The Dumb Zone FREE - Business Wednesday - Religion with Liz Bruenig

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

TC and Jake recently sat down with The Atlantic’s Liz Bruenig, noted Christian thinker, to talk about Christianity and how religion functions in the modern world. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hey there, this is an episode of the little-known podcast. It's just banter that I do with T.C. Fleming. It's from a few weeks ago. James Tala Rico was in the news. Questions of religion were in the news, and we thought we would reach out to our friend Liz Brunig, Arlington Martin's own, the Atlantic Zone. And she is a wealth of knowledge on these sorts of topics. So we had a discussion. And people had a generally pretty positive response to it. I suppose the people who had negative ones wouldn't reach out. But based on that positive response, I thought we'd shared here. You know what this means?

In a world of nothing, a barren hills and cracked earth and once proud oceans drained to sand, there will still be a monument to our existence. Bleached by the sun perhaps and blunted by time but everlasting. Because this man represents all that is eternal in the human experience. The courage to stand for a nation when all others fail or turn away. The strength to recognize the value of freedom and to accept its cost no matter how great. Through the curtain of the Aurora, a comet breeze shall be transcribed into every language known to history.

history including Klingar. Being of the world, I give you America itself. T.C. and Jake. Welcome in. This is It's Just Banter. I'm T.C. Fleming here with Jay Kemp. And today, special guest, Liz, Liz, thanks. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Wanted to start off with some current events. I know you're not a big sports fan, but today is the NFL schedule release day. The Jaguars announced their schedule by having a video of their

quarterback who's famous for having long hair. He got his hair cut, very short. The thing that stood out to me was a guy. Liz, like to just start off hot topics, is it gay for a man to have another man cut your hair? I assume that's usually what was happening with men. No? Barbershops?

I guess, but I'm an outlier because I've been going to the same lady my entire life. But Jake has switched lady several times. I've never heard him use a dude's name. No, it's true, but I think we're showing our Texas, though. I think that's probably what's happening. I think in other parts of the country, it's more manly to get a man haircut because you get to talk about man stuff.

The only thing that's more manly than that was, Liz, had you already left town when we decided to do the crossover? Like, let's apply the restaurant thing to men's grooming. Oh, wow, beautiful. No, I hadn't heard of that. One of them was called the boardroom, and it was spectacular. They would give you beer, of course. Oh, yeah. Sports on TV.

What was the main one, T.C.? Something, it wasn't the boardroom, but it was, this was very popular. They were. They're definitely looking for. Is sport clips breastforward? I mean, I feel, but like I said, I have no idea. I've never been in a sport clip. Yeah.

We have hair ladies down. here. It's a white lady who's in between marriages, you know, she's your rock. I've never been, but I've and it's only one location, so this wasn't like a trend. But in Flower Mound

they had a place called Gamer Cuts and I drove by it enough times and I wanted to understand what was going on and they would let you play video games while you got your haircut. To the people To be honest, I'm shocked that didn't thrive in Flower Mound. It is 100%

guys who don't leave the house because they're too busy playing video games. Yeah. I'm not shocked by that. Liz, there's no way you're aware of this, but there is a cultural artifact in our world now, which I guess now that I think through, it does just sort of create jobs,

but the NFL is such a big deal that's simply releasing the schedule, the list of teams, well, the list of teams that you're going to play are already known for a couple of months, and half of them are known for a year. But then the order in which they're going to take place and what time they'll be on,

all of the teams now put together like a mini Hollywood-esque 10-minute video to release their schedule with celebrities and it's insane. And like this was on television tonight. Like, this is our culture. This is the most popular thing in the country you live in. Oh, my God.

No, no, I'm not a special. sports person at all. And I feel kind of bad about it because like that is an important part of the culture and it's like a way that people bond. But one thing that happens in my house that's extremely popular and everyone loves is I get called in to the living room in the fall. Watch this play. Come watch this play. No idea what I'm looking at. No idea what I'm seeing. And all I have is Matt reacting. I also get called in there for horrific sports injuries. Come watch this. Come watch this. Guys. his femur snapped and half. Check it out.

I'm like, oh, no. Yeah, exactly. But I'm sure wives everywhere. Love that practice, yeah. There was a big trial recently. One of the athletes have been accused of behaving badly. He had a personal chef that they said that he choked the personal chef. And ultimately, a jury decided that he did not choke the personal chef.

I don't know, man. Her testimony seemed compelling to me. But during cross-examination, they were. trying, like she was saying that the choking was like a 10 out of 10 in aggressiveness. And they were saying basically like, he's such an aggressive guy. There's no way that was his 10 out of 10. And so they're trying to establish like how serious of a dude this is. And so they're saying like, you know he gets tackled by 300 pound men. And she's like, I don't know that. And they're like, you bend to the games. She's like, man, I go for the vibes. I don't know what's going on. I don't

position he plays. See, I think that Liz would have found that section of the testimony believable, yes? Yes, so relatable, so relatable. Okay, so do you have any other hot topics, T.C? No, just he's a gay to get a man, cut your hair. See, I thought... No, go ahead. I do get my haircut by a gay man.

Okay. Obviously, match. I mean, who else? Are you going to get your haircut for... If you're going into New York City for a haircut, you want the guy who did Lucy Lou's hair. That's what we always talk about when he's doing my hair. Hell yeah. You go into the city for a haircut?

Absolutely. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. If you're that close, I'd feel compelled to, I'm bad about it. I have to get my, like, eyebrows, like, waxed. Well, me and you both, girl. It really goes crazy.

But, no, like, the place where I get my haircut, it's on, you know, there's a kitchy little downtown and grapevine like there's a main street and uh there's an old barbershop there that really does function the same way i've not spent much time in you know black male barbershops but it functions the same way for you know middle classy suburban heb white women they they they it's just gossip nonstop like this is the place that if the new york times wanted to get one new place in their rotation of you know election like this is like where topics happen. I fucking love it. And there's like, you know, there's two or three Spanish speakers there that clearly have their own game going. It's a great slice of life.

So I wanted to talk to you because you reached out, you recently wrote an article about James Tolariko's campaign. And that, I have a real tendency to make things about me and be able to spin whatever's happening into like, boy, this really lines up with my personal journey. I'm sure people want to hear about that. But I, you probably somewhat gathered. I used to drink a lot. And then I stopped drinking. And I'm a couple years into that now.

And what happens to you then, I would imagine in some capacity to everybody is your brain is just like reborn. It really is the closest thing to a religious experience that I've ever had, right? Like I everything in my life perspective. And you know, TC's around me all the time. He could probably witness for me. Like I feel like almost universally people in my life would say like I actually really feel saved. It's just like I feel like I was like saved by like my wife, you know, and like my family and like my community. And so that for me is when because I also go to AA once a week though.

I'm not an AA like 12 steper. how much time you've spent in meetings, but if you're not going to be there like three or four times a week, you're probably going to be on the outside looking in. But I still do engage in, like, the literature and for... You think most people are more than once a week? Oh, yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. If you're in it, then yeah. And also, like, it becomes your community in a lot of ways, whereas I still had my community and family intact. I didn't lose my job. By just the grace of luck, I didn't go to jail, whatever. So I wasn't really, like, looking for new community. So in my mind, like, higher power really is like that love that saved me from my,

like my family community. So when they, you know, they try to be cheeky with God and higher power because they want to get people who are not necessarily Abrahamic religion God. So they put higher power. For me, that's how I started thinking about my faith. And then, um, then James Tolariko's campaign sort of pops. And it's like this different, um, view at least to, the wider culture on Christianity, like righteous gemstones, I feel like, is kind of the dominant motif of what it means to be a Christian in the 2020s. So all of this was happening at once, and I thought, well, there's someone that I sort of know that's almost like a religious scholar. Why not just have her on to talk to her about some of these questions I have?

And the first one that I want to start with is, so the faith as you practice it right now is obviously very different than the one that I just said, like ends up as, right, like, the mainstream perception of, like, evangelical Christianity today, as it is, I think, an extension of the thing I grew up with at some point it became that. It's very different than the way that you live it and practice it, right? So my question first, as it pertains to Christianity, is, has this ever happened before? Like, even in the run of Christian, Christianity? Has there ever been a time? Like, when did people start playing with Jesus' words? Like, where the dominant, you know, like, if you ask somebody, what does it mean to be a Christian?

You know, like, today you're going to get a lot more than just, you know, there's like a whole lot wrapped up in that. Is this a dumb question? T.C., you're laughing. Like, my question is like, when did? No, I'm just thinking about Shia. Like, you're asking, has this happened? Like, has anyone ever done some fucked up bullshit before? I'm like, well, Martin Luther, start there. And like I understand that like you have to have freedom of religion for this to even really be like a problem. But it just because as we work through this, you'll also see like I'm trying to get to like I when I was really little and the way that my mom practiced Christianity really spoke to me. It feels like how I am trying to live now. But in between there, both time wise and like philosophically is like the dominant version of Christianity today. And it's weird to me.

And I just didn't know if there was any, for starters, like historical context for that. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's kind of interesting. When Christianity first began, nobody really knew what they were doing. And it was extremely varied in both belief and practice. Of course, when Christianity gets off the ground, there is no Bible.

There are no written gospels. it spreads by word of mouth and what is of great interest to people as it's spreading are these miracles and these acts and the testimony of believing Christians going right back to the 12 apostles and it's only through the next couple of centuries that people start compiling these sayings of Jesus and these different documents into what becomes sort of rudimentary collection of Gospels. At that point, you have people beginning to sort of centralize in a certain way around certain principles that are considered necessary for being a Christian. But Christian ethics, the ways that Christians are supposed to behave in the world, you know, don't immediately come along with that.

So you have a bunch of early Christian writers trying to make sense of how. the teachings of Jesus actually cash out into daily life, how Christians are supposed to behave, and what makes Christians unique and distinct from all other people. And even in the letters of Paul, for instance, you can see Christians trying to figure out, are we a sort of completed Judaism? Are we completely different?

Do we need to adhere to Jewish cultural and religious practices? Paul writes quite a bit about whether we need to circumcise, for instance, or whether we're going to do our own thing. And Paul falls out on the, we're going to do our own thing. He talks about circumcision of the heart, which is a really interesting phrase. It's none of my business. But, you know, that's the, that's the direction that he goes in is we're going to kind of be our own thing. We're spreading out. We're no longer just a kind of sub-variant of Judaism. We're including all of these Greek and Roman people who don't have any background with Judaism, who are converting from paganism.

And that brings all of these different flavors into what becomes early Christianity. Can I ask you one quick question and make sure you don't, because I do smoke a ton of weed still and you may lose your train of thought. Let me say, so when this all may be very rudimentary, in Jesus' lifetime, he had no conception of this

100, 200, 300, 300 years later framework. work, like there was no talk of this is what this could be. There was no, it was structurally, like that, does that make sense? Like, there was no idea of like, this is what this would look like if this was applied to, there was no like, uh, uh, teachings on how this would be applied, I guess. No, I mean, not that many. Um, and, you know, the stuff that Jesus talks about are morals. Um, he much more rarely gets into, ethics. Okay, that's the distinction.

Yeah, yeah. He has principles that you need to live by and facts about the type of person, the type of life that God finds favor in. But in terms of, okay, so I'm a formerly pagan Roman slave, I get up in the morning, what am I supposed to do? That's all stuff that people have to figure out. as Christianity is developing. And there's a great deal of debate over it.

And you can see in the writings of, you know, for instance, St. Augustine, quite a bit of debate and argument over how Christians are supposed to live. And it's around that time that you really see people really zoom in on the sacraments as being a key and critical part of Christianity. you know, the sacraments that we know today, baptism, for instance, the Eucharist, communion, all become extremely important. And then, you know, that kind of gets at Christian practice and what doing the religion actually looks like, but then how lots of different kinds of people behave in a Christian manner is still something that has to be determined.

and it borrows a great deal from what Jesus does say, for instance, in the beatitudes, we know we should look after the poor, we know we should look after the widows and the orphans. We know that the last shall be first, so we should place special importance on people who are poor and weak and oppressed and marginalized. But figuring out what all of that is going to look like takes some time. Yeah, that's super, super, super interesting. I, yeah, I guess the thing that becomes tricky about it for me is, you mentioned there, like, I'm way out of my Sunday school classes, but the, what was the B word? It's B attitudes, right? The B attitudes, yeah. Okay. So, like, I was talking to a guy yesterday who's a Texas state representative, and we were talking about welfare. And of course, he has, like, the very paternalistic. It needs to come through the church. Like, you need to know what people are doing with this type thing. he may actually be more convinced on straight cash as long as it's through the church.

But it just occurs to me, like, you know, with Matt's work, a lot of work on just the bloat and the admin work and just the middleman and welfare. It seems to me like a lot of that does come from religion. Like it comes from a desire to have some sort of, but that doesn't, to me, I don't know, like that doesn't feel like exactly what the Bible is telling you. First of all, it's strange to me that that's not a virtue that we seem to really want to like apply through government, right, like through regulations, make sure people don't get screwed, these sorts of things.

I'm sure that's in the Bible. It's just not the, you know, not the one that we focus on government-wise at the time. It just, so to me that that's what it is, is that it's odd to me that the, the generosity aspect of Christianity doesn't like seem to make it to government in the same way that some of the harsher ones do. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's something that has bedeviled me for years is, you know, as a left-wing person who does believe in the sort of Matt-style Nordic social democracy programs, you hear people, Christian people, argue against that stuff by saying, as you were saying, it needs to go through the church. It's not charity.

if it goes through the state. And my thinking is, well, as a Christian person, I want the state to value and care for and ensure the quality of life and life of people who the Bible or Jesus, specifically, considers to be very important. And the thing about using welfare money or welfare programs in their various different forms to sort of create a floor for people living in the United States,

States or any other country is that it doesn't limit your capacity to do charity. And in fact, there are a lot of forms of charity that cannot take the form of money coming through the state. And that's a lot of charity that's really hard to do. It's very easy to donate to a food drive or to give money to your parishes fund for crisis pregnancy centers or whatever. it's hard to go spend time with people, to go to a homeless shelter and volunteer, not just to distribute items, but to talk with people, to keep them company.

You know, go to an old folks home, go spend time with people, have a conversation, really walk with them. I think that all of that is incredibly valuable and is arguably more valuable than a kind of distant donation of goods or money or something like that. It's the type of thing that the government can't really replace. And I think that is the kind of thing that I think about as being really important. Definitely, yeah, go ahead, TZ. It just seems bonkers that there'd be any kind of Christian

that would say that there's a wrong way to help the poor. Yeah, I mean, and it's completely, you know, if you look at the Middle Ages and stuff, I mean, the separation of church and state didn't quite exist in the same way as it does today. But it was certainly the case that you had state, you know, rudimentary state capacity to, you know, tax, for instance. And then there were states that were using those tax remittances to do stuff like funding hospitals, what they call hospitals, which are at the time not the hospitals we know today, but we're like sort of ends for travelers and so forth. And so it's not as though no Christian society has ever

relied on sort of government allocation of funds to carry out Christian ideas with respect to looking after the poor and so on. So it's really only right in this libertarian era of liberal governance that happens in the early modern period where you start to see people sort of really demanding the separation of church and state completely and then deciding that care for the poor and so on is a church problem, not a state problem. Yeah, that's, yeah, that is so interesting because this guy, like I jokingly said to this guy, he's pretty far to the right, but, you know, as a relatively normal dude, bad radio listener, and I jokingly said to him, I'm like, yeah, you I'll install like full Christian nationalism in Texas government if you guys would just like take care of people.

You know, like we just cut out the middle, man. We could do the socialism, but you guys are fully in charge and you just actually deliver on the message of Jesus. And on we go. But yeah, that's that's really interesting. Yeah, that's my view. And, you know, the great thing about having these sort of very generous welfare programs my husband, Matt, is very fond of stuff like a child. allowance, for example, is that, you know, we have overlapping consensus here. You don't have to be a Christian to think those programs are very important. You can be any kind of person and think those programs

are very important. But I think it's very easy for a Christian to look at those kinds of programs and the things that they're able to do for people and see something that, you know, really speaks to your morality and your ethics. Yeah. So I think, I think to me, I wish that you wrote, is there a chance that you would ever get back into doing, like, like what a Closerman used to call it? It's the ethicist. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Do you have anything like that currently running? I think the New York Times has always had that position. And I think that someone else took it over after he left. Okay. Yeah, this is a... Liz is probably met one of them or something. She used to work there. Yeah.

I did back in the day. So to me, I'm trying to provide myself hope as I navigate maybe the back half of my life. And that the perspective you put it in is the reason I do think it's interesting is that if you zoom out far enough, it means that maybe there's a version of Christianity in the year 2400 that looks totally different from a charitable or from a, you know, the prioritization as applied standpoint. Now, there's also a lot of other assumptions in there across 400 years. It's so cute. You think we're getting the 2400. I know.

I knew you were going to say that. And I get it. I just, like I said, for me, sobriety or like changing my life, a big part of it was thinking in a collective sense and thinking about how I could, you know, get involved in my community more. I did start going to old folks' homes. And, you know, because that was all like my grandfather died. So I'm like, you know, they got these for free. You can go use them.

Just go to the old folks home. I mean, I heard you guys talking about it. They do still have meals on wheels. My wife does it. The thing is, yes, if you just averaged it by time, you'd only have like 12 minutes per person, but you're forgetting like the three old men who don't want to talk to another person for the rest of their life. So they have zero minutes. And then you get like, you know, 20, 30 minutes or something.

Yeah, and I feel like you don't have to sort of equally distribute your time across everyone at the old folks home. You build relationships with people. And that's what I think a lot of people who are dealing with loneliness, a lot of people who are dealing with sickness, that's kind of really what they need is a relationship that's real, that's there. And I think of that as being like a very Christian thing to devote your time to. Yeah. This kind of dovetails into the one big religious question that I wanted to ask you.

So I have a living grandmother. She's doing great, about to turn 90. and for a while there I was she she goes to church every day and so we had like a rotation in the family in Wednesday mornings I would handle you know getting her to church my dad uh idiosyncratic decision he goes to church every week but whenever he takes her to church just like sits outside in the car because he'd rather play free cell than than hear from the Lord not not how I do it um but anyway not use that time to replace his other time or he would just be getting double churched because there is like a diminishing return for some people you know like no he's definitely committed to like his thing on sunday it's like a social scene you know he's got responsibilities where he's got a visit but if you're if you're at the church like the set i like church yeah like it's having 45 minutes to quietly think to yourself while someone reads out some you know like good ideas that's a that's a fun time um but

So I really enjoyed it, but whenever I would not take the Eucharist and I just constantly like going in circles in my head about like that. Because my understanding is that like if you're not a real current with confession, then like this is that this is not a treat for you. This is a treat for the people who have been going to confession. And so then I could easily just like solve this by going to confession. But like, I don't really, I've never really worked out what to say because there's plenty of things that, like, I'm sure the Bible tells me that I shouldn't do. But like, I don't really, there's not a lot of stuff that I'm thinking, like, this is wrong and then I'm doing it anyways. You know? But like, but I, so I guess if something like that came up, it would be nice if I got into some kind of.

rhythm where like every time something like that happened, I went and talked to a priest about it. But haven't really gotten there yet. And I think it just, I think that it would, there's things that I would expect them to expect me to want to confess that I don't want to confess. Like, like using drugs, you know, like, like, I don't consider that wrong. But like, it would seem weird to me on the other hand to like, like it, it feels like I'm doing my own shit too much. much. If I'm showing up to the confession being like, well, I know that, I know that we have these rules and I know that I did break them, but I've decided I have my own rules. And so like, I'm not going to talk about that here. Does any of this make sense? Do you deal with this? Like the,

I guess it's a personal question, but like, do you go to confession? I do go to confession. And, you know, so you see from, you know, I was never in Catholic schools, but I have seen Catholic schools giving students like checklists. How many times have you sworn? And then, you know, you check the box and you save five times or whatever. I find that to really promote what they call scrupulosity, which is where people get really anxious about their sins and, you know, in a kind of almost OCD fashion, document every single thing they do that even strikes them as possibly immoral and they take it to confession. But the guy in the confession booth has to hear the confessions of 30 people. And so I'm not sure they even want a level of super granular detail. So,

you know, out of respect for everybody else in the confession line and because, you know, confessions are maybe last for their 45 minute period on, you know, a Wednesday afternoon or something, I try to keep it pretty, you know, I try to keep it moving, let's say, keep the line moving. And so what I do is I say, you know, if there's anything that has really stood out to me since the last time that I've been to confession. Like, I was so angry. I've been angry at people. I've been short with people. I've been, you know, curt with my kids. I've been impatient. You know, that comes out or even like I've despaired or I've doubted God. And, you know, I think the more common ones are just like various sins of lust, which, you know, you really don't have to get very detailed with that,

although I'm sure people do. Those guys have heard everything. But I really, yeah, I just focus on what has stood out to me, something that I don't feel good about. And, you know, they say, you know, confession can be like pulling teeth, but it's really for you to kind of unburden your heart if there has been something that's weighing on you. And so I think the idea is that it shouldn't feel like, you know,

you're kind of spitting out in a panic, everything you think you even might have done wrong with a gun to your head. I think it's about, again, you know, you have a relationship with God and you're trying to grow in the faith. And confession is an opportunity to do that. Yeah, and I kind of have a sense that, like,

the priest is a bit incidental, you know? Like, it's more about what you're doing in there. But at the same time, like, I don't know. I like, like I said, I, if I did go to confession, I wouldn't drive all the way out to where my grandmother lives. It's too far. But like, I wouldn't really want to talk. I wouldn't feel super comfortable talking to any of those guys about it, you know?

Like, they just don't really. I would think you'd want a stranger. I mean, you'd want to close to like blank slate. Like, this person just represents the church. Yeah, I guess so. Sure. Yeah, I guess that would be nice. But I don't know.

I think that sounds fine. What would be really awesome. I mean, whenever I was a kid, we had a priest that we were going to all the time. And, you know, because he, like, was shaping my religious views to a large extent, I was very in sync with him. And, like, that, that was nice. If I had that again, I would love that. But, you know, I don't know. It seems like an arduous process.

Yeah, I mean, you can, you know, you can go to your local larger church cathedral and hit up the confession. It's like a McDonald's. I mean, it's a guy you don't know. and he's hearing a ton of these confessions and they just kind of move you through the line with three our fathers or whatever. But, you know, at my parish, there's a couple of priests that hear confession.

One of them is a white guy who's middle-aged, everybody gets three-ar fathers. That's it. You could murder someone and you would get three-R fathers, right? That's just, that's the wavelength he's on. And then one guy is a Hispanic guy who has a huge Marian devotion.

He loves Mary and. and people just get huge amounts of Hail Marys for everything. Minor, minor sins. You get the Hail Marys. And he'll also do really interesting stuff like, you know, I think one time I was confessing, like a lot of times people are kind of not very nice to me about what I believe on the Internet and so on.

And I know, this is coming from someone who's in a lot of left-wing spaces. and I was saying to him, when people are not very nice to me, I often say less than what I really believe or I pretend like I don't believe what I really believe or I'm not willing to say it. And his advice was very good, but the thing that really sticks in my mind

was he told me to get a Virgin Mary phone case. I was like, if you say so, bother. And he just said, You know, because every time you look at your phone, every time you go to beyond the internet, there she is. And wherever she is, she's going to bring joy. She's going to bring Jesus. See, people, when people get tattoos, nobody ever, if you try to explain that to them, they're like, no way. But it's like, yeah, it's there.

You're going to look at it. You're going to think about what it means to you. You're bundling there. I love that. Has anybody done the sketch yet where there's like a whoop or an aura thing for like just your send score? I don't know. We already have like what, like covenant eyes. You're familiar with that, I'm sure. That's in your world.

Yeah, the porn app where you kind of have a porn buddy and you're making sure you don't honk off to the porn together. Yeah, can I say there's something we do, T.C., Dan and I, like, you know, Trump will say something very, that the public seems to think is very stupid. And then I will kind of be in the back. Like, that's really, really dumb and I don't really get it. I'm like, what he said to make sense to me? I just, what were we just talking about? I'm sorry, I just have a total weed moment. To me, when that came out and everybody's like, this is so dumb, there was that pastor. Now he's sharing it with his daughter, his son.

Speaker of the house, Mike Johnson. In his adopted son, we're checking in about whether or not they'd church recently. Let's leave the Mike Johnson component outside out of it. I don't think the idea of Covenant Eyes is a bad, is a bad program. Like, we've been hit with a modern problem that people didn't have to deal with before. and I've known people who have had to use it because I grew up in church, right? And so when everyone was mocking that, I was like,

does everyone, am I allowed to say? I think this might be good for some people? Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't, anytime I happen to see porn on the internet, like it pops up or something, I mean, I feel like someone's screaming in my face. It's like, I don't want to see that. It is, yeah. But I definitely have other things that I struggle with.

And I think we've been alluding to drug use. And maybe that's more of my thing. And I think having people who, you know, make sure, you know, make sure you're accountable and that you can kind of rely on for support in trying to do better and stuff, I think is a good thing. And Covenant Eyes, you know, I think it's very easy to blow off and make fun of it, right? Because it's kind of goofy maybe, especially if you're sharing it with your dad or something. But to the, you know, to the degree that it could really help people, I mean, I guess it's something that we shouldn't laugh out.

I feel like part of the reason people laugh at it is because, you know, and I, this is part of my, like, journey, right? Is that I grew up and I thought that, you know, I got the speech where they're like, look, your family's saved. If you don't get saved, you're going to hell. So I did the church camps. I had some very emotional moments where they're wearing you down, you're crying. I was washing my brother's feet. You ever heard that bit? where we wash each other's feet, we're we're weeping, we're both telling each other how much we mean to each other, we love each other.

And that was, I came home and was like, I'm super fired. This is how I'm going to live my life. And then I spent probably like 25 to 26 years, like derisively shitting on religion. And I regret that to some extent, but I also think some of it was earned, right? Like I grew up in a version of Christianity that, lucky for me, my family, as it got weird or got away from it. But it just got weirder and weirder. And then I guess in my own life, I got more practically leftists. Like I used to sort of subscribe to centrist theories because I thought, like, this is how

you win elections. This is how you help people. And all of that has happened. And it's like now I'm at the end point. And I think I've gone my whole life making, like what I'm trying to say is I think if the right were known for welfare, we wouldn't immediately kick them in the dick. and they're like, I have to watch a thing so I don't watch porn or I have to have a program. Like, we make fun of everything they do because none of it tracks as positive.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I went through kind of a similar thing where my family was pretty religious. I mean, not in a weird way, but just, you know, it was Texas and it was conservative. And around the time that I was growing up, right, it was like it was the Bush years and we were doing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and so forth. And there was like this huge blending of conservative politics. with a certain type of Christianity such that they seemed kind of inseparable. Well, I thought the politics were stupid.

And so I kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater. I was like, this is all stupid. And, you know, you have to be some kind of ignorant to be involved with any of it. Now, weirdly, even during that time, I would still pray. And I would think, you know, because what else can you do?

Like in the Bible, I think Peter says at one point, like a Lord to whom else would we go? I mean, I can only go to you. There's nothing else out there. And so, you know, I went to college and I sort of got back into religion a little bit. And then I went to grad school and then I really got back into religion. I got my degree in Christian theology. And, you know, I look back on those periods where I had a lot of doubt and where, you know, it sounds like much like you.

I was more than happy to kind of sell other Christians out as being ridiculous. and stupid. And I just think it's all been part of the process, you know, it's all stuff you had to go through to get where you are. And so, you know, was it really bad? I mean, maybe you could have been doing better, but it was just all part of what had to happen to bring you to the place that you're in right now. So, yeah, I don't think you should maybe feel too bad about it, in part because, as you're saying, it's kind of justified in a lot of respects. And then in part because it seems like it's put you in a really good place. There's a part of me that watches like the righteous gemstone style church services,

and I'm just excited. People are so fired up for the Lord. Yeah, they seem to be having a great time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the, you know, I'm sure that Covenant Eyes has its place. I don't want to disagree with you guys about that. The topic of pornography, it feels like it's come up on the Brunigs number of times recently. and I don't

It's because it's coming up in the news a lot I just yeah no no the news has gotten extremely porn-brained in 2026 Yeah no bimbo-fied cabinet secretary His husband is a new ground for all of us And I don't know It's it's caused me to think a lot I do a lot I have a lot of conversations in my head

In response to it And I I think that my legitimately held belief is about porn is basically the drill tweet of about drunk driving of like, you know, it kills people but allows people to get to work on time so it's impossible to say if it's good or not. Like, I don't know. Like, I think that both of us are like coming from our experience, but like it's like a 14 year old, whenever like that sort of your sexual desires are our first coming online.

Like, it just, you know, having pornography there allowed for like a much richer sexual life than was ever going to be possible

for like, you know, someone from the age, like just, you know, whatever. It taught him how to have sex. And I mean,

I guess like, that's great. To some extent, I guess there's a bit of a debate about like whether or not sexual gratification is a goal, right?

And like having a rich sexual life is like a good thing or a bad. thing. But like if it's just, you know, like I, again, to go back to like what the Bible would say, but I'm pretty sure that they're fairly clear that unless it's like in efforts of making a child with your wife, like this is a bad idea. So like, you know, I guess if that's, but that's not, I don't feel that's the case. I think that having some kind of sexual life is good. And, you know, if you're an awkward and unattractive, you know, middle school student, like, this is,

there's not, like, any other avenues than, like, going, logging onto the internet. And so, like, do I think that it was good or bad in my life that the internet was there whenever I was a teen? I think that it was good. I don't know. I'm happy that I had it. And, like, but I do see, you know, like, that there is, like, the, uh, the drunk driving equivalent of, like, you know, like, the things that you cite, Liz, of, like, the, the people

are clearly living a sad life. Like, and it's in the, it's a spiral that they have reached the bottom of through constant access to internet pornography. And like, you know, even in my own life, like, you know, I, I still regularly consume it. And there's times wherever, like, I'll see something in the course of normal life that, like, should be just like a benign object. It'll cause me to, like, remember something that I've seen before. And now, like, I'm having, like, a light,

sexual experience about something that it shouldn't. So I'm just thinking about it a lot more than I prefer to because I've made these choices. So like, I can see that it is not all good. But like, I don't know, in your commentary, I do not feel it is reflected at all that, you know, lonely, sad men out there, be able to live richer lives. I mean, not even like exclusively me, you know. Like, I've had family members that, you know, like just never, any point in their life came within a hundred miles of any kind of relationship with a woman. And I never really had a big talk with them about what exactly they were doing with their free time. But I imagine that, like, they were able to have a better, like, sexual life than they would have absent these alternatives. And so,

I don't know. Like, what do you think? What do you think about it? So, okay, a few thoughts. one thing that I notice that happens again and again is women who have formerly been in porn really regretting it, really regretting it. I think a news story that I saw recently was about Lana Rhodes, who's a beautiful girl who I'm told had an illustrious career in porn saying that she has a son and that she's having to reckon with the fact

that all of his friends are going to have seen her, not just in like cute boudoir photos, but like explicit, hardcore degrading porn. And that's just the reality for women who perform in porn. There's a great documentary called After Porn Ends. And, you know, they kind of have rough lives after porn ends. And it ends, just like for professional athletes. You know, that's kind of a short span of time you can really make hay in.

and then it's the rest of your life that it's out there. And it really limits the things you can do. But as you're saying, I mean, it seems like a lot of fun. I guess if you're a man, you know, one might say you don't have to have porn to honk off. I mean, obviously people pulled it off for all of human history until now. But it's like cocaine. Like you can party without cocaine. But if you go to a party and somebody's,

cutting up a line. I mean, right? Because now you're really partying. And I mean, it kind of strikes me as a similar thing where, you know, it is out there. It's a thing you can do. But you start to see people who are always partying and they're doing a lot of Coke and they can't afford it and they're addicted and life gets really sad, really fast. The other thing I think about is having two daughters and maybe this is a downer. But by the time they're first going out on dates with boys at 15, those boys have seen more hardcore porn than a guy in 1950 would ever see in his whole life. Like from the age of 11, I think is an average age of first exposure.

So, you know, what is my 15-year-old daughter going to say to a boy whose expectations of sex involve Lana Rhodes? right? I mean, that's tough. That's tough to live up to when you're an ordinary kid, a little girl, basically. And, you know, those are the kind of concerns I have around it. But obviously, you know, tons of people use it and must be perfectly fine. I mean, the numbers would suggest that it's not destroying everyone's life. Just like in New York City every weekend, probably a million something people do blow at a party. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I'm just at the age where, like, internet porn was available whenever I was 11 and 12. So it certainly changed since I was a kid. But I don't know, man. I, it just felt like, like, I also watched the Fast and the Furious, but like whenever I got a driver's license, it didn't, like, seem to have any impact on, like, it just didn't really inform what my, what I thought my life was going to be like, you know? I it's so tricky because I mean it's it's really it's tough for us to I don't want to it's it's tricky to tell you how to feel right like uh it's a it's something that's very fundamentally different about males and females I think in general at a like zero point zero is how they view sexual relationships right like I for better or for worse and usually for worse on the male side um but at the so like I'm kind of trying to make this

that like actually it's just kind of more of like filling up your gas tank um it's not like a deep act but at the same time it's pretty much undeniable that the attitudes that have been ramped up in society have ramped up alongside porn usage right like it's hard to say that it's not part of something deeper and it's just like going and getting a shot if it does actually reflect the way that that I think a lot of people maybe subconsciously think and then it plays out, you know, on a public level. But but at the same time, it's not like you have like every guy running up to women and just like grabbing them on the street or something like that. We somehow have like a the functioning society. You know, I don't know. I feel like where do

you fall on like on sex work just in general? Like because it seems to me that porn is, that's a, you know, There's a record of it. Yeah. And but I feel like to T.C.'s point, like, I think that there could be a charitable case for, like, prostitution being legal. In my head, I say the normal, you know, the regulated will make it legal the state. But I think we've seen a lot of times the way that works doesn't work the way we implement it, right? Like, people get screwed by that too.

So, but I do think that, you know, T.C. and I talk to a lady once. there, we've heard tons of stories of, now who knows, it's not 30 years later, but that they have life as like escorts or sex workers and they go see couples and this and that, and they seem like they're in control of their destiny and kind of actualizing, but is that something you think is even possible as a woman when that is your job? Sure. I mean, there are girls who work their way up to madame and then they're making money off all the girls, and they seem to have a great time of it. it and you know ever has it been such this is an ancient um ancient line of work um you know as you're saying

sort of legalizing and regulating prostitution would probably prevent a lot of murders and a lot of women from getting just straight up robbed um because if it's an illegal act and then the guy doesn't pay you or it beats the shit out of you or something you can't really go to the cops um because you risk getting popped as well um So I think that, you know, sort of having a black market seems pretty problematic. The thing that I can't get out of my head in terms of sex work is when I visited Amsterdam, I took a walk through the Red Light District just to see what it was like. And it's a bunch of like naked women sitting in shop windows reading books and stuff,

bored out of their minds. And then you see a guy walk up and they're, oh, hi! Right? Fake as fuck. And there's just something like dark about it. Like it's making money and in some way every job sucks. I mean, all work sucks and you have to do stuff. You don't really want to work. And I mean, a hostess at a restaurant is kind of no different where they're bored out of their mind. But then kind of putting on a face for the customers. But, you know, sex seems a lot more personal. than that to me. Yeah, it's like putting on a face is a great way to describe it. Like it's,

it, you would hope, like the ideal would be, like, that that's the one time that like you really don't, you want to dispense with that entirely. And like,

it's not how it works out. Even outside of sex works up, it's not always how it works out. But it's, it's the time where it's bleakest that you like have to be, you know, being fake.

Like assuming, I mean, not another personality, but like, part of your personality, you wouldn't, otherwise be assuming in service of that. Yeah, I don't know. It's rough stuff. I think about it though, like in terms of, yeah, it is, just saying it is a part of culture, it's, it's the worst part of the

culture. But if you just removed that, like I'm thinking about our kids, you know, I think probably from like MassCom 101, right, you realize that, I remember thinking that in college, like the first time they introduce you to how like, you know, mass media models work and things. You're like, I have no chance of raising a kid on my own. Like, this is going to parent them, right? So it just, to me, it almost seems that, you know, yes, porn is like the end of it. But if you removed it, like, we have no chance at fighting the culture. Like, the culture is just steeped in, like, sexuality in a way that it would be very hard to avoid.

Very, very hard to avoid. And so for me, the way my mom tried to implement it was, or at least through, like, the youth group is how messed up my scene was. a little bit older than you guys, but it came about when I was in high school. We had like unfirewalled internet at my junior high in like seventh and eighth grade. But for me, I was like in the like, apologize to God every time I masturbated camp for three, four years, you know, and then your mom is is asking you quite. It's, it was insane. Oh, no.

It was insane. Like the level of, you know, you know, your mom getting involved. Oh, no. Oh, there's a mini. We have a segment on our show. So it wouldn't, the double entendre wouldn't work for you, but bad beats. Most guys have a, have a story. About their mother?

Getting, your mom finding you is a very common mom walking in. Oh, yeah. That's a, that's one you'll get to miss, you know. But my mom walked in on my brother many times. Oh, my God. Knock. Oh, well. At some point, there's something deeper there.

Like, are you trying to. Oh, my. I'm trying to find out. No, my kids are 10 and 7, and I knock before I go in their rooms, just because they should have some boundaries, I guess. I mean, it just seems like polite. Sure. Yeah, I don't know what they're doing in there, but yeah, that seems like a kind of Freudian

experience maybe of, like, of trauma there. Yeah. And there's like, there's, you know, I came from a conservative family, right? I mean, I'm a Catholic person. I'm probably not the most woke on sex and sex work and porn. and so forth. But there's like a, there's like a gray space between kind of what you're describing where, you know, per jerk, you have to apologize to Jesus and then, you know, sort of, again, using porn like every day or something like that. These, you know, there's got to be some kind

of middle ground there. And I think I kind of, you know, you can't ban porn and I, I don't even spend time with that kind of stuff because it's like piss in a pool, right? can't take it out. It's all there. If porn were no longer being produced today, I mean, there's still so much porn in circulation. It's like banning guns or something. I mean, they're out there and you've got to be able to deal with it. But I also feel like women should kind of reserve the right to think it's pigish, which is different than a ban, but it's not, you know, I don't think it's the case that women especially should be expected to think like it's great. Yeah. A healthy, this is pig stuff, it seems kind of like part of that gray area story to me.

Yeah. I think there's a chance that, A, like, I don't know shit about computers, Liz. I'm not that guy. But I think there's a chance that, like, that there are AI programs that one day could actually make pornography completely illegal. Like, if somebody wanted to do that. And, you know, the Supreme Court, if they were faced with something like that right now for the next 20 years as a technology develops, I wouldn't be super shocked by that. I hear you say like women should have the right to feel its piggish behavior.

And like that that resounds as like overwhelmingly true to me. But then like I don't know. Like whenever, because you know, like whenever you're talking on the podcast about it, you express very eloquently that you find to be piggish behavior and it's persuasive. But it's like it's not something that I think I should feel bad for. You know, like. So I just, I don't know how to balance it. Whatever, you know, like I'll keep on listening to the podcast and how I feel about the things you say is my deal.

You know, like, whatever. This is none of your responsibility, but like if you have further thoughts on it, I'm interested in them. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, take what I think with a grain of salt. I don't take myself seriously and neither should you. You know, I talk about knocking before I go into my kids' rooms. I knock before I go into my husband's room or into his office or whatever because I don't think you should go looking for shit you don't want to see. So, you know, everybody deserves their space and their privacy. And, you know, we're all adults.

And I completely believe in people's, like, right to make their own choices about that stuff. And I, yeah, I don't mean to treat it like, you know, if you're doing this, you're necessarily like a human rights abuser or anything like that. I don't think that. It's just at a weird place with the, you know, only fans. I don't know. You never know what numbers to believe. but it feels, and maybe this is just part of our generation and feeling the myopic millennial that always,

it feels like we can't go any further on turning society up. Like on the sexual nature of it. This is the last sane moment. Like everything from here is going to be more insane than this. It's like everything is more insane across the board. Like we have vice now and I think about it as ultra vice, where, you know, there's always been porn. I mean, pornography comes from the Greek word for horror, which is pornoia, and then graphia's writing.

And so before there were pornographic images, there were like pornographic writings. Oh, as a porn guy, I've used that before, right? Come on. Look at the caves, right? No, absolutely, absolutely. And so this is a thing that's always been there. But the porn that is out there now is like harder core. There's more of it.

It's more easy for more people to access. I was reading a news story today. They've got some kind of fentanyl. now that's like 20 million times more intense than actual fentanyl um with with weed you go to smoke weed and the shit is like 90% THC well when my parents were like smoking weed in the 70s it would unheard of that would have killed them instantly um and now it's just it's it's it's very common gambling i mean there's always been gambling but now it's on your phone right and and there are people whose lives get real fucked up with gambling um because it is kind of addictive and so

it's it's not just porn it's like everything across the board that is vice that has always been there is now for some reason I guess it's partly because of technology partly because of science um like 20 million times more intense and yeah i feel like the economy uh the setup of the the capitalism maybe playing a huge role yeah a huge role here yeah my i had a friend who uh in response to this insisted that he was uh only going to stick with obama era pornography and I always thought that was very well. That's a good stand. That's a really good stand. That's a really good stand.

I call porn inflation. Hoflation, they call it. Yeah. Well, you know, people probably tell you this listening to the show, but it fires me up to listen to you talk about Jesus and your faith. I don't, you know, that doesn't, that's been a long time for me since I felt that way. I was probably not open to it at any point that, you know, I was consuming you guys' content before but I don't know it's interesting to me and and it's I never really had viewed the history

of humanity through any sort of collective formation um the idea that it might not be done being formulated is a thought I hadn't really um considered so yeah there's all this stuff that's gonna happen and keep happening I mean the the pope is apparently writing an encyclical on AI right now which just isn't something that Christianity has ever had to confront before and whatever he writes, along with whatever Christian thinkers, discover and think about AI, will become part of the fabric of the religion. And that will continue to happen as history continues to progress and technology continues to develop. And so, yeah, I don't think Christianity is done becoming what it will be yet.

Just as when Christianity was first starting out, there were all different kinds of ways of being Christian. There's types of heresies that we don't have anymore, and they weren't always heresies. They were just ways of being Christian until they were, you know, sort of banned by an increasingly centralized church. You know, he had Gnosticism, you had Pelagianism, you had Aryanism. There are all these different ways of being Christian that no longer exist to us, but there are all kinds of ways of being Christian that exist now, and there will going forward be even more kinds of ways of being Christian.

And so I think that, like I was saying, that's just all part of the process. And I think it's baked in. And I think the age that you live in right now is the one you are meant to be in. And the Christianity you find available to you now is the Christianity you were meant to find. And so, yeah, I wish I could look a thousand years in the future and see what they've got going on because I bet it'll be interesting. So you won a thousand, T.C. Even rosier. It's hard for me to imagine the dinosaurs.

He's not killing us. He's a big dumer. Do you know that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm a black pill dumer myself, but. See, that's not what I want to hear. I want to hear that you're filled with the spirit. The two of you are both very excited about the future and ready to embrace it full of the gospel.

No, absolutely. Every moment I spend alive in God's world is, you know, fucking. Yeah, it's so awesome. I'm so appreciative for every gift. But, like, it's just not, it doesn't really interact at all with the fact that, like, I cannot imagine computers stronger, like more capable than us that don't kill us. Like, it's so silly to think that they wouldn't kill us. Of course they're going to kill us.

But like, you know, whatever. If God's plan is that I... It's my fault. If God's plan is that, like, I get five more good years with my beautiful family. And then we move on to the next thing. Whenever, like, sarin gas is released into the air by the compact brassario, that's fine. That's all fine. I don't.

Well, look at it this way. There were Christians in the Middle Ages who fully believe the world was ending. And they believed that because everyone was dying. Everyone was dying. The Black Death, right? It was horrible. They couldn't stop it. They knew how it spread and they couldn't stop it.

Nuns and priests died at higher rates, we can tell, from parish rolls because they were trying to care for the sick. And it was so bad that livestock died. I mean, there were fields of sheep that were dead. there were crops with no one to bring them in. There were whole villages that were annihilated. It created a huge bottleneck. And for all they knew, it was never going to stop.

And the bubonic plague happened again and again and again. It wasn't a one and done situation. It kept coming in waves. And they were quite certain. The world was ending. Everyone was going to die. And weirdly, they kept having children. They kept raising families.

They kept trying. And so it's totally possible. that we will, you know, endure the robot Holocaust, and I hope that doesn't happen. But if it comes to pass, we'll be no different than the Christians of the Middle Ages who just kept living. I mean, the great news is it'll be really quick, you know?

For those of us go into heaven, we'll be there before we do. You should have ended on hers. Yeah, all right, yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time, Liz. Thanks so much for having me, guys. That's it for tonight. The high school special is next. So until tomorrow, for everyone who's been a part of this one.

I'm TC and Jake. We do thank you for watching. Good night.