Shaun Newman Podcast - #923 - Chad Prather

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Chad Prather is an American comedian, musician, entrepreneur, and podcast host known for his fast-talking, observational rants, often delivered from the front seat of his truck, where CNN dubbed him the "Pick-up Pundit" for his unapologetic, entertaining style that champions finding joy in everyday life. He hosts The Chad Prather Show, blending humor with commentary on current events, politics, and cultural issues.Tickets for the Prairie Rising Forum:https://prairierisingforum.ca/To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] Money SummitWebsite: ExpatMoneySummit.com

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCulloch. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Peretti.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. How's everybody doing today? Okay, hold the phone here, folks.

It is confirmed March 28th in Calgary, Alberta. The Cornerstone Forum returns with Title. sponsors, Silver Gold Bull and Bow Valley Credit Union. Yeah, I know. I already mentioned this a couple of times, but I'm excited. And I can see the end coming or the beginning coming. I don't know. We're just, you know, how many more times when we're going to say this at the start of an

episode? We're so freaking close. I know everybody's like, I keep getting asked, when's a podcast studio starting? When's this starting? When's that? Well, I can tell you this. March 28th. Mark your calendar.

Cornerstone Forum returns. Okay? Calgary, Alberta. We are going to have tickets out, in my humble opinion, by Friday. That is my goal. And so mark your calendars. March 28th. I hope you're all coming.

That is going to be a fun one. We got a few returnees. And we're going to be announcing a whole bunch of things here as the weeks progress. But March 28th, and I got Silver Gold Bowl back in. I got Bow Valley Credit Union back, and I just got off the phone with Brett. And so that is exciting. Okay? So with the number of ounces of silver, talking silver gold bull.

Now, you know, me and Chuck talk about this tomorrow, but like the price of silver and price of gold, you should really go check those out. Hop on silvergoldbill.ca.com. You can see their charts and you can just see where it's at. Yeah. And down on the show notes, you can text your email Graham for details about any feature, whether it's the silver or any other offers they might have or any other questions you may have around buying, selling, storing, or using your retirement accounts to, invest in precious metals. Just reach out to Graham down on the show notes and or head to silvergoldbull. com and make sure to reference the Sean Newman podcast. Bow Valley Credit Union. Yes, back in for the Cornerstone Forum. I'll say it again. While buying and selling Bitcoin has never been easier,

Bow Valley Credit Union has developed the first in Canada Bitcoin Gateway and with just a few clicks you can buy Bitcoin directly to your Bow Valley Credit Union account. Businesses are also able to do this. They've got a whole bunch of things lined up. So businesses or an individual can either either way access Bitcoin through their Bitcoin Gateway. The Bitcoin you purchase through the Bitcoin Gateway is real.

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If you're in Lloyd Mincer and you're tired of the big chain stores are in the area, that is, you can discover Diamond 7 meets. They're on Highway 7 meets. 17 and 67th Street North, just the north side of town. And when it comes to different quality of meat, different cuts of meat, all the things to do with meat, you really give the team at Diamond 7 a call.

And if you want to call and be like, hey, I would like this, you know, thickness, this size, this tile. You just call them. They'll make it for you today. Or you can stop in and see what they got in the freezer. Either way, Highway 17, 67th Street, North, 306, 825, 9718. that's Diamond 7 meets. Caleb Taves Renegade Acres, they've been doing the community spotlight. So why don't we say it again?

Cornerstone Forum, March 28th in Calgary, Alberta, all right? When it comes to Concrete, Caleb Taves and his crew, fantastic, can't speak highly enough about it. We have the Mash Spiel coming to Kalmar, Alberta, November, June 17th. Come on, Sean. June 17th. January 17th.

Hey, yeah, yeah. you can pay attention here hopefully by the end of this week as well we're going to have tickets up on for that we hope to just have you know we're going to have 16 teams there me and twos in attendance probably a few other notables and it's just going to be a fun day just going to be a fun day to get the community together I've talked to a few people and I like I suck at curling hey folks I suck a curling so if you're the curling expert yeah you can have me on your team but I suck and if you're like I suck and I don't want to go curling well don't worry come be on my team we'll throw rocks and joke around and have have some fun so about getting everybody together that's what we're going to do so that is january 17th calmar

alberto and if you're weren't where is calamar it's right by the emminton international airport so just west of laduke quick dick mcdick is live in lashburn november 22nd you can go to showpass dot com backslash lashburn uh essentially i got to say this again about quick dick he's you know He found out it's for kids and is not charging. And he's coming down to do a comedy show where all the money raised is going to a brand new playground at the Lashburn Elementary School. So if you want to be, you know, grab a ticket to that. That's November 22nd, QuickDick Live in Lashburn. So showpass.com backslash Lashburn for that.

We have the SMP presents dueling Piano's Christmas show December 20th. If you're interested in getting a table for that, shoot me a text. I have a boat. I think it's five tables. Forgive me. I should have looked at this before I walked in here and started blabbering on. But, yeah, dueling pianos back by popular demand, December 20th at the Gold Horse Casino. If you're interested in a table for that, let me know.

If you haven't subscribed to Substack yet, I don't know what you're waiting for, but it's free to subscribe to every Sunday, 5 p.m. The week in review comes out, gives you a little snapshot of the week. About a three-minute video breaks down all the guests that came on. and some other interesting info that goes in there. You can also become a paid member, help support what I do on this side, and get a little bit of behind the scenes action on, I don't know, say the new studio and see the new table that just got unveiled,

and you might be interested in seeing that. Maybe you don't care. That's fine. We're just trying to add a few things into the background to make it worth your time to help support what I do. The new studio, yes, it is coming. And if you're wanting your name on the wall, I might as well just say this. It's $100.

If you're wondering, well, what? What's the cost? You can give me a hundred grand if you want. I'd take a hundred grand. And I would call it the, I don't know, the whatever legacy wall. We'd have some fun with it. But, you know, I'm assuming you're like a lot of us. And you're like, man, I want to be on the wall. I just don't got a ton of cash laying around. It's a hundred bucks. That gets you engraved. If you were a company and you want to give more, there's different options. But if you're just a everyday average citizen and you're like, it'd be cool to be on that wall. Shoot me a text. 100 bucks. we'll find a way. And if you got other problems, shoot me a text. It's, you know, it was

Rhett Fountain who was telling me about the wall of dissidents. And that's stuck in my brain and I'm like, you want to be on the wall of dissidents? Sure, we'll find a way. Okay, we'll find a way for you. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube Rumble X, make sure to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review. Make sure to share with a friend. Something hits with you. Make sure to get it shared out there. Appreciate all of you. being a part of this and um yeah i'm excited cornerstone forum i'm at the long i was saying five months it's taken me to get to this point you know how ridiculous that is believe me i think it's ridiculous but uh we've been thorough and i think no i know we're closing in i can see the tunnel or the light

at the end of the tunnel so they pay attention folks cornerstone 3.0 going to be coming here real fast tickets are going to be going on sale for that march 28th i'm excited excited, I'm jacked. And how about we get on to that tale of the tape? Today's guest is a comedian, musician, entrepreneur, and host of the Chad Prather show. I'm talking about Chad Prather. So buckle up. Here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Chad Prather. Sir, thank you for bringing me, or hopping on, bringing me on, hop it on. Yeah. Well, it's good to find out. I'm so focused. I'm so focused on getting the last name right because I'm like, get it right, get it right. And it's like you're overthinking.

What we were talking about is a lot of people do say prather. And I don't ever correct them because, you know, I think the way it's spelled with the two consonants on both sides of the vowel, it should be prather. It looks like the word rather, right? So my late father, he used to correct everybody on that. I've been called everything my entire life. So that's easy. I'm happy to be called that with some of the derogatory terms that come my way these days. Yeah.

It's going to be with you. Yeah, well, I appreciate you joining me. You know, I want to get to, you know, you telling the audience up here in the north, who you are, because I'd never seen any of your content before. And then with the Charlie Kirk assassination, one of your tweets got shared on my ex feed. I read it because, you know, like sit up in the north. Did I know who Charlie Kirk was? Yeah, absolutely I did.

But, you know, never interviewed them, you know, like never crossed paths with them. But it just, I sat and stued on it for probably, man, it must have been seven. 22 hours probably. I was just like, why is this bother me so much? Like, I don't get it. And then you had a lovely tweet. And I was just like, that actually makes a ton of sense. Like, you know, there was a couple different posts on X that I just thought hit the nail right on the head.

And so I'm happy that you grace me with your presence because I was really, you know, I threw it out there. And sometimes, you know, that works. And other times it doesn't. And I'm just happy that you give me some time today. Well, I appreciate that. That was a, you know, obviously it was hard. It was a hard day. I was dealing with, I was struggling with a couple of things that day that Charlie was killed. I found out that morning, my niece passed away unexpectedly. And so we were already dealing with the tragedy and the family of that, who's somebody that's immediately in the proximity of your life. And then you've got Charlie who, while Charlie was a friend, I was recognizing how many people were grieving over. over a man that they had never met. And so I was looking at those two comparisons. Here I've got an immediate family member passing away.

And then Charlie, who was this figure in a symbol in so many ways, and how you realized that grief isn't necessarily about your proximity to a person, but it's what the impact their voice or their presence had in your life in some form or fashion. And so I woke up, you know, the next two mornings realized, just woke up with the heaviness that Charlie was no longer with us. And I was thinking, you know, while Charlie's a friend of mine, I mean, this book on the shelf behind me is the first one I ever wrote, Charlie's endorsement is on that. But, you know, he's not somebody you were interacting with day to day, but it was that

heaviness that this guy's no longer here. He's not with us, right? And so it was about 4 o'clock in the morning the day I put that tweet out where I just put my thoughts out there and I had no expectation that it was going to have a viral content or quality to it, but it did, and I'm glad it met and ministered to a lot of different individuals and just kind of resonated with them. I got a lot of feedback from that. So I, you know, I always look at stuff like that, and I say the explanation, you kind of have to use the vocabulary of the divine and realize that God's finger was kind of on that to make it go the way it did.

And I hope it was helpful because it was such a tragedy that even, you know, now two and a half weeks later, everybody's still trying to make, well, I guess almost three weeks later, everybody's still trying to put their, you know, get their finger on the pulse of why they're grieving the way that they are. Yeah, well, it was, as a guy who likes to try and piece things together, I couldn't piece it together. Like, I was just like it doesn't compute. Certainly there's things that made sense to me. But once again, if people go to the top of your X, it's pin there and they can read it for themselves. I've re-tweeted it once upon a time.

And I'll probably do that the day this releases because I think it was just an important way of looking at it. I thought, and I thought it made a ton of sense for a guy who's never met you either, right? Yeah. Just like putting things in context, that actually makes a ton of sense. And so appreciate that. I'm glad you came on. Now, before we get any deeper into anything, it's your first time on the show. Tell people, you know, like I assume my audience has no idea who you are.

That's my guess because I had no idea who you are. So just tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure. Yeah. Well, hey, listen, Sean, I'm 52 years old and I'm still trying to figure out who I am. So they're a good company in regards to that. I'm a, at the end of the day, people know me as a humorist. I'm a comedian.

I'm a guy that travels around the country and, well, Canada as well, and tells jokes for a living. I've been fortunate enough through the last 10 years of podcasting to make a living running my mouth, as well as touring, doing music and comedy and all those things. and I'm one of those guys that's made a good living doing that. And I went viral on a social media clip about 15 years ago. I'm sorry, about 10 years ago. And then over the last 10 years, people got to know me as the guy in the cowboy hat who sits in the truck with his dog in the back seat

and pontificates about the humorous aspects of life. And just all the things that we all are kind of touched by with the human experience, particularly in Western civilization and the spoiled nature in which we live. but I kind of cast my hat into the ring of political humor and commentary as well about 10 years ago, something I swore I would never do. But, you know, we live in such a wild polarizing time that I felt like it was a responsibility of mind to at least speak into culture and use the platform that I had.

So people think of me as a conservative political voice in the States. I see myself more of a culture guy. And as Andrew Breitbart once said that politics runs downstream of culture, I think that so goes society and culture is how we are going to determine, you know, the future of policy and polity and bureaucracy and all of the things that touches our lives in a way that we just can't escape, especially in these days. And I also, I'm a faith-based guy. I'm a Christian, and I'm pretty outspoken about that. I haven't always been that way, but I feel like in these times, particularly with what we're seeing with the division that's happening around the world, that we've just gotten so philosophically and ideologically apart from one another, that I think that while politics runs downstream from culture, culture runs downstream from religion. And we've really gotten away from the foundational values and the moral values, which I think that's one of the things that influence people. in regards to this grief subject when it comes to Charlie Kirk,

because people who feel moral or they feel a Judeo-Christian ethic or they feel those kind of foundational values about the way they view the world, they kind of felt like darkness won that day, and darkness was celebrating over a triumph over light in a bright spot that was in our world, and a light and a voice for reason and truth. And I think that's another reason why people were grieving over those things. So, you know, all that to say,

I've been blessed to be able to talk and communicate and develop an audience over the years. And, you know, my travels have brought me up to your neck of the woods over the years. COVID sort of put an end to a lot of the Canadian touring because of the nature of which, you know, in which Canada was handling those things, which I disagreed with pretty strongly. But that's true about a lot of states as well. You know, I never wanted anybody to have to go get a medical procedure or to prove a medical procedure in order to come to one of my crappy comedy shows. So I was pretty outspoken about those things

and was penalized quite a bit on the platforms that are out there of social media. But, you know, we just keep plugging away and keep talking. It's better than laying bricks or shoveling snow every day to make a living. And I've done all those things. But I'm thankful that these days, God's been gracious enough to let me talk

and share ideas from one to another. Well, you know, coming through, through COVID here in Canada and sharing probably a lot of your similar thoughts on how Canadians or the Canadian government handled themselves during that time. You know, I probably don't say it enough. And it almost goes implied. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for COVID. I would have been off talking about the things I enjoyed.

And that was mainly hockey and sports athletes. That's what I was interviewing at that time. And, you know, in the middle of COVID, we adjusted on this side because I was just, like, are we going to talk about this? Like, is anybody going to talk about this? Like, this is getting pretty nutty up here. And of course, then the Freedom Convoy happened. And I feel like they tried real hard to box us in. And what they unleashed was a bit of Pandora's box. And out of that came a lot of great things. That was Canadians standing up to their government. And once that happened, you know, it's been, they continue to try insane things up here.

but the pushback has been loud, I think. And I think, you know, so I bring that up to Charlie Kirk. And so they silenced, you know, the darkness wins theory for maybe a day. But then you watch what's been all over social media. You watch what's going on across the United States right now. You're probably seeing it firsthand. It doesn't feel like darkness is winning, does it? No, it doesn't.

I was at the memorial. And in Arizona, which was a powerful thing. I think it translated very well, even across the airwaves. Sometimes what happens in a live event doesn't translate necessarily over a television screen or a monitor. But I think this one did. Would you have 100 million people globally that are watching this, not only grieving but celebrating? And, you know, Turning Point, they wanted that memorial to be a celebration. And there were a lot of people on the left who complained and said,

what's with the pyrotechnics and these types of stage theatrics that were going on? and the explanation is very simple. Charlie liked that stuff. That was very signature to turning point events, and they wanted it to be very much a turning point event there in Arizona that day. So I was there. I was on the floor, and it was very much a grieving experience,

though a lot of tears were shed. Me personally, I was very excited to see the administration officials openly proclaiming gospel truth on this occasion, and I was very proud of that. It was very inspiring. And, you know, that was a celebration of life. We're actually, when we're done recording here today, I've got to run over to my office, and we're planning another Charlie Kirk Memorial tomorrow here where I am in Texas

and expecting a number of people that are going to show up for that thing. And so the celebration is going to continue on. That's the thing. We don't grieve as those who have no hope. And so we're celebrating. And, you know, we'd know that the darkness can't conference. the light and at the end of the day knowing Charlie the way I did and I say this to a number of people and it kind of takes them back when I say it if you could see the fruit of what's come out of

Charlie's death his assassination is martyrdom I'll be honest with you I look at it as a martyrdom Charlie would be okay with it Charlie would be okay with it you know I've had many conversations with Charlie Charlie knew the risk he knew what he was up against he knew the threats that were there he was very open about it he was on my show a number of times we had that conversation he was eerily prophetic on my show once in 2020 talking about how he hopes things are going to come back together, but he just doesn't believe that they are. And he said some just wildly accurate things in regards that ultimately came true. And so, no, I don't think the darkness wins. And to the degree that we have hope and we have trust and we have love and we continue to stand up and we continue

to speak, I think that we overcome. Just the silliness. that is the confusion that we live in and we've allowed to reign in our society, this just, you know, up is down and right is left and this weird dystopian 1984 type logic is very Orwellian out there, but we, you know, we have people who are arguing for these crazy ideas, and we have to stand against that. You're going to get canceled. You're going to get deplatformed. You know, I think we've got an opportunity here, at least right now in the States. Canada is another story, but here in the states, we have an opportunity to push back on some things. We're seeing different things happen.

You know, the wild-eyed progressive radical left, they see this as fascism or some kind of Nazism. I mean, I don't think they know what the word means anymore. And, you know, I've often joked. I say it jokingly serious, you know, here in Texas, we've often floated the idea of Texit, which is, of course, a secession from Texas from the U.S., having been. been a republic once. We often joke as well about Western Canada with Wexit, and I keep saying that up there in, you know, places like Alberta, y'all are the Texas of the North. And so I look at all these places and I say, you know, there's so much similarity out there of these of these

kindred souls, kinsert spirits and kindred voices. And there was a lot of things, whether it was COVID, whether it was the Charlie assassination situation, things have been exposed where we see all of those tyrannies that we're up against as freedom loving and free speech individuals. We've seen that our medical system is corrupt, big pharma is corrupt, which we pretty much expected that. Our court systems are corrupt. Our, you know, our local, state, federal, provincial governments are corrupt. You know, we can't trust, I think I said the court systems, but we can't trust the educational system. I mean, all of this has been stacked against us.

You know, I've often said that there's kind of a three-cord thread out there that you've got to have all three, but we're losing them. One has been the media, one has been religion, and another has been the court system. And those three things, and throw in education as well, all of those things have been corrupted in a big way in our culture. And fortunately, we're able to see that for what it is and speak out against it and hopefully expose it.

And, you know, when I see something like 100 million people coming together to grieve over one voice that was silenced and that voice gets multiplied and that blood of that martyr and Charlie Kirk cries out from the ground. I have hope that that multiplying of that voice is going to cause some real change and difference in our world. Well, I'll share the, you know, from my standpoint and my journey. I think it was the summer of 2022 was the first time I ever asked anybody about God on the show. I was pretty nervous to do it, but I was wrestling with something back then, which I think most of the audience now knows lots about, but I was read and I was just, it was just kind of like out of the blue. Do you believe in God?

And he was so taken aback because we just didn't talk about things like that, especially up here. It was just like, who, I don't know. And the conversation of God has become mainstream. And it's, it's just right there. And I'm like, wow, that's really cool. Like I mean, dude, I want Charlie Kirk to have to die for that. Absolutely like absolutely, like, Absolutely not. Full stop. Sure. But what's come out of a horrific act has been just wild to watch from this end to when, you know, I remember the first time a guy ever said it. This is going way back into the sports days of the podcast. I'd had Ruben Mays on. And if you've been listening that long, go way back. He was running back for the New Orleans Saints who had come from a town about an hour away.

And he said, ready at the end. Oh, can I say one more thing? And I'm like, sure. He's like, I just want to say, I believe in God and just thanks everything to him. Something like that. And I thought about editing it out of the podcast. I'm like, oh, I don't know. Do I allow that? And I chuckle about that thought because, you know, that's almost five, maybe even six years ago now. And how full, like, how far I can come from that.

And then you watch, you just watch the conversation. You bring up the memorial and having politicians talk about it and read scripture. You're like, whoa, this is, this is. It's just different. It just is. And it's really something to behold, people who would never bring it up or would be very, very cautious to just start talking about it and what his beliefs were. Yeah. And you think about it, and I'll show you this, cheap, cheap little, cheap little promotion. But a week before, this is my latest book, it's called Born for Meaning, and it came out a week prior to Charlie Dying. And this is this book about grief and, and, and,

trauma and heartbreak. And I wrote this with men in mind, because men don't like talking about those things. They don't like talking about anxiety or depression or panic or life or death or any of those things. And I wrote this about grief. And so I've gotten a lot, it hit a bestseller list. And I'm thankful that so many people have found some hope and courage in this book, Born for Meaning, in the days that we've had with these tragedies that have happened. But, you know, I say this, Sean, I look at it. You know, I've, I've looked for reality in the, the bottom of a bottle. I've looked for reality in the bags of drugs. I've done everything there is. Everything that a red-blooded American male can go out there and find and do a, you know,

a guy who's steep in Western civilization. We look for meaning in all of these things, whether it's a, you know, our relationship with our work and our ability to make money or success or our relationship with a woman. And all of these things, there's no reality. We find a lot of emptiness there. And I know that for me personally, I'm a person who has built a brand called Unapult. I don't believe in the apology tours. You know, every time they want to cancel you, they expect an apology out of you. Well, if you ever do that, you've got to keep apologizing. And one of the things that I'm unapologetic about is in these days, particularly my faith, you know, at the time of this taping, you know, just yesterday, we had a church shooting in Michigan.

Then there was the shooting in North Carolina from a guy on a boat into a restaurant two days ago. and then there was the shooting at the Catholic Mass where the children were killed. And so that was in Minneapolis. And, you know, on down the list, of course, Charlie included and on and on it goes. If we don't start to think in terms of the finite nature of our life and what that means, I mean, is there, am I born for meaning? Is there any purpose in this life? Or is it all just a neolithic, chaotic, you know, soup that we're just trying to, you know,

in some kind of matrix. I don't believe that. I think that we were created with purpose, and we actually have a creator who gave us that purpose. And I think that it's time for men to stand up and take a good, hard, honest look at that and live in light of eternity. I think there's a boldness to it. I think that is ultimately what gives us the strength for free speech to say those things which can quite literally get us killed, things that you and I can have a conversation about that seems very normal to us talking about our freedoms and our liberty and the things we value and cherish and our own ability to govern ourselves and our families and take care of our communities, that there are people out there who perceive all of that as hate speech. And the fact that we're

even having to discuss things like hate speech, which I don't believe exists. I think there's free speech with critical thinking. We already have laws against things like defamation and threats of violence and terroristic threats and things like that. But when you start labeling something, hate speech because it hurts your feelings or you disagree with it, we're on a very slippery slope. And that conversation has gotten bigger and bigger, certainly in Canada, but it's gaining a lot of traction where our own attorney general just on a podcast said that very thing a couple of weeks ago. And I called her out for that. We're on a slippery slope out here. But I think when you live in light of eternity, when you live in light of purpose and meaning and you understand

that your times are in the hands of a creator that cares about you and loves you and wants to guide and direct that, that I think that we can be a lot bolder than we are to stand up. That's what made Charlie Kirk so special. He lived in light of eternity. I mean, here was a guy who was watching Charlie do stuff was like watching some it was like watching AI download in real time his brain was so quick and so fast he was a vociferous reader he was reading five books at a time and if he didn't have time to read a certain book he had other people that would read the book for him and come and tell him what the book was about I mean it was incredible what he could download in his brain but then regurgitate it and but but he was very bold with it he was unapologetic with it and it it grieves

people to see or he grieves me and many others that knew the man to see his words taken out of of context. Most people who say that, they hear a sound bite and they misquote it without giving the full context of what he was saying. He was a very passionate and compassionate man. He was very kind. He was one of the greatest debaters I've ever seen in existence. But he did all of it with a gentleness, and they killed him for that. So I think we've got to get back to that kind of boldness. And everybody's saying, I am Charlie Kirk. I get the sentiment behind that. But I'm Chad Prather, and you know, you're Sean Newman. And we're created with our own purpose to use our voice and our platforms that God's given us. And I think we've got to live in light of eternity. So yeah, I think

that I think it's getting a little more mainstream. And I'm excited to see people who are talking about things of faith, things of value. And, you know, it's the thing that Western civilization was created and based upon. And if we get away from that, I think we're getting away from something so foundational that could be very well just unravel the fabric of the society that we've come to know and love. And we're unfortunately losing that very quickly. You mentioned you went searching for meaning in the bottom of a bottle. You mentioned a bunch of different things. Sure. Along your journey then, when did you find something different than the bottom of a bottle that made sense? Well, I was one of those who came to a place of faith as a kid and throughout

my college experience. And then I went through a period in my late 20s of some burnout on life and marriage and just some things that were going on professionally. And went through some burnout. and some frustration, cynicism began to set in, and there was no skepticism. I always knew my childhood faith. I never left that. But I said, if this is what this is all about, I'm not sure that I really want any part of it. And so I began to explore, you know, as the gospel writer Luke says in the 15th chapter, talking about that famous prodigal son, he went to the far country, he left the father's house. And that's the way I describe it. When you cross the threshold of the father's house and you're immediately one step out of the house, you're in the far country because your heart's already there,

whether you're there physically or not. And that's sort of where I was. But a number of years ago, using my platform, I was that guy who was mixing in some elements of my faith as well as the humor that I would use and just some pretty outspoken points that I would take. And so people were kind of confused. You know, who is this guy? Obviously, he has a foundation of faith, but but he's pretty brash. You know, he's kind of bold and rough around the edges at times. And about two years ago, I started to feel a very strong pressure, like pressing down on my shoulders.

And this is the only way I know to describe it. And I just went into a place of prayer because I was feeling this stress, this pressing, this twisting of just, you know, I'm 52 years old. And so you hit that point in life where you're like, man, what is life all about? You know, I've probably got less to live than I've already lived. so am I leaving anything behind? And I felt like God was literally saying to me that he had made a lot of investments in me as a young man

and now he's ready to make some withdrawals. And it was time not only for my faith to be personal but to take some other people along with me. And so I've started engaging in that. My social media reflects that. My podcast reflects at the Chad Prather Show. Every morning we do something called Before the Noise for about 15 minutes at 8-7 Central

where the podcast are offered as well as live on Rumble and YouTube. And so it's just a devotional thought to start the day, hence the name before the noise. And all of those things just reminded me of something that I've tried to live my life by, Sean. And that is, men particularly, we really, we talked about my name earlier, and I joke about trying to figure out who I am. We really do have an identity issue. People by and large do. We have identity issues. We're not very comfortable in our own skin.

We're products of our own insecurities. We don't know how to be confident. We don't know how to be unapologetically. We don't know how to think critically. Common sense has become dead and we're not pursuing it. Thinking is a hard exercise. And so we just ignore it completely and let the chat GPT or the podcast or the news media tell us what we think. But I think that if you're going to truly be comfortable in your own skin and make a difference in the world, you've got to know who you are.

And for me, that part is a big part of faith and letting God. direct me in the way that he does and I think if you're going to have identity you got to know where you came from that's history and if you got history and identity then you're going to know where you're going which is destiny and if you got history and identity and destiny well then you know what you're going to leave behind which is legacy and I think when you put those four elements together I think you got it's a pretty powerful way to live it's certainly a very good worldview and paradigm through which to judge the way you enter the world and so for me those things became very They were internally important, but then they came to a place, like I said, where I felt like I was supposed to start taking some people along with me and be pretty outspoken in those areas. So I still do humor. I still do comedy. I'm, you know, I'll, I don't get offended. So you don't have to worry about that. I've seen it all. I spent a number of years in West Africa. In fact, I met the mother of my children in Nigeria. I like to joke that I went all the way to West Africa to meet a white girl from Alabama. And like a needle in a hayst.

stack. But, you know, I spent a number of years in West Africa and traveling around the world. I was introduced to a lot of different cultures extensively and just immersed myself into them. I realized that people are people, no matter where you go, people still, they fear the same things, they stress over the same things, they deal with the same things, they celebrate and rejoice over the same things. And Redneck, to use a southern colloquial term, as we have here in the U.S., is everywhere. So you can find it even in the darkest depths of Africa. So, you know, people are people, and people are cruel to one another. The man's inhumanity to man has defined Western civilization for thousands of years,

and that's not going anywhere. And people are greedy, people are covetous, people are, they're, you know, they're wicked. I mean, the prophet Jeremiah said that the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, and who can know it. It's a pretty profound question that nobody can answer apart from faith. And so I think those are the things that are, you know, no politician is going to save us. I mean, there's just no politician. I was listening to one of your episodes where you compared, and I thought quite eloquently and accurately, Kamala Harris to America's Justin Trudeau.

And I thought, nailed it right there. I mean, we have some absolute arrogant airheads out there who are trying to dictate to us how we should live and think and structure our lives and behave and the things we can say and we can't say. And if we're not careful, if we don't get back to some real foundational principles, those politicians, or in bureaucrats, I should say, especially the U.S., we got four and a half million unelected bureaucrats that are running our lives. We didn't appoint them, we didn't put them in, we didn't elect them, and we can't get rid of them.

They're like a parasite, you know, they just can't get rid of them. And if we're going to let those people run our life and not get back to a place of foundational faith and virtue and values, then we've got a serious problem for the days ahead. And our kids, you want to talk about legacy, we're not leaving anything for them if we don't speak out against that and do so. something about it.

That's, um, there's a lot there. And I, I'm like, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this, about the, the politician thing. Like no politician's going to get out of it. Well, because how do politicians operate? If the, if the, sorry, if the public wants stricter, COVID lockedouts or whatever you want to put it in that, then that's what they're going to do. There's very few politicians that are going to speak against the crowd. So then you have, have to change the crowd. Well, how do you do that? It's like, well, this is the million dollar question, although I think it's been answered. It's just not the answer people want. It's like, you know, Jordan Peterson says, clean up your room. You know, and, and there's a lot in the Bible about

how you should act and behave and how you become a good man, honestly. And that seems like almost too simple because it isn't this flashy somebody rides in and just changes all the laws. And overnight, we're back to the great nation of Canada or the United States. States of America, right? It's it's us. It's us that have to change. Well, you look at COVID. COVID's such an easy, relevant and recent example, because they looked at the ways that they could control us. You know, they started by showing us videos of people supposedly dropping dead in China and welding them in their apartments. And I can remember thinking in those days, if this comes to America, we're going to be burning bodies in the street, right? And so I didn't know what was coming. I didn't know what was happening.

Everybody was wondering, you know, how do you avoid this? And so we were immediately taken by the whole two weeks to flatten the curve rhetoric. And then the protocols, you had to put a mask on, maybe two masks. You know, you had to bathe your body in that antibacterial goop to the airport and put on a hazmat suit. And, you know, you obeyed the stickers on the grocery store floor. You could go north on aisle eight and south on aisle nine and you maintain six foot distance. People were putting pool noodles on their head so nobody would get close to them, wearing gloves, scared to death.

I mean, if you coughed, it looked like they were ready to put you in a gulag. And these people were doing it. We were waving goodbye to grandma in the back of the nursing home through the plexiglass while she died alone. We couldn't bury our dead. We couldn't marry the people that we loved. We pulled our kids out of school and put them in front of yet another screen. And all of this was in the name of normalcy. Because, again, I said in numerous places around our country, I said, you know, the Constitution wasn't written to keep you safe.

the Constitution was written to keep you free. And we were sacrificing constitutional rights in order to keep ourselves safe. And they saw that they could do that. Now, it was interesting that right on the heels of that, and I'm going to be a little crass here. I'm going to try to clean this up, but you're going to get the point. When they tried to roll out, when we started waking up to the fact that nobody had the flu in four years, but we were seeing the COVID ticker on the front of CNN every damn day. And so we were looking at this thing. And then they said, we're starting to lose control with these people. What else do we have? And I could just imagine some pinhead professor in the back of the boardroom going, hey, there's this thing called monkey pox. Maybe we could roll that out.

And so they started showing us pictures of people breaking out with monkey pox. And we're like, that's gross. I don't want that. What's the protocol? And they said, they literally said, well, you can't have sex with strange individuals. They literally said, you can't have sex. because that's the way it's going to spread. And people said, oh, no, we can't go for that. I mean, we, you know, we'll put masks on and ride down the street in a car by ourselves and cough into our, but you don't tell us who we can and can't have sex with. And they rolled that right back in.

They were like, yep, that ain't going to work. So it showed me that there was, to a degree, a limit that we were going to reach where we said, no, you're not going to, like, we'll give you a way. Like, we'll give you all of our freedoms, but our fleshly gratifications, we're not going to change any of that. And I thought it was interesting in this last election cycle. They tried to bring monkey pox back out here in America, but they call it Mpox because they said the word monkey was racist. This is literally the dumbest world that you could imagine. You can't make up this level of warped matrix that people are living in with this kind of ignorance rhetoric.

I mean, it's an illusion and people have bought into it. So they've seen that they can control us. They've seen that they can, I mean, here in America, I mean, I don't, you know, Joe Biden was never smart. I mean, the guy was in Washington, D.C. for 700 years. He was never an intelligent guy. And they just basically trotted him out there. Whatever window he was licking in a basement there in Delaware, they pulled him out of the basement. And they trotted him out there.

And you knew he was going to be the candidate because it was just his turn to be the chairman of the board. And so with 23 different candidates, primary candidates out there, Joe was the guy. Joe has the mental capacity of a tomato. And we knew that. And the media covered for him. They would bring him out to a rally during his campaign, and he would just kind of walk like C-3PO with the claw hands. And then he would do that little stumble step like he was going to take off to run.

And the media was like, look how virile and strong and competent he looks. Like he just looks powerful. And it's like, what are we watching here? And then they told you that, you know, 81 million people voted for the guy. And the guy got more votes than that. Barack Obama did black votes than Barack Obama did in two different elections. And they said, believe that. We want you to believe that.

And none of us believe that. But again, the bureaucrats and the politicians and the media, they're all in this thing together. And then you factor in the money of Hollywood and big business and big pharma and all of the like. And they come together. And folks like you and me, we just can't compete with that level of noise that's out there. And people have literally become brainwashed to this stuff that they float out. there. And we can't control it. We can't stop it. They're literally telling us lies. The media gets on. I said back in, I said back in the 80s, I was a kid. And I remember when Ted Turner came out with CNN,

and one of the most profound things I think I ever said as a child, as a young teenager, is I said, 24-7 news channel, what are they going to talk about? What happens when they run out of news stories? and I thought they're going to start making stuff up. And now we're inundated with it. And they do. It's not journalistic objectivity anymore. People don't tell you just the news. They want to give you their opinion,

which at the end of the piece, if you know the opinion of the person reporting or writing, then that's not journalism. That's not news. You just put an op-ed out there. And we're inundated with this. I mean, it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's in front of us.

It's in the coffee shops. It's in the diners. It's in the airport. you can't get away from it. And they're coming, they're making news out of things that aren't real stories. And they're showing us the worst or the worst of the world we're living in, which is again, I go back to this is why we got to find hope in something else because bureaucrats, the media, politicians and policy, that's never going to give it to us. Question for you. As a comedian, has it been ever easier to just be a comedian? Because I mean,

like you've rattled off like 15 things there. And I'm like, I feel like it almost writes itself, you know? It does. It probably doesn't, but, but, but yeah, somebody asked, me years ago. They asked me years ago. They said, why, why bother with politics? And I said, well, it's just too easy. You know, I would go to Hollywood. I was managed and had an agency out of Beverly Hills. And so I was writing sitcoms for the networks and things like that. I was represented by Lionsgate and some other big production companies. And so we were writing and they hated me because they knew that I'm a conservative guy. They knew that they didn't care about my faith. They cared more about the fact that I was a conservative. They didn't like that. They kind of, they kind of

categorized me in the same ilk as a Roseanne bar. And so I was sort of blackballed in regards to that. But that was okay. That was okay because that's Hollywood and that's just that big entity, that big, gushy monster that's always going to be what it is. And nobody's ever going to break that wall down. But yeah, you know, I remember back in 2015 looking at all these candidates and these primaries, both on the Democrat and Republican side. And this was before I understood, I never understood. Like Donald Trump, I mean, I've been with a man. I've been with him in the Oval office. I've been with it. He's been nothing but ever, you know, gracious to me. The man Donald Trump that the media shows you is not the real man Donald Trump. I've seen it firsthand. I've

been in his home in Mar-a-Lago. And I didn't understand Trump, though, back then. He didn't make sense to me. I mean, here's this real estate tycoon, a guy who's, you know, a billionaire playboy from New York City with weird hair and a weird cadence when he speaks. He was a reality show guy. And I'm like, you know, what is it that Middle America is finding in this guy? that I don't quite understand. And so I remember back then trying to figure out which candidates support. And I did a video from the front seat of my truck. And I said, trying to figure out which candidate supports like trying to figure out which venereal disease you're most okay living with for the next four to eight years. And I went into the voting booth and there was a box that

said Hillary Clinton, a box that said not Hillary Clinton. And that's the one I checked. And we wound up with Donald Trump. And I'm glad we did. But my gosh, look at the crazy world. It's unleashed. I mean, the absolute panic and just chaos that it has unleashed and the polar division that we have politically in this country and in Canada as well, that we'll never come back together. I mean, we will never come back together, barring some type of massive miracle where the pendulum swings so far that way that it comes bouncing back and people's eyes are opened up. But I think violently it's going to be too late at that point because the damage in many ways is already going to. going to be done. So as far as the humor is concerned, boy, it really pisses them off. I mean, they don't like, they don't like some of their, you know, some of their political saints being ridiculed and picked on, but I figure as a comedian, I'm allowed to punch up. And if I can't

make fun of Nancy Pelosi and even Donald Trump, then what's the, you know, what are we doing in this business? I will tell you that comedians have kind of changed their tune over the years because of cancel culture. And they don't want to touch politics. I don't mind touching politics it touches us so we might as well touch it and so you know these days you got comedians that aren't after laughter anymore they're after applause and and they want to be i mean you look at the late night stuff going on with jimmy kimmel and and stephen colbert and all of these guys who've made themselves basically into political pundits with a back room of writers that aren't funny uh but you know they still get the applause that's out there so you know i i still think that humor and music and

those types of things those are those are some stuff that they still have the power to bring us back together. So, you know, I try to keep doing it. What did you think of Jimmy Kimmel getting removed and then brought back? Well, you know, I didn't, I didn't, you know, again, had it been, had it been the FCC or the federal government doing it, I would have been completely opposed to that. There were a lot of people who their perception was that's what was going on. The bottom line is he was losing numbers, he was losing ratings, and he was losing money. And so they decided to put him on a little furlough, give him a paid vacation for a long weekend, and everybody made a big thing out of it. think you should ever silence entertainers. Again, I go back and refer to what I said earlier about

hate speech. I don't believe in it. I believe in free speech with critical thinking. And we should be able to tell when somebody, just because they have a right to do something, even if they do something that's not right, well, I don't think you just necessarily go canceling them for that. But, you know, Jimmy, Jimmy had a right to say what he said, but nobody silenced his free speech. I mean, he never jumped on YouTube or Facebook and did a live video and said, hey, I want to tell you what I meant. No, he just couldn't do it anymore on that particular platform, which was owned by Disney and ABC and all of their conglomerates, whether it was Next Star or Sinclair. So I'm never for canceling a performer, but I do believe there's consequences for the things that you say, and the

consequences that he was being dealt were because of something completely different than just saying something inappropriate about the death of Charlie Kirk. So, you know, I can go both ways on that. I can argue both ways. But, you know, we got a lot of people out there that they don't think a lot before they speak. And listen, I raise my hand. I got a foot-shaped mouth, man. Men aren't supposed to talk as much as we talk, you know, and we make a living doing it. So I don't think God designed us that way.

So if we keep talking this much, we're going to make mistakes. But that was a very calculated thing on Jimmy's part. And I think we're going to see some more ramifications and results that are going to come his way because I just don't think he's got the money and the ratings to keep a career up in the way that he did. His sister actually opened for me in Mesa, Arizona, a number of years ago, Jill Kimmel, she was very funny, and she's very gracious. She's very leftist, but she came in, and she cut a couple of jokes. Like, I actually used this on stage.

I thought it was pretty phenomenal. She said that her friend told her not to come open for me that weekend, because it was during COVID. She said, you're going to get sick because that's going to be a room full of mouth breathers. And I said, I'm going to use that in every set while we're together. But, you know, at the end of three days together doing those shows, she said, you know, I misjudged you, Chad. She said, you're a gracious guy. You're very kind and you're thoughtful. And I said, yeah, if we could get past a lot of the crap that gets peddled out there. Because that's because that is the process. That's the protocol. If you can label somebody, whether you know them or not. If you can label them,

then you can categorize them. And if you can do that, you can put them on the shelf and marginalize them and you don't have to deal with them anymore. So it always starts with the dehumanizing labels. If we could ever get together and have some conversations, we would see that, you know, what happens online or in the podcast world? That's not the real world we live in. It's just not. We have enough evils to deal with in this world. But that in and of itself, I don't walk into a restaurant and start looking around to see who I can disagree with on their politics. A foot-shaped mouth.

I'm going to think about that. That's a great. That's a great line. That's a great line. We're good at putting it foot right in there, man. I go back to, you said this a while back in this conversation. You're talking about being a young man. And you said something along the lines of if this is all it is.

And I forget how you finish that, but I was like, huh. You know, like I just had on Matt Smith, don't expect you to know who that is. And we got talking, he's written a book called The Preparation that is basically instead of asking, kids who they, what they want to grow up to be, should ask them who they want to be. And then it outlines some different ways in which they could go figure that out, essentially. And I remember as a young man, you know, after I had finished my hockey career, being like paralyzed by you can go do anything. I'm like, I don't even know what that means.

I've had this one track of what this is what I do. And then it ends. And when it ends, you're kind of like in this limbo of you can be anything you want to be. go out and do anything. It's like, I don't even know what that is. When you say, if this is all it is, what did you mean by that back at a young age? What did you perceive back then that bothered you so much? Well, I think that we have a lot of institutions and people who represent those institutions that over-promise and under-delivered. There's a lot of people out there, whether it's preachers or non-profit people or people that run organizations that are very large and very powerful.

who promised something, but behind the curtain, it's sort of the Wizard of Oz. He's not as impressive as the public entity wants to look. And so I got very disenchanted and disengaged because of that, because I was thinking to myself, if that's what's really behind the curtain, I don't want to be that because the biggest compliment anyone can ever give me is when they tell me that what I say comes across is genuine or authentic. I want to be my authentic self. I don't want to, you know, the book of John, the gospel of John talks about John the Baptist, says he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He wasn't an echo. He was a voice. I've always strived to be a voice. I don't want to be something that's just regurgitating what somebody else has said or trying to repurpose or reprocess that. And I love what you said about kids and being what you want to be. I think one of the biggest lies that parents tell their children, maybe the biggest lies, that you can grow up and be anything you want to be. You can't. You literally can't. You've got to be. You've got to be. what God created you to be. And that's what grace comes in. Grace is the power of God to do what he's called you to do. So it's up to the parent to help a child shape their life and get a vision for who they are.

So I use this as an example. I've got four kids. They're all grown now. My 27-year-old, I've got three girls, 27, 25, and 21. Those are my girls and then my 18-year-old son. Now they're very different. My 27-year-old daughter, she's a teacher. My 25-year-old daughter, She's a professional dancer. She tours all over the world. And my 21-year-old daughter is a college student. And my 18-year-old son, at 18, has already graduated from college with a degree in mechanical engineering. So he's a math prodigy.

And I don't know where he got it from. At 18, he's already graduated. Yeah, 18. He's technically already a junior again. He got that from his mother, did he? He didn't get it from her either because I know her. And I think it's skipped a generation somewhere. I joke, I say, he doesn't look anything like me.

It looks like my old postman Ping. So, you know, but he's my retirement plan, and Ping's not getting a dime of that money. So, you know, they wanted this kid at MIT when he was 15 years old. So we homeschooled, and we had to look at these kids and we had to look at them every day and say, okay, what is the grace that God has put on your life? So my daughters, interestingly enough, they all took dance. At about seven years of age, I had to look at my oldest daughter and say, this is not a lot. for you. We'll find something else for you to do, but this is not for you. Same with my 21-year-old daughter. This is not for you. We'll find what it is you're supposed to do, but it's not for you.

But now my 25-year-old daughter, she had a gift. And we saw that in her. She went to college. Her college was paid for because of dance. She immediately got a position touring all over the world with dance. She's financially my most successful kid at this point. We're very proud of her, but we're proud of all of them. But now my oldest daughter, she's been published three times. My 21-year-old daughter, she's been published once. And then I told you about my 18-year-old son. So these kids are very impressive in the way that they do these things,

and I've never paid a dime for college tuition. One of the things, and I don't believe in college, although I have more degrees than I should ever acknowledge, but I do. I believe in college with a purpose. And so I've never paid a dime for their college tuition. All of their education was paid for on scholarships because academically they excelled. And they just did well and they performed. And I always told them, I said, you can go to college, but we're not going to fund bad ideology.

So if you come home at Thanksgiving and tell me that Bernie Sanders would make a good president and you love the words of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you're coming home and I'm going to chain you to the bed. We're going to kick the doors off of the bedroom and I'm going to read the Bible to you all day long because we're not going to go. to that brainwashing Marxist socialist academic bubble where some tenured professors never tested as wild-eyed theories in the real world, just pushing papers around and brainwashing kids. We're not going to entertain that. Fortunately, they came out in pretty good shape, you know what I mean? And so I like to think two things that I say jokingly, but it's true, is we gave them a value

system, and we beat their ass. We believed in discipline. And the beauty of having a big family, Jean, is you don't have to be. to beat all of them. You can cut one of them out of the herd and go spank that one while the others watch. You just have to make sure it's believable and everybody's crying at the end of it, including yourself. So I say that jokingly, tongue and cheek, but discipline. We don't discipline our kids anymore. They live in this overblown sense of security bubble this out there. I actually wrote a song called Beat That Ass. I sing it on stage quite oftenly. You can actually get the song.

It's on all the music platforms that are out there, a song called Beat That Ass. And it's one of my most favorite deals we ever did. And I like that because we've gotten away from stuff like that. So I got very disillusioned, very disenchanted with people, people who claim to be leaders, heads of organizations and things like that. And I said, okay, I don't want to spend the rest of my life as a cynic who is a passionate person who's tired of being disappointed. I don't want to be a skeptic. I don't want to be a neelist. I don't want to be a pessimist. I don't want to look at everything half empty. I want to be able to have hope. And I want my kids to have hope. I want them to take something into. You know, the Bible says that a righteous man leaves an inheritance to his children's

children. That's generational. And that's not just money. That's reputation. That's name. That's all these things. And so for me, you know, that sense of identity knowing who you are and finding a deeper meaning, ultimately for me was finding my faith in God and Christ and finding those things and being unapologetic about those things and vocally outspoken about them. Those were the things that meant something to me. And then I realized I don't have to, I don't have to ride on that wave of other people's, you know, other people's failures or their inability to measure up to whatever my standard was. I read proverbs every morning. And so I sit, sit by myself and have a coffee usually and sit and read Proverbs and you know you're talking about discipline and this is uh forgive me it's the Bible I have

in the studio I have a different one at home so I kind of like the way the one this morning put it but I can't regurgitate it so uh in Proverbs 29 17 it said correct your son and he will give you comfort you also delight your soul so it was the other one I'm sure uses discipline in there somewhere but regardless uh the discipline thing certainly is important and you know I I I don't know why it shocks me that you homeschooled, but it kind of surprises me. I don't know why that is. Don't mean that as a judgmental statement. I'm just like, geez, I didn't see that coming out of your life, just that you homeschooled.

Was there a time where they went to school or was it because of your career that having them along the road with you was important? No, you know, we started out with my oldest daughter. We started out, literally went to an orientation for kindergarten. And my wife and I looked at each other and we said, we're not supposed to be here. We're not supposed to be here. Our kids are not supposed to be here. And so we began that homeschooling journey. And we just felt like it was a conviction that these are our children, not the state's children.

And looking back on that, I sort of innately understood something. You know, in 1917, when the Bolsheviks took over in Russia, the first thing they did was take the children out of the home and put them in state schools so they could be good little communist because they didn't trust the parents to teach them right. And we're very close to that in these days with what we see in our educational systems now. Kids aren't truly being educated by the state. They're not receiving an education. They're getting rote memory that they can pass a test, usually a standardized test, and then they get moved on. But they never get a critical thinking skill at all. And so we looked at that as a conviction, and we just said, this is what we're supposed to do.

So we did it, and we did it, I believe, successfully. And we did it until we couldn't do it anymore. So like I said, when my son, they wanted him at MIT when he was 15 years old. At the age of 12, he was in the top 10 in mathematics nationwide, ranked. And I was like, I don't even know where this kid comes from. So we had to get help in regards to that. But fortunately, we had a community of people whereby we could do those things. Was it, was you at some point with your son going,

this kid is doing like, I don't know. I can't, I can't give the level of math. But you're sitting there as a homeschooler and you're going, holy crap. Like, I can't even do this. I don't even know if I'm, like, is that right? Is he right? Yeah, when he was 11 years old, Sean, when he was 11 years old, he came up with a concept for wearing something behind your ear,

like a hearing aid that sent out a sonar peeing, and it was for blind people so they could tell where objects were in the room. And so this was an 11-year-old. And then when he graduated from college, he graduated from college a week before he technically graduated from high school. So the state that he was in college, and they required him to maintain an attendance in he didn't attend but he had to have at least be enrolled with a high school in that area

and so he did that the only time he ever went to that high school was when he was teaching the trigonometry class uh when he was 14 years old and then you taught the trigonometry class can you imagine sitting there i'm an athlete i'm an athlete i played baseball you played hockey you're sitting there you're like really you know we're both we're both ex jocks you know and can you imagine sitting there looking at some 14 year old punk teaching your class you wanted to beat his butt And so he was the valedictorian of this school. And imagine that. You're the salutatorian, and you're having to sit there.

Your class body's having to sit there and listen to this kid, give a speech for the valedictory address. And you don't even know who this kid is, really. And I'm like wild. And they actually give you a medal on a ribbon. He had like nine medals when he graduated from this high school, nine medals that he wore on his gown. And one of them represents the fact that he graduated college before he technically

graduated high school. So, I mean, I want to beat him up myself. I mean, who is this nerd? You know, I'm telling you what. Sometimes I look at pictures of him and I don't want it. I don't like him. So yeah. That's that's super cool. Like, I mean, obviously to have a son that talent, that is, that is wild. You said there, okay, one of the things, I got three young kids. I got a nine and eight and a six-year-old. He just turned six here a couple days ago, folks. So it was cool to have him run around. And anyways, I don't know where the time goes. But regardless, as a father, I've been wrestling with this, right?

Grew up playing hockey all my life. Want my kids to be hockey players. I just, I don't, you know, is that wrong or is that? I don't know what it is. I wrestle with it all the time. You said, you know, you're watching your kids. He said, oh, this isn't for you. And just wondering, how did you navigate that as a parent?

Did you look for things your kids loved and excelled at, or was there different ingredients in watching your children grow and the things they went into? Yeah, I think a little bit of all of that. For me, as a baseball player, and I played some higher-level ball, and I never was that guy, and there's a lot of these dads out there

that kind of want to relive their own glory days, and they want to live vicariously through their kids, and so they're sort of forced to play whatever sport that they played when they were younger. I wasn't wired that way. I wanted to observe my kids. I wanted to watch them. I named my kids on purpose. All of their names have meanings.

And I prayed about that. I prayed about how to name these kids because I felt like we were, you know, it was very biblical thing. Names have meanings. And I was very careful about that. You know, their first and middle names. And it's amazing to watch how they've grown into those names.

And it's just fun to watch. But just observing them. watching them. You know, my son, when he was small, he played one season of, like, coach pitch baseball, most miserable kid on the field. And I was like, son, I'll never make you do that. I'm not going to make, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. He loved math. And we saw that early on. His brain was wired differently. You know, my, my girls, they love to write. They love to get lost in that world when they were writing these, these things they were doing. And just looking at their pursuits and looking at the things, because I truly believe,

for all of us that your deepest heart desires and the things you pursue and the things that you're passionate about and the will of God for your life are usually synonymous. They're usually one and the same. People are always saying, what's God's will for my life or my kids' life? I think if you just observe it, I think it's pretty evident that's there. So I've often said the four pillars that I believe in are vision, passion, discipline, and risk. Vision is when you see beyond your boundaries. You see something nobody else sees. I mean, you've had a vision. I mean, inevitably, you say, I'm going to start a podcast and be able to like, you know, what are you going to do? I sit on an airplane sometimes and people say, what do you do? I said, well, I have a podcast and that immediately

in their head, they think, well, you're broke. And so, you know, but you get a vision for doing something. And I remember years ago, I called somebody on the phone. I was at the gym. I was not in the gym. I was at the gym. There's a huge difference. And I was sitting in the parking lot. And I called somebody on the phone. They said, what are you doing these days? I said, you know, I've decided I'm going to go make a living just being myself. And they said, what's the street value on your personality? And I said, well, we're about to find out. And so that vision, though, led me to something that created a passion in me.

It's what gets me up every day. I'm like a goose, man. I wake up on a new world every day. Like, what's the next adventure? Let's see what we can get into. What can we learn today? What can we communicate today? What's another way to twist a phrase that gives somebody an aha light bulb moment?

Those are the things that get me up. And that passion, because the vision is what you see that nobody else can see. And the passion is being inspired by what you see. The discipline is shaping your life around what you see. That's the hard part. And then risk, which is spending your life to accomplish what you've seen. And you've got to do it in that order. In my opinion, because I think risk without discipline is recklessness and discipline without passion is legalism.

There's no fun in that. Passion without vision is just hype and cheerleading. And then to me, vision, ultimately without faith, faith in God, faith in yourself, faith in the community around you, your family, your friends, yourself is meaningless. So I think if we can build that way and then we look at it from that pattern when we look at our kids as well, what gets them out of bed in the morning? What makes them passionate? Now, again, you've got to have discipline. It doesn't mean kids just get a, you know, they just go out and do whatever they want to do and that they're passionate about. There's still got to be the discipline element.

And that helps shape their life. And so, you know, parenting these days is got to be one of the hardest, it's got to be one of the hardest moments in human history to parent a child. There are so many things vying for their attention and dragging them in so many directions. And then not only them, but ours as well. Everything's trying to steal our attention as parents. And, you know, we're missing out on so many things in this allotted moment of eternity called, you know, life. And I'm telling you, I'm glad my kids are the age they are. I'll just put it that way.

I hear you say those ages and I go, man, you got a lot to deal with. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And you've got to enjoy it because it is an adventure. It is an adventure. And it's the greatest adventure that I believe that a man can have is watching those kids grow and develop

and get that vision and passion for their own lives. It's really, truly fun. Chad, I appreciate you doing this. You know, you're apologizing at the start because we were supposed to do it a week ago, and it just didn't work out. But, man, I really respect the way you lay things out. I'm glad we've crossed past. I hope it isn't the only time. But if it is, it's been a wonderful chat.

I appreciate you hopping on and doing this today. Hey, thanks for having me, man. It's been a true blessing to just hang out with you a little bit. And I am glad we connected. I don't believe there's any accidents in that. There's always those divine connections that come along. So I appreciate you having me. Thanks a bunch.