The Eric Metaxas Show - #159 - Andrew and Spencer Klavan

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with Andrew and Spencer Klavan about why wokeness is losing its grip on Hollywood, how Trump’s victory changed the cultural landscape, why political ideology destroys storytelling, and why conservatives need great art rather than anti-woke propaganda. They also discuss race-swapped casting, modernism, beauty, truth, classic literature, popular art, and the difference between genuine art and political messaging.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/- -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE:    / @ericmetaxas  #EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca.

Wayfair, every style, every home. Hey there, folks. I think I may have mentioned that I would have one or two Clavins, you know, part of the program. And I managed to get two. I'm told it's a father and son team. It's Andrew and Spencer Claven. Welcome to the program. Great to see Eric.

This is all the Clavens we could find. We'll round up some more. It's a scrape up at the last minute. Is that the idea? All right. Well, we'll just, we'll have to go with it. Now, I see behind you, there's a prominent sign. It says, Clavens on the culture.

Is this some type of podcast, as they call it? It is. This is our new Daily Wire podcast. where we have a revolutionary conservative approach to the culture, which is we will be talking about the culture without complaining about it. It's an amazing, it's never been done before. It's a quite a difficult. It's a bit of a high wire act.

We have to choose our subjects very carefully. How the heck are you going to do that? I'd love to know. We're going to talk about things we like. And if we don't like them, we're going to not like them for aesthetic reasons. We're not going to talk about the fact that everyone in Hollywood is a left-wing, madman even though even though we know that's true despite the fact that it is in fact the case that everyone in hollywood is left to madman i do think part of our objective here is to uh not just we can yeah

we can critique things that don't work we're happy to talk about stuff and even to you know joke occasionally about how ridiculous some of these some of these guys are but essentially i think if you want to see more of something good you have to also praise what works you've got to get excited about the stuff that is affirming and you got to kind of engage with things on their own terms. So that is basically our objective. We kind of feel that people on the right only have two modes who are talking about culture. Does it reflect our values? And, you know, is it young Washington, which is great and that's fine.

And we're all very happy about that. Or is it from the pit of hell and going to destroy everything that it touches, including, you know, the United States of America? And we feel that art is always kind of countercultural. It's always culture critical. It's always talking about the individual in the society, where there's always tension and drama. It's about all the things that conservatives kind of recoil from.

It's about sex and death and tragedy as well as comedy and love. And that's about life. And so we want to talk about art like that, you know, the way I think people who love art and we do love the arts talk about it. And so that's what we've been doing. Are you saying that Thomas Kincaid's paintings are not art? not that they're not that they're not that they're not that they're not that they're not that they're not that's not that it's definitely the case as you say that there's you know always going to be something inherently

challenging about about art and we as conservatives i think we have to learn not to shy away from that it's also true that we're in a moment right now where the culture and where arts are i think more exciting than they've been in a while, mainstream arts. And part of this has to do with, actually, with Trump's second electoral victory in the revolution that represented. I don't think Donald Trump has fixed Hollywood or anything, but I do think that the fact that he won so decisively and the fact that there was such a decisive rejection of wokeness, at least for the time being, has really made a lot of people kind of rear up and realize that some of this political nonsense that was coming out of

Hollywood and the streamers. It just, it actually does disgust people. Like you can't just, it shove that stuff down people's throat forever. It also destroys storytelling. The, the wokeness, it's a small-minded, pinch-hearted philosophy. It always was. It looks down on people.

And it wants to shut them up. And what's happening in Hollywood is people will tell you, they'll pull you aside. They won't say it out loud because everybody in Hollywood is afraid and wants to keep your job. But they will pull you aside and say, wokeness is killing our stories. It kills your stories to have to think about, you know, can I get a black guy in here into the story so I can get nominated for the Oscars? Can I deal with minority questions or questions

of gender so that I can get nominated for the Oscars? That is basically crushing to an artist who just wants to express his vision of the world. And so that's folding. And it is in part folding because of Trump's victory, which was not only a victory for him, but led by him. It was a victory for For the normal meetings, yeah. And you don't know if anybody has said this lately, maybe both of you have said this, but I haven't heard it said. And I haven't said it in a long time. But what this reminds me of, in other words, the madness of the left in trying to impose these just preposterous standards. I mean, the fact that the Helen of Troy, excuse me, the fact that Helen of Troy has to be a black woman and that some of these Homeric heroes.

have to be Ellen Page disguised as a man. The madness of that reminds me of Stalin-era Soviet Union. I mean, that how do you make art in a world where somebody who is against truth itself is imposing these insane standards on you? But I mean, you really have to go back to Stalin almost to think of, what do I compare this to, the madness. Well, it's, it's sort of like the left's version of Thomas Kinkade. I mean, leaving, leaving Stalin aside. But yeah, also it is very Soviet and Stalinist. We make fun of the guys like Kincade who make this sort of twee, cutesy, disnified art where everything is perfect.

But that is what wokeness represents in art also. It is this enforced, kind of controlled, small world where nothing that doesn't fit is allowed in. And I think that the right sees that and very understandably says, well, we need anti-woke art, right? We need art that pushes back against that. And that's where you get some of the like, God's not dead, the sort of, you know, table-pounding right-wing art. What I actually think we need is post-woke art. I think we need art that is just kind of dealing with a totally separate set of ideas

and categories because these ones, these identity. categories about race and sex and gender are suffocating. They're death. Are you daring to say that there are other singers than Kid Rock? Is that what you're practicing? I can't comment on that. Let's not go too far. Wow.

It's a new generation problem. I would dare you suggest that we can go past Kid Rock. I don't know who you think. Sorry. Things get a little wild here. But there's also, you know, part of this too is this sort of natural rage. At the same time, they're putting a black Helen of Troy into the Odyssey and yelling at us for mentioning it.

There's a black woman who has written a very popular Romanticy novel, which is now being filmed, and she has detached herself from the film because while the star of the movie is black, she's not the right black. She's not the right shade of the... She's a true, true story. She says, I'm trying to help people who are really dark black in this person. This is not the right shade. So at the same time, you know, we're being, you know, whipped for saying maybe Helen of Troy was actually blonde, you know, they are having arguments.

If you play a, if you're deaf and you play a deaf character and you're not deaf, they'll yell at you for that. And it just gets very natural. But you won't hear it. If you're deaf, you won't hear about it. Yeah. Well, this is, I have to say, the first time I'm hearing about this, which just goes to show you that Andrew Claven is where you come if you want the latest in Romanticacy. drama. I didn't, I actually didn't understand that that was what I was in for. I want to do an Othello with a, with a pasty British man.

Well, Anthony Hopkins played a fellow on BBC. No, you know, nobody said it because who doesn't want to see Anthony Hopkins? I saw Denzel play Macbeth, which I loved. Who doesn't want to see great actors play great parts? But it's when it's all on one side and if you cross the line, you get crucified. No. then you start to get angry. Yeah, the ratchet only moves one way.

And when you object, you're told, well, but, you know, it's really just a fantasy story and anybody can be any race, which did used to be kind of the accepted idea. As you say, Anthony Hopkins played Othello because he's a great actor and actors. I hate to break to you are in the business of pretending there are other people, right? People that they are not. And so this was sort of common sense. And that is still used when people object, like, well, why are all the dwarves and Lord of the Rings suddenly black, you know, fat black women.

It's like, why are they tall? Yeah. And people are like, oh, you know, you just think that you just don't like black people because anybody should be able to deal with anyone. But then it's like, okay, so put a white chicken little mermaid or put, you know, make a white Aladdin or whatever. And it only goes in this. And so this, Eric, this is exactly what we're not going to be talking about. We've now ended up precisely in the area. That's the difference between your show and my show. We're not talking about it. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus.

Starring Emmy Rossum, Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. You've often heard me talk about the golden triangle of freedom, that intersection of faith, virtue, and liberty. And for that triangle to hold, we need access to the truth. Unfortunately, the Medicare system often feels designed to obscure the truth, leaving millions

on plans that don't actually fit their needs. That's why I want you to know about chapter. Chapter is a rare breed in the health care world, the completely independent advisor that puts your interests first. They help you understand your enrollment options and ensure you're getting the benefits you're entitled to without the typical high-pressure sales tactics. One chapter member, Gary, said he spent countless hours trying to understand it all and was just left more confused until he called them. Their service is free and has saved seniors an average of $1,100 per year. If you want to ensure your coverage is based on facts, not marketing, call chapter at 571-421-125.

That's 571, 421, 1253. It's time to find the clarity you deserve. But to get to the heart of this, I mean, what you said early on, what has happened with Hollywood, I mean, we have to go back a little ways because this is all of the arts, you know, going back to, I don't know, Marcel Duchamp. You go back over 100 years, but it's been this kind of perverse orgy of transgression, a celebration of nothing. thing but transgression as though, in other words, it's one thing to say that, you know, art has to challenge us. But basically what happened to the arts is that rather than challenging us, it decided it needs to punch us in the face, that the only, you know, the only thing you could do is punch the, the woman from Scarsdale who's coming to see a nice piece of theater. She needs

to be punched in the face with what a hypocrite she is by being a housewife from Scarsdale, basically, right? And, you know, one of the great things, I mean, I've been a novelist all my life. One of the great things about art is that you don't have to answer questions. You only have to present them. You don't have to give the answers to life. Nobody has the answers to life. You give life.

And that helps people find answers for themselves. If you give, artists are supposed to give you new fresh visions and experience that broaden your perspective, not new fresh visions and experience that beat you into submission. Yeah. And there is also, I think, that there's Douchon moment that you're describing where you take a urinal and you not say this is this is art or is it art is a different kind of transgression because it's we we do think that you you want to push the limits of kind of what people think of as acceptable you want to explore things that don't really you know fit inside of the normal social range all of that is part of the artistic venture but pushing the limits of of reality is actually a separate thing right and that was that was that moment in in art where you did start to say well the thing that we have to deconstruct is true and false, is morally right and wrong. And that's actually not a successful.

It's like fun for about five minutes and then it just all kind of falls to pieces. You can see, you know, modernism is often thought to begin with the novel Don Quixote. And you can see Donkey Hodi is this story. Gee, all these rules of chivalry that we were taught to live by, they don't really work in the real world. And that's a truth. But as you read Don Quixote, you both admire the rules of chivalry and you laugh at this guy. tilting at windmills and being beaten in a joust with windmills, you get both things. You get the absurdity of our values coming up against the reality of life. And you also get an admiration for these values that try to make life something more beautiful than it is. That's completely gone.

Once you start to say, oh, if you try to be chivalric, you're a white supremacist, you know, then you're just some ranting guy on the corner trying to beat people into submission and into your belief system. And that's what, that is what has happened to art. But that does not mean they're untalented people out there doing great stuff. You know, I have to interrupt and just to say for my audience that, you know, the two, you guys, you're, you're smart. What? Don't be clear.

It sounds like they say like you're dumb. You're smart. And you can do things and you can say things. No, it's a joy to have this conversation because it's an important conversation and there's a lot of nuance. I mean, what you just said about why is it that donkey, Hode basically is criticizing something at the same time that it is respecting that thing, right? That's the difference.

In other words, propaganda just smacks stuff down. Art is, it's more complex. And I think that's kind of, you know, what we're talking about really on some level here also is the difference between art and propaganda, right? Or, you know, something that actually tries to understand. understand that, you know, truth can be paradoxical. We can explore those paradoxes. Rather than just the paint by numbers, we're going to tell you what to think. Yeah, well, I mean, you need to use a bad word, but like, isn't the key here love? Isn't it about whether you love the thing you're critiquing or not? And I do think that,

you know, art at its highest is an expression of love. It's an expression of love for the world and especially for humanity. And this is something, again, kind of gooey that maybe is not the way that your hardline, conservative politicians like to think. But we talk about our very first work of literary criticism, Aristotle's poetics, deals with the fact that our subject is always people doing things, men in action is how it's usually translated. But that's what we're in the business of.

And so a work like Don Quixote, which is kind of attacking something really, central about our fondest aspirations. We dream of being knights on horseback, but we're also kind of doddering old men. Like that is, there is something really true to the human condition about that, but it comes from a place of interest in and ultimately love for humanity, for the human person. So, so much, so much of art and just a wise view of humanity comes out of Genesis. You know, this idea that we're made to be angels, but we wind up, you know, kind of killing each other and, you know, sleeping with each other when we shouldn't and we end up acting like animals. That's the story of the fall of man.

And it's where all comedy comes from. It's where all tragedy comes from. It's where you, it's not because what the left thinks is, oh, if we could just change the values. You know, stop fat shaming people. You know, some slut shaming people. They just change the values. Then sluts will be happy and fat people will be happy. It doesn't work that way.

Those values are real. They actually exist. And yes, we violate them. And even good people violate them. That's the whole point. That's the whole point of the doctrine. of original sin, one of the greatest gifts that Christianity has given to the consciousness of man. And basically, the underpinning of all art and storytelling, you know, Oscar Wilde had that great

line. We're all standing in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. And like, I think that that could be the theme of almost every work of art. That is a really, I think, key idea. And it actually goes back to your point about Stalin, because, again, it's not that there aren't sometimes political ideas. art. But when you start to ask, like, what went wrong? Why is the Soviet approach to art so horrendous? It's because the thing that's being critiqued and attacked is this, are these basic realities of human existence, like original sin, like the fact that out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made, but also like male and female for us now,

and these sort of basic realities about what kinds of beings we are. If you don't start, and this goes for conservatives and liberals, it's not a political thing. It's just, if you, if you, You don't start from a real affection for that and therefore an interest in that. You probably can't, you can't know the world as it actually is and portray it. It's hilarious, Eric, you know, one of the most controversial things I ever said on my podcast, I mean, of all the things that I say that are, in fact, controversial, I was watching a TV show on Netflix and a woman got into a sword fight. It was a medieval fantasy thing.

She got into a sword fight with a man. And I said, that can't happen. in real life a man would just simply, he wouldn't even kill her, he just walked through her to get to the guy behind her so he could have a fight. How? It went on for a year.

People were writing me. Still going on. They're writing me, as they've been doing throughout my entire life here, making me account for your controversial statements. It's true, though. You know, people, women who were fencers were writing, I will take you on.

And I said, no, no, no, no. This is not like fencing with an old guy. This is a warrior who's going to wipe you off the face of the earth. And so every time I see a movie in which a woman hits a guy and the guy spins backside over tea kettle out the room, I turn it off because I know that that's not an honest betrayal. If a cop, a female cop chases down a male suspect, I think like, I'm sorry, you know, that's not how that works. And like, if art is, if art is not going to tell the truth at some level, what's it for? Well, it's so interesting because there's so much here. but it really is, I think part of what we're talking about is it's insulting to the viewer or to the reader.

It's insulting. Let's be honest, because you can feel them trying to manipulate you, trying to tell you what to think rather than respect you. They're telling you what to think. And while they're telling you what to think, they're sort of saying, shut up and take it. because, you know, but it's interesting because I think that this is part of why I bristle at things that are pretentious. It's why I sneer at Gertrude Stein and much of James Joyce and others because I feel like they're so pretentious that they are, it's a similar kind of thing. Like they're basically saying, hey, hey, this is cool and transgressive and you need to know that. And don't dissent because we've decided that this is cool and transgressive.

And there's a lot of that. I mean, let's face it. I mean, all you need to do is read Tom Wolves short book, The Painted Word about modern art. You know, it's just, it's manipulative. Yeah, and it suggests that the problem is you, if you don't like it. I mean, to bring up Joyce, somebody that I've got some time for,

maybe more than you. I don't know, we could have that conversation. I knew you were going to say that, but go ahead. Okay. There we go. Well, he does have this unreadable work, Finnegan's wake, and he said, I think, of Finnegan's Wake, you know, I took a year to write every page, so you need to take a year to decipher it. And that's where you think, well, no, the problem is, you know, this is sort of akin to when that movie Bros came out, which was about like gay love and the guy that made the movie got mad.

He said, people aren't going to see this because they're homophobic. It's like, no, people aren't going to see it because it's a bad movie. And so, you know, what you really ought to be doing is reaching out to the people that, you're going to. you're there to speak to. And one thing that's exciting to me now about the summer of movies that we're having is that there are a couple pictures, you know, backrooms, obsession. There are these movies that are really taking off. And they're taking off whether or not we might like them individually because they are entertaining to people. Like they just don't have this stuff in it. It's true. I will say this, Eric, though, when you mentioned Gertr's sign, you have to respect

her because there are many bad writers, but there's only one worst writer. And I think she takes the pride. I've never taken her off my shelf for that exact reason. I'm pretty sure you're only saying that because she was chunky. You're going to prove her for chunkiness. She was chunky. Yeah. And just grotesque all around.

Those funny glasses. Didn't she wear funny glasses? No, she didn't wear funny glasses. Oh, she did that. But she would have if she could have. It's just so funny because I think that, you know, when I was in college, just having this modernist stuff thrown at me like, hey, this is the cool stuff. And you think, this is pretentious.

This is the height of pretentiousness. And I know there's an edge there. I know, you know, I knew Spencer was going to defend Joyce a little bit. And I know that people are going to defend him. But I just want to sneer at Faulkner and just say he's insanely pretentious, like offensively pretentious. And I would much rather read something else, basically. I don't want to read about, you know, whatever. Benji or who, the only, the only, I'm not a big Einran fan, but one of the best things she ever did,

if not the best thing she ever did, was she took a description of New York in the rain by Thomas Wolf, not the, not the R. Tom Wolf, but the old Thomas Wolf, who was supposed to be the greatest writer of his time. And she compared it to Mickey Spillane, who's the most popular detective story writer of his time. And he had a description of New York and the rain. And his was so much better. It was humiliating. I mean, it was just amazing how much better. writer Spillane was than the vaunted and the left hated Spalane because he was all about bringing justice and vengeance to the evil people. And they love Thomas Wolfe because he couldn't have been more pretentious. So yeah, you know, I think this is part of it, right, is that I'm not

sure when this happened in culture. But it's obvious that at some point the elites decided that and we, I touched on this earlier, that they have contempt for, you know, let's call it your average person. There's a contempt. And so if something is attractive, they kind of sneer. They sneer at Norman Rockwell. They sneer at Longfellow.

Anything that's attractive or popular that people like, they assume is garbage. And to them, it's kitsch. But that, I don't know when that happened. I guess it happened around the turn of the last century. It happens to every art form as it becomes Moribund. There's a starts to die.

It splits into stuff that intellectuals like and trash for the masses. So in other words, it's not like the masses. When the movies start out, you're getting John Ford films, great works of art that anybody can love. And then once you get into the Marvel comic stuff, you're really just doling out dumb stuff for the masses and not giving them stuff that actually is uplifting and makes them think. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, as the resident pretentious guy who likes choice, I will say, I teach college students. I teach them literature.

And there is a really interesting phenomenon where, you know, we do like Plato. We do one of the great philosophers of all time. And when students connect to Plato, which happens pretty quickly if you do it right, he's a great writer. And he's talking about things that we all care about. What's right and what's wrong? How do I know, right? What kind of a person am I supposed to be?

And when people connect to that, they think they're doing it wrong because it's too simple. They're like, I don't, I feel like I must, must be misinterpreting or there's some layer here that I'm missing. And you have to say, no, it's because of his greatness. It's because he's so powerful that you are actually getting him right. He's speaking directly to you. He's asking the questions. The children ask. And those are the ones that are infinitely deep and yes, layered.

And you can read it again and again and all of that. But I think what you're describing is like once the intelligentsia gets bored of those questions, they start to go off on their increasingly naval gazing journeys into all. And I'm, you know, I'm actually with you, Spencer, on Joyce. There are people who do that kind of work well, you know, but it is a very exclusive, you know, way of writing that only certain people are going to enjoy. I don't think, I don't think if you're not into literature in a deep way, I don't think Joyce speaks to you at all, whereas Hemingway always speaks to Dickens, who I think is

one of the greatest writers who ever lived and is sniffed at by critics. All the time. Yeah, but I think Dickens is fantastic and speaks to anybody. Anybody can love Charles Dickens. So I think that it's a shame that happens to works of art, but then frequently forms of art come back and they regain their popularity. I guess, you know, modernism is kind of where this all happened, right? I mean, I'm speaking simplistically, but at some point somebody decided that beauty is kitsy,

it's too accessible. We have to do ugly, right? They decided that rhyme and beauty are beneath us. And, you know, they would have sneered at the terse reema of Dante. They just, they wanted to be difficult and somehow ugly and offensive, that there's something purer and truer if it is, if it is not beautiful. And that, to me, you know, it's the opposite side of the, there's a scale here, obviously, right? Because you want to.

That was terrible. a terrible mistake and we're living, I think, through the end of that or that idea is kind of collapsing in our lifetimes. It was also, and this is part of the complexity of it, it was a reaction, wasn't it, to the chaos and the horror, the catastrophe of the World Wars and the way that these certainties that produced masterpieces like Dante's Terse Rima, like the Divine Comedy, you know, the glittering construction of the universe that Thomas Aquinas gives us via Aristotle, which starts to kind of fall apart, you know, and these things aren't, it's not some scheming evil doer, like, you know, rubbing his hands together saying, now I will do it post-Madonism, you know,

it is like these are reactions to what's going on in the world. And I think we're grappling with figuring out how to get that meaning back. If it were a scheming evil d'oe, he would have that action. He would have, he would be a French. It is. It's funny, though, because there's. So this is an endless conversation, which is why you guys should do a podcast about it. That's a great idea.

That's all that out there is my idea for you. But I think it is interesting because we can see both sides of this, right? There's legitimate place for people to critique whatever, whatever it is, the idea that we should all go to war in World War II and that God is with us in the war. You know, of course, there are going to be poets that are going to criticize that. but then it kind of curdles into sort of like a settled bitterness that continues for decades and decades that all authority is suspect, all authority, you know. And especially in the state that we've been in in this country for the last, I don't know, 30 years say, where nobody's, nobody challenges this one point of view.

I mean, people, people who have my point of view have a very, very, very hard time in Hollywood, very hard time in publishing, very hard time publishing their work, getting their work out there. Whereas anybody who's willing to say, you know, America stinks and all our values are wrong and any kind of family life is ridiculous. Anyone like that can be, can win the Pulitzer Prize. What you guys are talking about is the fact that anti-Orthodoxy is now the orthodoxy, right? It's become the boring in the same way that people, you know, like the originators of scientific revolution were annoyed at the...

the kind of dogmatism of the Aristotelian to mystic philosophy. We are now chafing at this like anti-order, anti-religious thing. And I mean, Camille Pollya said this in like the early 2010s, I think. She wrote a book, Glittering Images where she said, you know, I defended the people who were dunking crucifixes in your, I mean, she was a real radical. She said, I thought, I found that interesting. At this point, it's as just as dull and boring as any academic certainty. and what we're looking for in the 21st century is a way of making meaning,

is a way of finding structure and beauty. And I agree with that. I mean, look, I think it's all going to come back to the crucifix, but even so, even if it comes back to the crosses, I think it must, it's not going to come back with the kind of certainty that you might have had before we knew certain things about science that make you think, well, wait a minute,

this is much more complex. The world is a very complex place. The truth is still going to be the truth, but there are going to be new ways to see. speak about it. And that's where new art comes from. It's not, it's not like you're going to find out that something Shakespeare thought was true is false. It's that you're going to need new language to say those things. Yeah, it's true in a way, perhaps in a deeper way than he even knew. I mean, there are things like, you know, people always say, oh, the earth, people, we used to think the earth

was at the center of the universe. Now we know it's not. Or we used to think it was at the center of the solar system. Now we know it's the sun. And you think that's actually not quite what's happening. happened. In fact, it turns out we're central to the universe in a much more profound way than we ever thought. And certainly, you know, there's no such thing as a center of the universe mathematically exactly. So it's actually like, oh, I'm sorry, but like humanity. Yeah. And so it's like all this stuff that Dante was saying about here we are, you know, or Milton, right, that the earth is hanging on a golden chain between heaven and hell. It's like that stuff's still true. It's not physically true in the way that, you know, maybe people thought it was. But I think, wait a minute. So. Milton said that? Fast by hanging in a golden chain, this pendant world in bigness as a star fast by the moon. I hate to correct you, but I'm pretty sure that's Nipsey Russell. Sorry, yeah, this is Nikki Minaj, actually. I'm pretty sure that's Nipsey Russell.

And you just think because Nipsey's a black man, he's not capable of that. I'm not talking to you. I'm insulted that you would say that. Honestly, I really just wanted to end on a Nipsey Russell note. And I appreciate that. It's the only other person on earth who knows who nips you. I, listen. No, this is, this is delightful.

And I want to repeat, you guys are smart. It's not like they say. You're smart. No, this is, it's such an important conversation. And this is a conversation I've been having in my head all by myself for many, many years. So it's joy to hear the two of you talking about it. Now, where can people find Claven's on the culture, this beautiful podcast that I just suggested you do?

We have been bringing it out on the Daily Wire, and we've been bringing out kind of sporadically whenever we think, you know, whenever we think something important is going on, we'll come out and talk about it. And we're hoping, I think we're going to run our contract out in another two episodes, so we're hoping they'll renew us

and we can do it more regularly. And we just think it, we love the show, and we think it's unique. Yeah. There's nothing else like it out there. It really is, yeah, a conversation that we think is, it needs to be had. YouTube, you can get it on YouTube and wherever fine podcasts are sold so you can do it on Apple podcasts or anywhere else. Well, it's, as I say, it's something I think about all the time.

And one thing I learned today was how to pronounce Duchamp. How do you say it? Deschant, you actually have to, yeah, and then you have to turn off the air conditioning. And I was pretty sure it was Camille Paglia. I think he's probably right about it. I simply don't care. Let me just say, I simply don't care. But you know what to pronounce Nipsey Russell. That's the way. But Nipsey Russell is pronounced Russell. Get it right because it's important.

No, I think that this conversation genuinely is very important. It's especially important for conservatives, for Christians, because I think we have been pushed over into, you know, the opposite instead of saying that, oh, you have to love Gertrude Stein. No, no, you have to love Thomas Kincaid. Oh, no, I don't. And I don't. And I think that it's vital. And it's why, Andrew, I've just admired your books so much.

And I think that this is, it's time, as you both were saying. I think Spencer was saying, it's time. You can feel it in the culture. So I'm going to leave it there. But just a joy to have both of you on this program and to feel so superfluous on my own program, I just want to say, it's been my joy to sit here. No, but honestly, I'm very happy you're doing this. So congratulations, Clavins on the culture to both Clavins.

Thank you very much and to be continued. Great to see, Eric. Thanks a lot. Wonderful.