The Eric Metaxas Show - #200 - Dinesh D’Souza

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Dinesh D’Souza joins Eric to discuss his new book The Stones Cry Out and the archaeological evidence he believes supports the historical reliability of the Bible.Dinesh and Eric discuss discoveries connected to King David, the Exodus, Balaam, Belshazzar, Jericho, Caiaphas, and the world of Jesus. They also explore why Dinesh believes biblical archaeology has increasingly forced skeptics to retreat from claims that major biblical people and events were simply invented, and why he sees the growing number of discoveries as especially significant in a secular age.Later, Grace Precious Metals CEO Bill Armor joins Eric to discuss the “Everything Bubble,” stock-market valuations, and precious metals.⭐ 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 Dinesh D’Souza Joins1:50 Why Dinesh Started Studying Biblical Archaeology5:26 Why Skeptics Have Been Forced To Retreat9:09 What Archaeology Says About The Exodus13:47 The Balaam Discovery Skeptics Did Not Expect17:01 Belshazzar And The Book Of Daniel19:01 What Archaeologists Found At Jericho21:45 The Bones Linked To Caiaphas24:38 Archaeology, Prophecy, And The Last Days31:10 Bill Armor On The “Everything Bubble”- -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.

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Discover coffee plus on nispresso.com. Hey there, folks. Welcome. As you know, every day I'm going to remind you to go to bonhofermovie.com, October 3rd and 4th. We've got a special relaunch of the film. Very important that you and your church can involve. Please go to the website, sign up, Bonhofermovie.com. It's now my joy to speak with my friend Dinesh D'Souza about a subject both of us care very, very much about. It's called biblical archaeology. It's called Truth. Dinesh, welcome back. Eric, it's a real pleasure. Thanks for having me. You have a book coming out called The Stones Cry Out. You stole that from my book is atheism dead,

and I stole it from the Gospels. It's the story of the stones speaking about the Bible as truth. It's about biblical archaeology. I become so fascinated with this subject, and I'm absolutely thrilled that you are at least equally, if not more fascinated with it, that you've written a book about it. Honestly, where do we even start, Dinesh?

I mean, I've gotten to a point where I say, you know, in my book as atheism, dead I say, if you look at the science, there's no longer really a debate on whether there's a God. Like, it's become overwhelming. When you look at the archaeology, there's no longer a debate if the Bible is history. It's just become overwhelming.

Isn't the challenge really to get people to look because most people just maybe don't want to know about it? They prefer that the Bible were not history? You know, I think that for many years, I was plunged into, I would call it generic biblical apologetics. And by that I mean arguments about cosmology, the Big Bang, issues that have to do with evolution, the Odyssey, the problem of evil. But most of those things are in the sort of philosophical domain. The Bible, I thought, at that time, was kind of something you had to take on faith because it makes such astounding claims. And it does so without, in a sense, even attempting to prove them.

It declares them. It proclaims them that I kind of bought into the idea that maybe the historicity of all of this was on shaky ground. I mean, you and I went to college at a time when. and the kind of higher criticism of the Bible was kind of in full flower. We could not help but be exposed to the acid of skepticism.

So it was only really in the last few years of my first trip to Israel, 2022, quite honestly, reading your book shortly after that. I don't really want to admit this because I don't want to give you a bigger head. But when I read your book, you had sections on the, you know, the Mesha Steli, the Moabite Stone.

You had sections on, of course, the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery, and I was like, wow, this is really fascinating, and I need to dig into it. So I've essentially taken up the project for the last three years. And this book, The Stones Cry Out, I mean, the cool thing about it is it covers the entire, not only historical, but geographical scope of the Bible. So it kind of begins with Abraham about 2000 BC, goes through the book of Acts, about 50 or something. so AD, and covers the land of Canaan and Israel, covers, you know, obviously Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and then, of course, Rome, and also Greece and Turkey, where the spread of the gospels in the New Testament. So this is the scope of biblical archaeology, and the wonderful thing is there's dense artifacts all the way through. It's not as if, like, one portion of the

Bible is being validated. The historicity of the whole thing is coming into full. view. Well, first of all, nothing could make me happier that my book encouraged you along these lines, because I mean it when I say that I think that there isn't enough attention given to this. In other words, we're dealing with things here that are just overwhelmingly true. It's like, let's debate if the earth is flat, you know, you think, wait a minute, the evidence, we don't need to discuss this. We can know it's become overwhelming. When, with regard to the, historicity of the scripture, it's become overwhelming. And the examples are everywhere. But I think Denech, part of it is that there's a lag time, right? And if there's a hundred years ago,

a lot of these discoveries hadn't been made. You could say the same in the world of science, that as science progresses, as biblical archaeology has progressed, in a way that cognoscenti have not kept up with it. They sort of bought the lie back when that, you know, it's a lot of folklore. it's a lot of it. They haven't kept up. And that when you're introducing this evidence in a way, I think a lot of people, a lot of skeptics are shocked if they dare to look at it because they have lived in a world where everybody knows the Bible's just folklore until suddenly it's not. I think the problem, and you know this as well as I do, has been compounded by what we could call the reluctance of the pastors on the one hand and the reluctance of the archaeaumption.

on the other for quite different motives. Pastures are not typically trained in this. They're a little nervous about it. They don't want to wade into territory that's kind of not their specialty. They stay away from it. They'll teach biblical episodes, almost like morality tales or parables without grounding it in history. Like what century did Isaiah live or Jeremiah? What was going on at the time? They don't really want to go there. As you also know very well, the archaeological community wants to maintain its scientific bona fides, they want to stay away from being seen as corroborating the Bible. The Bible to them is theology. It's a sacred book. It's revelation. So as a result, there's a kind of understatement, even on the part of a number of biblical archaeologists.

And so what we're doing, I think, in your book, is Atheism Dad in mine, the forthcoming book, which you can order now, is we're bridging the gap between 150 years of archaeological discovery, and kind of the wide, yawning public ignorance about this, which, you know, I think Christians would be exhilarated to realize that the Bible is being confirmed not just in its major figures, King David, Isaiah, and the large events of the Bible, but sometimes the tiniest details. You know, how many shekels was Joseph sold for by his brothers, and what was the slave price in Canaan and the surrounding areas, right about that time.

That can be checked out. Luke in the Book of Acts gives excruciatingly minor details about when the winds blow off the coast of Cyprus and what the name of the city magistrate is in a particular part of Greece. And all of this can be checked out. So this is really what historians and archaeologists have been trying. And let's remember, at the very beginning, the skeptics thought that biblical archaeology would be a battering ram to do.

just prove the Bible. And boy, have they proven wrong. They have been increasingly forced onto the defensive. Not that they give up, but what they do is they retreat. And they now have to make sort of more modest claims. They can't say there's no King David. They can't even say that they haven't found a large monumental building that resembles a palace. They now have to say things like, well, maybe it wasn't a palace. Maybe it was some other sort of administrative structure. Or maybe it was started in David's time, but completed in Solomon's time. Well, I mean, whoopty do. The point is the Bible speaks of David building a palace.

And in that location, in the biblical location, we find huge pillars, columns. You know, clearly this is no ordinary residence. And you can go stand there as I have, and probably you have. And so in a way, the stones come to life in this respect. I think a lot of this is humiliating for the secularists, to be to be honest, that I don't know, I don't think that they ever dreamt that they would have to face this. It's kind of like the Nazis in 1945, all of them committed suicide because it was unthinkable that they could ever lose. They couldn't face the concept of maybe we'll lose. This has been going on for decades and decades and the evidence piles up and up and up. And I do think it's humiliating. I mean, if you're honest, it wouldn't be humiliating. But if you really have just said, I'm going to die on that hill, they're dying on that hill, basically. Instead of saying, well, you know what, we got it wrong, wherever you look, the evidence has become overwhelming.

Do you talk, I think, in your book about the Exodus and Egypt. Talk a little bit about that because that's not something that I focused on it. I'm fascinated with it. Sure. This has been kind of a strong point on the part of the skeptics, because they say, A, show me the presence of Hebrew slaves in Egypt. Show me the path of the exodus through the desert. And I will admit that the evidence here is circumstantial and indirect.

By that I mean, you don't find Egyptian royal proclamations talking about Hebrew slaves escaping. Now, there are good reasons, by the way, in the ancient world where they by and large these royal proclamations only record victories and not defeats. If a bunch of Hebrew slaves got out of the grip of Pharaoh, they're not going to be highlighting that in their royal documents. Now, were there Semites in Egypt? Absolutely. Going back to about 2000 BC, and there's art that shows them, you can look at them, they actually look Semitic, they are darker skin, they have colored garments, they, their archaeologists will agree, the presence of Semites in Egypt undisputed.

Then there's something called the Reckmeyer tomb paintings in which you see these dark-skinned foreigners. What are they doing? They're building things with bricks and straw. I mean, remember Pharaoh, right? Pharaoh says, listen, you got to build with bricks and straw. You're not going to get any more straw from us, but you still need to build as many bricks as you do as much work as you did before. I mean, this can be seen visibly.

You see these foreign workers in the painting. They're being supervised by Egyptian overseers. So I'm only giving you a hint of the evidence because someone, I read an interesting archaeological article which said, we can look for Israelites in Egypt, but there's a second pathway which people have never thought of. Can we look for Egypt in the Bible? And here's what I mean.

If the higher critics are right, and these are a bunch of Canaanites, in Israel writing about Egypt, they wouldn't know a whole lot about Egypt, right? They wouldn't know the dietary practices of Egypt, the geography of Egypt, because they weren't there. So one way to check the validity of whether the biblical writers were in Egypt is to look at the level of their knowledge of obscure Egyptian customs, names, prices, dietary practices. And in this way, you can see, listen, this guy who's writing Exodus appears to know more about Egypt than he knows about Israel. He writes about Israel as if he just got there.

But he writes about Egypt as if he lived there. All of this, I think, is fascinating. And you put it all together, you just realize that, wow, this is a very impressive case. Admittedly put together kind of Lego style with small pieces, but the pieces do come together. It's interesting because I always thought that, you know, if you can prove this kind of stuff to people, then they'll just have to accept it. But I think what you've found and what I found is that there are plenty of people that once you prove it to them, in a sense, you corner them with the facts, they still won't accept it. In other words, they will at that point effectively say, I vote for Satan. You know, in other words, if you're going to force me to choose, I will curse the God that I now know exists or that I know.

In other words, that I think there are people, I've been one of those people that think that everybody's reasonable. And if you can just show them the truth, that's true of many people. But there are other people that simply are hostile. They're hostile to it. And I don't know what they'll make of your book or what they make of my books. but it seems that you're likely to see demons manifesting than you are to see people say, you know, I'd never seen that before.

Tell me more. That's kind of a weird moment we're in. That as this evidence becomes overwhelming, yes, it's going to lead some people to faith. And that's, of course, the hope of why you write this book and why I do what I do. But at the same time, there are people that have already decided, against it. Yeah, I'm really kind of struck by how the skeptic who has been very loud for a long

time just goes into sullen silence. And this is when they are hit with things that are particularly devastating for them because they don't just involve historical details in the Bible. They involve, in a way, you could say, some of the more preposterous sections of the Bible. So a good example of this is the Israelites are crossing over into the promised land. the king, the Moabite king, goes to a fortune teller, Baylam or Balam, son of Beor, and he says, you know, curse the Israelites so that they're not going to have problems crossing our land. This is essentially in modern day Jordan.

And Balam's ready to do it, but the Bible says that God prevented him. And the biblical description of this guy, Balam, is he has a talking donkey. So you can see this is like red meat for the skeptics. So, like, this whole thing is just ridiculous. Obviously, it's all made up, except in an ancient plaster section of Jordan, archaeologists discover a plaster inscription, and it happens to say the following words, the warnings and sayings of Balam, son of Beor.

So let's look at it. It's the same first name, Balam, but they happen to mention his dad's name, Beor. It happens to be in the right area, Jordan, and it's dated to a person. about the right time. And then his profession is the same. The warnings and sayings indicate that he's some sort of a fortune teller. So how can you deny it's the same guy? And so this is the kind of thing that I think is a body blow for the skeptics, because as I say, it's one of the more implausible sections of the Bible, and it's stunningly vindicated in a plaster inscription that no one can deny. It's, I mean, it becomes funny. What led me,

into this subject, as you know, was a conversation that I had, it's got to be about seven years ago, with a biblical archaeologist named Stephen Collins, and somebody said, oh, yeah, Stephen Collins, he's discovered biblical Sodom. And I thought, are you kidding? You know, that's like people say, I've discovered Noah's Ark.

I mean, it would be nice, but I'm pretty skeptical. And then you get into the details, and you think, my goodness, it's true. It's true, you know, and then it's all in the details, but the reason I bring it up is there are certain things you think, well, that's just so far-fetched. I mean, you know, Sodom and Gamor, that's just the first couple of pages of Genesis. We're never going to find anything to corroborate that through archaeology. That's just, we don't need to look there. So the story of Bealam is

similar. It's just shocking that God is allowing things to come out that, you know, I don't know what else we're going to find. And Dinesh, that's always intrigued me as, who knows? knows what else we're going to find. Who knows what is yet undiscovered? I mean, a number of things that I know are in your book I hadn't heard about. I hadn't heard about the Baylam thing. It is interesting because this is ongoing and we don't know what tomorrow the spade will uncover. Yeah. I'll give another example, which I think you'll really like in the book of Daniel. we have, this is the time of the Babylonians and the last Babylonian king

whose name is Nabonidas. And Daniel says that there was a ruler named Belchazar. And Belchazar put a necklace around Daniel's neck and named him, quote, the third man or the third ruler of the kingdom. Now, there's no historical record in Hiroshima. or the ancient xenophon of any Belchazar.

And so skeptics said, well, we know who the last king of Babylon is. It's Nabonitis. This is a made-up incident in the Bible. There's simply no record of it until there's something called the Nabonitis cylinder that was discovered. And as you look at it, it says in there it refers to King Nabonitis and his son Belchazar. And elsewhere in the cylinder, it points out that when Nabonitis is, so to speak, out of town, his son rules in his stead.

So who's the first ruler of the kingdom, Nabonitis? Who's number two? Belchazar. And this now explains that very obscure reference in Daniel that he was the third man in the kingdom. He couldn't be the first to the second because it was the king and his son. The best position he could have is number three. suddenly that obscure biblical reference, previously mystical for hundreds of years, kind of jumps into clear understanding.

And again, we're dealing with, you know, the writing on the wall. There's sort of a miraculous aspect to all this, which, again, the skeptics were like, this is preposterous. None of this could even really have happened. Show us Belshazzar. And now we can go right here. Well, there's so much of this kind of thing. There's also the collapsed walls of Jericho.

Can you say a little bit about that? Yes, there's a big argument, of course, about the dating. And in archaeology, this is not uncommon. Was it in the 16th century or the 15th century BC? And I admit that these kinds of things remain unresolved. But here's what we know. The walls of Jericho did fall. We do know that they fell outward rather than inward,

which suggests that they are knocked over by battering rams. They fell some other way, possibly by a nor. earthquake or some other sort of calamity, which is actually more consistent with the biblical account. We know that the attack occurred in the spring, which is when the Bible says it did. We know that the grain in Jericho was not consumed because the remnants of the grain are found now. And so Joshua was instructed, don't eat the grain. And so guess what? We find uneaten grain, which is very unusual, by the way, in the ancient world, you take over a city.

the first thing you're going to do is take all their stuff and start eating all their food. But this was not done consistent with the biblical account. So bottom line of it is that Jericho was burned and that's proven. Hot Saw was burned and that's proven. There is a debate about biblical I, which is the third location. And there's some argument about the location of that site. One of the things I do in the book, I freely admit that there are things that are not discovered,

that people are still looking for. But I come back to a point that you also made, and that is that show me a significant archaeological discovery that contradicts the Bible, right? That's very, very telling. Now, of course, when Nelson Gluck said this, you know, in the 1950s, that was 75 years ago. There have been hundreds of artifacts,

thousands of artifacts uncovered since then, and the fact that his statement still holds true is incredible. 150 years of archaeology, thousands of artifacts across multiple nations and a wide geographical, and you can't find one that definitively refutes the Bible. Hey, what does that tell you? Yeah, it is almost unbelievable. And again, if only the mainstream media would cover this. If only the world knew about this, people are hungry to know, is the Bible true?

And we can say, yeah, the evidence points in that direction, dramatic. We've been living in our lifetimes in the world that says the opposite, and we've got to get this out. So it's another reason I'm so grateful that you've taken up this banner and written this book. You talk at some point about the time of Jesus, the crucifixion, the burial, the resurrection. What can we say about that? Well, I like to envision the great trial scene of Jesus, which involves Herod, the king. It involves the Roman prefect Pontius pilot. It involves the accused man, Jesus, and the high priest, Caiaphas.

Now, there's fascinating archaeology on all of these for major biblical characters. But I'll focus on Caiaphas, the high priest. The Bible only gives you the first name, of course, Caiaphas. We know from the historian Josephus that he had a first name, Joseph. He's Joseph Caiaphas. And yet for many, many centuries, if you believed on Caiaphas, there were some historical references to him, but mostly you'd have to take it on faith. Some of the historians even are considered not always reliable until a few decades ago. They're looking in the so-called priestly or aristocratic quarter of Jerusalem.

Out of the ground come these ossuaries or stone boxes. There's a bunch of them, but one of them is like ornate, particularly decorated. And of course, what's the name on the top? You know this as well as I do. Jehosef Bar Kayafa. Joseph, son of Caiaphas. And inside of the bones of a 60-year-old man, it's dated to the first century BC.

It's the right location. It's the right first name. It's the right last name. Who else? It's Caiaphas. And, of course, now you have that chilling feeling that we do as Christians. You're not just looking at some historical inscription

or some reference in somebody's writing, from 100 years later, you're actually looking at the guy's bones. So there's a sense here in which these historical figures, suddenly Caiaphas is now entering the pages of history via the pathway of archaeology. And I think the reason the skeptics are so discombobulated, you know, Eric, is this. The Bible combines theology, miracles, the supernatural, and history.

But if the history is authenticated, it makes it more likely that the overall story is true. And so this is why the skeptics want to knock down the history. They know that that is the domain of the verifiable. And if the Bible holds up, it's kind of like if you and I are in a jury, and the sastra gives a lengthy account of what he did over the past month. And some of it is kind of wild and you can't verify it. But there are a lot of details.

I ate lunch at Chick-fil-A and here's my receipt. And I crossed over state lines and you could see me on the surveillance. If we can check him out at, let's say, 40 key points, and there's not one point where we can find something where the guy is lying, where we can refute what he's saying, we're going to go, you know what? Strange though his story might seem, it seems like it's the truth because he's a truth teller. Right. Well, what do you say, you talk about end times to some extent. What do you say about that or what this says about the end times? I'm a little cautious about biblical prophecy, a part partly because I sort of operate under the assumption that the book of revelation is deliberately veiled.

We're not meant to sort of know it all. And so I'm very skeptical about people who give you the blow-by-blow account of what's going to happen. But I do think that there are certain key prophecies that are prophecies from the Old Testament that have quite obviously come to pass, prophecies of the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland. This is predicted repeatedly in the Bible. And it's stunningly and implausibly came to pass really in the last century, in the last hundred years. And then I think this, which is that why are we getting the stones crying out now? If you look at the history of biblical archaeology, I put it in three phases. 1850 to 1947, then the forming of the state of Israel, so 1948 to 2000, and then 2000 to now.

And if you were to sort of plot all the artifacts, you will see a small first wave, a bigger second wave, and a biggest third wave. It's almost like the stones are crying out or God is speaking through the stones with increasing intensity. So I think it is not insignificant that in a secular world, God is choosing this kind of new language to communicate, almost as if he's saying to, you know, college graduates, say, listen, I know that you respect. the language of archaeology and of science and you can't deny material objects coming out of the dirt? Okay, I'm going to start communicating with you in that language also. And I find this very thrilling and interesting. And I do think that as we get this word out, we will see that people, both Christians and non-Christians, will find this material irresistible. I think you're right. I've had this sense for years, for some reason, that as we approach the end times, God is going to make it more and more difficult for us not to believe, in a sense, challenging us.

And I do see that, which is why I wonder, who knows what will be found next in the realm of science, in the realm of archaeology, who knows what is still not discovered? It's absolutely fascinating because when we think of the things just in our own lifetime that have been discovered, you wouldn't have. You know, if you said to somebody in 1900 that all this stuff is going to be discovered in the next 120 years, they would think, I don't see it happening. Well, it's been happening more and more and more and more. I know there's some links to videos in your book. Talk about that. Well, the book has maps, timelines, lots of photos.

But in a sense, people like to be on site. They want to see. And so I have QR codes in the book. and it just links to on-site artifacts. Usually it's me at a particular location. Look, the best thing, obviously, you've done it, I've done it, is to go to Israel, see all these places for yourself.

But the next best thing is to try to experience it in this sort of video format. And so technology allows us to do this. I mean, 20 years ago, the best we could do is show some photos in a book. But now we can have the links so that people can kind of experience these artifacts for themselves. interact with them.

Well, I do think that, you know, as things get tougher, it's good to have this kind of encouragement to know that, no, no, no, it really is true. And the more evidence comes out. So I think it's important for people, it's important for skeptics to be confronted with this evidence, but it's important for believers to know that what you believe is real. It is true. You can base your life on it. You should base your life.

on it. Dinesh, tell us again the title of the book and the best way for us to find it. The book is called The Stones Cry Out. You can pre-order it now from Amazon and the book comes out

October 13th. So if you pre-order now, you'll be one of the first to get it. And the other thing that people should know, and you know this as well as I do, that pre-ordering books is really helpful to put fuel into the rocket of a book because the more Amazon pre-orders, the more Amazon is going to order of the book,

the more that they're going to promote the book. So to the degree where we want to push this message out as widely as possible, a pre-order is in fact more valuable for the book and for the message than an order that's put, for example, after the book's already out. So folks, the book is The Stones Cry Out, Biblical Archaeology, Prophecy and the Last days. The author, Dinesh D'Souza, Dinesh, thank you for all your work on this book and all you do in general. God bless you. Thank you, Eric. God bless you, too. You've often heard me talk about the Golden Triangle of Freedom, that intersection of faith,

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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. As you know, one of the sponsors of this program, and I feel very strongly about this particular sponsor, is Grace Precious Metals. I wanted to get the CEO of Grace Precious Metals on the program, Bill Armour, and I have succeeded. Promises made, promises kept.

Bill Armour, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. I wanted to talk to you about this thing called the everything bubble. You're qualified to talk about it. I'm not. I'm barely qualified to understand what you have to say, but I know that it ties in to what we want to get to.

So tell my audience, what is this thing that people are calling the everything bubble? The CAPE ratio, it stands for a cyclically adjusted price to earnings. And what that is, it takes what a company is actually produced over the last 10 years and then averages it against what that stock is worth. And it creates a ratio out of that. And historically, that number across the entire stock market will sit at something around 20. Might go a little higher, might go a little lower, but generally it's going to reside around 20. Back in 2001, when we had the dot-com bubble in the crash there, it jumped all the way up to

43 and then came cratering down to about 16. And that was where people saw 60%, you know, lost 70% in the NASDAQ, 40% in the SMP. So people across the board retirement savings were dramatically impacted. So when you look at that, you say, okay, well, what's it at today, Bill? Well, today it's at 41. So it's the highest we ever had at bar 2001. And it's pointing to this realization that we are getting so much fluff. You know, you slap AI on the front of a company's name and suddenly it's worth 10x, you know, multiples here. So it's like the dot com boom, right? I mean, I remember this vividly because I'm older than you.

I mean, I remember people, you could just see people kind of going crazy for this and throwing money and acting like, you know, we've discovered free energy or something. Like, jump on. We're all going to be billionaires. And clearly, this happens in history. And you say this is happening out with AI. And that seems to be an understatement. I mean, it's kind of amazing how people are just going crazy over this, acting like, it's free money.

Come on, join us. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, the scale of it, I think, is what should concern people because the NASDAQ was a 78% drop in 2001. And for someone that is looking to preserve their wealth, you know, maybe you're not 25 anymore. You're saying, hey, I've got to make this last the rest of my life. A 78% cut to what you have means that you probably have to go back to work. And that's, I think, the part that, you know, a lot of brokers and whatnot will not necessarily explain is the cyclicality. So we see these market crashes often.

We saw them in 2000. We saw it in 0.8. We saw it in 2020 around the sort of COVID drop there. All of this together, we're seeing this, this cyclicality, this constancy to the market drops. And so what does that mean for someone that has retirement savings? It means that you are in a position where you need to think critically about what you're doing. to protect, preserve your wealth, because the answers that were true maybe 50, 60, 70 years ago and just kind of trust the system are not true today. We have $40 trillion in national debt.

That's not a number that we would have even fathomed 50 or 60 years ago. Yeah, it's kind of disturbing. So once again, precious metals, gold and silver tend to be stable, and it's why we're recommending them. But the reason, I say go with grace precious metals. And by the way, people can go to metaxismeddles.com, folks. If you need a website, go to metaxis metals.com. It'll take you to grace precious metals, metaxis metals.com. But I really, I've been astonished at, you know, talking to you and learning about the business and how a lot of other gold companies, they're playing this game.

And you can kind of see why they do it, but it doesn't really mean it's okay. Or I would say if you have a choice, I would avoid them. You know, it's just, it's like dealing with a car salesman. You just think, like, I understand why he's using these tactics on me, but I don't have to like the tactics. Yeah, exactly. I would say there's two things here. One is that you're right. Precious metals have been a store of value, and they've done incredibly well through these turbulent

market times. So there is a lot of reasons to want to own precious metals and people are right to think that they're right to feel that way. The other side of that, though, is how you go about purchasing precious metals is its own sort of dangerous journey. And the problem, as you just alluded to there, is a lot of these companies out there will sell products with exorbitant markups. They won't explain that to the client. The client will think that they're getting, you know, just gold and silver. How complicated can it be? But in reality, a, you know, as sort of a sleazy salesman has come in and pushed what are called semi-numismatic or numismatic coins, which is just collectible. So they're charging a massive markup for the design on the coin.

Just to be clear, just to solve for X. So the theory or the idea is that gold and silver hold their value. But what they're doing somewhat subtly is they're taking you into a realm where, yeah, you're getting gold and silver, but you're now getting this other thing. which doesn't hold its value. You're getting this other thing, which is, you know, it's subjective, a coin. You know, we know how much it weighs. We know how much gold there is,

but it's a beautiful coin. So they're bringing you into a realm that moves away from the whole point of it is that I'm getting something that holds its value. It's gold and silver, period. Yes. Yeah, exactly. you want ounces, not designs.

So our goal here on our mission at Grace, precious metals, is to get people the most ounces possible, irregardless of how pretty the coin looks. We want to find people basically the metal itself at the lowest premium, lowest markup possible. And that's where we're, I mean, we're better than just about anywhere you can find when you talk about all in, that's buying, that's selling everything.

We're going to be, you know, I mean, we're beating everyone. So that's the encouragement I give to people is, You want the best deal. You want the most ounces possible. That's we're here for. If you're shopping around, if you're a coin collector, you know, that's great. Probably not someone that we necessarily work with. We're here to help people preserve wealth via exactly like you said, get the most ounces

possible. And that's what's going to be valuable. And you look at silver was added to the critical minerals list here for this year. You look at golds potentially being talked about as backing the currency again in the future. So you're looking at these metals are going to be valuable because of the weight they have, the contents, not the designs. I mean, silver, the infrastructure that what we're using it for, the amount we're using, we're in sixth consecutive year of a deficit in terms of production versus usage. So we're

draining the above ground silver supply. When we get to a point where Samsung can't make a computer because they need silver, they're not going to care what the design on that silver coin is. They're going to want the metal itself so they can continue production. Yes, they're not going to melt down mercury dimes, ladies and gentlemen. They're not going to melt down the coinage. They're not interested in that. They just want the silver. That's the value. I'm always excited when I can understand something clearly. So I'm particularly thrilled right now. All right. So, Bill, you've published a new free guide called The Everything Bubble. People can get it at metaxismetals.com. Folks, you can find all this stuff at Metaxusmetals.com. Have we left anything out or have we pretty much covered it?

No, that's great. I would just add that ultimately here what that guide is going to do is it's going to give you in your own time, you know, take as long or short as you want to read through that. It's going to explain the case on where the market is, where the, you know, this everything bubble, what that means, what that could mean for your retirement, what the options are, what it looks like to purchase metals. It will give you the tools here so that before you ever make a call to someone like Grace Precious Metals, you're already going to have kind of all the information you would need to make. a, you know, a defensible decision here, are really a smart decision. And so our goal is to make sure that there's no pressure on you. There's no pressure on anyone that's picking up that guy. We want them to make their own decision, come to it at their own pace, and we're just here to be a resource. All right.

And that's why we're working together, Bill. I really appreciate that. Folks, please go to metaxismeddles.com. Metaxusmetals.com. Bill Armour. Thank you so much. Thank you. Every game, every weekend, Draft King's Sportsbook has you covered.

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