The Confessionals - 516: Blurry Creatures Feature

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

In Episode 516: Blurry Creatures Feature we are joined in the studio by Nate Henry and Luke Rogers from the popular podcast, Blurry Creatures! Ever since moving to Tennessee, I have been talking with them about coming over to my studio to have a fun conversation and we finally made it happen. We talk about how they got into podcasting, why they cover bigfoot and Nephilim giants, why modern Christianity avoids the supernatural, and Nate's dogman encounter when he was a child. This conversation had no limits and was a great time for all!Blurry CreatureWebsite: https://www.blurrycreatures.com/NEW LOGO PRE-SALE: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/storeBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinSee Tony LIVE in Gatlinburg, TN!Tickets: https://bit.ly/3IC4IkxGet Crypto-Color (Coloring Book):Non-Signed Copy: https://amzn.to/3Yn23RlSigned Copy: https://www.merkel.media/store/p/cryptocolorWatch Expedition Dogman: https://bit.ly/3CE6Kg0Tony's Studio Equipment: linktr.ee/mystudiogearSPONSORSGET EMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase! Listen to this episode for more information! Link: bit.ly/3YaMD1NGET ExpressVPN: expressvpn.com/confessGET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGET Hello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionals16 Promo Code: "confessionals21" for 21 FREE MEALS!!!Get Emergency Food Supplies: www.preparewiththeconfessionals.comGet Beard Oil: bit.ly/2FbOhN5CONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterSOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIDiscord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelAre you a military veteran struggling with thoughts of suicide?Contact Watchman Readiness Corps for REAL help. A veteran-run organization that is designed to help through hands-on survival training.Website: wrc.vetEmail: [e-mail]: [phone]Instagram: wrc_survivalFacebook: colbywrcvetOUTRO MUSICVanTesla - ShutUp N DriveYouTube: https://bit.ly/3yH4kvGApple Music: https://apple.co/3nDfsU1Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3nErEUI

Merkel Media. Hey everybody, today is the day. The last day for pre-orders. If you want the new show logo on a t-shirt, you've got to go to the professionals podcast.com. Hit the store tab and get your pre-order today because after today, they are no longer available.

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This was all circulating around the base that a giant had been killed, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, bony fingers reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. But the giant moves, he's got a solid. Spears in one hand and he's running really fast and Spears Dan holds them up like this. Somebody else shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated.

Got spouser, got closer, got spars him when he got about... I feel something pulling at my leg and I look over and there are two small and they're literally I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air. Couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing it. A monster. Yeah. Welcome to the show, everybody. You're listening to The Confessionals.

I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you've a crazy, wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. That's The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, The Confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either way works for me, just get a hold of me.

If you want more shows on a weekly basis, go to the Confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the join button and become a member. They're going to get self-access to all the membership content, all the ad-free content that are coming out on Tuesdays and the overtime content right there for you as members at the professionalspodcast.com slash join. And if you want to EMPP proof your house and your vehicles, check out EMPShield.com. Use coupon code Tony to knock off 50%. Nope, not 50%, $50 off of every purchase on that website. So you buy three items, you will save $150. Check it out. EMPShield.com. All right, today we got in studio guests, Legends in the House.

We got the blurry boys. What's going on, guys? Hey, Tony, it is good to hang out in person. Yeah, absolutely. So we got Blurry Creatures Podcast here in the house. Now, listen, when I moved down here to Tennessee, I knew you guys were here. And immediately, when I was talking to you guys about how I'm moving to Tennessee, I was like, we got to do something.

We got to do something. know, and we're finally doing it. And I was thinking about it because I kind of, part of me felt bad. You know, you guys are driving out here from Nashville area. It's like a three-hour drive. And today I was like, I was feeling bad. And I was just like, no, no. There are two, like, there are three hours from me and this needs to be done in person. That's right. It's just better. Yeah. It's just better. I mean, you, and actually, you guys said that we're actually creating history right now because this is the first time you two have recorded in the same room together. Right? It's really weird. I don't even want to look at it.

Good to see you, brother. Should I get some kind of like a computer monitor and make you guys feel like you're looking at each other? You just put something up between us. Yeah. It's just too weird now. No, but I figured it's a good trade, Tony, since you're going to be at our conference next month in Franklin, Tennessee. So we had to do something to break the ice and hang out in person first. Otherwise, it might just get too weird, you know?

Which weird is good. Yeah, weird is always good in this industry, you know? I'll say when I first opened a door thing that struck me is you both are Nephilim. You both are like I was like, holy, I was like, you guys are both giants. I mean, I'm not short, but I'm not tall like you guys. I was like, holy cow. We are on the largest side. Yeah.

We have a little bit alpha, alpha juice going. There you go. Well, you got the red hair too. Yeah. You're putting the stereotype, man. Well, welcome to Tennessee. I appreciate it. How long have you guys been here?

I know you guys are neither one of you originally here. A decade. decade. Ten years, yeah. We're both Californians originally. We beat everybody else on the curve of Californians coming to Tennessee. We're way on the front end. Yeah, yeah.

I'll tell you what, I was looking at Tennessee. I think it was probably about five years ago, four or five years ago. I was podcasting, and I just remember driving in my truck and grinding, hoping that one day I wouldn't have to drive truck for a living anymore. And thinking to myself that I hope. that I don't die in Philadelphia because the city was getting worse and worse. And when I was driving down there and stuff, I used to have like these visions in my head. I'm like, what if for whatever reason some foreign country decides a nuke? So what city would that be that they try a nuke? And like, well, Philadelphia was the first capital of the country. Maybe they would try doing that

symbolically. And that's where the Liberty Bell. Liberty, the Constitution, all that stuff. And I was like, maybe they, but I hope I'm not here when it happens and all that stuff, you know? And I started thinking like, where would I want to live if I would. going to get away from all this. And that's when I first started thinking about, like, Tennessee and stuff. And I remember mentioning it to Lindsay years ago, and she's like, no. You know? Yeah.

And then I didn't hound her about it or anything. It's just over time, the environment we lived in changed a lot for the worse. And the more it changed, the more she was like, yeah, Tennessee sounds pretty good, you know? Oh, yeah. So, yeah. A lot of friends probably relocating from California to Tennessee, too. So we get it. I mean, you're not alone.

A lot of people just upset, frustrated. and it was it was affordable here. I think it's not. Yeah, when we came out here, it was. It was. And it wasn't, I think it was different, a little different than, at least for us. It wasn't a, I know for me it was more about community. Like, you know, Cal, you might have the same thing in Philly.

Like, it just felt like it was all compartmentalized. It was in Southern California. And it was like, all my neighbors lived in their own bubble. There wasn't really a sense of community. Everybody was kind of out for themselves. You get that anywhere. You get that in Nashville proper now. But it just.

people were friendly and and the values here were a lot of the same values. You know, we grew up with in Northern California and just I liked, I liked how nice everyone was. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't have that city feel, but it was a city. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, when I moved here, I was like, wow, everybody's really nice. I was actually driving home yesterday thinking about that and how I think I'm getting used to it already because I don't, it doesn't stand out as much to me as it did when I first came here, you know? When I first came here, I was like, holy crap, this person just talked to my son. signed and gave him a sticker in a store. Like, you know, like I was like, that never happens.

In fact, if it happened up in the Pennsylvania area, I would look at them like, why are you looking at my kids? Why are you talking to my kid? What is wrong with you? Back up, back up, back up.

Yeah. Everybody waves. Like, now it becomes common. You're like, okay, why didn't that person wave? What's wrong with it?

You know, from the northeast? Are they from California? Like, just get out of my neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. They like,

I mean, I remember just being here and there were like prayers and school staff meetings, like public schools. they're having a prayer meeting before they get started and things like that that just people would have like 15 lawsuits two minutes later if they did that in California so much like 1980 here in good old Tennessee

look at that dude just branding yeah yeah we'd love that that was a good decade yeah it was it was in fact uh I just this week they were blaring the uh like it was an 80s playlist next door in the hair salon and I was just like in my office I was like vibe and I was like yeah I actually had to put on my headphones, turn on some white noise, just so I can focus.

But anyways, before we get too far into things and stuff, this is the first time you guys are on the show. So, like I said, you guys are from the blurry creatures podcast. We got Luke and Nate here. Tell people about the podcast, tell them about who you guys are, how the podcast come together, all that fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we're blurry creatures.

We don't really know what we were getting ourselves into and we started the podcast. You know, I moved to Tennessee in 2011. started listening to a lot of podcasts because I was remodeling houses. So I came from the band world where there was like eight or nine dudes in a van all day long and eventually an RV. And you just had people to talk to. You were used to being around a lot of people. And then all of a sudden it was just like I was alone all day, just being the dog.

So podcast became my best friend and bought an old crappy house, I had to fix it up. So I was just, you know, doing drywall and painting and rip it out stuff. And you go crazy if you're just in your head, I'm on a log going on all day and I was like, I need something to distract me. These tasks are just boring. Started to listen to a podcast about Bigfoot because it wasn't spooky, but it wasn't like politics or sports. It was just something, it was different.

It was like, oh, I can listen to this for hours and hours and hours. I can get lost in these and I just loved it. And then more and more, and then around 2000, I think when I started listening to Politis's stuff that I was like, okay, there's something weird here. There's something way more going on. And then I bought my third fixer upper in 2019. I had the logo design, the dot com, all the social handles. And Luke and I had done an episode on a previous podcast that I was doing with a friend in the band world was kind of music related.

And I knew that him and his brother, Jordan, had a podcast. And we talked a little bit about that on our podcast, my old one. And I was just, and Luke, I had this, I had it ready to go. but I didn't want to do it by myself. I was like, I want to talk about Bigfoot, but I grew up in the church. So I was like, there's this whole paranormal side of Christianity

that no one wants to talk about. And he was tweeting about Bigfoot one day, and we had met years before. And we had a bunch of mutual friends from Northern California where we grew up. So I was like, you know, I asked a couple musician friends and they were super flaky.

I don't want to bring a band dude into this. I want to really do this. Yeah. And if I'm going to do this, I need to do this with somebody who, like, like, who understands this, who, you know, gets what podcasting is. It's, it's a marriage, right? So he was tweeting about Bigfoot. And then literally I just, I was like, dude, I've got everything ready to go down to the logo, all the domains. Do you want to talk about Bigfoot? Because

there's also this, this spiritual connection to all this stuff. And I don't think a lot of people are really getting into this. I think we, we have something there we can explore. And then he just literally wrote me back, think within the hour, like, dude, I'm down. I wanted to do a podcast. I'm down. And since then, he's been 110%. And like a lot of creative projects I had in my life, it's not like that. Usually people don't just jump into the deep end and they're with you.

So it's been really cool. I just, it was like a brainchild I had in like late 2018, 19, and it's just turned into something way bigger than I think we thought it would become and just bringing in the spiritual aspect and really just not being afraid to talk about the job. Genesis 6 event and then even way more than that, which we've heard on our show. So that's kind of the genesis of, uh, see that? Uh, kind of how it started. And then since then, you know, we were just in the basement for a year, recording episodes.

And then this last summer, we just had a lot of more opportunities, got it invited on some shows and then some influencers or sharing our stuff. So it's just kind of turned into something a little bit bigger than we thought. But that's, that's the oral history of. Yeah, it's a good one. First couple years. It's a good story. Yeah.

From my standpoint, it was just funny because that year that Nate reached out, my brother and I had stopped our podcasts, more or less because ESPN was trying to do a 360 deal and knowing everything that my brother was doing. And I had worked in sports media for like three or four years before that. And so I'd been doing TV and I hated it. And I was, so I'd left like CBS Sports where I was working. I didn't want to do sports anymore. But the only thing I really liked about that and missed was the creative aspect.

And so it was funny that year that Nate reached out. Like Nate said, we had friends from the music scene from like early 2000s back in Northern California, like my best friend's band. And actually, people that I know played in Nate's band. And so we knew each other and we were like Twitter friends. And then we forgot we did the podcast with Matt. And I totally forgot about all that. I actually told you said that. I didn't even remember we did that.

but I had written on my, because I stopped doing New Year's resolutions because they're disappointing, right? Yeah, yeah. But I had these goals and I'd like, I want to do another podcast. And I had this idea for a podcast that I want to do. I still want to do some point,

which was one about masculinity and, and, yeah. Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, I had this like, I still kind of have a heart for that for like, you know, men, becoming man and walking in in the way that God's created us to be, right? And so I had this idea for it. And then it was one of my goal. was I wanted to start a podcast this year again or just podcasting in.

And they reached out and I was like, I'd always, it was funny because I'd always loved the Bigfoot thing. Like my, the point where like the Finding Bigfoot show and all those different shows, my family knew about it enough. My mom would like put a Bigfoot something to my stocking every year for like the last like 10 years. Yeah, yeah. And then we say this all the time and we just started because we were interested.

Like it was never meant to never, we're like, we're going to do this for a job. It was always like, I thought, yeah, me my folks and my, My friends will listen and it'll be fun. I like to learn. Nate likes to learn. We want to learn about this stuff. Yeah. And it just became an organic thing.

It's really been amazing in some ways to watch the way that it's taken off. Not to tutor and horn or anything, but I think Nate and I still do it and still ask the guests the same questions and still sit here with you if no one listened just because I'm fascinated by the whole thing. That's cool. Yeah. So you guys, when you had me on, I think I was on there twice, right? Yeah. At the first time, I remember you guys saying, let me get this right, I think it was, we asked the guests, every guest, the same question. Yeah.

What are your thoughts on Bigfoot? What are your thoughts on Bigfoot? Yeah, yeah. And do you guys still, do you guys still? Every show. Every show? Unless they've been on a couple times and that may it kind of hard. We have any new thoughts.

Everyone's always always will be like, do you any new thoughts on Bigfoot? Gotcha. Because I think, I think for us, like, it's a journey podcast. We've kind of gone on this journey from where we thought and what we thought. and Nate, you know, spent the 10,000 hours listening to Bigfoot stuff. And I had this idea of what I thought. And then we bring on the guests. And we talked to experts about all the things we talk about.

And so it's evolving, right? I think our thoughts, I mine have at least. Well, I think the question is good because it's, it's, we don't usually bring people on the podcast to talk about Bigfoot. It's something completely different. And so it kicks it off. But I always just test, you know, people have thoughts on Bigfoot. and people who've written books about other stuff than Bigfoot. Doctors, you know, important people have thoughts on Bigfoot.

And it's just funny because only like, I think maybe two or three people at 150 episodes have had no thoughts on Bigfoot. Tim Eckie. And the Bible Project came on and he's like, I don't really have any thoughts. I've never really thought about Bigfoot. And they're like, do you live in the Pacific Northwest? How have you not thought about Bigfoot? Yeah, you're in Bigfoot country in Oregon.

But you'd be surprised. Listen, that's somebody who had a Bigfoot encounter and doesn't want to talk about it. you're like, why do you ask? It's something that a lot of people have contemplated, and I thought that was, that's what I like, like about it. I don't really care, like, if they have a totally different opinion about what Bigfoot is than I do. It's just, you have an opinion. That's fascinating.

So many people do have an opinion about something that supposedly doesn't exist. You know, that's, that is what's intriguing about it to me, is that these people thought about it, and they've looked at the evidence, they've scanned through, they've written books about other things, and they, it's not an illegitimate topic. they're interested. Well, it's a cultural phenomenon too, right? Like, so we can talk to someone about the most niche thing, whether it be, you know, we talk about dog man or these things that aren't like the mainstream.

There's not thousands of people and thousands and thousands of people a year that have a dog man encounter. Maybe they do and they don't talk about it. But Bigfoot has become a cultural phenomenon. So I think that it makes a good point that most people have thought about it. Yeah. Except for Tim Macking. Sorry, Tim. But most people have thought about it.

And it's an interesting to talk to somebody who's, you know, spend the 10,000 hours on something very niche and different, whether it be like, you know, Gen 6 or Uphology or something, to be like, what do your thoughts on Bigfoot? Yeah. You know, and they're like, well, I have thought about it actually, you know. Yeah. It's funny you ask. Yeah.

It's like the Walmart of Cryptids, you know. It's like everyone has. Right. Everyone knows a little bit about it. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I mean, it's funny because I think it depends on where you're at, too, regionally. It's surprised me he's from the Pacific Northwest.

and he hasn't have an opinion on it. But I know, like, in Pennsylvania, when I first came out and told, like, my coworkers that I'm going to start a podcast, like, what's going to be about? And, like, talking about Bigfoot, Monsters, ghosts. They're like, Bigfoot. Yeah. And I was, like, they clowned me so much.

And I was just like, you watch, suckers, you watch, you watch, you watch, just keep watching. Oh, I'm going to remember every name. And I'll tell you the guys' story. I, um, I, when, when I first, uh, started making some money podcasting, um, I was like, I think it was in October, or no, it was September of, uh, 20, I want to say 19 or 20, I think it was 20, maybe 2019. I don't remember. 2019 it was. I don't remember. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Roughly. I, uh, Lindsay advised against this hard, but I, I, I just went and did it anyways because I, I, I just had to. I just had to. And so I didn't tell my wife.

And she advised me not to spend our money this way, but I did anyways. I had a billboard made, and I stationed it right on the on ramp to the highway where all our trucks in the morning had to get on to go to Philadelphia and other places. And so I had a picture. And a lot of people have seen the picture before. It's a dog man, alien, me, the Bigfoot, and the ghosts. And, you know, it's in the dark room. that was a billboard and it just said the confessionals podcast on it and uh i i put it up there

and i had it up on a billboard for a month and with the guys were like i saw you on a billboard is it really going that good for you i'm like no but yeah absolutely i was like i just spent all the money i ever made podcasting but that's amazing dude Tony keeps receipts that's yeah and they're like did that help you i'm like oh yeah help me tons It didn't help me at all. In fact, I think one person emailed saying they saw my billboard and started listening, you know. But I was like, I didn't do it for that. I did it for you, suckers.

You know what I mean? But I was like, I think I even said, I was like, yeah, the media agency I'm with right now. I thought it would be a good idea. They put it up a lot of you. That's funny. I love it. Yeah. So.

I'm like, I love you, man, where he takes all that loan, the personal loan and he makes all the, all the billboards of him as a real estate agent. Remember? He's like a James Bond and he's a cow. boy. We might have to do that for Tony here. I have another idea. Actually, I'll tell you guys afterwards because it might. You might actually do it? No, I'm definitely doing it. I'm definitely doing it. But it would ruin the vibe that I'm going for if I'd say I'm doing it publicly. I'll tell you afterwards. But yeah, so I mean, it's cool how hearing how like these kind of things start out for people. I mean, people know my story, I think for the most part. You know, and it's just

everybody has their own story. And you know what? The thing is, this is what I think separates you guys and me from a lot of other people is that we just kept going. I think that I've seen, there's a guy who started a podcast.

I think it was like the same day as me. And we were both growing significantly together and we had a friendship, you know? And then some life things happened where work got tough or something. He just dropped off. And I mean, it wasn't like work was easy for me either.

You know, like, I mean, I was doing 12, 14 hours a day driving a tractor trailer and then I would go home and work till 2, 3 o'clock in the morning on podcast stuff, get up the next morning and do it all over again. And it was just like, it's just pushing through. And I think that's whether it's podcasting or anything else, I think people who start an endeavor, like when you start out, you have to know it's not going to be pretty and there's going to be bumps. And if you just, if you expect the bumps and you push through that,

I mean, you're going to, every bump you get, then you go through it, you're going to keep going further and further. And that's going to be the separating factor from everybody else. Because so many people quit so fast. I remember when I first started my podcast, my one friend from college, Phil, had his own podcast. And I looked at him as like the veteran podcaster, you know? And I was like, you know, I got any advice. And he's like, if you can get through your first eight weeks of episodes, you're fine.

And so I was like, that was my benchmark at first. When I first started, I was like, if I can do eight weeks of episodes straight, I'm on to something. And I did the eight weeks. I was like, all right, let me see if I can do that again. Did 16 weeks. Let me see what I did. And I just kept on going and going hit episode 100. I was like, ah, wow, you know?

So it's just, it's just sitting, hitting those benchmarks and taking the punches and hits when they come. I mean, even like the logistics of things and trying to figure out how to podcast, I mean, you guys know as well as I do. Every once in a while, you put out an episode and people hate you for it. And you get the emails. And that in itself is enough to make some. some people quit, you know? Because, I mean, like, we don't sign up for that stuff. Like, like, we technically do, but like,

um, nobody, we, no, none of us were trained to handle that kind of public scrutiny. Like, these are complete strangers having an opinion on my life and how I think about things. And I'm like, and it takes some time to get used to. Just like, what? You know? Like, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of things to maneuver through the whole podcasting realm and stuff. But, uh, it's cool to see you guys have come so far.

When we first met, I mean, it was pretty early on, I think. And it's just, I think I told you guys in the first conversation, but I also, I've told several people after that, when I've been talking to other people, I tell them about you guys. And I'm like, those guys, one day they're going to be bigger to my show, hands down. And I believe that.

And you guys have grown significantly. And it's because you guys have the intelligence, the ability to do it with technology and stuff. the way you guys go about it is very open. And that is what the audience wants. I think that's what I do with my show. I just talk to people, let them share their thoughts, their opinions, their experiences, and just see where the conversation goes.

And if you get kind of boxed in with trying to steer somebody into your way of thinking all time, you're going to alienate a lot of people, you know? Thanks, man. I appreciate that. I mean, I think that, you know, obviously, like coming from the band world, being in a band, I think a lot of people, the hardest thing they ever do is start something creative and it's just, it's a lot of that, like a lot of reviews, a lot of negative stuff, trying to get it, get along with people.

And being in a band was like 10 times harder than podcasting, I felt like. So it was like, I had this just crazy mountain that we, that I did in my 20s. So podcasting is just, you know, you're making content all day long every day. But it's like you're not in a van driving somewhere. You're not getting in fights. You're not getting stiff for money. you're not getting like crappy pizza seven nights a week and stuff like that making your own crappy piece that piece at home but as you know it's just you know I think it's like you go through hell

you know you have a little bit of a break I think starting a podcast with millions of podcasts is hard but starting a band with millions of other bands is hard to and I'm thankful for those years because they were they were a grind man they were like it's like driving a truck basically for way less money and no benefits so and with five of your friends that you love and hate Yeah. So, and then it's just, you know, you're playing for five people, right? Sometimes you're playing for five freaking people and you just give it your all, right? And so when you start a podcast, you just, you think five people are going to listen to this, but I'm going to give it my own. I'm just going to give it 100 percent. And you just,

you can't be your own worst sentiment. You can't, you know, beat yourself up mentally and you just have to think, you know, at some point, I think this is interesting. I'm the biggest fan. I think Luke and I are the biggest fans of blurry creatures and you have to be. And so every t-shirt that comes across, sticker that's made, every episode that goes out, like, nobody cares more than you. And if the moment you stop caring is the moment I think your show goes downhill. If you're not, if you're not your number one fan, so we just... I think you made a good point, too, Tony, like, from any kind of, any kind standpoint, entrepreneurial or not, like entrepreneurial show, podcast, whatever it is. I think most people fail because they give up. Like, I think first fours you have a good idea, like an original

idea, too. Like, that's different, right? And when you have a, you have a good idea, you have a good idea, that, I think most people just don't want to push through the wall. Whether you are, you know, starting a business, starting a podcast, starting a band, starting something, like, it is always a grind. And I think we live in a time when everybody wants instant gratification and they want it now and we want to have a huge podcast now or want to have a thriving business now. And we are so fortunate to live in a place where you, there is that opportunity where if you work hard enough and you push hard enough and you do push through. And like Nate said, you care enough about your craft that, you know, you can do it.

And it's not, there's no guarantee you in that either. But, you know, I think what, you know, credit to you, man, you've been a great friend to us. And we were, you know, when we were just starting out doing it, doing nothing. And you have a big show and a big following. And you, you've been like a, like a brother to us. So thank you for that, number one. And then just thanks for the kind of words, man.

I think Nate and I are continually blown away. Like we, like I said, the very beginning, we, I think, I think, we would do this even if no one listened because we want to learn because we one of the things that we look at is Christians and being in being Christian men is that you know and Nate makes a great analogy it's like the like the the paranormal world doesn't talk about the church or talk about Christianity or or contextually talk about things in that way and then the church doesn't address it so you have this space where if this is your this is what happens on your show you have these people that have these experiences right there's a lot of people that

to have weird experiences, whether it be like some kind of supernatural thing with a ghost or you name it, there's a gamut of it. But there isn't a place, or at least doesn't feel like there's typically 99% of the time, there isn't a place for that to live. On Sunday morning.

And so how do you put that inside your worldview? If you're essentially sublunum being told there isn't space for that, right? But the reality is that, man, there's space for it. Like the Bible in our faith is big enough for all of that. Yeah. And that's the thing, like, there needs to be space for it because I think that what we deal with in our podcast is like, it's a huge part of your existence as a human being.

We are spiritual beings. We live in a spiritual world. But I think that the church, I don't know what happened, but it does not view. it does not view anything with the Bible in a supernatural lens. You can look, you can, I don't know if they just gloss over the Old Testament and everything that happens in there, but I had a conversation with a pastor before I left Pennsylvania. And I told him, you know, we were talking about what I do for a living and stuff.

And I told him, I said, you know, I do this. And I think that over the years, the church has really dropped the ball on reaching people in these kind of communities. I mean, like these people that are witches and people who dabble in other spiritual practices and all that stuff. I told them, I said, I think the church has really dropped the ball

on those people and almost resist them out of fear or something like that because I think that if the leadership of churches don't recognize how much of a supernatural world we live in, when they come across people who pursue the supernatural, but not through a biblical world lens. They're scared of those type of people. And I told them all this stuff.

And his response to me was, but we just don't know how to reach them. I'm like, I mean you don't know how to reach them? Like, they're human beings. Just talk to them. What do you think I went to school for this? Like, I turn on a microphone

and just started talking to people, you know? And it's all it is. And so I'm going to come down. I'm starting to get grumpy. But this is why the new age movement stuff is exploding, right? It's that people have this yearning inside them. they know that there is a supernatural space and you can encounter it and albeit in a like in a jv like you know um in the wrong way obviously new age speaking but it's like in a in a pittily way right

but they people be us being spiritual beings hunger for the supernatural and the church isn't providing that and which is ironic you've got a couple mike heiser books here on the shelf behind us right and and all mike is really done and you know prayers up to to mike hiser right because his health is struggling. But all he really did was say, hey, listen, the people that wrote the Bible, they had a supernatural worldview. They didn't divorce the physical from the supernatural.

In fact, the people that wrote the Old Testament, there wasn't a separation. This supernatural world was real. It interacted with the physical world. And yet we're post, you know, where we live now in the 21st century, we're post-enlightenment, we're in the empirical era. And the vast majority,

and this is not a slide of the church at all, but the vast majority of churches are pretty, pretty much inoculated themselves against the supernatural. God doesn't speak anymore and God doesn't heal anymore. And it's like we create all these safety nets for God not coming through. We're God not doing supernatural things. And yet it still happens. All you do is get out of the first world to realize how real

and how amazing, how powerful the God will be served as and the things that he is doing and healing and, like, raising people from the dead. All that stuff happens outside of here in the first world. But, you know, we're insulated in this space where we've got 401Ks and a safety net for everything. And, you know, I'll pray for this, but if God doesn't come through, it's all right, because I've got this plan, right? That's how we... I got the plan B and C. Well, I think also the church is very much like politics, right?

It's gloss over the surface, make it look presentable. And then behind the closed doors, everyone's actually having real conversations and real life is happening. And I think the beauty of a podcast is, is like, we're not, all of us are not afraid of being canceled. Because, like, you know, I said this once on a show. is like, you know, at church, you're sort of massaging the message. You can't speak the truth. And if you speak the truth, people will leave. But on a podcast is the exact opposite. If you don't speak the truth, no one's going to listen. So podcasters are sort of thrown like, get weird, get as raw as possible. Because if you don't, you're not going to separate yourself from anybody else out there. So it's the church is afraid to get raw and real for whatever reason. I think it's because it's kind of adopted the political stuff and how they see the world. But even with my kids today, I was at my kid's birthday party. And one of the, one of the, one of the, the volunteers there also works at my kid's school, it's talking about how my kid's always pushing back on the evolution stuff in class. And she's like,

my kid, you know, he's a dinosaur kid. He knows all about dinosaurs. I'm like, my kid, too. But the brainwashing starts really young in this culture.

And so when you get to a certain age, you don't realize how much you've been influenced by all these systems, all these paradigms. And then you try to read the Bible. And it doesn't make any sense to you. So yeah, you do gloss over the Old Testament because it doesn't make any sense if you grow up hearing evolution and all this other.

this paradigm that we, you know, billions of years and all this other stuff. And, you know, you get to a certain age and it's like, well, that Bible's just, yeah, I can't. Because you just didn't grow up and ask those hard questions and has somebody lead you through. Okay, well, this is exactly what ancient history probably more was. You know, and then we got into the giants a lot on our show, which is just like where blurry creatures has lived a lot. And some people hate that. But we use the giants to kind of make sense of all the modern-day cryptids, like, they were corrupting everything in the Old Testament.

It sounds like a, you know, a movie. But Bigfoot creatures, werewolf creatures, chimerical creatures. You had actual giants. So we start there and we kind of get people who've had paranormal experiences, maybe more answers.

Because I think it is fun and entertaining to listen to a paranormal story, but some people just, after a while, if they're like me, I just like, what the heck is going on? How are all these experiences happening to people And then the theologians were coming on shows.

I was like, oh, wait. You know, this unlocks a lot of stuff I've heard my whole life. So that's when I did a 180 from where I was going spiritually. And the podcast has really saved me, I would say, from a lot of bad ideas and a lot of bad thoughts. But it starts young in our culture. And then... There's a mind virus. You can't deviate because then you have to, like, your whole system falls apart, right?

Everyone thinks you're crazy. I mean, I could just see in the conversation today. She's like, my kid's been brainwashed. I'm like, no, no. It's the opposite. She was telling you that to your face? Well, she says it's okay to disagree, but I could tell like my kids pushing back on all the, all the narratives. And that's not, it's a Montessori school, so it's open-minded, but it's still.

That's crazy because I think ideas should be pushed back on, you know? That's why free speech is so important. Yeah. Yeah. They've been taking that away for a while now. Well, they call it religious. Oh, that's a religious. That's a religious idea. No, the flood isn't really. It's science. The flood is science. Like he found some fossilized shells in the back of, literally in the playground in the back of the school. And he brings them in school and he goes, see, this is why the flood happened.

And he gives him to his teacher. I'm like, that's my kid. That's my kid. And then she's like, what flood? He's like, oh, here we go. You might be one of those Christians. But they're asking all these questions of young age. What dimension does God live in? I mean, I've got some crazy questions this year on the way to school with my kids. And I love it. They're six and eight asking about what dimension does God live in.

Wow. We can't do that as grown-ass people, right? Like, you do that in church, people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, where's that, you know? Yeah. Where's that at? The Bible. Oh, man, man. Sorry.

I mean, you know, it's funny. We got to have a free marketplace of ideas. Like, is one of the great philosophers of the 21st century, the macho man Randy Savage said is the cream rises to the top, right? And speaking in 80s. And too, it's speaking in the 80s. But the cream rises to the top. You know, but listen, like, that's the idea is that we are,

we need to have dialogue. You know, we talk about our show and we're just looking for better answers. A lot of the questions that we ask, and I think Tony, you do the same thing. a lot on your show is that there aren't like definite answers for a lot of these questions and so you're just looking for better answers like how can we answer this question better?

What is big, what are these things? What are these experiences people having? What are these UFO things that people are seeing now? Especially with every phone having a camera. Everybody's catching something in the sky. And I think it's fascinating in some ways the way we have culturally

we were talking to a friend of mine on a recording Zach Bell, veteran with a sign and he was talking about his, he had a UFO experience in Afghanistan he was, what was impressed upon him when he was out in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, was that there was no light pollution and no noise pollution out there, right?

So he said the sky is immense and it's bright and he's like you can, when the moon is out, it's almost like daylight. And you, I think we forget that like for thousands of years, like our nighttime entertainment was looking at the sky and seeing, and you know, this is why we look at these, if you watch Graham Hancock's latest episode about all the temples that are pointed

towards serious and they all move over the time. Well, at night people were just tracking what's going on in the sky. And we don't spend time doing that. And yet the frequency to which we are seeing these phenomena now seems to be on the, on the escalation. And it's like, I don't know, everything's a circle, right? It's like we're coming back to like being interested in what's the sky again,

what's in the sky again, but here we are, you know, and where we live. And it's like, there is no night sky. Yeah, I mean, Nashville. No. Or you can see an UFO and just take it something else, like some drone or a satellite or a plane. That's another thing is with the technology we have today and stuff, it's so easy to explain away as something. And there are explanations.

It's like my friend Derek, he's a listener in the show. He texts me just the other day a video that his kid took outside their house in New York. And it was this line of lights going through the sky. And he's like, what do you think about this? And I said, honestly, I think it's Starlink. And he's like, thank you for giving me the scientific answer or something like that. Or the non-paranormal answer. And I was like, I was like, yeah.

You're like, I'll text Tony. And then I'll get, if you're like, you probably got 50 links to it. And you're like, that's not. Oh, of course. Yeah. And I always like, the hardest thing for me is when I get, I mean, I get DMs from people all the time and it's like, whatever, you know. But like when it's somebody that I know and I like and they send me something, I'm just like, oh, that's really explainable and he's really excited. I don't want to let him down.

You're like, sorry, bro. Because I'm Mr. Paranormal guy. So he's like, oh, my bro is going to love this. And it's like, actually. Actually, that's not a big foot. That's a bush. I'm sorry. You know what I think.

Yeah. I know. But it's a wild journey doing this stuff. Now it's AI photos. Oh, yeah. Photos coming at you. So, all right. I'm glad you brought that up.

So I have an account with one of these AI generators and stuff because I started using them for the show. And I was like, I woke up thinking about this one day. I was like, and I'm not going to do this. But nobody's going to believe me now that I'm going to say this. But I woke up thinking myself, how, how, how realistic is this stuff? Could I make something on this AI art

and then put it out there as a listener sent me this to see if I wanted to lie to people, right? And so I went on there and there's certain things with the AI art you can't, it still has a hard time with. It has a hard time with hands, feet. So I was like, let me see if I can make something that looks really old, like an old picture.

Like Admiral Bird took down at Antarctica, right? Followers. Yeah, yeah. So I spent way too much time going back and forth on this generator to get it right. But I created a pyramid covered in snow down in Antarctica on an old, I forget what camera I use, but like an old camera. And it looked like real. And I was like, holy crap. And I showed it my wife.

And she's like, did you make that with AI? I was like, yeah. She knows you too well. That we did for the last six hours? Did you put those out on the internet? Because we've got those. She said that somebody else had already done that. There's like statues.

Yeah. Some guy got to fight with me the other day because I posted on something like those are fake. There's been to several rounds of those. There's like three or four groups of them that I've seen on every Facebook group and I've seen all over the place. And there's one, like a bunch of AI photos in like the jungles of Peru or something. And it's clearly just a bunch of weird stuff. Kind of looks good. Doesn't look good.

But we're in a weird time where AI can generate stuff that actually people believe. Well, it's like that Morgan Freeman video where you've seen the deal. deep fake thing where they think it's this white guy talking and they make him it's a weird time to be alive right now and it's even better than what's his name well uh frank calliendo when he does his morgan right what's a weird time for a lot of people who have spent their life learning the craft and how to make these things and then all of a sudden a computer can do it better than you can it's like whoa yeah you know but i don't know but yeah so you know for blurry creatures i mean we we just live in that space a lot and we bring a lot of people that are on the fringe of christianity

on the show. And I think that's really what separates us. We didn't really want to become a, like, a cryptid podcast and just, we want to talk about just like more of the blurry. Why is it, why is there no focus on in the church on these ideas? That's why it's blurry, right? I mean, obviously it's the quintessential blurry picture of Bigfoot, you know, it's kind of tongue and cheek, but just these subjects are not able to just give in a clear shot, you know, a clear lens. And what are they, you know, but there are the, you know, the occasional author like Dr. Michael Heiser, who will have a hit selling book because he's, let's talk about it. But I think what people have to understand is like ancient people didn't look at it the way that modern people look at it

from both sides of the camp. They either believed in the gods or God. And there was this clash. There wasn't this like middle space of apathy, unbelief. I don't believe in gods. Like, whoa, whoa, what? Yeah. Freak. Yeah. Like, of course there's gods. It's just are one or there many. Yeah, they were building this stuff as, you know, effigies to these gods and they were getting something from it. You know, we bring a lot of guys on who talk about the megaliths, right? These ancient buildings, these pre-flood dynasties.

And clearly they were getting something from what they were doing. They were building these things. It took 20, 30 years, and they're perfect. And there's just weird stuff carved in them. Yeah, you've had Derek also on the show. Yeah. So, like, I mean, the stuff he talks about all the precision, the technology, even if you want to break your head

in your mind on something, just start looking at the mathematics on the pyramids and be like, how in the world did they line these up and precision? It's insanity. And like people will say, the other side is like, well, you know,

people default to aliens and all this stuff. Well, man could do this. Sure. But to the precision that the ancients, they had to have something that we don't know they had because we can't recreate it now. So there's that paradigm that I think needs to be addressed and just isn't. It's too easy to be like, or why?

They made a ramp and they just brought all these 100 ton precision cut pieces of rose granite up, up this ramp. Or if it's more than 10 degrees, guess what? You can't haul it up there. So let's talk about how that happened. Yeah. But it's always the how, never the why either. Like, why? Yeah, why would you build something that took one block every two minutes for 20 years, a two-ton block, you know, something that you couldn't get enough human beings.

around to lift it anyways. Why? Why would they build this stuff? It's always the how. We're very much a how society. And that's always the videos, how, how, how. I'm more into the why.

Why would they build it? And why would they build them all over the world? Yeah. And that's the, that's what, I think that's the vein we like to live in. And they're just, they're crazy things, man.

You talk about the pyramids. You can, you could spend a lifetime trying to figure it out. Like, if you've seen the videos like from, from Central America and Mexico where they can sit at the bottom, I mean, you can clap and it comes back and sound like a bird.

Or these pyramids in Central and South America and even in Mexico can have weather that's created like because of the position. It's just crazy stuff where you're like, this is so purposeful. And it, you know, the idea that's just a tomb. There's the answer. You know, there is a, you know, Kufu built this as a tomb. And you're like, this doesn't really make a lot of sense. Yeah, it doesn't.

I just realized that that camera is not recording me. So, okay. A lot of Luke and naked. I desperately need my brother here in studio working things because I have too much going on. You could just get AI to make it. Right. Just get Tony. It looks mostly like Tony.

There's something little off, but okay. It's a little blurry. All you have to do is just film like 10 seconds and say, AI, follow my mouth, make it look like I'm there. It probably is possible. We don't even need you anymore. You can replace yourself. You'll give you some hair like a mullet or something, man.

Everyone knows it's fake. Very 80s. So I shaved my beard off like two weeks ago. No, I saw you post that, dude. And now you're bringing it back. Well, yeah. I mean, I shave it off a lot. Back to the beard.

Yeah, I usually shave it like once a year, once every year and a half. When I go mustache, man. Let's be all in. Sometimes it just needs a reset. And I don't post about it though, right? And I posted about it. And I was stunned by the amount of dudes on there. mad, full grown men, mad that I shade my beard.

Why would you do that? And I'm like, bro, it grows back. And I do it all the time. I'm like, there's something weird about you, bro. You might have a conversation with your wife soon. That's the thing about this space is there's a lot of weird people in it, right? Like, you know, Bigfoot attracts a lot of weird types of people. And I think that was a nice thing that, you know, Luke and I,

I had lives before all this. You know, he, different, you know, some successes in different areas. And we didn't, we weren't looking for blurry creatures to like do anything other than we're just, we're passionate about these, these subjects. And I think a lot of times, you know, sometimes it's, it's hard to deal with the weirdness that comes at you from your fans if you've never dealt or experienced with that. And I'm, luckily, my band didn't have like crazy fans. We tour with some bands that did.

So I, like, watched what. they had to deal with on a daily basis and, you know, crazy stuff, you know. So I'm glad that, you know, we don't have to deal with some of that. But we do have to deal with some weird stuff. And I'm sure you do too. It's just like you put yourself on the internet and you have your thoughts out there. And that's why I just stopped looking at the comments and stuff. Like I just got to be, yeah. Like I'll look at them. But like as soon as I see one negative thing, I bail. Like I'm like, I'm out. Or just deleted or I'm out. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just being like completely disrespectful to me or my wife.

or something like that. But, I mean, it's not good for my head space. So as soon as I see a bad comment, I'm out. See you. You know, I got too much going on to be getting all up in my feelings about some strangers' comments about how they didn't like me or my podcast cast or something like that. Yeah.

We live in a time when everybody's a critic. So, and then everybody has a megaphone, or at least a soapbox, whatever you want to call it. So they feel like they need to voice that opinion. Everyone's a Yelper, right? Or everyone thinks that you have to be an expert to put your thoughts out in the world. And it's like, I think one thing we say a lot on our show is like we're not experts for some dudes. Dumbies, yeah.

Yeah, just asking a question. And I think, you know, we're able to ask the dumb question. Bring Heiser on. Ask them some dumb questions. Because everyone has one. You're just not brave enough to ask it yourself. So we'll do it. We'll do it for you.

Yeah. We'll ask the dumb question for you. And sometimes we get some good questions in there too. but we don't take ourselves too serious and I think we try to make it fun some memes, make some dumb videos. It's just meming. You guys are the king of the meme world.

That man, right man, right man. I'm like, man, I wish I knew how to do that crap. And like, you pump them out. I'm thinking myself, how the heck do you pump on all that stuff and the podcast? I'd spend an entire day just trying to make one of those freaking things you make. I'm like, geez. But we just send videos back and forth about like,

we should meme that. You should meme this. And Nate's the master of voices. Like, well, it's just, that's what, that was, thank God, you know, the band world taught me how to do that stuff. Because we were so broke. We had no other way to promote our band. So we, you had to get good at this kind of stuff. So I had all these years of experience, how to do it quick, how to make funny stuff fast and then get it on on MySpace because that was MySpace days. Who top seven? I think I still have a MySpace account somewhere with my music on there. What's playing on there? Like Three Six Mafia. I love that post recently where Elon was like, I need someone to be a CEO of Twitter. And Tom posts his quintessential Myspace picture right underneath it.

But yeah, there was a time when like, you know, Tom was a hit in our, like, because we were on their label. And so we were like a MySpace band in the MySpace. It was like. I didn't know MySpace had a label. Yeah, they had a record label. Oh, okay. And so we were on their label. And it was just like, you know, a crash course into social media.

But they're constantly telling me, we need more content. need more videos. This is like pre- YouTube and all that or stuff. I mean, YouTube was the thing, but it wasn't a thing. It wasn't what it is now, yeah. Yeah. So government paid for operation. So it was just like you learned how to make content and on the cheap, you know,

videos and stuff. So we were always trying to, I love the bands that didn't take themselves too serious. And I was like, that's the spirit of the podcast. Just come on. There's always somebody smarter than you. There's always somebody who's more of an expert. Yeah. It's just some people,

want to laugh too while they're talking about some things about heavy stuff yeah yeah yeah because these are i mean these are you you tread in this you talk to people that have wild experiences and they're traumatic yeah and it's somewhat traumatic people to engage these thoughts sometimes i think that's why there's such a there's a mental block for a lot of people to even even want to delve into this because it does break your paradigm it completely does and some people we much prefer to be safe. And people that have had experiences, they can't, they don't have that luxury, right? And so they, there's trauma involved. And so you talk about a lot of heavy things. And when we get into the heavy things that surround these, like even from an academic standpoint, we're talking to

doctors and PhDs and these people who wrote books about this stuff. It's, it's, it's, we just don't, yeah, we just don't try to take ourselves too serious. Yeah. Like, it's, um, because there's a lot of bad, I mean, there's a lot of darkness in this world. You, a lot. And, and I think, I think it's important, like just the art of war, to understand your enemy. Not to be, to obsess or, but to understand what's happening. I think you, you cut yourself short if you don't want to know what the darkness is doing, right? Because understand your enemy is how you defeat it. And so I think putting a lot of the paranormal and the, the unexplained into a paradigm that's founded in, in your faith, I think is freeing.

it also is empowering. Way empowering because all of a sudden the world makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. It's like, whoa, that was one of the biggest things for me. When I started this podcast, because like you guys, my brain changed so much over the years, you know. And as I uncover new information or somebody brings something, you know, an encounter across the desk, and I'm listening, I'm like, wait a second, if that's true, then that makes this over here a lot more, you know, digestible. and it's just it's one of those things where um without without um without um without this

this constant flow of information uh with what we do uh if if you're into these topics it's like you're you're almost abandoned you it's like i don't know how to make sense of all this stuff yeah yeah and so i mean with you guys because you guys talk to a lot more um educated type people and stuff, you know, like Heiser and Dr. Laura Sanger and, um, Albarino, Albarino, Doug Van Dahlia. So like, I mean, uh, you guys get a perspective, like a much more, uh, academic perspective geared towards this stuff, you know, and so I think it's, I think it's really cool. So now we just shot shot about 50 minutes of just talking back and forth and stuff.

Um, let's, let's talk about some different topics and stuff. Uh, and I guess what do is we'll start off, Nate, with your encounter here because I've been this past year, ever since I came out with Exhibition Dog Man, we've been having a lot more dog man stuff on the show. And it's really presenting a new dynamic to the show. But you have a dogman encounter. Here we are. This is your moment. Yeah, yeah, it's funny to be on the other end of this. So, you know, I guess I'll tell you the story. I'll try to do. Luke's heard this a couple of times, so he's probably tired of hearing it. But this is really my only kind of weird thing that happened to me specifically.

You know, I grew up in Northern California, the suburbs of Sacramento, and probably seven, eight years old, maybe a little younger. But I'm in that age where, you know, I'm still young. And one thing we hear a lot on our show is, you know, kids see stuff and they see a lot of weird stuff. And I don't know what happens. You get to a certain age and you stop seeing. things or things stop messing with you or whatever. But this was in the age of like that, you know, obviously not talking about the 80s, but a lot of Hollywood gore movies and stuff like that is around.

So I had an idea of like what a werewolf was and what it would look like. And I remember when it was like a summer night and there was like a sunroom detached from my parents living room. And there was like a glass door and then a few feet. And then there was like a screen door and a back door. right. So at night in northern California, if you grew up on the west coast, it gets cold. Even in the summer, you can open your windows and, you know, it's just something that happens. You just, your house isn't all walked up because it's either, like in the south, it's just too sweaty.

You can't. It's just too humid. So anyway, I'm on the couch watching something and it's probably late. I think people are going to bed. And it's summertime. And so I'm, walking from the TV room, cross the house, and I walk by the glass door and it's open and I can see into the backyard and there's just this crappy little screen door with the screen on top and the bottom half I can't see because there's like metal sheet metal there, how the door is designed. And as I'm walking, I had that feeling that everyone describes on these shows of something's looking at you, right? And I look to my left and in the window, right outside the door, there's like standing in the doorway up. There's this werewolf face. And I did like a triple

take, you know, and I'm the youngest of four siblings. So my sister's eight years older than me. So I want to be pretty damn sure that I'm, what I'm looking at is when I'm looking at if I'm about to have a reaction. I wasn't the oldest. I couldn't convince my brothers and sisters. You know, like, didn't have an imagination,

so to speak. You know, you just couldn't get away with lying about stuff like that. Anyway, that's just where my mindset is. So I'm seeing this thing, and I did,

like, I remember I did several takes, and finally I just panic and the fear set in. But this thing, like, I swear it had, like, from my memory, had, like, red eyes.

And it just, like, smiled at me. Like, just, like, a sinister, like, grin. And it looked just like you would imagine the werewolf to look like. It just had this dog face. It felt more on the demonic side. I don't know.

I can't place it where it was. I mean, we're, this is Carmichael. I grew up riding my bike to the river. So I'm not completely in the middle of the suburbs. Like we were about a mile and a half, two miles from the river right there, the American River. And when I was a kid, we'd ride our bikes down there and we would float down the river, right? We'd go fishing there. And that goes all the way up in the Sierra's, right? So there's a way that it could have followed the river, but still suburbs, you know, Sacramento was pretty big.

But this thing was, it was terrifying. And I didn't, I screamed, I ran, went into my parents' bedroom's like there's a war there's a werewolf in the you know it kind of reminded like you know story of the three little pigs right the wherewolf comes is going to like you know it's kind of in that but i remember there was that movie silver bullet that was out stephen king movie movie and that i think it was an 80s movie and there's that one i think cori hame was like one of the leads one of those 80s kids um anyway it was a big movie and i think my brother watched it and he and that's how it was my older siblings and watched scary stuff and it freaked me out and I was too young to be watching that stuff but I would sneak in and watch a movie with my

older and so my parents just wrote it off and for years I just thought oh that was that was just something that I imagined but I know that I experienced some PTSD because I wouldn't look out that window for years I would just run I would run from one end of the house the other and I wouldn't look out there and my dad we had this fireplace and my dad put the wood in the backyard behind a shop and he'd be like go get some of the house the other and I would be like go get some would. And I remember being like, I don't want to go out in the backyard. And he was like, what are you so freaked out about? I'm like, I was freaked out for a long time. And then probably around 12, 13, just stop thinking about it. Like, no, I didn't see that. And then it wasn't until

listening to podcasts like this that I was like, oh crap, people are describing exactly what I saw. And I think if I hadn't had that PTSD of not looking out that window for a year, I would have probably forgot it. But I remember running from the carpet to the hardwood. So I remember running for years, just like not wanting to look out. So I don't know. I don't know if I saw Dog Man or if I saw like the demonic manifestation of Dog Man. And one thing we've learned on our shows, there's a difference.

For some reason, these things can look like that. But there's probably actually a flesh and blood creature that is it too. It's like a skinwalker or something. It's like the hybrid of the two. But it definitely looked exactly like you would imagine it. And it had just a sinister like grin. But it was freaky, man. So I mean, you know, it's one of those things where years later you look back and you go,

I think I saw that. I don't think I imagined that. And I don't, I wouldn't have had any reason to. I would pitch something probably a little less scary. Yeah. It's the Dogman stories are the worst. I think they're the, it's like Bigfoot's kind of, it's almost like get a Harry Henderson's feeling half the time, you know?

Not always, but I don't think anyone has a positive counter with this thing. Some people do, but I've heard two or three times, but it, so you were a kid when this happened to you and it, it's, it terrified you. I've heard, I've ever heard people having positive experiences is children. So sometimes people as kids come across these things and the reaction that this thing has towards a child is much more gentle, almost like a dog would be. Weird. Very weird. Yeah. Especially if you're thinking like, if you come from the perspective of these things are evil, demonic, and as a parent, you're like,

this thing is going towards kids and befriending them. Like, what does that even mean? But I, I think at least twice in my show, but I think it was three times. We've had somebody talk about the gentle side of dog man, but it was always, I was a child, and this thing, like, was friends with me, not as adults, though. And I had Martin Groves in studio earlier this week, actually, and he talked about his dogman encounter and how he and his hunting partner had these things coming on in their camp. They're both retired police officers. At the time, that time they were active, this is 93. And they're running, they jump in the truck. When they turn on the lights, across the way in the field, he said,

are two bigfoot standing there. So there's dog man in their camp and two bigfoot standing in the field. And he said, these things were the ugliest things he's ever seen in his leg. Like the way he was talking about them didn't strike me as, oh, it's hairy, furry, patty. Right. And then he said the smaller one dropped down in all four and then they had taken off. But the way he said it and the way we talked about it on the recording, like I said to him, you know, it's almost like the way he's describing it. Because we hear people talk about how Bigfoot and Dogman don't get along, this, that, and the other. but what if it's just our vantage point

from the outside looking in that we don't really get the relationship between the two? Because the way he talked about it, here goes my voice. I'm trying not to let my voice squeak. I'm sucking down lozhenger's like crazy. But the way he described it was it almost sounded like

the vibe was they were there almost like observing and orchestrating almost. It's almost like they showed up together and it's like the Bigfoot just let the dogs off the leash and said go. And they went. Because that same night that they had that encounter, there was another camper like a mile away

that the next morning was found torn to pieces. And he had met the guy before he died. And the guy was real nice. But he was, and they called it a bear attack. But yeah, it happened in the LBL, which isn't far from where you guys are.

So it's like the grays, the grays let the bigfoot's out and the big foot. Right. Right. Let the dog man off the leash. It's like, what's that, what's that, that box thing where it's like the bigger box is on the outside.

Oh, it's like a Russian, it's a Russian nesting doll. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, that's what it was, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a very interesting topic. And so, and actually, you know what? I think he even talked about it smiling.

If I remember correctly, I think he recalled it smiling. And that's, that's something I've heard before, too. In fact, years ago, episode 85, I believe, there's a guy, I called it Lost in the Smokies. He said, him his girlfriend. friend got lost in smokies wild night. They saw something. He's like a face in the bushes almost. And he said, this thing,

when it smiled, he said the smile went from like ear to ear. Yeah. So I think that's part of the reason why I just wrote it off because it felt kind of cartoonish. And, you know, you're just like, I'm not saying what I'm saying. Like, it's not possible.

I'm having an hallucination. But I don't remember ever having anything like that happened in my life. I've been through some crazy stress and stuff, you know, just on the road and losing sleep and I've never seen anything. So this is something that was really different. And where you were at, it wasn't rural, right? You said it was suburbs? Yeah, suburbs, but, I mean, we were close to the river. So, I mean, so I've heard these things jumping from roof to roof.

Yeah. So, you know, it's possible climbing over fences. And I don't know, you talked to dark waters. I know you talked to dark waters a lot. and he said, you know, people see them in cities. And it's weird, right? But, you know, some of the people who've talked to, they almost want a classification chart for this thing because there's multiple, you know.

And I think the same thing with Sasquatch, you have different types, different abilities, different breeds, different colors. I mean, it's not just Bigfoot. But, I mean, that's where you start. And then eventually you're like, man, we need to chart. we need to like map this out so we can make sense of whatever it's going on yeah it looks like that meme with all the strings attached to all the all the all the all the thumb pants and the yeah it's like now it's funny though because you talked about it made me think the idea that like

there's some amicable dog dog men with with kids is not unlike sometimes what we hear about with bigfoot right is there's these stories about bigfoot rescuing kids from drowning or taking it's weird like yeah and i don't know i don't know i don't I still don't know what to think about any of that, except that, like, you also have these Native American lore of Bigfoot carrying kids off and kidnapping them. And it's like, is it a kind of like the old I have candy in my van thing?

It'll be nice to. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we, there's a lot to try to digest, too, when you start thinking about, we talked about this along the show, Nate, about the whole politeness effect and any of these missing people in national parks.

And you can overlay these maps with Bigfoot sightings. You can overlay it with. with the caves across the United States. And you start wondering like, yeah, you know, are they just buttering people up to take them? Are they really like,

are there, are, is there a variance in like there's somewhat, you know, benevolent? And then there's the nasties. Yeah. Yeah,

I don't know. It's almost like the world is more like Narnia than we want to admit. Yeah. So there could be. You don't know how right you are in saying that. So it's like, you know,

there's, oh my gosh. There could be some, some loyalty. to Aslan and there could be some loyal to the white witch. And I think that we're kind of caught in the crossfire. Yeah. And yeah.

So I think it's, it's, I don't even care anymore what people think. So, but I think if we start looking at this stuff and that kind of lenses, it makes you feel weird in the sense that like, I don't want to, that's a fictional book. You don't want to pull that as part of reality. But what if it was based off of reality when they wrote it? Yeah. And that's some information. that I'm not going to drop right now,

but it's really interesting. Really interesting. You were talking about Tolkien. Well, there's a lot of Tolkien in parallels to like the book Enoch, for example, like there is these, that some ways he was writing, you know,

allegories or parallels to some of the ancient apocrypha that we see. And I always think this is interesting. I've had this thought a lot lately, Tony, it's like God and angels, right? And that's what you have. But then I look at what we have here on Earth, and like the variance in flora and fauna and animals

and all that kind of stuff. And I don't, and it makes you wonder then about like what we call the heavenly or the spiritual realm. It would be kind of crazy to think that it's super binary and there's just this and it's not like a variance of creatures. And I mean, I got to do is read Revelation.

It's easy to look at those things and say this is prophetic iconography, right? But what if it isn't all? What if we have this vast realm of variance creatures and things and heavenly things? And I don't think that maybe isn't too far off. So the idea there's this Narnia kind of thing. You know, I don't know. I don't know how to unpack that except to say that I think we vastly underestimate what we call the heavenly realm or the spiritual realm

in the diversity of stuff, things. And I think we see that because I think things come through. And if we're, you talk about portals a lot. You might even talk about portals at our conference. Maybe. But there's this,

there's this crossing over. And, you know, I don't know how much, it's tough to understand. I don't know how much lives on this side and how much lives on that side if we're going to put it in sort of those terms. but there's a lot of weird stuff that I think we can classify as supernatural and it isn't angelic necessarily. It could be hybridized angelic, but it's not like what we would understand or how we sort

of have this maybe medieval understanding of the angelic realm. So I think that's interesting. I think it's interesting to think about like Middle Earth idea, right, that there's just all this stuff. off. Well, and two, like the Bible probably picks the most important parts to write down. There's probably years where nothing happens, right? So when you read it, it's a highlight of the weird a lot, especially in the Old Testament, or important moments. Maybe they're not weird to you. Maybe it sounds normal, but they're important moments. So just like the average person has one, two,

three supernatural encounters in their life. Maybe none, right? Because, Because that's the way life is. For the most part, I think God protects us from this stuff. So we don't experience it all day long. The people you interview that do experience it all day long, people who can see, you know, their lives sound not very fun if they can see all this stuff. And people say, oh, they're just on drugs or they're crazy or whatever. Not all of them.

Some of them. Not all of them. Yeah. And I think that's the way the Bible was written too, is it like, it gives you the important pieces. doesn't explain to you what a Nephulam is for 15 chapters. It just talks to you about that and then it goes on. And I think to that point there's because it was written by the ancients to the ancients,

there's this requisite understanding that I think is assumed. And we've lost a lot of that. Because we are 21st century human beings that spend, what's your screen time look like? How much time did you spend looking at your little box in your hand, right? Up your game, bro. No, but it's there's things that were understood. that I think if we don't go back to look at and try to understand, and this is where, like,

a lot of the people on our show, you know, find these things. This is why I think, like someone like we brought up Heiser sometimes, and Michael Heiser resonates with so many people, because all he does is go back and say, what is the original language saying? What are the people that wrote it? What did they believe? And what were their thoughts and what was their worldview in writing this? Yeah. And I think when you unpack the biblical narrative that way, it's not only is the context incredible and it becomes, I think, like, almost 3D in a sense, if we're looking at it in 2D to 3D. But I think it makes everything else makes so much sense. Like I, and this is like a, this is an infomercial for our podcast in 30 seconds.

It's like, how do we make it all makes sense? Well, the Bible, what does? It does provide the context. I think, you know, once you, once you open your eyes and your mind to that, I, it makes everything more real for everything from the Old Testament to the gospel. The gospel doesn't need any help, but the significance of what Christ did. It contextualized in what happened in the Old Testament and what happened in Genesis 3 and what happened in the Garden and what happened in Genesis 6 and what was going on. I think it makes it unfathomely more incredible.

And from that contextual space, I think when you start to bring in these encounter stories like Tony that you have week in and week out, there's a space for us. all of this. Now, I don't think we have an animal kingdom. We can't put it in the Psychopedicotica and decide, you know, but I think there's a better way to understand it than just like, let's write that off because it's weird. You know, I think the weird stuff matters a lot. Yeah.

You know, I think it matters a lot a lot when we look at the biblical narrative too. It's the weird stuff that's maybe most important. It's like it's like we live in this engineered culture and way of thinking and the weird stuff just doesn't

fit what we've been engineered to live and exist in. And I think the more we look into it, the more we pursue these topics and understandings and stuff, the more we're breaking out of that engineered system. I'm trying to not say, but I'm going to say it's the matrix. We're breaking out of the matrix. You know, it's like this pre-programmed way of living, you know, like you don't do certain things. You think this certain way. You only, there's only two Republican, or there's only two political parties. Like, it's just this very engineered existence that we live in. And anything outside of that that hasn't been, hasn't been pre-approved by the engineer

is just wacky, weird, and shouldn't be talked about. But that stuff, it really helps make sense with what the world is and why it is the way it is when you start looking into it and try and understand it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, you know, like a lot on our show, too. It's like providing the space to have the conversation because so many people just you know, Christians are so afraid of getting it wrong

that they err on the side of not talking about any of it. Right? So we get a lot of that on our show. There's got like a lot of pushback of like, oh, these guys are bringing on false teachers and all that stuff too. But it's like, look, the church is so afraid to talk about this stuff because they're afraid about getting something wrong, preaching something that isn't biblical or whatever. And I think that the problem is, is you don't, I agree that there are heretical ideas. I agree that there is a, but the problem is, the majority of the problem with the church,

like Heiser says, is it has a very deist perspective. God sort of set up the world and then took off, and we're just kind of like Lord of the Flies down here. They don't actually bring in any of the supernatural stuff. They don't believe the Red Sea parted. They're Christians that go to church. They don't believe the Red Sea parted.

And I think that it's more fun to believe the Red Sea part isn't it? No, but there's like they waited across the Sea of Reeds, and it was just like, you know, it was a metaphor. Or it was metaphorical. There was this ad that was popping up, I think, on YouTube or Instagram for one of these masterclasses of writing literature. And the guy was like talking, it was about the Bible. And I think he was doing a master class on Genesis or something like that.

But it was just a pure academic, like, this is all metaphoric. And here's the beautiful nature of the Bible. They're like, we're going to dive into the Bible. It's going to be so beautiful because it's all fake. and we're just going to show you how it's fake. And I'm just like, come on, bro. Like, you can look at, so there's, there's so many prophetical things throughout the Old Testament that it's really hard to get around.

And I haven't looked at this information in a while. I used to kind of be able to rattle it off. I think it's, I forget what Salman is, but David is writing and he's prophesying the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and he's writing about his crucifixion. And the problem is crucifixion hasn't been invented yet when he wrote it. Now, we don't know when that specific psalm was written, but we do know that from the time of the oldest psalm to the time that crucifixion had been invented was I think still like nine,

I think it was like at least a max of 90 year period where crucifixion hadn't even been existence yet. I think that is more than that. I think it's King Darius, I think it was. I think it was Darius who invented crucifixion and for his political enemies. I think he crucified over 3,000 political enemies. But when David was writing about it, that wasn't even existence yet. So, like, David's seeing something that is not even possible.

Dude, I love that. I love that. And we talk about a lot of those topics on our show. And that makes me think of the story of Joseph when he sold into slavery, right? And he goes to the, he's like the king's guy. And he gets put in prison, right? and he's in prison with who, the cup bearer and the baker, which symbolizes the blood and the body, right?

And he says in one of his dreams is he's going to be nailed to a tree, right? This is way before. And then he says, and one of you is going to be restored to the right hand to your father. And so you have to have this sort of 4D view of scripture of like, wait, what's going on here? You've got dreams being interpreted. You've got the symbolism of the blood and the body. you've got this guy going down into a jail cell, which sounds like Tartarus,

which sounds like where Jesus goes when he dies. And you've got all this stuff going on. It's not just a metaphor. And this wasn't just crafted by a person or a group of people who had a really good idea for a story. Yeah. Like, it is a real story. And these real characters that actually played out.

Yeah, like, so this is really datable where, you know, like the Bible, we can date when it was written. and it was written over a thousand year period. I think it was more than a thousand year period from beginning to end. And it's like, so people are writing things that other people are confirming

after that person wrote it is dead. And so it's like people who send back me like, well, you know, it's just, we have people write stories today and stuff, it's just a story. It's not. This was written by, was it, I think it's like 60,

over 60 people, I think, total authors in the Bible. And it's just, well, here's the other thing crazy tell me, this is what I was about to say, looking backward, right? Like, Christ fulfilled more than 300 prophecies in the Old Testament. And it's not like people went back and rewrote those. We can pull stuff from the Dead Sea Scrolls and stuff that are written before the hundreds and thousands, maybe a thousand years.

Don't quote me on this. Hundreds of years before Christ and they exist. And the personage of Jesus fulfilled more than 300 prophecies of the Old Testament. So it wasn't like he did these things and then they wrote it bent backwards. Let's make sure this works. It was, in fact, statistically impossible for it to happen. Yeah. Which then, I mean, yeah, so you want to have your masterclass on saying this is all fake.

There's so many things you can explain that happened literally forward that weren't revised backward. That it just is, it's miraculous. And the fact that it is, it just to me is more credence. And one of the thing Nate was saying, I want to point out, like, is it, I think when we're doing it, it's just trying to have conversations, right? Like, and I think it's important in all these conversations, whether it be a paranormal experience or rationalizing or trying to understand these things,

looking for better answers is to, you know, spit out the bones. Like, there's, there's a lot of truth and a lot of things. And we're not saying to everything that on our show, Nate, is all gospel or truth. It's not. We're not, we're not, we're not saying all of this is gospel. We're just saying we're looking for better answers. Look at the people that have better answers, put in time for better answers.

And it's the free market of thought. We encourage people to listen to take the meat and spit out the bones. There is truth in a lot of this. And the reason that we ask these questions is there aren't answers for them, right? We don't have the answers this side of heaven as of yet. Or you bring on a theologian talking about something like a reptilian because they've had personal experiences like dealing with SRA survivors and they've told them anecdotal stories. And then they'll go on a rant about some theology stuff. you know you can't it's just a podcast episode you can't you can't bring on someone who has perfect

theology and also wants to talk about reptilians yeah it's just not going to fit into that box and so a lot of people it just it they take it as they do take it as gospel they do get upset about it and it's like dude we're talking about reptilians now like i'm not sure if like this whole system of this other things that people are saying what we're going to do not talk about not cut it all loud. I mean, it's just a, it's like a, we're having a conversation. So, you know, we're talking about the blurry creatures in our world. That comes with a lot of, a lot of baggage. But like you someone's as a simple as a UFO. Like, until it lands on your, your lawn and the guy, and the driver comes out and tells you exactly what's going on, you get to walk inside and push all the buttons.

Like, the best you can do is go on, you know, for that, for that analogy, the best you can do is, is go on what people, best experiences and the, and the best, you know, people have studied it, the best scholars and hope to pull the threads of truth through that. And better understand it.

Because, yeah, because it serves no one to not talk about it. In fact, it serves nothing to put your head in the sand. Or just slap demons on it. That's what people love to do. Yeah.

It's demons. It's like, well, if you've done a podcast like this for long enough, if you realize it's not just that easy. Yeah. this stuff's showing up. There is actually specific character traits in the Old Testament to what a demon is versus what these things are.

That's why Heiser is so important. Like, Heiser is so important with all this stuff because he's really shown a light on all that, especially his teaching on Psalm 82. That changed the game. That changed the game because no longer, anybody who sits and listens to Heiser's full teaching on Psalm 82, I'm sorry, you can't walk away from there saying the guy's crazy. Like he's not, and he's, because it's just literally sitting there waiting to be read. And so like, anybody who's, I'm assuming you guys, but I know you guys know, but anybody listening,

Psalm 8, two verses point to a very radical changing of viewpoint from the traditional Christian theology, which is it says, God in the Hebrew, it says Elohim, held judgment amongst the Elohim. and it continues. So it's like, so God held judgment amongst the other gods. But then it goes into him actually saying, like, how long are you going to rule unjustly? Essentially, like, these characters had roles and they weren't doing their jobs. That, so. It also says you're going to, you will die like men.

Right. Which is, you really can't justify that being like, we're just talking about kings. Well, if you're a man, what do you mean you die like a man? Right. That's how we all die, guys. I mean, so you look at that and you're like, okay, so it can't just be demons for everything because here is... It's one of the Ten Commandments, you know, have no other gods before me. I mean, it's...

Right. You would give more power to the gods by saying that commandment if they weren't real, if they didn't exist. And the... Listen, like, our message now in this day and age, vast majority is that like, oh, you know, we make gods out of all kinds of things. True. True. But that's not what they're talking about. Yeah.

No. No. That isn't it. It's the same thing with like, idolatry. You got to, well, you got to slay your giants,

you know? Giants is just metaphorical for that thing that, that is in front of you. That's an obstacle. And it's like, sure, but that's not what they're talking about. But every,

like, all language and metaphors come from, like, real things, real stuff, you know, we don't call it the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantis.

There's a connection there, right? Like, think about it. Like, everything, every word has an origin to like what really went down.

She said that on Ali's show. She would have loved it. You know what I mean? No, like that's probably where it was and it sank in the ocean. And then years later we call it the Atlantic Ocean. But like they knew. They knew.

I'm not sure if that's the origin of those two things. But I think that language is often. Yeah, yeah. You know. Well, it's safer too to make it metaphorical, right? Because then there's nothing that goes bump in the night. There are these, you don't have to confront the idea that there are entities that were

when Deuteronomy 32, when the nations were divided and Yahweh took Israel into himself, that there were entities that were put in charge of nation states. And they, guess what, they didn't go away, right? And then if you look into the, like, even like, just understanding like the word demon and find out where it exists in the Old Testament, it really doesn't exist very much in the Old Testament. Like, there's, you know, the Enochian, the bastard spirit.

Right, but the inocan account of what happened there, which is an expose and an expanding of the Genesis 6 narrative, and you have the idea that there are the disembodied spirits of the giants. That makes a lot of sense, right? But there's a lot of other things out there. There's a lot of flora and fauna that aren't that. And I think oftentimes we want to settle for the most innocuous easiest answer that doesn't threaten our worldview and doesn't, it makes us feel somewhat safe. And we're in a world of war. We are in the middle of a world of war, and it's been at war for a very long time before we were here.

And, yeah, it's just a disservice, I think, to our faith, to the magnitude and the majesty of the God we serve as well, to just be like, we can put it all in this little box, and it feels safe. Sorry. And I think someone who's seen, like, Bigfoot, not to get too cheesy, but they believe the story of the Red Sea,

because they've seen something that doesn't fit. Yeah. So they can believe when they read something that doesn't fit. Because they've seen something, it doesn't make sense. So when you read something, it doesn't make sense. Like, well, I can put that in my worldview. So I think the paranormal, it's a gift, right? It's a gift.

It helps you see the world for what it really is. So anyone who's had some sort of terrible experience, yeah, it sucks in the moment, but ultimately it's a great thing for you because then you can see the world in color and you couldn't before. It's like a Wizard of Oz, man, into Technicolor. deep. I don't need to go too deep into that because the Wizard of Oz is weird.

You're going on a rabbit hole there. A lot of those movies were weird and they were saying things without saying things. 100% they were. Yeah. But that's the gist of what we were trying to do our show, kind of marry those two things.

I kind of felt that. I remember years before I had a, like, sitting around a fire pit and had an idea of like, there's something about, there's something about believing in the paranormal stuff that's also big part of our faith. You know, it's faith. It's not certainty. It's not it's not 100% black and white. It's

faith. So you take these anecdotal stories and you build a case and then you believe it. I mean, you've heard thousands of accounts and you've been able to build something in your mind that you can't put out in the world in one episode. People come on our show and they're like, these guys are nuts. It's like, well, we built this over three or four years. And now we're describing it. We can't take you through it. We can't take every single new listener through. You know, you talk about Sasquatch on episode 1000 versus episode one. It's going to be different. It's going to be way different. Way different. You know, and you can't take the listener through those years and those moments. It's just you're there now. And I think the ancient people had

years and years of understanding the gods, the relationship, spirits, unclean spirits versus regular spirits, and they wrote about it with this whole world. It's like you writing about Sasquatch today versus then. That's the way that the Bible was written. They understood this world. So, like, I'm piggybacking off that, like my mindset on these things have changed so much over the time.

And it's still changing. And I came across some information last night that blew my mind and I'm just still changing. So the idea of when I first started this podcast six years ago in a few days, like I was, thanks. I was just starting going down this road of this thing being a hairy creature running around the woods is just some kind of primate that we can't keep up with is really like I. I have to do mental jumping jacks and gymnastics to make that make sense now. Like, I just couldn't. And I was like, it doesn't make sense. So either the, and I got to the point where I was like, this thing may not exist.

Because I was like, this is just getting too hard for me to make sense of it. Oh, it's just a normal creature just running around and we just can't catch it. And there's all these different variables. I got to the point where I was like, this is making me sad, but this thing might not exist. and then I think it was probably about six months before I started the podcast. I started stumbling into this nephlum stuff. And I was like, hold on a second. Yeah.

And then that took me down this new birth of maybe these are remnant of something that happened a long time ago. And then since then, though, I'm like, now I'm like, yeah, they come through portals. It is what it is. What are we having for lunch, you know? A skin walker ranch, they saw him. He came right through the portal. It is what it is. man, and it just gets

we're weirder and weir, but that's kind of like going back to what we were saying earlier and stuff. I mean, like we live in this like pre-designed reality and when you start looking at information outside that thing that everybody says is okay, then that's approved and stuff, it gets weird. Yeah, yeah. It gets real weird.

And then you also realize that there's the pushback that gets too because there, people aren't, there are a lot of people aren't happy that we do this, that you do this. Yeah, no. And there's a listen, we're all on a journey. We talk about our podcast being a journey podcast,

and we're talking about this journey of understanding. And I think that's, we're supposed to be, we're supposed to be asking questions. We're supposed to be challenging our beliefs. We're supposed to be growing in understanding. And it's perfectly okay to be wrong. And to have been wrong and it changed the way you think.

That's, that's how we come to a better conclusion of the things that we believe. And, you know, I think about in terms also, these conversations and also in terms of like understanding God. Like my view of who God is has changed since I was a kid and changed since in the last few years. Like for the better.

Like we serve an infinite like no depth, no height. God that lives outside of the realms of time and space. And I think learning that and understanding who the person of God is, a guy who is fully just and fully loved. There's these things that are these paradoxes that are, that are hard to understand, but it's okay to ask questions about it. And you want to keep learning. I think this is the whole point of a lot of this is like,

let's just keep learning and pushing. But people have a hard time with that because I think we like comfortable things that we can wrap our heads around, wrap our arms around, and put in the palm of our hand, or build a fence around our faith and say everything that in my life fits inside of this. it's sometimes it's a paranormal experience that breaks that like okay i saw this we talked about what a big foot or have a paranormal experience to see something that's outside this this fence you've drawn around your around your understanding in life and then you have to make that fence bigger but

again like i think i know that our faith is big enough to contain all that and to provide the answers for that at least good answers for that right it's there i just think we have to to peel back, just just peel back to things that, unlearned the things that we've learned as far as, you know, the way that we've been told to look at things and the way you've been told to understand things. And from post-enlightment, academic, empirical, like, there are things that we see and people have experiences with and interact with it that can't be quantified. That's a problem in the paradigm that we live in. But it isn't, it can fit inside this fence. And it's not a, it's not a popular way to be a human, right?

Like if there are, if there are, most people go down the wide road, right? If you take it from the biblical perspective, most people are going to think the same, right? And so God chooses people. It's like you always wonder, like, why does God choose certain people? What character traits that those people have when God chooses that person to use them, right? I think it's somebody who's going to question things. But, you know, the angel shows up to Mary and says, you have a face. favor by God. I mean, think about that. You're going to birth the Messiah, right? What goes on in

her head in that moment? Well, she has favor because God's going to do something through her. So she has to have a specific mindset to believe, to understand and know something's going to happen. I don't know what. I don't know how, but it's going to happen. So many people, you know, Jesus says, you heard it said, but I say, right? You know everything, but I'm telling you something different than everything you know. And it was the religious people that had the hardest time with it because their paradigms were breaking every every second. So it's like God needs you to be usable, not perfect morally. It needs you to be able to do something. So you have to be able to obtain some information that's hard to digest and then you have to be able to do something

with it and you have to be a part of his favor to carry out his plan. And it's a weird juxtaposition of things. It's like you have to have some human experience. You can't just be naive. You have to believe in things, but you can't believe in everything, you know? And it's a, it's a quirky set of, I guess, traits. And that's the story of the Bible is like humans are kind of stubborn in their own ways, but God uses them and he uses their stories. And I think that all this paranormal stuff fits inside of that. So I think people who host podcasts like this, like we don't believe everything. But I think we believe more of the things that come on our show than less of the things that come on our show versus the people who just don't believe any of that

stuff. They don't have a show. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because they just can't welcome it. And that's why you're not a podcast or sucker. Well, they can't sort through it all and sit back and let it marinate and go, what sticks here? Right. What, like Luke said, spit out the bones. Like, what's, but what's the, what's the, what's the meat of what's just said? And what kind of attitude do people in the Old Testament have, you know, what kind of attitude do the prophets have? And under these, these, these people that God uses, what kind of mentality do they have? And I think that when someone comes to you

and says, I had this paranormal experience, you can just be a total skeptic and be like, I know, that stuff happens. And a lot of Christians are super skeptics. They don't believe any of the weird stuff because it's all demons or, you know, you're being totally deceived and these guys are you know, we're all deceived, right? We're all, you know, we're all pushing, you know, the agenda that's going to deceive everybody. But they know. They know the truth, but nobody else does. You know what I mean? It's this weird mentality. And I don't think that God can use those types of people because they know it all. They're know it alls. I appreciate a lot of the humility and things you've said. Early on when we were starting our podcast, you and I had a lot of phone calls. And there was a lot of humility there.

And I appreciate that about you. You know, like you got, this is the things that I wish I would have known when I started the podcast. And this is what I would focus on. Don't give up. Keep going. you know and I think that you know when you're doing a podcast like this you're and you're actually helping people you're going to be your own more sentiment you're going to get down yourself you're going to tell yourself oh we suck we don't we're not smart enough we're not good enough we shouldn't keep going we shouldn't do this and you see it happen to a lot of good people who are trying to speak the truth they they sink their own ship yeah so I appreciate the you know just a lot of conversations we have and I and I feel like you you're interested in the truth

getting out there and I felt that early on and I think that's what we are interested in too. It's cool to make money and you have to provide, you have put food on the table for our families, but that's not the driving force here. Not to make a ton of money. It's just to get the truth out and provide a place for people to think about this stuff. And it's a weird type of thinking. It's like, can't believe at all. Can't believe none of it. You got to be in the middle. I don't say, I think it's in some ways it's important to also be skeptical. But I think you have to have a receive. You have to have a filter. And for us, we chose the biblical, the Bible to be our filter, right? And because that is the truth. And so I think, sure, you can't believe everything, but I think

you need to filter it through the right filter. And so I think it's important contextually to be open to a lot of things because I, because I think maybe we have the wrong idea about scripture a lot of times, right? It's a non-super, it's, it's, it's divorced from the supernatural. So I was going to echo you. You have to have an open mind. I think it's also healthy to be skeptical, but I think it's important to understand how you filter it and how you see it. What you pass that through. And again, it's the, but now the bones is the meat, but.

A lot of humility too. Yeah, humility. But I also think we would do ourselves and our listeners, you would do yourselves a massive disservice to not consider and and think about and ponder the things of the paranormal and supernatural and find how that fits into your worldview. And there's gotta make a space for it. Because it was important enough to the ancients to write it down, and it was part of their worldview

and the heroes of the faith. It's funny in the way you talked about, Nate, because they were just like dudes and women that were, you know, very much imperfect and had all kinds of problems and God decided to use. And I don't know why a perfect and infinite God decided to use imperfect people,

but that was his plan. And it still was plan, which is encouraging to all of us because, like, you know, there's that old, like, what is it, Hobby Lobby, like he, he didn't give up.

You know, he didn't give up, but it's the whole Hobby Lobby thing. Like, you see on the signs, like, you know, it's the live,

laugh, love thing, but it's also the, he doesn't, he doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the call. Yeah. Rich is like super cheesy.

It's true. But it's very true, right? It's like, you've got to be to where you are. And as long as you're willing, for whatever reason, chooses to use people that are willing. And people that are willing to believe crazy things. Like, they can pull this off.

I can get these people out of Pharaoh's hand, right? I'm crazy enough to think I can do that. Then he's up to the Red Sea, right? But he's a crazy guy at that moment to everybody else. And then all of a sudden, boom. Well, he doubts himself the entire time. Do you've got to read Texas. Yeah, but he won't give up.

But he, and Jordan Peterson's going through Rexis right now. I haven't listened to it, but it's, I'd like to see what, what their, what their take on all that is. But it's, you'll understand about, um, 65% if you're lucky. Yeah, right. I mean, I believe it. He's so, like, because he takes you down these, these, these, these, these, these roads of just, you got to keep up. You got to keep up. And he just, and I get lost in just watching him.

I'm just like, how are you doing this just by talking? Like, like, like, the way he spits out the information, I'm like, I would need. like notebooks. It's like reading Unseen Realm. Like how many times you have to reread and be like, I don't know what I just read. I got to digest this. I got to read it again. Like I bought Unseen Realm on audio years ago, worst thing I ever did.

Because like, I'm driving a truck and he says things. I'm like, wait, what? I'm trying to flip back. That's actually a great job to do, to learn a lot. So how often did you space out and you were like, I just went through so much? You know, like eight chapters. I don't know what I just. I have no idea.

And so I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm skipping back four. minutes like yep that's the last thing I remember hearing. I do that listen to podcasts. I mowed my lawn and when it's, the weather's nice enough and I'm just like, that's 20 minutes. I have no idea. I just can't recall what time.

Have a time slip in? What happened there? That was like, that was like all of school. I was like high school. Yeah. Just four years of that. Like,

what just happened? Yeah. I didn't learn anything. Finals? Yeah. We're here already. Yeah. I barely made out of school myself.

Let me ask you guys a question. we were talking, this is kind of backtracking a little bit, but with the Graham Hancock stuff coming out, and Randall Carlson talking about the release of this ancient technology, do you guys, I do, do you guys look at what they're talking about and think, huh, what they're doing is, might be rediscovering what caused the conflict at the Tower of Babel. Like, I wonder sometimes

if at the Tower of Babel, like, because they're like, you know, we're going to build a tower to the heavens. How are they doing that? Like, they weren't idiots. You know, like, people think back then that ancient humans were just stupider than they aren't.

No. No. They had, I don't believe they thought they were going to build a physical structure that reached to heaven. But I think that there might have been kind of technology involved. And guy was like, nope, not happening.

Confuse the languages go. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, I think they're discovering like, well, the guys we talked to on our show, you know, the antediluvian cultures. So they're discovering these, you know, dynasties all over the world with similar,

they built similar things. And they had a knowledge and they're all connected somehow. So I think a lot of those guys, they filter it, right? Their filters different than ours. They can see the evidence, but they just have a different conclusion. The Graham is so close. You just can't get to the, you just can't get that last hurdle. It seems like he has disdain for Christians, too, the way he talks sometimes.

Well, I've heard that he thinks that, you know, he sort of interprets Yahweh as the enemy. So he's got the reverse. Oh, so he's Satanous. Well, it's the Sumerian Babylonian. Technically, yes. Or the serpent God is the top. Yeah. I mean, it's really the same.

Nothing's newer to the sun. I mean, I'm just making that as an analogy. It's like if you've created God as the enemy, this is the Tower of Babel. Like you're saying, they wanted to war. They're at enmity with God. They wanted a war with God. Nimrod wanted to war with God. The idea of the Tower of Babel was to war with God.

And so then you go into, you can get down a rabbit hole here with like ziggurats. And what is the ziggurot? Was it actually like a Stargate? Like the idea they had this access. It was meant to be an access point to heaven where they, you can read some extra biblical top of stuff about that expounds up of that and the validity of what that

that I think is in question but the idea isn't is that there was they were going to be at war with God and they were building this structure for whatever purpose and technology we don't know because I think it comes from the same thing as Nate was saying antediluvian stuff where

we don't know what the purpose of the pyramids was I can probably tell you 100% for sure it wasn't to be a tomb right it doesn't make any sense so they were building something with some sort of technology, whatever that ancient technology was, they believed was given the ability to war with God.

And God called a halt to it. So, nah, we're not doing that, you know, and you're spread you out. And then to Nate's point, and then all these people that spread out across the globe end up building the same kind of structures, doing the same kind of things,

you know, worlds apart. Now that makes a lot of sense from the biblical narrative because they were all one point to speak the same legs in the same place. Yeah. But, or they're all their, all their, you know, technology came from the same place. That as well.

You know, and I think that if you think about it from that perspective of like human beings, who is, who is our creator, right? We are, whether we rebel against God or we don't, whether we choose to believe in them or not, we still have one creator. They, maybe their creator, right, the giants, where they were loyal to the dragon, the snake, the serpent. That's the, imagery and all their thing. That's like their father in their minds. So they're building these effigies to who they think their creator is. So it is this war of bloodlines, war of DNAs. I just think, you know, we think that the difference between us and the Graham Hancock's is that they, you know, there is one God outside of time.

All the other beings are created beings. So, you know, their parents of these, these gods, these civilizations, like they had, they were loyal to their gods. but they weren't the supreme being. They probably got some benefits from, obviously they did. They were getting something to the point where they would sacrifice their children to it. You don't do that unless you're getting something in return.

I don't care who you are. Every parent out there knows that. Don't willingly give up your babies unless you're getting something. And that's something that just modern-day humans don't realize we do it today. We do it under the guise of rights, human rights. But it is the ups.

Now, I've read a lot of things. It's just, it's the inverted. right modern day sacrifice it's just repackaged as a human right issue you're doing the same exact thing to the same exact entities we've been doing it since day one so and you can look at at what's happening now you really want to like rabbit hole things on transhumanism and and and what is the trajectory and what is really happening is again the the powers that be are our building an army to war with God. Yeah.

And is the Joltu army. And it's, we are seeing the stepping stones of that. So nothing's a new one to the sun. It's just packaged a little different. It's marketed to us a little differently than it was there before. And then you want to really talk about crazy stuff like technology. And you can look at all the tomb of Gilgamesh.

And these tombs of the, what would have been Refayim or Nephlem, these, you know, Gilgamesh being Nimrod. And the fact that there are nation states now that are after these tombs, and it's pretty easy to jump to say they're looking for some of that ancient technology, ancient power, agent DNA, whatever it is, in order to once again, you know, raise, raise at least the spirit in the spirit of Nimrod to war against God and war against Yahweh. Do you think that we're in a transitional period right now in our human existence where

that the secular world, when I say secular, I mean just people who don't look into any of this stuff, not faith-wise. Sorry, it's probably secular is the wrong word. But do you think that people are going to have, in our lifetime or soon, going to start having some real awakening moments like, oh,

this I thought was just for the movies. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think we're on the dawn of it. I think one thing I've learned on our show more than anything is that there is this deception that there's just one, right? Everyone's trying to figure out God.

But reality, it's two bloodlines. It's two religions. it's the regular cross, it's the inverted cross, you know, it's the battle of two, and it's not just, it's a seed of the woman and the serpent. But they look, they look similar, right? That's the thing. We always were taught, oh, that you'll notice the devil, he's going to be a, you know, pitchfork and the horns.

It's going to be obvious to you. No, no, no. Like the transhumanism, the religion is coming. It's going to be massively accepted because it's going to be the moral thing. It's a battle of two moralities. You can tell anyone right now, I mean, we've seen this in last two years. You can say, the moral thing to do is put a mask on your child. And the other side will say, that is immoral.

Put a mask on your child. Put that fear in your kid and force them to parade around. Both sides think they're doing the moral thing, right? Yeah. I was on the other side. I was not going to do that, right? Because I didn't want to put fear in my kid's head. Half my friends in California would tell me, you are an immoral, horrible father.

Right? It's the battle of two morality. That's just a small analogy of what I think is coming, is that it's going to be a moral code. It's going to be a system. And if you don't accept it, you're out. It's not going to look like Satanism as we've been marketed it. It's going to look like Christianity, exactly like Christianity.

Well, it's also going to look like, it's back to the garden. It's going to look like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's a good thing. Eat this and you can be like the gods. Yeah, it's going to be marketed as a good thing. You want to upgrade yourself, upgrade to Human 2.0. Just do this and you can be like. like the gods. It's the same thing in the garden.

I have this thing where I think and I say I think loosely but I'm serious at the same time Elon Musk is using Twitter to map the human brain and how it

communicates and reacts to certain things and he's going to use that for Neurrelink to ascend humanity into transhumanism. Yeah, we used. I think if you don't, humans are very like pliable tools for both sides, right? Something that's interesting about that.

He's going to be used in some way because he's not loyal to God. He is made in God's image, but he's not loyal to God so he can. He's freely able to be used. So yeah, he's probably going to be a big part of transhumanism. I mean, he said it. I mean, he thinks AI is going to take over the whole world and he, there's no stopping it, so he might as well be part of it. Yeah.

Like he is a transhumanist. Well, he says it's, I mean, but the weird thing about Elon is in another breath. He'll say it's going to kill us at the same time. Well, yeah, he's accepted his fate. So he's a capitalist. He's going to make money off of it. That's how I view Elon Musk. I think he's like, this is going to ruin humanity, but there's nothing we can do to stop it.

So we're going to make money in the process. I think that's what's going on. Listen, shoot, I forget the Ignat. I tweeted it out. It reminds me that, like, Klaus Schwab said some stuff about that recently. He said, we're bigger than God now. Like, we can create weather now. We can do all these things now.

We're getting into an age of defiance, right? We're moving from, to answer your question fully, we're moving from a state of, like, apathy and unbelief to, I think, a state of full-on rebellion. We're getting angry, and we think we're better than God now. And so we're going to have the same spirit of the Tower of Babel in the modern day with iPhones and implants versus pyramids and portals. You know, it's going to be electronics, not acoustics and frequencies. Vibrations.

They knew that. They knew that technology. We know electronics. That's our technology. So same thing. Same idea. We can transcend God. We can be better than God.

It's a rebellion, right? But ultimately, the end of it all is you're going to have to be loyal to somebody. You're not an independent, free human just having no loyalty. You're going to have to pick a side. I mean, the sad thing, too, is that we saw in the last two years, especially, is that there's a study, and I can't remember someone will butcher me on this, but there's a study that came out that said that 80% of the population will follow the, follow the the dictations or the commands of authority, even if it's immoral because it's authority.

So this is humanity. They did this whole social study, which just shows that we, if you didn't wake up in the last few years and look around and say, what are people doing and why are people following? Why are people getting in line? You know, this happened in the 40s as well. we, that people will obey authority even when they know it to be immoral because it's authority. This is what is getting set up and people will

fall in line and do what they're told and it will be to the detriment of their, of their destiny. Yeah. And it's nothing new under the science. I was always, always impressed upon me. It just isn't, this is all stuff that's been done before and tried before and is all leading up to a crescendo, which will be the final, you know, battle, it would be the final war

in with God. Which is something I do like about Elon is that he doesn't he doesn't listen. He does what he does what he wants to do. Yeah. I have respect for him for that. Because he'll flat out say things that don't go with any narrative. So he's a free thinker

and he's at least got that going. Sure. It's funny though because people will tell you that then they're being you're being sciop then it's like, how many double blind. This is what you never know. But he definitely says stuff that goes against the system. I mean, Twitter files and all the stuff.

I think Elon's out for himself. Well, sure. That's the bottom line the way I view him. I think that he is an independent thinker and he takes care of himself. And so sometimes he's going to get it right sometimes. He's going to get it wrong a lot. I think sometimes it's going to look good for people who are like freedom loving free speech type people. And then other times they're going to be like, what are you doing?

It's because Elon's his own person. And he doesn't go with anybody. He just does what he wants to do in the moment. He's the richest guy in the world. So sometimes you're going to like him. Sometimes you're going to hate him. It's what it is. It's like T.O.

I love me some me. Exactly. Did he get signed by the Cowboys? I wasn't sure. Was he almost 50? Yeah, he's 49. Sign that guy. Jeez.

And I think that's something about the way humans are made. Something we've been talking about on this podcast is that you're made in the image of God, right? So you have this desire to be free, be creative. put things in the world. But it's like, what's the driving force behind all of that? Why were you made the way you were made and to want to do all these things? And that's a big part of like what we see is that most people are going to deny that and they're going to get in line and they're just going to, you know, they're going to be just more interested in football than anything else. You know, that's one thing that's going to drive their life, you know, and you get

outside of these lanes and you want to talk about some real deep things. You know, it's just, it's not the human way, but I think that I'm just learning more and more that, you know, kind of what is required to see the truth. It's a lot of experience. It's a lot of questions. It's not a, it's not a, it's a very, you know, you have to have a perspective that's a healthy one. But most people, the way they come at paranormal topics is also the way they do everything else in their life. They just get in line. And so when you do podcasts like this, you know, you can't help but be the person who learns the most. I mean, the professionals is mostly about your journey and what God is doing in your life and where you're at and what you've been going through. You're

influencing people along the way, but it's changed your life. And I think blurry creatures has changed our life. Like, there's no going back now. Like, more than half of what we've heard is probably true, and you can't go back to not knowing that. So, take the red pill. Yeah. I mean, basically just summarize the matrix. I, I, uh, sometimes during the last few years in the, excuse me, in the height of everything, uh, that was going on globally, I just thought about just eating some good old fake steak and just forgetting it all existed.

Like I just was like fake steak taste the best. And I, because I just like, I want to unknow what I know. And I, but you know what? I grew a lot of patience too. I, because of the, I saw, I observed the interactions of human beings with one another on the outside.

And then I was just like, yeah, you have to have patience for people. And I'm not the best of that. I'm like one of the worst. I used to drive for a living, so we can't hold it against you. Yeah. Faces are short.

People who tune into my Instagram lives, they know that because they see it, they see a totally different side of me on Instagram live because it's in the moment and people say things in the comments that I snap at. And they're like, whoa, dude. yeah, yeah, you didn't expect that, did you block? But I did, I grew, I did grow a lot of patients because like, there was, there were people

that would come to me, like members would come to me and say, hey, in your discord, people are saying this about, you know, masks or vaccines. And I'm like ignoring that even, that person even said anything to me. and then they get mad and they cancel because I'm not cleaning up my server. I'm like according to who, right? And so I just, during those moments, I just started learning that, you know, people have different perspectives on life and just got to be patient with them and just let them just kind of find their way through it like I did.

I mean, I was totally different six years ago, you know? And so it's just, I don't know. I don't know where I got on that. But did the truth set you for you? First it pissed me off. Big time. Big time. I got real mad.

Yeah. I mean, it can't help but frustrate you and change your perspective. But I just think ultimately, you know, a podcast is a person or a group of people just trying to figure it out. And the more honest and raw you are and the more personal it is, the better it's going to, it's going to translate it in the world. And people get mad at you personally.

like you're the leader of this. That's where I was going to do. And we're not a leader of a cult. We don't want a cult. We've had people try to do things like that. We're like, we shut it down. Like, no, it's just a podcast. We don't need any help.

We don't need a whole bandwagon. We don't need people. It's not like Forrest Gump running through the woods. And we got a whole trail of people behind us. We don't want that. It's just two dudes. We're trying to be good friends. Do this the right way.

Ask good questions. We don't want to be rock stars or famous because of it. and I think that people get mad at you and they think it's you, you're doing something, you're not doing something. It's like, no, we're just putting questions out in the world that the world didn't have in this space.

The world needed this story. Did you bring this story to the world? You didn't. You know, these people have come on our show said that they've been getting abducted by aliens and they've never even told their kids. So it's like, why do they feel comfortable to tell us

and our audience first, versus their own children. Well, we've created a space for them to do that, a non-judgmental space for them to do that. So the world needed that. Some people go, oh, that's just crazy. It's not biblical.

It doesn't fit in. What's happening? This is not just her. Hundreds of people. Yeah, it just made a whole film about it. Yeah. It's hundreds of people. You know that.

You've been doing this longer. Who are they going to talk to? Yeah. I think they're going to go to their pastor and say, hey, I've been getting abducted. I thought about starting a church just so I could be a pastor that's something I could talk to with that stuff. Some pastors, I thought, because I mean, there's still part of me that kind of... You are a pastor. It's just you don't...

Yeah. You don't have people sit down every week and... I thought about starting a home church. I think that's the best way to do church. I think home churches are the best because you're just meeting in my living room. There is no overhead. You don't need to pay me. Yeah. Any tithing goes into a fund to help Sister Susie when she goes. is the hospital has big bills to pay.

Sure. You know what I mean? I have thought about it. Several times in the last 10 years. But I just don't have, I don't think I'd have the consistent willpower to do it. Like, it takes a lot. It takes a lot to do that stuff.

And I also... Deal with a lot of the weirdos there, like you do in this space. Well, it's like I don't want... I don't want to deal with... I'm just, I don't feel like I'm past material. I get grumpy with people too much. I'm like, listen, last Tuesday.

Not your calling, Tony. Yeah, last Sunday we were good, but this Sunday, I'm in a bad move. So church, we're just going to skip church this week. Go hold. I think there's something like it's when you get into paranormal space, and I'm not going to try to quate these two, but it's like, you know, it's like you get shell-shocked a little bit, right? You get kind of like, you see things you shouldn't see,

and you hear things you shouldn't hear. And it changes you for the good. and the bad. And I think that, you know, there's a war going on. And, you know, I think about how I'm never going to be the same. I know I'm looked as crazy by a lot of my friends growing up, especially my old musician friends. I know that there's text threads going on behind my back. Like, have you heard of these podcasts? It's crazy. I know that's happening. I know it. But you know what? I don't care because it's like, from my perspective, it's, you know, it's more important to figure out what the heck's going on than it is and the truth, then it is what those people

think about me and care about me. And I think that's a trait and a quality you need to get something done in the world. And a lot of people just don't have it. They care more about what everyone else thinks about them. And I think we grew up in this church culture and said, you know, don't do it like the world. You know, to be in the world, but not of the world. What does it mean to be of the world? because the world wants to be moral. We've never seen more moral panic ever. Do the right thing. You know, love your love people.

And it's just all paraded this morality. I think being of the world is just doing what everyone else is doing. You care more about what everyone else thinks than you do your own pursuit to God and what God is asking you to do. And I think that to be of the world is to let your whole life be dictated by what other people think about you. And it's like, it's really hard not to live a life counter to that, to do what you're going to do.

God's giving you a mission and you're going to fulfill it. And that's going to make you look crazy sometimes and people say things about you, but you're going to do it anyway. You're going to tell your kids, you know, I don't believe in evolution. I know all everyone in your system says that's what happened. That's not true.

There were giants out there too. You know, you can tell your kids crazy stuff and everyone's going to hold me aside on my birthday party saying, I don't know, what you're telling your kids? I'm telling the truth. I don't know what you're telling your kids. But it's like, I'm not here to please you. I'm not here to make you comfortable and happy.

I think that a lot of Christians, especially in the church, we do things because we're 99% of people here will be okay if we do it this way. But if we do it this way, everyone's going to freak out. Well, who cares? They're only chasing safety.

But that's my rant. You know, it's like, it's getting out of that mindset of, I'm doing things to please other people. That doesn't mean you're not going to get it wrong sometimes because you're going to get it wrong. We bring people on our show. They say things that I'm like, I don't believe that.

I'm not going to edit that out. No, they said it. Yeah. They said it. That's the biggest thing. I used to prep people, but I think people are just understanding it now. I used to tell people, I'm just letting you know, when we hit record, if you say it, it's going on the show. Yeah.

So make sure you sure before you say something. It's like, listen, this is a conversational show, and we're going to let it. be wrong. So it is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we do on our show too. And we're hearing that Joe Rogan time right now, dude. Well, actually, we're on, we just started the third hour. It's not three hours. It's two hours and three minutes. But no, yeah, we are hitting the Joe Rogan time. And we'll start wrapping this piece up. Before we wrap it up, though, we didn't even touch on something that I wanted to touch on the beginning. So pardon me, but Blurie Con. Yeah.

You know, BlurieCon, you guys are doing a conference at the end of next month, the 25th. And it's in, what, Nashville? I'm assuming somewhere like that? Franklin. Franklin, Tennessee. Tell people about it and stuff. Is there any way that they can still participate? So there is a digital, we hired a team to come in and live stream it.

We had a lot of members, you know, ask for that because there's members all over the place. and Australia and New Zealand and stuff. So we knew they couldn't come. So you can go to our website, Blury Your Creatures.com, get a ticket to that. Hired like three or four guys to come in and film it. So that's not cheap on our end, but we're providing that option.

We have, you know, a lot of people, we probably resold 20 tickets or so to other members who wanted to come. Right now it's just more of them. You know, we're trying to give our members first access to those tickets. And they scooped them all up. Yeah.

Which is good. Tony, you're going to be there. Some of our more frequent guest, Nate are also going to be there. It's going to be an 80s themed, you know. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. It's going to be what Nate and I do. We want to have fun. We want to keep it lighthearted.

We're going to keep it 80s themed. Yeah. But Tony, you're going to be there. Doug Van Dorn. Derek Olson of Megalithic Marvels has been on your show. Dr. Laura Sanger, Tim Albarino. Is Tim been on the show? No.

We can get them on for you. Yeah, you said that before. I'll do. Now you can hit them in person. I'm going to be like, hey, Tim, three hours east of here. Let's go to my studio now. Yeah, no, Tim's so funny guys. He's hard to lock down.

But yeah, no, hopefully some tickets might hit the website, but right now it's a, we honestly didn't think that. Yeah, we had, we don't know what we're doing. Per usual. We're just like, hey, it sounds fun. It's doing it. And then it's going to be a blast. We've got a bunch of fun stuff cooked up.

There is a, there are no more tickets, but we're going to be a pie, peanut. than the night before. I have just sort of real casual with most of our guests and a dinner. And I was joking beforehand. It feels like planning a wedding. Because it really does feel like planning a wedding between catering and tables.

I can't imagine. Just no one's getting married. It's going to be a lot of fun though. Yeah. Yeah, it's like basically like blurry creatures live. We're going to do it. Memes and we're going to have some fun stuff, 80 stuff.

We're going to be there. Bigfoot running around. Yeah. There might be some big foot in. There might be a Delorean there. Yeah. there might be. Really?

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. We're going all out. We're going to try to have fun. I mean, I think that's the thing. It's just give people some meat.

Yeah. But package it with some fun. Yeah. And then it's crazy how this thing is really, you know, when I say a thing in blurry creatures as is, it really has become somewhat of a community. It's just really cool.

And so it's, I think it's going to be really fun for a lot of our members to hang out with other, other folks that they know from online and from our members groups. and we know more now. I think maybe next time we'll find a little bigger place so that we can offer it to the public. Maybe do two nights too. Maybe two nights.

You know, we've got, it's funny when we announced this thing, we have some of our guests that, you know, are like, hey, I'll come. And we're like, we don't have even have time. I mean, we've got, we're full up. And we're going to be doing the opposite too. We're going to be doing this with you. We're going to be asking you a bunch of questions.

Yeah, we're putting, yes. That's fine. We're going to turn the tables. No, it's fine. Like I told you guys, I said just, you know, if I get too weird, just give me the, the woo-woo, woo-woo. And I'll be like, okay. We're going to have a panic button.

And I think when we hit the panic button, Bigfoot's going to come out and throw some shirts. That's fine. And I'm like, perfect. So the Eagles, what's the score? For you, maybe it'll be Dog Man that comes out, though. Yeah. I'll just slime you like Nickelodeon. I don't know how the Dog Man thing happened for me because, like, I was aware of Dogman

since I started the podcast, but my lord, recently, I've becoming this, like, dog man guy. And I'm not, I'm not complaining about it. It's cool, you know, but like, I'm just like, 50K for a speaking engagement. Man, dogman expert. That's what they're paying them nowadays. Oh, well, that's great. That's great. Dr. Merkel? Speaking of 80s, though, real quick, you can't do that on television. Remember? They slime the guests. Oh, that's right. Right? So if you can't do that on the podcast, we'll slime you.

There's a real 80s connection. I think that was a Nickelodeon. It was Nickelode. It was a green slime. Yeah. I remember, I remember being a kid watching those shows and thinking, oh, I'd so want to go to that. I don't want to get slime. I want to get slimed.

It seems so much fun. That was like the thing to do when we were growing up on TV. It's just getting slime. Double dare, got slimed. Can't do that on television. No. No of that. Maybe there's a gong.

Maybe we'll incorporate the gong show. There you go. If you get bad, we throw it. We gonged. Yeah, dude. I, um. I, I, um, yeah, I got, I've been coming across some information recently. That's been popping my brain.

And, uh, I know people aren't ready to. Save it. Save it. Oh, save the juice. Save that juice. Bottle that up. Yeah, we, we, we'd love to bring, we'd love to bring six years out of you in an hour, an hour and 15. Yeah. That's fine.

Yeah, I'll do whatever. Um, but yeah. So blurry con. I'm excited to go. Uh, I saw the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the speakers you guys have coming. I was like, what the freak are they have me coming for? Oh, come on.

Like, I was like, I was like, holy crap. Like, I hope I'm, I was like, I hope I'm going first so that, you know, I don't have to follow anybody up. Then you're like, nope, that's not happening sucker. I'm like, shoot, dude. Like, I need to be the first one up, you know, just so everybody just forgets about me. And then, you know, just, oh, man. Maybe we'll get a, maybe we'll get a dunk tank and just put you up on the, on the seat.

And, you know, if you start feeling like you want out, we'll just have somebody come, come push the button. Oh man, it's going to be a blast, though. I'm going to be bringing my family out and stuff. So it's actually giving me my kids first time coming to any kind of event where daddy is doing something like this. So it's interesting because like my son, both the kids, but like my son knows kind of like what I'm doing in a sense. And he has no perspective at all. I mean, just yesterday we were driving in the truck and we drove by a tractor trailer and he said something.

and I said, you remember when I used to drive those trucks? And he's like, you should drive those? And I was like, bro. But that was the goal. The goal was I didn't want my kids to ever remember me being a truck driver. So they don't have the memories of me not being around, you know? Right, right. But I was like, holy crap.

I said, do you remember riding in the truck with me? Because I put him in the truck and he's like, oh, yeah. And I'm just like, you don't remember. But, yeah. So yeah, I'm excited for that. I'm more excited about that than I think of even just doing anything else. The fact that my kids are going to be there, especially Benny, because he's, you know, five. And he's like now, like, he was telling me a few months ago, he's like, Bigfoot's not real.

I was like, how dare you get out of my house? And now, like, he's now talking Bigfoot to me. You're like, hey, like, son, I moved you close to the South of the Mountains because it's going down. That happened today. The teacher told me that my son and one other kid have a project to write a, write a story about Bigfoot and maybe even trying to turn it into a book because they want to do a lesson on it. So I'm like, there are upsides to the Montessori school too. They are open-minded, but they're also, there's this weird thing. They're more open-minded than ever school, but,

you know, traditional public school, I guess. And then, you know, so it's really fun to have my kids at that age. I think they went through that stage. Like, Dad, Bigfoot's not out there. And now it's like, I'll just wait, just wait for when it's like a- Now they're teaching their other kids. Bring your parents to school. My dad, my dad talks about Bigfoot all day. So, yeah. Yeah. So I was like, well, have you ever want me to come into class? I know. I can teach some weird stuff. I was thinking about that. I was like, because Ben's in preschool now and I'm dropping out of school and we're starting to do these school things. Yeah. And I'm like, am I ever going to like do, like, because you see in the movies like bring your parent in the school day. Right. Why has a firefighter? Yeah. And it's like, what's your dad do? He. Yeah. I mean, who cares? You ever heard a fire. dog man. Yeah, right.

That was always the most interesting kid in show and tell days, though. I think, I think I've already have a game plan. I'm going to start out soft and see where the kids want to take it because I'm going to like, Daddy runs a media company. And the next question is, what do you do? What do you do in the media company? Oh, okay. We're getting a little closer to the topics.

Right. So I have a cryptic coloring book. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're actually, this year probably coming out with a children's bedtime storybook. And I actually, I'll show you guys, I have a copy of it on the desk out there. But, you know, we'll play that game and stuff.

But, you know, they're like, if they get me going on dog, man, those kids are going to have nightmares. It makes you think about like, we're just coming off the holidays, right? Like the movie, the Santa Claus where he goes, my dad's Santa Claus. And he's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You mean I'm like Santa Claus. You know, I make toys. I just showed.

And I'm jolly. We just watched that movie for the first time with Ben this past, Christmas and he liked it. I was glad because this is my favorite Christmas. Yeah, it's a good one. Lindsay doesn't like that movie. Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Tim Allen, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I know. We should watch that one. Yeah, the beauty is

your kids get to that age and my kids are finally in that fun age. We're just, you're not too cool yet. Yeah. Dad's still their hero a little bit. But it's like, it's all that hard work is kind of paying off. And I think my kids might come to Blurricon as well. So at least in the morning. So they might catch that before the lunch. might make it. My son's six months old. Yeah. You got to get him out there.

You got to get him going early because the brainwashing starts so. Listen, man, if your kids are going to be brainwashed, you might as well be the one brainwash. Right? Exactly. So. And I just want to say to, like, to listeners, like, I really appreciate your show and I really appreciate your attitude. And I think that we're happy to promote you. And we want to, you know, our listeners, whatever we've created to be into your show and get to know you as well. think that's a big part of this community is like people who work hard and you know doing their

thing to me is always just like respectable and i like that you know people who are just trying to to figure it out you know and i think it's cool to share an audience you know i'm thankful for your listeners listening to us today and even people we've disagreed with a lot of people come to our show and i know we talked about a little bit off air before the show started but uh we tried to just have an open mind on our show. I don't shove the Bible down your throat. We just talk about a matter of factly, but it's not like shoved at you. It's just, yeah, we believe these stories are true, so we're not going to take you through the process we got to there. But we're going to talk about this stuff from that perspective. And I just appreciate you. So I just thank you for your

encouragement early on. And I hope that blurry creatures listeners hop on to your show all the time and there's a lot of camaraderie. I mean, we got a lot of traffic. I just posted a photo of tons of people were sharing it and loving it. Oh, yeah? Yeah, so, I mean, there's just a lot of, I like that. You know, we're not all just trying to corner the market here. It's just what is the weird stuff out there? You talk a lot about the weird blurry stuff on your podcast.

We're more honed into specific creatures and a little bit more of Old Testament, but all welcome in the weird space. Yeah. Just thankful for your friendship. Yeah, absolutely, man. I learned from Sam Tripley and Wes Gürmer. I mean, those two guys don't, especially like, like Wes and I became friends before podcasting,

but Sam Tripley, I mean, he doesn't need to be nice to me. Like Sam Tripley has been in L.A. for over 20 years as a comedian. His best friends are high-ranking celebrities. Yeah. Rogen. Ranking. Ranking. High-ranking celebrities.

But like, you know, he doesn't. a podcast with Brian Callan and like like he doesn't need to be you know texting Tony Merkel the truck driving dope with a podcast but he does and and it's like it's because he cares and and I learned that from people who you know came before me and that's kind of like what I wanted to do and I see the the tension that some some some people and shows have with other shows and stuff and I just never wanted to be part of that. I never wanted, and that's why we don't do that stuff with my show. We just stay on topic.

We talk to people and their experiences, and that's it. And on the back end of things, I try to be supportive and help a lot of people. And, you know, I always tell people, I don't tell them so much anymore. I think it's kind of a given, but when I first started becoming friendly with people, I think you guys kind of got me, caught me on the beginning. beginning wave of that. Because I used to keep real it to myself. Like,

I don't know. I'm not talking to anybody. Because it wasn't like a selfish thing. It was, I don't want none of your smoke. I don't want none of your drama. I just want to make a podcast. Like,

I'm not here for the bull crap. And so I just didn't talk to people. But in the beginning and stuff, I used to just tell people like, yeah, man, we're cool and stuff. Just don't cross me. And I was just like warm people because I'm like,

and it's not like, don't cross me. I know something's going to happen. It's just I'm not going to talk to you anymore. Like I'm not going to be like drama boy and stuff I'm just going to stop talking to you But now I just think people are They get it with me

Like I just like talking to people and show like It's just the Philly in you bro I guess I don't know I got like like The Philly Tony comes back out of me sometimes But I'm really trying to become Tennessee Tony Just laid back Tennessee.

We like this new this new Tennessee Tony Yeah Yeah try star Tony Try star Tony We can go a lot of ways But you can't shave your beard, though. We can't.

Let's move along. Unless you go mustache. We didn't comment about the beard again. Totally okay. If you want to grow a bullet too, you can do that. You know, you're in the South now. You can have a little hair in the back. I can't.

That's the problem. I can't. I think in the back you probably can. I probably can in the back, yeah. It's just like if I try growing my hair out, it would be like this reef, you know? Dude, it's like Hulk Hogan, man. It's okay. Just where you wear a bandana.

No, I ain't doing that. Well, you know what? At the end of all this, though, the way, the world's going. It's just going to be like Waterworld, like Luke always brings up on our show. I love Waterworld. It's just going to be like two pod, he's going to be the smokers. It's going to be like, all the paranormal podcasting guys that just didn't do any of the things that they were told to do are still surviving and we're just on these little islands floating around. We're like, dude, you know, it's going to be like Lord of the Flies. Here comes Dogman and Bigfoot on the jet ski.

We got to take them out. But it's like that, you know, I think we need each, I think we need each other more than ever, you know? Because the way the way things are going, like, we don't need any, we need everyone trying to bring awareness to everything, you know? I mean, we're like, feels like we're years out from them telling us who's flying the UFOs. Yeah, well, I can tell you who's flying the UFOs. But I mean, like, you know, the rest of the world getting a narrative of who's flying the UFO. Yeah, I mean, I'm so tired of that, the SIOP that's going on with that. Listen, these things, I think, all right, let's put this way. The ones our government are talking about, it's because they know where they came from.

They came from us. I really think that they have these highly sophisticated technology drones, and they've been testing it on our own military for a very long time. And I think that they have been pushed into a corner with people like Tom DeLong, and they had to start talking about it. So they're doing it in a very controlled manner. But I think a lot of the stuff that they are talking about, the government's talking about, and that they're showing this thing on the screen and stuff, it's theirs. And I also think it's, I also think it's their flag being put out to the rest of the world saying, look what we have.

I think that Russia, when Russia supposedly shot down the UFO, I think that they either shot down one of their own or I think they shot down in any aircraft, which is probably us. Yeah. That's what I think. I don't know saying all UFOs. We're starting a whole other show right now. Yeah, this is nothing. Yeah.

I know, I know. I just, like, I don't, like, with cryptids, I don't think all UFOs come from the same origins and all that stuff. But I think that this whole hoopla that the government's doing right now, I think a lot of these laws. I mean, listen to it. They don't, they say nothing. It's a nothing burger. It's always, it's like, oh, we have this, we're doing this, you know, special counsel on UAPs and they say nothing. It is just an, it's an acknowledgement and nothing new, nothing else. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, which is interesting in and of it. It's that they can't keep a lid on it. Like I said, we have 20, 30 years ago. We didn't have cell phones with cameras.

Now you can get stuff and you can't keep a lid on all, but you don't own all the channels and all the media channels. So it's out there. You're going to either stay in front of it or you're just going to keep denying it when people are seeing stuff. To me, it's a, well, I think it's just like we're on the dawn of the true origin, the true human origin story. if I could say it.

That's really what I want to say. We're going to get to the true origin story of humans. The narrative, right, is going to completely change. Not what I think is the origin story of humans, but people are going to go from this ape evolving over billions of years to something completely different. I think that's going to be a big part of it. It's a new religion, right?

Yeah. But dude. Was it apostiosis? Well, that's a sure, everybody. I don't know what the heck you're talking about. Apotheaism. That's what it is. Apotheism.

It's essentially to be the return of the golden age. Okay. The new world order is the new golden age. So we should be on board for it? No. No. No, no, bro. In this analogy, we are the smokers.

We're staying outside the, on the jet skis. So the old world order. With our 3D printed guns. Yeah. The old world order was the pre-flood world. And obviously they didn't do it right. And they got it destroyed. The new world order is the new golden age.

The new we can build utopia without God, so to speak. So it's marketed as the new world order. But it's a new golden age. It's a whole new show. It is. Next time. Yeah, I mean, at BlurieCon, we're going to finish this conversation. Probably not, though, because we're going to talk about portals and dog

man, let's go. And hopefully my voice is cleared up. That's fine. It's not, we'll just put an AI version of you on the screen. There you go. You can be Morgan Freeman. You can be whoever you want. Yeah.

Oh, that'd be great. That'd be great. Just velvety, velvety voice. Yeah. All right. Soon, man. All right, tell me.

Thanks, man. I appreciate you. We're great for you, man. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we are. Yeah. Yep. So, all right, guys.

I hope you enjoyed that three hours or no, two hours and 23-minute conversation with the blurry creature guys. We hope you enjoyed it. You know where to find them. Blurry Creatures Podcasts everywhere. The website's what? Blurrycreatures.com. You know.

Yeah. Yeah. That's it. So check them out if you haven't already. And give them a subscribe and a five-star rating review before you hit play. Always give them love before you hit play. That's the way real human beings do it. Right.

All right, guys. Until next week, stay safe. Take care and remember. The truth is such a free. But first, it'll piss you off. Bye. Because that's just what warriors do.