of modern politics. I just cannot keep shoveling into my head the horrors of modern politics. I just don't wanna live that way. And whenever I listen to your show, the fact that it's once a week,

ah, that's so nice. It's not every fricking day and it's- I had to do that. You know, I was on four days a week and I just started to bloviate. And I said- How did that deal, how did you talk them into doing one episode? I said I'm not having any fun and it was Jeremy It was you know, Jeremy boring

It was the founder of the the place with with Ben and I just said I'm not I'm not having fun and he's well if you're not having fun stop, you know, he's great and It was you know doing four of those satirical openings was the hardest thing I ever did. They stopped being funny. They, the humor started to go out of them. And I don't have that many opinions. I have one opinion.

I have two opinions. One opinion, one opinion is that there is a God. That's not an opinion, because that's just true, right? But the other opinion is that people should be free. You know, people should be free as long as they don't hurt anybody. They're gonna do wrong things. It's not my business I've may tell them not to do it, but they should be free to make the choices and the government And if anybody's gonna tell them what to do, it shouldn't be the government

They're the last people and that's that's it you know, so like I don't want to make fun of you know, I want to make fun of the absurdity of things, but In the do I care if a guy thinks there should be more of a welfare state and this guy thinks there should be less? No, you know, those are not the things that really lighten my... Did you feel pressured to be as,

I mean, I love that the fellas seem like they're really finding this stride. Let's just be honest, Michael Knowles is essentially a Catholic YouTube channel at this point. I mean, it's just, it's masquerading as a political channel. I told them I wish they had buried him with the last pope, like, you know, they put him like little vitamin pills with plants.

Yeah. And Walsh, I am embarrassed at how much I love that fella. Every opinion he has, I'm like, I want to seem more intelligent by disagreeing with him on certain points, but I can't. He's so excellent. His interview, I don't know if you saw his interview with Tucker Carlson.

I did. He did such a great job. You know, he's just, he's just honest. Yeah, he's honest. And he has the temperament for that line of work. And he's really funny. He's really funny. Most people are not that funny.

He's really funny. Do you think he knows he's funny? I said to him at the launch of the Am I Racist, we got to go there. I said, this is like Ricky Gervais level funny that but that was there were see there were scenes in that movie There I was in pain what yeah? Yeah, I mean God bless the daily wire for this for am I racist? And what is a woman they've really been culture changes They have they really change things and like it and it's it's the thing that on the right that I keep complaining about That's just not enough like just pure creativity and that kind of boldness of like saying like, you know, what are you gonna do to me?

I'm more you know, they already Demonize him. They threaten his life all the time. It's like, you know But he's he's really I I really like the fact that he has done that that's been you know, a breakthrough and like the fact that he has done that. That's been, you know, a breakthrough. And the wire, you know, we get so much hate from the right. I don't understand it. You know, it's like, I think like, you know, you have to agree with everything we say, and we all say different things. And mostly, mostly it's the Jew haters, because they hate Ben. And so they, you know, they say, you have to say what Ben tells you to say. Ben has never told me to say anything. It's also wild that Ben would be funding two prominent Catholics to promote Catholicism

I think so, you know, yeah, he does and and you know, he he likes Christianity young you know American Christianity is very different than European Christianity and like In that it exists in that it is vibrant and vibrant and it'll listen Your pogroms, you know No, I mean, I've never understood it. It's a jolly place, like people who come there are surprised at how funny it is. I wonder what it is.

I mean, like it could be that some of your opinions suck and that's why. No, that's why, some of them. Yeah, so maybe that's it, I don't know. I don't think that, but I suppose, I mean, I think it just is the, well, I've got a couple of theories. I think one is whenever you get too cool,

there was a band that came out in the 90s called Korn. They were really cool until everyone thought they were cool. And then it became cool to hate them. Yes, I think it was that. Something like that, like with Daily Wires Ascendancy, it was like this weird little thing that sort of erupted with ferocity and brilliance and articulation. And it kind of, it made all of us feel less alone.

I remember stumbling upon Ben for the first time and, and Matt and Michael, and just thinking, oh my gosh, I've thought this, these are the conversations I have with my friends. And the fact that they're now saying these things gives me more permission. And they're much more brilliant than me, they're more articulate than me. And so now I feel like I have more permission to hold these views. I come from Australia, I was just in Australia with my bride and we were watching the news. And you just get the sense that they're all singing from the same sheet of music.

That there isn't a significant contingent of people, let's say on the right, who are pushing back against the mainstream narrative. It's weird. I always thought of Australia as kind of the America of the... Wouldn't it be cool? And there are very cool people in Australia, but they're just not the ones with a microphone, except at this Sky News who seem obsessed with American politics. That's where the money is maybe. I don't know. But anyway, so that's the first thing. I think the other thing is we're really, as human beings, we're really good at defining ourselves against something. And maybe we're not

good at being for something. If we're under attack, then we can all kind of be against the left. But once the right comes to ascendancy. Now, this is an important thing to me, because I really, all this time that I've been attacking the left because they have the power but I've always tried to say what it is that I believe like it's not because it's not just that I don't believe what they believe I believe in something else you know and I it's really interesting I mean once it becomes clear to you know Eric Metaxas. Yeah I just had him on.

He was the last guest. Yeah, he and I had this conversation. I saw him, I don't know, a few weeks ago in New York. And we were talking about how hard it is to take people seriously who don't believe in God after a while, because after a while it's so obvious. And you start to, and not only is it obvious, it infuses everything.

Like, once you see that everything is kind of sacred because it's part of creation, you know? And he was saying, like you talk to people and you're thinking like, I don't want to think you're an idiot. And this was really important to me all this time, was I kept saying like, you know, it's not enough for us to take them down. We have to be something, which is one of the reasons that the Jew hatred and the basic nastiness puts me off so much because I think it's a no sale. Yeah, anti-Semitism is really weird because I'm open to the criticism, I'm very much open to it, that anti-Semitism has become the new racism, namely a word to shut down discussion. Open to that, 100%. 100%.

But it's hard for me to deny that anti-Semitism exists. When I look in my comments section and I see something like, it's always the effing Jews or don't lie to yourself, you know like I do, they run the world, and you're like... I wish, I wish they ran the world. I don't know if I wish that, but... We wouldn't be 36 trillion dollars in yeah so I think of anti-semitism as an irrational hatred of

Jews as Jews yeah where rather than sort of assessing them individually yeah you just sort of like blame the ills of the world on them and so I do think that some people are accused of anti-semit when they shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean anti-Semitism doesn't exist. Right. Well, all those things are true, of course, you know, that people shut, people want to find ways of shutting people down and all this stuff. But there's so many lies and such it's so universal, you know, it's so like, oh, they run everything like, please, you know, if they run everything, how come they keep getting killed? And the other thing is, you know, if Biden were a Jew,

and if Pelosi was a Jew, we'd hear about it nonstop about these dirty Jews. But because they're Catholic, well, we just sort of go, yeah, he's a bad Catholic. And so yeah, are there shitty Jews? 100%, there are shitty Catholics. Yeah, who's exempt from that, you know? Yeah.

And I just. But then I think people might say, yeah, but it feels like I'm not able to criticize the state of Israel. But I would say, well, that's not any Semitism either. It depends what you mean by your criticism of it. Right, and I always say that to me, the key is, first of all,

do you know what you're talking about? Which is almost nobody knows. I don't even know how plastic is made. That's right, yeah, exactly. So almost nobody knows what he's talking about. But the other thing is also, there's only one country in the world that has to argue that it should exist.

And I think that is the one that kind of goes up my spine. You know, that like, this is the one country that has to argue that it has a right to be. You know, nobody says like, you know, oh God, Pakistan, you know, France, you know, the Franks took it away from the Romans, you know, so it's like, just give back, give it back to Italy. You know, no, you know, it's like it's the one place where people say, you know, I mean, they have the deed to the property.

Let's face it, the Jews have the deed. Well, if I had the choice between the Jews or the Muslims running it I'd rather the Jews. That's what I think too. Yeah, and it's it's a lovely guy I don't know if you've ever been there. So I need to go. It's a remarkable country because it's really foreign I just I was at the I Don't know if you'll find this funny I was at the a the American friggin conservative friggin conference in friggin, Arizona recently Trump spoke I didn't really want to be there

But my knew my son would love to see Trump speak and and I met a couple of Jews and we had some cigars It was fun because I never really hung out with Jews before you know And and I made the mistake of telling him my favorite Jew jokes thinking that they were funny Yeah, and both went as I told him they're like And I went I am never gonna recover, I'm never going to recover. I hate myself so much. I'll tell you after the show. Yes, I do want to hear these. Yeah. And I will see if you find that. I don't want to keep you any longer. You've been so generous to be here. It's always a real pleasure to talk. I would actually just come down here

to talk to you. That's nice. Well, God bless you. Everyone should go get the kingdom of cane by Andrew Claven on Amazon and wherever else. I don't know. That's it.