The Eric Metaxas Show - #175 - Rod Martin

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, geopolitical analyst Rod Martin joins Eric to explain why conservatives must reject despair and remain engaged in the political fight. They discuss socialist candidates gaining influence inside the Democratic Party, the alliance Martin sees between Marxist and Islamist movements, and why recent elections may create opportunities for Republicans. Martin also lays out his case that President Trump’s strategy could weaken or ultimately bring down Iran’s regime without another ground war, while reducing conflict across the Middle East and allowing America to focus on China. Eric closes with highlights from the recent Socrates In The City retreat in Oxford, including John Lennox, Nigel Biggar, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George Whitefield.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 Rod Martin Joins1:49 Why Conservatives Must Stop Black-Pilling6:18 Socialist Candidates And Republican Opportunities7:43 The Marxist-Islamist Political Alliance11:35 The Fight For Michigan And Texas13:58 Could Iran’s Regime Collapse?20:08 Why Trump’s Strategy Is Not A Forever War25:17 Sacrifice, Leadership, And Staying In The Fight29:32 Eric Recaps The Oxford Retreat- - -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@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 folks, trying to keep track of the time. Somebody told me it's Thursday. And you know what? Every few days it is Thursday. So I might as well say it's Thursday. I think I almost said October, August 6th. And I would love to talk right now, if possible, to Rod D. Martin. Rod D. Martin.

Welcome. Good to be here. It's always good to see you. You encourage me. I like to have guests who encourage me. I try to find them. And you, let me just say that what you write is almost always not just encouraging, but very informative.

And people need to know that they should be reading your stuff. Rod D. Martin. Ladies and gentlemen, are you listening? I'm trying to help you. Rod D. Martin, find his stuff. Subscribe to him on Substack. You can trust me on this. You can trust me.

because this is what I read and I don't know what I would do without it. It's really wonderful. I feel similarly about my friend Jim Cuncelor. It's important not just to know what's going on, but to know what's going on from people who can spin it positively, not just for the sake of spinning it positively, but because they actually see positive things.

They're not making it up and that's how I feel about you. So, Rod, what can we talk about? For example, we've had a number of lunatic socialists, communists, winning primaries. This sounds like a good thing to me. I don't know about you.

Well, it is. Before we get there, I would like to address something you just said, and that was all very kind. But it is the tendency of a lot of people on our side right now to black pill, to just see everything is negative and everything is hopeless. And, you know,

everything was hopeless in 1942. And we're losing battle. everywhere. Everything's terrible. The Pacific fleets at the bottom of the sea. And, you know, three years later, we've basically conquered the planet. And, you know, there's just no call for this. We serve a sovereign God. We have smart people, too. We actually are working on plans at all times that actually advance the ball down the field. And the mere existence of opposition does not imply their victory and success. It's just, and I hear that all the time online now, especially.

Well, but they'll do such and such. Well, what do do do? Then we're going to do thus and so. I mean, because they're going to do something. Doesn't mean that. Did you hear that? We're going to do thus and so. That's what we're going to do, thus and so.

And the thus and so strategy is really, really powerful. But the reason, this is actually important. that, you know, folks, we're not being positive just to be positive, right? There's solid reasons to be positive. And I want to say that when people are being negative in the way that many people are, it is working with the enemy for the enemy's purposes. In other words, I want to threaten people who are being negative and saying, you are working for the dark side.

and you are piously pretending to be a realist. In fact, you're harming things. You're harming the cause. Now, this doesn't apply to people who are simply speaking the truth, but there are people who speak the truth and spin it in a way that leads to hopelessness, that leads to despair. And it reminds me in my book on the American Revolution, I quote this almost every time I speak on the American Revolution. Samuel Adams was, it was 1777, the book.

British had taken Philadelphia. And when you talk about a moment, you know, to be upset, a moment to say things are looking bad, things were looking bad. But Samuel Adams says good tidings will soon arise. He says despondency does not befit the dignity of our cause. This is a Christian man and saying we are involved in a godly cause. We're fighting for what is right and good end. true and to be despondent is is not fitting it is wrong it is in fact sinful um and and i think

that there's so many people i get particularly annoyed when christians do this they they have this they're basically parroting satan's lies with religious trappings they're basically saying uh nothing matters uh it's all going to burn uh we're all it's all going to hell but oh Praise God, you know, the end is coming and we're going to be with Jesus. And you think, well, until the Lord tells us to stop fighting, our job is to fight. And not just to say, oh, it's all over. It doesn't matter. Anyway, there are various versions of this.

But just to say that can be very, very harmful and very, very sinful. And so, Rod, let's talk about some specifics now. But I think it's important for us to say this, that those, the doom and gloomers are, they're actually part of the problem. Instead of working for what is right and good and true, instead of fighting, they are despairing, they're wringing their hands,

and they're being chicken little, and they're really leading others to give up. And so you're basically giving voice to what the devil would like you to do, and it's very serious. So thank you, Rod, for not being one of those people, for being the opposite of one of those people. And let's, yeah, let's talk about the primaries, if you want to start there, about all of these socialist Democrats who are actually communists taking over the Democrat Party. I think that's a good thing.

Well, griping is easy. Winning is hard. I'm not here to gripe. I'm here to win. And I look at Michigan. And I am extremely disturbed that our country is in a place where you could nominate as the candidate of either making. party, a guy like El Saeed. But on the other hand, that's probably a Senate pickup for us. We've got a really good shot now with Mike Rogers, and that would have been a lot harder against Haley Stevens. So, you know, the truth is this is an opportunity. Now, it's a really huge opportunity for the enemy if they should win the general, but that's not a reason for despair. That's a reason for getting out the vote. that's a reason for calling 10 of your friends and arranging their transportation to the polls. That's a reason to actually take responsibility for your life instead of just sitting around and commissing on Twitter.

And that's where so much of the conservative movement is today. So we've been handed a huge opportunity there. It is fraught with problems, but it is a huge opportunity. And if we elect Mike Rogers in Michigan, we might not just not lose the Senate. it, we might actually expand our majority, that's a good day. So, okay, who is this guy? Well, he's like Mamdani. He's another Marxist Muslim.

And that may seem like a contradiction, but the entire Arab world has shown us that it is not. That's actually pretty normal. And not only that, even though technically Islam and Marxism hate each other, in reality, they share more characteristics than they don't. And particularly in terms of totalitarian one-party regimes in which all descent is crushed. That has been the norm in the Arab world since World War II. It's not true literally everywhere, but it might as well be.

I mean, there are almost no exceptions to this. And when you look at Iran, you have the one rare outcome of a red-green alliance, of a Muslim-Marxist alliance, where the Muslims actually won. You know, Mossadegh, back in 1953, the one that every liberal wants to tell you was the popularly elected leader of Iran that the CIA overthrew. Well, you're darn right, we overthrew him. and we do it again. And twice on Tuesday, because he was a communist, and it was 1953. And the Soviets had just detonated a hydrogen bomb, and they had just clamped down into slavery every country in Eastern Europe.

And if we lost Iran, we were going to lose the Cold War before it almost began. So, you know, we just lost China. We just had the Korean War. All these things are in play at that same time. and we restored the legitimate Shah. Now, in 79, it went a little bit different way. In 79, the communists, as they always do, created what they call a popular front. You've got all these left-wing movements together, all the people who hate the regime,

they all band together, they overthrow it, and then characteristically, if you're talking about Russia or Czechoslovakia or Cuba or Nicaragua or China or anywhere else you want to point at, the communists are always the most ruthless after the victory and they very quickly kill off everybody else in the popular front and establish one-party rule. Iran is the rare exception. In 79, the Islamists won that fight and killed the communists. So, There you go. But they were in the same group together precisely because they had the same view of governance and economics. And that's why Iran isn't a first world country. It's being held down by this evil Islamist regime. That is almost exactly what Zoran Mandani and now El-Said and these other DSA clowns are pushing on America. And, you know, right now, they're not doing it in that violent a way, except, you know, oh, wait, Antifa, BLM, all the ways in which they're doing violent things, firebombing, Teslas, whatever.

They're not actually seeking to violently overthrow the government yet, but if they win enough power, if they win enough seats, if they take over enough of the existing system, they can destroy it from within. They are a real threat. they have to be stopped, not with bullets, with ballots. And that's why we've got to get very serious about Mike Rogers being the next U.S. Senator from Michigan. Well, it is interesting.

The black pillars, they don't really fight. They complain, they despair. And the fact is we have to fight. We have work to do. Getting Rogers elected is, as you say, what an opportunity. What an opportunity. he lost very closely in the last election. It was real close.

This ought to be something that's doable here. I feel the same way about defeating Tala Rico in Texas. My goodness, folks, if you don't see the difference, Tolariko is, I mean, awful, absolutely awful. Ken Paxton is a hero, a hero, a huge hero. The fact that the rhino bums, Cornyn and the Bush gang are not willing to support him, That's just like Mike Pence.

Thank you, Mike Pence, for not even endorsing President Trump when he ran against Kamala Harris two years ago. Despicable, Mike Pence. Despicable George W. Bush, not getting behind President Trump running against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Despicable. We have seen who these rhinos are. We've seen these people that we voted for and fought for what they're made of. what Mike Pence and what George W. Bush are made of when they cannot see an existential crisis and get behind Donald Trump against Kamala Harris, even though you don't like Donald Trump.

You obviously don't care if Kamala Harris is elected or if Tim Walts is elected. You don't care if Tolerico's elected. That is petulant, selfish. It tells us everything about the character of a Mike Pence and of a George W. Bush and of a John Cornyn, we now know who we're dealing with. We know, we can see very clearly who these people were. And we need to fight hard for Ken Paxton. There are people listen to this program.

You've got a lot of money. You need to help him. And don't, don't complain about the things you don't like. We're in a war with the crazy left. You want to destroy America, whether they're Islamists or, or Marxists, whether they call themselves socialists, whatever they call themselves, they're anti-liberty, they're anti-the-founding, and they're certainly anti-Christian. So we're in a very, very serious position. I want to ask you, Rod Martin, my guest, I don't know who I was talking to about the situation in Iran right now,

but you seem to believe that there is a good chance that this regime could, be overthrown, not just that they would be kept from having a nuclear weapon, but the entire regime could be overthrown and that the son of the Shah, Reza-Palavi, might step in to an interim government. Or, I mean, say more about that, because so many people don't seem to think that that that's possible right now. I don't know why people are blackpilling on this. I mean, first of all, Donald Trump has been telling us since the 80s that he, he functioned as a chaos agent to keep his enemies off balance. We know his strategy.

We see it all the time. It's nothing new. And yet nobody seems to absorb what he has told them in multiple books, in print. And, you know, like 15 seasons of The Apprentice or something, which for a while was the top-rated show in America. And he's teaching you exactly how he does all this. And nobody bothered to learn the lesson. So first of all, if you're seeing a break for negotiations, trust me, there's something else going on. And the negotiations more often than not are with our Arab allies than they are with Iran,

because there's nobody you can really negotiate with Iran in Iran. And Donald Trump knows that better than anybody. All of these guys are just lying liars. And moreover, don't have the power to execute on any agreement. that they enter because the government in Iran is so factionalized now that nobody really speaks for anybody else. And that's before you get to the Mosaic defense where they divvied up command of the Iranian military across 31 different regions, okay, a lot of those guys are just popping off missiles for the heck of it. And okay, every time we have a pause, we're processing intelligence,

We're figuring out what to hit next. We had two solid weeks of massive strikes that dramatically degraded the remaining Iranian capabilities. So at your very least, we have set them back 20 years. They're not going to be able to build the 20,000 ballistic missiles. They openly said they wanted to build. That is a fortress. That is so much firepower that nobody in the world could say boo at

them when they did whatever the heck they wanted to do, whether it's subjugate their neighbors or build a nuclear bomb. It doesn't matter. They wouldn't be assailable. Trump got ahead of that, and it turned out to be a bigger deal than has really been reported because, you know, NATO didn't miss it. All these guys see it, but the general public is not seeing, for instance, when the Iranians fire two missiles at Diego Garcia. Well, normal people can't find Diego, Garcia on a map. They don't even know what that is. It happens to be our most important military base in the Indian Ocean, but that's not the point. The point is to hit it, you actually have to have built an intermediate range ballistic missile. This is the kind of thing we and the Soviets were

deploying against each other, carrying nuclear weapons in the 80s in Europe. And that's a big deal. because what it means is Iran at least had a couple. They apparently didn't have more, but they had built a couple of missiles that had enough range to hit Berlin or Paris or London. When you have hit that point and you've also orbited a satellite, which they have, you are about a half-step from an ICBM

that doesn't threaten Jerusalem and Tel Aviv or even Paris and London. Now you're threatening New York and Kansas City and Los Angeles, and that's a different world. Donald Trump has prevented that from becoming an imminent reality. He has clearly set back their nuclear program hopelessly. There's no question about that. If they were able to buy a bomb from Pakistan, they would have.

If they were able to buy a bomb from North Korea, they would have. So that's not the issue, and that's not likely to be a problem as long as the blockade continues. but the real issue here is we're depriving them of money. Every day that blockade continues, they're losing about half a billion dollars, and that can't be sustained. So the longer this goes on, the more he gets the factions mad at each other

by making statements that make them, you know, think the other ones betraying them, the more that goes on, the more vulnerable the regime becomes, and the easier it gets for the Iranian people to actually take to the streets and actually overthrow their government. We're not quite there. It may take a little while, but I guarantee you it's not going to be a U.S. invasion. It's not going to be boots on the ground.

It's not going to be a quagmire. It's going to be degrade the capability until the Arab allies get fully on board, and we've seen some progress there, until we can route around Hormuz with new pipelines, construction through Oman, across Saudi Arabia, across Syria, and until we can get the resistance inside Iran in a position to actually win. We don't want to get them slaughtered. We lost 42,000 innocent civilians in two days in January to this murderous regime. We don't want to get them into that situation. When the balloon goes up, we want them to be able to really win. Well, there are a lot of good people, people that I would generally agree with who are, who they're, they're beating the drum, you know, against forever wars.

They're saying that this is hurting us in the midterms. It's not like they don't have a point, but I guess what you're saying is, hang on, folks. Trump has not been captured by crazy neocons who are going to keep us in a war forever. Trust President Trump, which is my instinct. always trust President Trump. This man is no fool. Yeah, this is a realist operation, not a neoconservative operation. This is definitely not liberal internationalism. It is not neoconservatism. It's that Kissingerian realism combined with the moral hopes of a Ronald Reagan. There's an aim here that gets you ideally to a free Iran, that in a generation could be a first world country.

It could be a beacon of hope and prosperity to the world. But if you don't get there, the realist component is we're not going to do stupid stuff that we can't sustain. We're not going to put boots on the ground and just invite another cataclysm internally in the United States. We're not going to do that kind of stupid stuff. We're just going to degrade this regime's abyss. ability to threaten its neighbors and to even exist at home. That's a much, much more reasonable

approach. And yes, our team needs to get on board. This is, this is, first of all, a very worthy aim. It absolutely must be done. No president going back 47 years has disagreed with that. Second, the truth is we've been in a forever war for 47 years. Donald Trump didn't start it. The Ayatollah did. Donald Trump is finishing it. And then we don't have to deal with it anymore. Which brings us to third, the Iranian regime is the source of every armed conflict

in the Middle East, bar none. They arm, fund, and direct every major armed conflict there is. period. That was true during the Iraq War when they were responsible for killing 1,200 American soldiers out of the roughly 3,000 or 4,000 who died in the course of that war. It was Iran who was killing as many of them as anybody. It's Iran carrying out the Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, which is more against Lebanon than against Israel. It's Iran funding and arming Hamas. It's Iran funding and arming the Houthis. And if you cut off the head of that snake,

all those conflicts, they don't instantly go away. They don't instantly just cease to exist and snap out of existence like a scene from, you know, Star Wars, the Phantom Menace or something. But they cease to be able to sustain. If you can't get resupplied and you can't make payroll, you can't keep fighting, at least not at any militarily significant level. So Trump is killing that, and the net result of that is going to be $20 off the price of oil for the long term, and it's going to be the ability of the United States to draw down forces in the Middle East that have been there for decades longer than they really should have been. And then we can focus on containing the real threat, China.

If you've got enough force that you can project in East Asia, you never actually have that next world war. And that's what he's aiming at. You've got to fix the Middle East and then you can get out and you can actually prevent that next world war. That's the goal. And it's worthwhile. And it's definitely worth a few cents extra on my gasoline bill. How did we become such weaklings that we make foreign policy decisions on whether my gas tank is a little pricier than it was? But when I think of the sacrifices that people have made, and folks, read my book, Revolution, okay?

They, before the revolution, the Americans were willing to sacrifice hugely. They refuse to import British goods. You don't think people were complaining about that, just like people are complaining about gas prices today. There are people complaining about it, complaining about it. But the Patriots said, we have to do this. We have to do this. We have to wear brown homespun.

That's what we do. We're not going to drink tea. We're going to drink coffee. We're going to make sacrifices. There were plenty people, plenty people that hated to make sacrifices. They said it's not worth it. Let's just go along with the program. The British aren't so bad.

There are always people like that. Do not be one of those people, folks. When I think about how Biden tanks this economy, destroys our economy, causes tremendous inflation, and now we're blaming it on President Trump, who in 18 months hasn't been able to. I mean, I have to tell you, it really is like, you know, you're like the children in the marketplace. We played the pipe. You know, we, we, we, we, we sang a dirge. and you did not mourn.

We played the pipe. You did not dance. They're just going to complain about everything and anything. Those aren't the kind of people you want on your side in an existential war, which is what we're in right now. So I thank God for President Trump, for his tremendous wisdom and fortitude in the midst of this. I thank God for voices like yours, Rod D. Martin, because we need your perspective.

I want to say to folks, you got to read what Rod is doing. on X. I usually post what you do on X, but people can find you at Substack. And, Rod, what's the best place for folks to find you before we go? Everybody should come to rodmartin.org. That's Rodmartin.org. You can get to our our X account from there. We've got hundreds of thousands of followers there. You can get our daily geopolitical analysis that Fox Business calls absolutely phenomenal. Pretty soon, you'll have a link to my new book, Trump's New World Reorder. And I hear that one of my favorite people in the world is writing the forward to that, a certain

Eric Mataxis. So that's going to be exciting. A little birdie told me the same thing. No, it is so exciting. It is so exciting that you're writing, that you've written the book. It is really important, folks. We are in a war. And we need to know what voices to listen to, voices that are going to encourage us.

And they're not just encouraging us to encourage us. They're encouraging us with the facts, with the truth, with wisdom, very, very important. So Rod Martin, thank you for being one of those voices. And the website is rodmartin.org. Yes. Okay, not Rod D. Martin, just Rod Martin. My Twitter or X or whatever we call it this week is at Rod D. Martin. but the website is rod martin.org and yes everyone should come yeah well no kidding because i say this

sincerely there are very few voices that are worth listening to very few voices that are realistic that know all the facts can can give us the context we need how do i because if you're listening the wrong voices you're going to get bummed out folks you don't need to get bummed out you need to be encouraged and to be in the fight. Rod Martin, God bless you, my friend. Thank you. And you. 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, a 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, 1253. That's 571, 421, 1253.

It's time to find the clarity you deserve. Hey there, folks. I think I promised that I would do a recap of our time in Oxford, England. And there's so much to say that where do I start? First of all, let me frame it and say, this was a Socrates in the city retreat. Now, we're doing all kinds of stuff.

A lot of it we're doing under the aegis of Socrates and the city. When we do a Socrates and the City retreat, typically at the heart of the retreat is me interviewing fabulous, extraordinary people. We did it in Boston and Lexington and Concord back in April or whenever that was on the Revolution. Those are, you can see them at Socrates and City.com. This one, I interviewed John Lennox twice. I interviewed Lord Nigel Bigger, Lord Nigel Bigger, and I had to call him my lord. That's not true. He let me call him Nigel, but he had to call me Nigel.

So it's to foretat. He wrote a book on colonialism, which was, I mean, I have to tell you, of course I got to read these books. It's a big deal in a way to have somebody in England pushing. back against the anti-Western lies, right? Because people who hate the West, you know, those those who love the West have noticed that, you know, if you say anything about the West, they can only focus on the negative, just to say only focus on the negative about America. So he wrote a book about the British Empire and talked about the good that it did. He doesn't

say that it was, you know, unmitigated good, that they didn't do anything bad. But the lie that colonialism is 100% wicked, has to be pushed against, and it hasn't been mostly. His book, really, it's called colonialism, a moral reckoning. So I interviewed Lord Nigel Bigger about that. That was a great joy. That was the first evening. And all of this stuff will air at Socrates in the city. And so I say sign up for that.

Then the next day, I guess we had a day off. We did other stuff. Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of people that always are big. to yoga. You're big into yoga. That's not true. That's a lie. The whole group in yoga class. I've never done yoga and I never will do yoga. But no, what do we do though? We did we did all kinds of stuff. We visited Churchill's birthplace, which is Blenham Palace. We did a lot of stuff. But then I interviewed the next day I interviewed John Lennox. I interviewed John Lennox. He's written a book on artificial intelligence.

and that's kind of chilling. His book is called 2084, I think, in the future of AI or something like that, but it's 284 is the top. He interviewed him about that. And he comes at it from a very explicitly Christian biblical worldview. So it's unlike anything that I've seen. And then I interviewed him on his book where he tells the story of his life. This man has been, he was going into the former Soviet Union and he was, he was going into the former Soviet Union

into East Germany when it was, you know, fully communist and he was speaking about faith in Jesus. I mean, he's, there's nobody like him. He's extraordinary. So we did that. I interviewed, I think I said this the other day. I interviewed, well, I interviewed James Orr, who's a friend. He's been a friend since 2014, interviewed him. And then I interviewed Dennis Noble. who has really pushed back against Richard Dawkins. It's extraordinary. It is extraordinary. So when these things come out, I just got to say, I'm excited.

I mentioned Victoria Jackson was with us. There were lots of wonderful friends along, old friends, new friends. I did not go to Addison's Walk. Addison's Walk is, I did tell the famous story, and I read about it in my book, Miracles, and you can find it other places. But it's the famous story of how C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien took a walk late at night behind Marlund College in Oxford. There's a long walk. I've been there many times. It's called Addison's Walk.

And they and their friend Hugo Dyson took a walk. And this is where Tolkien introduced to Lewis. Imagine this. Lewis is not a Christian. He has come to believe in God suddenly. but he's not a Christian. And Tolkien introduces him to the idea that the story of Jesus dying, being killed, and then rising from the dead is the one true myth.

Because Lewis loved myth, it had power for him. You know, the northern myths, Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead. Lewis, that had power for Lewis. And Tolkien introduces him on this late night walk to the idea that what if, you know, once in history, one of these myths came true. And he suggests that's the story of Jesus and his death and resurrection. And that got Lewis thinking. And I think it was a few days later in the sidecar of his brother Warnie's motorcycle. they were going to the whipsnade zoo

when he got into the sidecar he didn't believe Jesus was the son of God and when he when he got out of the sidecar at the zoo he did anyway it's all it's in his it's in his autobiography but to be in these places I talked about

there are two places in Oxford and I put this on my Instagram where when you are when I'm there I immediately think of George Whitfield because most of us think of Whitfield in America preaching up and down the 13 colonies. And I write about that, of course,

in my new book on the American Revolution. But in my book, if you can keep it, I talk about what happened to George Whitfield while he was a student at Oxford, while he's hanging out with John and Charles Wesley. And there's a place right near Marvelline College where, you know, the road goes over a bridge over the river Cherwell.

and that's the spot where I write about my book, if you can keep it, where Whitfield was there. Now this is like, I don't know, 1737 or 1736 or something like that. And he sees a woman drowning, trying to drown herself. And he basically saves her life or rescues her and convinces her to meet him that day at the deader's prison. She was in despair because her husband was in the debtor's prison and she had nothing to live

for. So he meets with her and her husband in the debtor's prison later that day. And this young man preaches to the husband and wife. He tells them, you only need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And they almost literally leap for joy at this news. They accept Jesus. And Whitfield is kind of taken aback because he's thinking, how come I don't have the joy that they have? They believe this and they have this joy. And he was still kind of in this works righteousness phase where he's starving himself to death and praying day and night,

trying to earn heaven. So it all happened right there. Anyway, I don't want to say any more than that. Chris, what else should I talk about with Oxford? There's so much. I just thought I'd throw in a couple of things while we're here. Well, Victoria Jackson was there, so that was really fun. A number of folks that I've gotten to know over the last.

I was going to say, it's the friendships. There's so many friends. That's the joy is that you make new friends. You see old friends. Our friend Martha Linder was there. Now, Martha Linder, my goodness, she lives in Lakeland, Florida. And she, we have known her. We met her in 1998 when we went to the first, well,

Suzanne and I had been married two. years at that point. And we went to the CS Lewis Foundations. They would do these Oxbridge events. So Oxford and Cambridge, a week in Oxford, a week in Cambridge. This was to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of C.S. Lewis. And that's where we met our friend Martha Linder. And I remember being there in 1998, it was the first time I heard Peter Craft speak in the Sheldonian theater designed by Christopher Wren. It was the first time I heard my very dear friend Thomas Howard speak, and I've written about it in the preface to his great book, Chance to the Dance.

Meeting these people, hearing them speak, changed my life. I was a reasonably young man, and it changed my life, and it made me decide I wanted to do Socrates in the city. I wanted to do something similar, and now that's what we're doing. So it is amazing really to look back on how life-changing that was in 1998. They did another Oxbridge event in 2002. We were there. Martha Linder was there.

Other friends that we've met, my friend, Kel Peterson. We went back, I guess, in 2005 again. It's just, it's amazing to think how our time in Oxford and in Cambridge visiting the haunts of C.S. Lewis and others, how it. how it affected me and changed my life. Anyway, we'll leave it there for now. More updates as they develop.