The Eric Metaxas Show - #184 - John Zmirak

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, John Zmirak joins Eric to challenge the standard Darwinian account of human origins and discuss the growing case for intelligent design. They examine whether Christians can truly reconcile evolution with Genesis, why Zmirak believes Darwinism undermines the biblical understanding of humanity, Francis Collins and theistic evolution, and the cultural consequences of teaching that human life arose through unguided processes. Later, Chapter CEO Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz joins Eric to explain why Medicare has become so complicated and what seniors should know before choosing coverage.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 John Zmirak Joins0:26 Intelligent Design Vs. Darwinism3:29 Creation Or Evolution?5:11 Were Humans Really Descended From Apes?6:29 Can Christians Reconcile Genesis And Evolution?9:16 Why Darwinism “Multiplies Faith By Zero”11:40 Eric’s Encounter With Francis Collins17:14 Deism, Providence, And The American Founders23:05 Chapter CEO Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz Joins- -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 there, folks. Today, I get to talk to my friend John Smirak about, oh, I don't know. John Smirak, what do you have? Well, I got a new piece up at the wonderful website, Science and Culture.com. Science and Culture.com is run by the Discovery Institute, which promotes a research and education on the idea of intelligent design, which is the alternative to atheist, materialist, Darwinism. a worldview that most scientists uncritically accept and impose on students in schools, which says that in order to be a rational human being, in order to be an educated person, you have to believe that all life on earth arose randomly as the result of chemicals interacting in the primordial group, and that every living creature,

developed as a result of completely random unguided chemical mutations in the DNA, and that the human race developed entirely randomly by accidental mutations in our ancestors' DNA, and we are descended from apes. And God played absolutely no role in this. This is what is taught in every public school and sadly many Christian schools. I got to tell you, I read Recently, some people know that I was recently in Oxford doing Socrates in the city interviews, and I interviewed Dennis Noble, who comes out very strongly against Richard Dawkins and Neo-Darwinism. And when you look at the complexity, I mean, when you actually weighed into the complexity of what goes on in living organisms, the idea that this could have just, that we could have just evolved,

It is so insane. It's not just like, well, I think maybe not. It is a level of insanity. And I honestly am amazed at how many people have been taken in by this, that I was taken in by it. I mean, it's absolutely crazy that here we are in 2026, with many people still believing this, many scientists believing this.

It's really, it's just crazy. Crazy. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating to me. I once wrote, I once an article where I pointed out, according to Sonny Bono, his then-wife share thought that Mount Rushmore was a natural formation, that just the wind and erosion had randomly formed the face of four presidents on the side of a mountain. He had to explain to her, no, it was intelligently designed by a sculpture. That makes more sense. than the idea that all life developed by random mutation. It is much more likely that Mount Rushvar was simply the result of erosion.

Anyway, there's no doubt about that. I mean, there is no doubt about that. But anyway, so you've written an article at Science and Culture.com. Now, is it spelled out Science and Culture.com? Yes. Yes. Okay. Science and.com.

And the title of the article, so you want to look for it, is descended from 8. or formed by a father. And it's appearing over there. What I'm doing is I'm reviewing a wonderful new book called Creation or Evolution, a Catholic Dilemma. Creation or Evolution, a Catholic Dilemma. It's by science journalist Steve Green and a Catholic priest named Michael Schiberich.

And what it does, it addresses the urge we have to try to somehow recognize, reconcile the book of Genesis with Darwinian evolution. Many, many Christians, especially Catholics, have been told, oh, evolution is fine, but we believe God was somehow sort of kind of involved in it and that he kind of sort of wanted human beings to develop. So at some point, some ape, some non-human creature gave birth to something that had mutated in the womb to be a human being and God put a soul into it. In other words, take the book of Genesis entirely as folklore.

God did not create man from the dust of the earth and woman from the side of man. That's cute. That's old-timey mythology. That's like Hansel and Gretel. No, evolution happened. God was sort of involved in it. He set up this big Rube Goldberg and made sure that all the dominoes fell in the right place. but that at some point,

genetic mutations in the womb of an ape gave birth to human beings. Maybe they were identical twins, so you could say Eve was pulled from Adam's side. We could try to find a way to sort of shoehorn some kind of meaning to the book of Genesis. But basically, Darwin got it right. Human beings are descended from apes. Now, the great thing about this is the scientific case for it is collapsing.

All those fossils they show you as the missing link, many of them are taken from a couple of little scattered bones, like a hip bone here and a foot bone there, and then they draw this elaborate creature and they make it look as human as possible. But basically, they're just guessing. They're making stuff up. People who believe in Darwinism, how? a religious faith that God was not involved. They have a religious faith that we are all descended from apes and ultimately from amoebas. And what the people of the Discovery Institute do is show that the evidence does not prove that. But more importantly, the book is mainly about theology and philosophy.

And what it says is, if you're going to deny the literal truth of the most fundamental, fundamentally important thing in the Bible that God made man and he made him directly, that he made him intentionally in his own image and like this. If you're going to deny that and try to find scientific ways to explain it away, you might as well do that for, I don't know, when Sarah gave birth to Isaac, even though she was like 60 years old. We believe that was a miracle. Well, no, you can have to get the gynecologists in there and figure out how it happened

non-miraculously. The Red Sea wasn't parted by God to save the the Israelites. You know, there was some kind of weather phenomenon. So we're going to have to call in the oceanographers. Jesus didn't physically rise from the dead. The biologists tell us that's impossible. So we've got to find some other meaning for the resurrection.

This is what I was taught in my so-called Catholic high school, that Jesus didn't physically rise from the dead. That's impossible. But he was still present in the hearts and minds of his apostrophe. And that's what the resurrection really means. That's what they were teaching us in our Catholic school. And you even hear bishops say things like this. Pope Francis once gave a sermon where he said,

Jesus didn't really multiply loaves and fishes miraculously. Come on, that kind of stuff doesn't happen. He just inspired the crowd to share their food, to open up and share and be more generous with their neighbor. So a pope actually said this. Yes. Yes. And to me that's kind of anti-Semitic, that it takes a miracle to get Jews to share food.

I've been around Jewish people. They love to feed you. You haven't eaten enough. Have more of the soup. But I mean, yeah, go ahead. Keep going. This impulse to explain away the central miracles of the Bible and try to find some scientific just so story that. That explains it away.

This undermines the entirety of Christianity and of Judaism. It undermines the entirety of biblical faith. If you're going to believe that Jesus was miraculously born of a virgin and incarnate God and that he miraculously rose from the dead, why should you twist yourself into pretzels to deny the Genesis account that God made man directly? That he wasn't the result of mutation. in the womb of an ape, but of God's original intention

to make in his own image. So it's a fascinating boat, creation or evolution, and it applies to Protestants as well as to Catholics because plenty of Protestants try to reconcile Darwin with the Bible. What that means pretty much

is putting the Bible through a wood chipper because you have more faith in Darwin, or rather more, you're more concerned about not being perceived as an ignorant fundamentalist, a young earth creationist who rejects all science and rationality. So you have to find a way to win worldly respect from atheist materialists by mutilating your own religion. It's a really good book. It's written in like a question-to-answer format between the science journalist and the theologian. I recommend it highly. I wrote about it over at science and culture.com.

And I think finding all the evidence that Darwinian evolution is impossible, mathematically impossible, is one of the most important cultures fronts in the culture war. Because if you even suspect in the back of your mind, then maybe humanity is to send it for mapes by accidental genetic mutations, that multiplies everything else you believe by zero. And I think thoughtless acceptance of Darwinism

has done more to undermine faith and morality. Why shouldn't you engage in the sexual revolution? Why shouldn't you hook up and have fun when you're young? When there's a pretty good shift, pretty strong arguments that

we're all here by accident and life means absolutely nothing. We don't have free will and when you die, you just rot on the ground. If that is, what you're being taught in your science class. It really doesn't matter what you're learning at Sunday school because it all gets multiplied by zero. And that's why I think the work of the

Discovery Institute and Intelligence Design Advocates is so important. And that's why I thought that recent movie, the story of everything that we talked about by our friend Stephen Meyer was so valuable because it took scientists, hardcore lab scientists who went and showed all the holes in the Darwinist theory. And it's treated as dogma. It's enforced at universities. Even Christian universities, Catholic universities, their biology classes negate,

entirely negate their theology classes. They just multiply it by zero. I like that I multiply by zero. It's like an acid bath. It's all gone, basically. If you believe that, it's interesting, John, because, I mean, I remember, I guess it was around 2008.

I was still not sure whether I believed in what we call intelligent design or what is called theistic evolution. I was open. I said, look, I'm open to whatever, and I have heard some Christians advocate for either of them. But I remember I had Francis Collins before I knew much about. about him, I had him speak at Socrates in the city, and I remember asking an innocent question of him, because I was really trying to figure this out. And his response to me, the host of Socrates, was sneering enough that I thought, wow, I'm not going to get a straight answer because I was actually looking for an answer. And you realize that there are people, and these are the, you know,

the Christians that are, I guess I don't really know if they're Christians. but they're looking for cultural approval. They're looking for approval from the cultural elites. So they don't dare say anything like we believe God did it. Or I guess they pretend like, well, we sort of believe God did it, but he didn't do it in a way that we can see. So it's like he didn't do it. It's like he used randomness to accomplish his ends.

Francis Collins actually says that by definition, there cannot be evidence of intelligent design. Essentially that God purposely hid his fingerprints from the universe, which of course, St. Paul says the exact opposite. He says there's proof of God's purposes in all the works of nature. Remember, Francis Collins also supported abortion and transgender surgery and the enforcement of the abortion-derived COVID vaccine. So, in fact, our friend John West did a whole book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity,

about the way that Darwinism corrupts and hollows out Christianity throughout all the churches because it says God is this remote thing. It shouldn't even call theistic evolution. It's really deistic evolution. God is this remote cosmic force whose existence you can't prove, You can't find any evidence for it at all. We have no reason to believe he cares about us at all. There's no proof he was involved in our creation.

But follow all his laws and have faith in Jesus Christ anyway. Because for no reason whatsoever. Just randomly just do that and sing little songs on your guitar the way Francis Collins does. Sing about Jesus while saying he's essentially a liar. Everything you said in the gospel to the lie. I would be to worship him anyway because, you know, I have a lot of free time on Sunday mornings. and I like the company. I like to meet people.

Yeah. Well, it's funny, when you bring up the term deistic evolution, I, as you know, you know, because of my book on the revolution, everywhere I go,

I'm talking about how the secular left has pushed forward the lie that George Washington and all the men of the revolution or many of them were deists. And I always have to explain to my audience because not everybody knows.

What is it? deist. And it isn't really easy to say because a deist, it's kind of like the devil is a deist. He believes God exists, but he doesn't want to worship him. To believe God exists, but not to acknowledge him as Lord, as a god of history is sort of like saying he doesn't exist. So it becomes it becomes meaningless. It's like one of those terms designed to fool you by definition. say somebody's a deist. So to say like, yeah, I believe in God, but you explain about the God you believe and then you realize, well, then why do you believe in that God? What makes that God God? Because you've just, you know, talked to him out of the room. Your definition of God has

become completely meaningless. And, you know, the folks like Francis Collins, that's, that seems to be what they're saying. So you do wonder why they would even bring up God. Right. Well, they bring up God so they can get invited to speak at churches. And they claim to be Christians so that they can shut the real Christians up. We are the cool Christians. We're the smart Christians. We're the Christians who get invited to events where Barack Obama is the main speaker. We're the Christians who live on the Upper West Side and are sophisticated and read the Atlantic Monthly.

And of course, we have to remember. what Deism says. Deism says God made the universe like a kid by an ant farm. The kid doesn't meddle with the ant farm. He does not involve. He doesn't feed the ants. He doesn't kill the ants.

He doesn't get involved. He just watches them, watches them crawl around. Deists don't believe in miracles. They don't believe in petitionary prayer. They don't believe in divine provenance. They think God just set up this Rube Goldberg and watches it unfold and has

no involvement with it at all. That is what... I guess what immediately... I mean, if case anybody wants to understand how ridiculous that is, that the most basic part of biblical faith is the idea that God is involved in history. Like, it doesn't get more basic than that.

I mean, the whole story of the Bible is the story of God being involved in human history. And so you wonder, if God is involved in human history, If he raises, if he speaks to Abraham and he speaks to Moses and he creates this people who worship him, why would he bother doing that? Why would God do that if he is this, this God that, well, he wouldn't get involved in, you know, creating the United States of America.

He wouldn't get involved. He doesn't really care. It really doesn't make sense. It's almost like these people say, well, yeah, he maybe did that back then, but that stopped. He's no longer doing that. He's no longer involved in history in any way. He's evolved. That was just a phase.

And he's matured now. And now he realizes that he should just leave us alone. Yeah. The crazy thing is it's provable that George Washington wasn't a deist because he asked people to fast and pray. He believed that divine providence was entailed in creating the United States of America. Ben Franklin asked people to fast and pray. So he wasn't a deist either.

Thomas Jefferson, I think, wavered between being a deist and a Unitarian because he said we should tremble at the thought of God's justice. A deist God is involved in justice, doesn't punish people for their sins, and doesn't reward them for their virtues, doesn't redeem them, doesn't resurrect, raise them from the dead. So really the only major founder that you could point to who was a real deist was Thomas Payne. And Thomas Payne was a liar. Thomas Payne pretended to be an Orthodox Christian. In common sense, he talked about God's will, God's providence, God's justice. He was just lying. He didn't believe in any of those things.

Actually, I don't know if that's true. I think at that point, he might have been on the fence. Later on, he goes way off the reservation. but in 1775 when he wrote that, I don't know that we could say that he didn't believe it at all. I think that he was somewhat persuaded by it. He knew that these arguments would work, so he used them. But I think it was afterward, you know,

as the French Revolution raises its head, that he really goes off. And so his story ends pretty sadly, actually. But he goes off to support the French Revolution while it's murdering Christians, while it's taking over churches, while it's committing genocide in the Bondi. By the way, there's a powerful movie out.

You can watch streaming called Victory or Death. Victory or Death. And it is about the persecution of Christians by the French Revolution and their attempt at armed resistance in the Bombay. So if you want to see a good historical movie that is pro-Christian and anti-tetalitarian, I'd recommend people go ahead and find

you can look it up in streaming victory or death. Well, John, thanks for joining us today. Before we go, folks, this is my reminder to you that on October 7th, I'm going to keep saying this until it's on every calendar in your house, write it on your hand. October 7th, which is that horrible day a couple of years ago, we know what happened in Israel. On October 7th, this year, 2026, the Bonhofer film is going to be. released in theaters across this country and in other countries around the world, but especially

across this country. I don't know how many theaters. Please write it down. Please get your church to advertise it, to buy theaters out. It's an extraordinary opportunity for evangelism, for people that maybe don't know what do Christians believe. It's an extraordinary opportunity to help Christians understand what is our role? How should we behave when anti-Semitism raises its head? What would that look like for a faithful Christian to get involved, to take seriously the threats of anti-Semitism? The story of Bonhoeffer, the film, it is a spectacular film. It's in theaters, October 7th. You can't buy tickets yet, but I'm just telling you this, so you can't say you didn't know. We want to get the word out to every single church.

in America and of course beyond churches. But make sure your church buys out a theater or several theaters or several showings because this is a huge opportunity. That's all I'll say. Johns Merrick, my friend, thank you very much. Thank you. Cop class. Today's show is brought to you by Grace precious metals. In an industry that can be confusing, grace believes in doing business differently with Christian values, transparent pricing and a focus on straightforward gold and silver bullion, not high markup collectible coins. They even publish their spreads directly on their website so you can see the numbers before speaking with anyone.

Learn whether physical precious metals may fit your financial plans at metaxusmetals.com. That's metaxis metals.com. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. I want to introduce you to one of our sponsors. We've talked about them before in the past, but we've not met the CEO. And I always feel, you know, it's a nice thing if I could meet them, but it's even nicer if you could meet them.

The company is Chapter. They're the folks that help us navigate the Medicare quagmire. And Kobe, Wulmenthal Gans is my guest right now. He's the CEO. Kobe, welcome the program. Thank you so for having me. Well, you look way younger than you're supposed to. What's going on with you?

I appreciate that. I do look younger than I am, but I am not of Medicare age, if that's what you're implying. Neither am I, but I still look older than you. Now, because we're talking about Medicare, I have to start, you know, with the stupid joke thing. You don't seem like somebody who has navigated the world of Medicare, and yet that's exactly what you're all about. So before I actually let you answer that question, let me ask you, tell a bit about your story. where do you live? What do you come from? How did you get to be doing what you're doing right now? Yeah, and thank you for having me. I grew up in a very small town in North Carolina, in eastern

North Carolina, moved to the suburbs of New York City when I was about eight and grew up there. I currently live in New York. Of New York, Westchester County. Never heard of it. I've heard of it. Yeah. No, of course. That's, well, it's good to know. So we're basically local as far as I can see then. All right. Keep going. Exactly. I live in New York City now. Love, love the energy of the city. And before starting chapter a few years ago, I really started my career in software at a large technology company building data systems for the U.S. government. So I've been in and around government bureaucracies and government data systems for the better part of a decade now. Wow. So obviously, now,

there's so many people watching right now who have dealt with the Medicare Quagmire, as I'm calling it, because it is very complicated. It shouldn't be complicated. And as people, I guess a lot of people until you hit 65, you're not thinking about it. So of course, this is 25 or 30 years in my future. But for those people who are approaching that number, I want to, I want them to know about chapter, first of all. So in a minute, I'll tell them how to find you and everything. But what, do me a favor. And for people who aren't yet thinking about this, walk my audience through what happens as you, at 65 or you're approaching 65. What are you facing? What is this? Because if you face it, you don't even know that there's a quag fire.

That's kind of I want to be proactive in talking about it. Exactly. And as you said, most people, don't really engage with Medicare until they have to, or if they've seen their parents go through it, or grandparents. And that was my experience. I saw my parents going through the Medicare process. And that's what really opened my eyes to the quagmire that people face as they turn 65 or retire. But every single American, when they approach retirement or turn 65, has to deal with Medicare in some way. That might be a decision to not sign up for Medicare if you're still working. But for most people, it's a it's a serious decision to know whether they should sign up for a Medicare plan or not. And if they should sign up for Medicare, which plan? And there are lots of different types of Medicare options. Most people just think, oh, there's Medicare.

It's automatic. It's the government. I've been paying for it my whole career. It must just work. That's unfortunately not the way it works. There are a lot of decisions people have to make. And that's really why I start a chapter to help people make that, make those set of decisions much more simply and with much more confidence.

Now, I guess I want to say up front, the reason I'm talking to you and not to somebody else is because I trust you and I trust chapter because I should say it's come to my attention that there are lots of companies that purport to do what you're doing. But my guess is they're getting something out of it and it's a little complicated. So I feel this is a very serious decision for people and they need to be able to talk to people that they genuinely. trust that they have their best interests in mind. And so what was it that made you see that this is something that you want to get into, get into? What was it the process of watching your parents navigate this? It really was.

I saw my mom in particular worked with a local Medicare broker. As you said, there are a lot of Medicare agents out there. She got really bad advice and now has to pay lifetime Part D enrollment penalties. So if you sign up too late, the government imposes lifetime penalties on you so that to incentivize people to sign up at the right time. So there are a lot of consequences to this. And then on top of that, her whole experience was really painful. She had to call the Social Security office numerous times.

She had to fax documents. And as someone who works in technology, I just looked at this. And I was wondering, what is going on here? This makes no sense to me. And that's really what opened my eyes to the entire process and how broken it is. And then to your other point, most or really all Medicare advisors in this country are agents of the insurance carrier. They are not agents of the consumer. What we've done a chapter is that. That is cute. That's like that's the breaking news. That's the headline. So in other words,

people port to be doing what you're doing. Like, oh, we're here to help you navigate, work for whom exactly? They work for the insurance carrier contractually and legally. Right. And it is the biggest issue in my mind in Medicare today. And I've testified at the Senate about this. I have been working with Congress to try to pass new regulations that prevent Medicare advisors from representing insurance carriers and force them to represent consumers. But unfortunately, that's not the state of the world today. And unless you have the resources like a company like Chapter has, unless you put consumers first,

and unless you build your own data and technologies that you can get access to the data you need to recommend the right plan for each person, it's very challenging, if not impossible, for others to do this. So, and obviously that's what you've been doing. This is why we're talking to you. I should just tell people, if they're interested now, the website is askchapter.org. Metaxus. Askchapter.org slash metaxus. And there's a phone number. I'll give that in just a moment. So I guess my question, a couple of questions. First of all, what are some of the common mistakes? I mean, suddenly, you know, people are facing this thing? What are some of the say you just mentioned, you know, your own family, what they're dealing with? Suddenly, you sign a piece of paper and, whoops, now you're going to be fine forever.

What are some of the common mistakes, other mistakes that people make when they, you know, they sign up for Medicare. That's something that's not optimal for them and that they start. The most common is people just don't do anything. They don't realize that they have to take action. And so they either miss their enrollment window or they get defaulted into a plan or into a setup that's not the best for them. So that's definitely the most common.

Second most common is people assume that Medicare Advantage, which is one type of Medicare plan, is really the only type of Medicare plan. And so they sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan, which may or may not be right for them. The reason that Medicare Advantage is so heavily promoted, there are all these ads, is because insurance carriers will pay more

for a Medicare Advantage enrollment than for a different type of Medicare enrollment. So last Q4, for example, almost 10,000 ads ran per day trying to get people to sign up for Medicare Advantage plans. And so that creates a lot of, misinformation in people's minds for reasonable reasons. And it makes it really hard to know what's going on, who to trust.

And then I think the, or go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I've looked at, you know, it seems to me from what little I've looked into it, that it is very complicated. There are, there's almost like an infinite number of options available. And so I guess my first question is, how did it get so complicated? I mean, the whole idea is Medicare's set up a long time ago to help older people, how did it get so complicated so that now we need, you know, seriously good advice or we can get in trouble? Medicare was initially passed in 1965 by LBGA. It was a much simpler

system at the time, to your point. Over the last 60, 70 years, the number of options have dramatically increased. And under the Clinton administration, there was this new concept of Medicare Advantage, which is privately administered but publicly funded Medicare plans. And that's really when the complexity started ballooning. And today, because Medicare is such a large component of our economy, it's almost a trillion dollars a year. That's the amount that the government spends on Medicare. So when you have such a large amount of money and such an important, such an important piece of our health care and our health insurance system, there are going to be a lot of private companies that go in wanting to help and wanting to make.

a book. And so that has created a lot of complexity for individuals. The additional component here is there's not really good regulation, as I said, that puts consumers first here. So people are in, these Medicare brokerages and the insurance carriers are incentivized to make things complicated. I'll give you a very simple example. Today, the way the regulatory regime is set up, it is illegal for me to post all the Medicare plan information I have online. Chapter has the best Medicare plan information. One of the common questions we get is why don't we just post it all online. It is illegal for me to do that.

Okay, hold on. We're going to go to a break, and I just want to talk to you more, but let me remind people again. You can go to askchapter.org slash metaxis. Askchapter.org slash metaxus. Or is the phone number 571, 421, 12, 3. Again, the phone number is the best. 571, 421, 1253, or askchapter.org slash metaxis. Be right back. I just decided I want to write a book on the American Revolution because this is extremely important. Unless Americans know our story,

we cannot possibly continue to keep the Republic. Welcome back. Kobe Blumenthal Gantz is my guest. He is the CEO of Chapter, which is a sponsor of this program. These are the folks that help you navigate the confusing quagmire, unfortunately, that Medicare has come. So, Kobe, you were just saying that there are these weird rules. Whenever you deal up with the government, weird rules, you said that there's a law that you, for example, cannot helpfully post a lot of stuff about this online, that doesn't seem, you would think that transparency would be a good thing. Like, hey, here's some stuff people can read, but they won't let you do that. That's right. It was one of the most surprising things I learned when we started the company.

It is perfectly legal for me to tell someone over the phone all the information about the options in their area, and that's what we do every day. It is not legal for me to post that same information online without getting every single insurance carrier to approve of exactly what I want to post NCMS at the government to approve it. And of course, for me to get all of those approvals is not going to happen because the insurance carriers are not incentivized to make that information transparent. So it's one of these things. The intent of the regulation is to minimize risk so that people don't post deceptive information. So there's, you know, there's some integrated logic to it. But the The implication is that it's very hard for consumers to get transparent information.

I mean, I just have to say it's fascinating. This sounds like the definition of bureaucracy. You don't need to read Kafka. Don't read Kafka. I don't recommend it. Kafka asks, it's labyrinthine, it's confusing. It's dehumanizing. Let's just put it there.

That's what bureaucracy tends to be dehumanizing. And so it's one of the reasons that I just love the fact. that people can pick up the phone and talk to somebody at Chapter. And it's why I'm warmly recommending they do that because, you know, it's one thing to talk to a person on the phone that's nice. But sometimes talking to people on the phone is not so nice. If it's people that you can actually trust. And so obviously, folks, I'm suggesting that if you have questions that you call up

our friends at Chapter, I'll give you the number again because that's even better than the website. It's 571-421-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. 253, 571, 421, 12, 523. So what is the typical experience that people have? In other words, I assume that your goal is to steer them to a plan that's optimal for them. And so talk us through some of that. Our goal is to make sure people have the right health coverage, whether that's on Medicare or not. So if you are on your employer coverage and that remains the best for you, you're not leaving your job, you're remaining employed, we'll tell you that.

We aren't going to try to switch you to Medicare if that's not appropriate for you. For most people, though, switching on to Medicare is actually the right decision for their health coverage and their wallet. So it's a very simple process. You call up if you're already on a Medicare plan, we'll tell you if there's a better option for you. If it's your first time signing up, we'll walk you through the process. We've built a lot of technology to automate the tedium. So it's very simple and delight. We try to make it delightful, turning a terrible experience into a delightful one.

And we'll answer all of your questions that you might have about Medicare, about your health coverage, about your doctors, your prescriptions, how much it will cost. All of these questions. We'll sign you up. And then importantly, even after we help you enroll in a Medicare plan, if that's the right for you, we'll help you navigate the entire ecosystem throughout the year. So if you need to find a specialist who's in network with your plan, we'll help you with that. If you need to minimize your prescription costs because you got a very expensive prescription, we'll help you with that. If you need to appeal a bill or a claim, you get a bill that doesn't make sense to you.

Many health care bills don't make a lot of sense. We'll help you walk through that. And if it's an incorrect bill, we'll help you appeal that. So our goal is really to be your advocate, your navigator throughout this entire journey. And obviously other companies that do something similar to you claim to do the same. same thing. So if you don't mind my asking, what is the difference between you and most of them? There are really three core differences. One is we look at every single Medicare option. And that's actually, I think, unique in any insurance market where we have access to every single

Medicare plan across every type of Medicare. And we will enroll you in the right Medicare plan for your needs, whether Chapter earns money on that plan or not. All of the financials are hidden from our team. So our Medicare advisors are only incentivized to help each person. They're not incentivized by the insurance carrier. They don't earn a different amount of money or their chapter makes money or doesn't. And that's a really core difference because if you're not looking at every option, how can you know if you're getting the right plan? So that's one. Two is we've built a lot of technology to make the experience very easy and simple and to catch mistakes.

Because it is such a Byzantine system, there's all these rules and edge cases that can really hurt people if you aren't aware of them. And so we've built a lot of technology and a lot of oversight so that we know. every single person who talks to us is having a great experience in getting accurate information, which is really important. We spend so much time just even looking at, is the accuracy of doctors correct? Do we know which doctors in network with which plan? Do we know exactly what your prescription will cost on a given plan? It's a very hard data problem to solve that we spent a lot of time solving. And then the last piece is we care that every single person who calls us has an amazing experience. We don't want any variability in that experience. We don't quality to be

high for every single interaction. And the only way to do that is to keep a very high bar for who we hire and who we allow to interact with people who call us and we call them our members. And so I personally interview every single person who works a chapter, every single candidate across our engineers, across our Medicare advisors, across our Medicare advocates. We accept less than 1% of people who apply to join chapter. So we keep a maniacally high bar for 10,000. talent, and that is what translates into an exceptional user experience. I think 4% would be maniacally high. 1%, I don't even know.

There's no adjective for that. But it's kind of funny because to me, as I get to know who you are as a company and what you're doing, that that to me is the key, what you've just said. In other words, that you understand that this is the piece, that almost no one else would go to this length, but you understand this is what we deliver, this kind of I mean, for somebody to, I'm just speaking personally and for my own family

that, you know, to call up somebody to get somebody who's personable, competent, kind, understand, you know, all of that stuff. It's not easy to find basically. You often find the opposite of it or some

variation. So that seems to me the key to your success to the whole idea and for reasons. that I'm so warmly recommending chapter. I'll give the website again, folks, if you want to contact them, it's askchapter.org slash metaxus. Askchapter.org slash metactus.

Just got a couple of minutes left, Corey. What else can we say that we are not said? Well, I think one really interesting aspect that is a part of the ethos of chapter. and I think relates to what you do and the important work that you do for your audience is that, as a religious scholar, you think about what does the Bible teach us? For us, I grew up as an observant Jew, and just last week, the Torah portion was for the Jewish Bible, was actually about, there was a mention of retirement.

And God instructed the Levites to serve in the tab. tabernacle, only from ages 25 to 50. After age 50, individuals are not supposed to do physical work. They're supposed to still mentor and provide their wisdom. And a large part of the ethos of chapter is we want to empower people to share their wisdom and to have the health coverage that they need to live an amazing chapter of their lives. That's why we're called chapter and not insert in name Medicare because we want to help people live the best chapter of their lives. I think there's a lot of wisdom that is currently lost between the older generation and the younger generation. And what we're really trying to do is empower people with the health so that they

can share that wisdom with the rest of us. And that I actually think it's a very important part to holding the fabric of our society together. And that's really what drives us to to continue to push so hard for an amazing, amazing experience for our members. I knew that biblical wisdom was behind all of this theoretically, but I also knew that it was behind you and what you're doing at chapter, but I wanted you to be the one to talk about it, because to me, that is the key. And it's not, you know, it's not even just wisdom. It is the kindness, the graciousness that comes out of that whole worldview. So I'm just grateful for you. I'll tell my audience again how to find you all now that they know more about you.

The phone number, that's the best thing, folks. It's 571, 421, 12, 153. 571, 421, 1253. The website, askchapter.org, askchapter.org slash It says Kobe Bluongan, C.E. of a chapter. First of all, congratulations.

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