The Eric Metaxas Show - #214 - Stephen Kent

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

What do the stories you loved as a child reveal about who you are today?Stephen Kent, creator of Geeky Stoics and coauthor of Great Escape: 30 Reflections on Stoicism, Faith, and the Wisdom of Great Stories, joins Eric to explore why stories from C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Star Wars and other childhood favorites can shape the way we understand courage, meaning, faith and the world around us.They discuss Tolkien’s defense of escapism, why Stoicism has become popular with young men, the search for meaning in a culture increasingly dissatisfied with nihilism, and the surprising story of the “nihilist penguin” meme that Kent believes reflects a broader shift from pessimism toward hope.Eric and Stephen also discuss the new Narnia adaptation, the importance of wonder, the return of a culture that wants to build and dream again, and why revisiting the stories we loved as children may help us understand something about the people we were created to become.⭐ 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 Stephen Kent Joins3:23 Tolkien’s Defense Of Escapism6:03 How Stories Shape Young Minds8:02 Lewis, Tolkien And The Fight Against Nihilism11:43 Narnia, Meryl Streep And Greta Gerwig19:24 Why Stoicism Appeals To Young Men25:12 The “Nihilist Penguin” Meme28:58 “You Can Just Do Things”33:24 Why Big Dreams Are Coming Back40:21 What Childhood Stories Reveal About UsChapter 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, welcome to the program. As you know, I'm kind of eclectic, and I like to talk about different things. But it always somehow circles back to faith, C.S. Lewis. I can't help it. Today, my guest, a new guest, Stephen Kent, he has written a book called Great Escape, 30 reflections on stoicism, faith, and the wisdom of great stories. He is the man behind geeky stoics on YouTube. He's also the principal at Better Media LLC, a PR firm, I think.

And I'm thrilled to have him as my guest. Stephen Kent, welcome. It's very nice to be with you, Eric. Well, listen, I want to talk to you about the book and the ideas behind the book. You also wrote a book called How the Force Can Fix the World. this has to do with Star Wars. Do you see yourself principally as an author, as a thinker?

What's your bag, man? Man, I wish I could figure that out as a young guy just out there just doing things and then figuring out where it goes. The last time I was on book tour, I was in Dallas and doing Glenn Beck's show. I used to do movie reviews for Glenn and the Blaze. So I dropped in to talk about how the force can fix the world,

and all they did was make fun. of me for having never kissed a girl, apparently, if I was writing a book about the philosophy of Star Wars. But, you know, the more that as a conservative writer and PR guy, the more that I just lean into talking about the things that I love, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Star Wars, and how these stories shape young minds and build people's hearts out when they are young, you know, the more I find people actually just really love that stuff. They derive meaning from these stories. stories. Meaning, what's that? In these topsy-turvy times, who's to say whether meaning exists? But you and I are two of the guys who were crazy enough to believe it does exist. It's actually

important. I've spoken on the subject of what is the meaning of meaning. We don't have time for that right now. But I want to talk to you about your book, Great Escape. Now, I guess people my generation are older think of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, film The Great Escape starring Steve. That's how early it is in my time zone. I'm in Thailand, ladies and gentlemen. Steve McQueen, thank you. Yeah, yeah, Steve McQueen.

But your book is titled Great Escape, Nothing to do with Steve McQueen, correct? Yeah, that's right. You know, it's actually derived from Tolkien's essay on fairy stories. Well, Tolkien got it from Steve McQueen. Let's just be clear. I'm sure he did.

No, actually, Tolkien's essay on fairy stories is one of my favorite essays in the world. And so I'm thrilled that you brought that up. So go ahead, talk about it. Well, you know, the basic concept, and you hear this a lot when you talk to nerds, lovers of movies, things like Star Wars, for example. You know, do you want these stories to be escapist in nature? You want it to take you out of the world and put you in George Lucas's, galaxy far, far away, and you have really no thoughts, concerns, or connection to what's going on in the real world, things like politics. You know, that's a real bugaboo, particularly when it comes to

talking to conservatives about media. They, like, tend to want things to be unpolitical, which is totally fine. But Tolkien's essay really takes a defensive position on escapism, suggesting that the world that we live in, this isn't really where we're meant to be. And it's also him kind of cribbing, I think, a Chestertonian idea. G.K. Chesterton would write, but, you know, we're almost as if we're aliens on this world. We were not meant to be here. And his heart, and to be clear, Chesterton is cribbing it from the Bible. It just keeps coming, keep coming. Yeah, one after the next, you know, and his heart rejoiced when he realized that we were meant to be somewhere else with our creator. And so Tolkien's basic idea is that is, is it really wrong? And,

if you're a prisoner in a jail and you look out the window because you would like to be somewhere else. You know, you don't want to think of Earth as a prison. God did make it for us. But in many ways, we are spiritual beings in these bodies, and we are meant to be with our creator, meant to be somewhere else. So the book is called Great Escape. It's about taking that journey from raw materialism to a life of wonder.

And there are a lot of young men, particularly in our audience at geeky stoics, who are hungry for that. I think you can see it in the zeitgeist, Eric. Well, you can see it in the zeitgeist, not literally, as many people would like to misuse the word literally, but you can see it in the zeitgeist. It's an extraordinary thing. It's a good thing. And I see it as a reaction to the madness. We've kind of been drifting toward madness. And at some point, enough.

people say, wait a minute, we're getting close to the edge. There's an abyss there. Let's recalibrate. And I think that's part of what you're talking about and part of why I think folks will enjoy your book. What is geeky stoics before we get into the book more? This podcast that you've launched on YouTube called geeky stoics. When did that start? How did that start? Yeah, about two years ago, it really started kind of on that Star Wars track about looking at the philosophy within Star Wars, the light side, the dark side. But the main idea, and if you're familiar with shows like modern wisdom by Chris Williamson, you know, it's the idea that philosophy is all around us. Oftentimes we are living in philosophical systems that we don't even realize we are, you know,

kind of like fish to water, they don't even know what it is. And for a lot of young people, the first exposure, they ever get to a philosophy, a way of seeing the world and in understanding it, is watching Disney's Robin Hood, you know, from like the 1970s, watching this movie from the 90s called The Pagemaster, watching Star Wars. These things are like your self-help when you are a young person before you ever need a self-help book about optimizing your routines and trying to repair your focus and all that kind of stuff. I think that going back to the C.S. Louis and Chesterton pipeline. You know, I have it on the back of my shirt here, the quote from C.S. Lewis about how we need children to know about monsters and dragons so that they know that they can be

defeated or beaten. You know, that's really valuable to people. And so when you're a young person and you watch a story where a young guy faces a dragon, it's not about the idea that dragons exist. We all know that they're real. We believe in boogeymen under the bed at a very young age, but what you need to know how to do is slay those dragons, defeat monsters, or that's code for overcome challenges in your life. And, you know, I'm kind of well exposed to a lot of these ideas, but I find that, you know, you just put this idea out on YouTube and talk to people about it. It's news to them. They've never heard these things before. And so that's where Geeky Stoics comes from and it's it's been a lot of fun well the the the leftist mainstream media um

are not fans of c s lewis g k chesterton jr r Tolkien uh it's interesting isn't that that they um i've talked so much about uh lewis and talking over the years uh my friend joelacante you may know him i do yeah he just uh we we spoke just recently on how already In the 30s, 1930s, Lewis and Tolkien were fighting against the zeitgeist of their time. So this is 90 years ago. These modernist ideas were already in the ascendant. And it's just fascinating that their idea that we have to go back to stories of heroes and good and evil and chivalry and honor, that that was already countercultural, 90 years. ago. So we've been dealing, you know, with the drift toward nihilism and whatever else we might

want to call it for a very long time. We absolutely have. You know, I was reading a story last night from a year ago in City Journal. And they were reporting on this town of tech entrepreneurs in El Sabundo, south of Los Angeles. They call it the gundo. And basically, young men have been flocking there from all over the country to build technologies, to get involved in the defense industry, really taking a page from the world of Andurl. And what's the other big one? And Durrell, and I can't remember the other big tech company that's a Lord of the Ring, Palantir, a Palantir, another company with a tech reference to see, to J.R. Tolkien. And young men from all over the country are flocking to this town called the Gundo, not just to develop

new technologies to defend the West, which is how they're talking about it, amongst one another, which is remarkable. But they're also doing Bible studies every Friday, these tech entrepreneurs who are wearing mullets almost out of a belief that they can sort of time travel back to more simple times in America, where people believed in the country, were optimistic, wanted to build things. And so there's just so much hunger for traditionalism, or more so a rejection of the black pill, that we're all just going to stumble through this horrible life, then die and our molecules will become one again with the earth. People do not deep down believe that. They want more, and they are gravitating towards the people who are telling them the truth that there is

more to this life than what the progressive left and the mainstream media are telling us, that we don't have to be doomers about our existence here. And of course, Of course, the more, I touched on this a few minutes ago, but the more that the left has gained ascendancy, the more manifest is the paucity, I guess I would say, of what they have to offer. It's fascinating because, you know, when you finally get to see it, you think, really, that's it?

When they can still maintain the idea that there's a promise of something. But once you actually see it, because we've had enough time, there are most people, because we're created in God's image, we're looking for something transcendent. And I think young people, especially are waking up to the idea that this ain't it. You got anything else? So I'm very, very hopeful. I just want to add to that. I think that this is at the heart of the conversation or the budding controversy around what's happening with the Chronicles of Narnie.

I don't know if this was on your mind to discuss it today. I have talked. I wasn't on my mind to discuss it with you, but I'm happy to, and I discussed it quite recently with at least one of my guests. So please go ahead. Yeah, you know, I think that there's something here with the Greta Gerwig, you know,

having Merrill Street, voice Aslan, we've seen sort of these first images come out of the Chronicles of Narnia, which she's, you know, going to have a first male pronouns, right, voiced by a woman, though, red eye, blue eye, scales on his face. And people have been talking about Greta Gerwig as if she was raised Catholic, that she came up in sort of a traditionalist upbringing and, you know, that she's sort of weaving that into her stories. That's not really true. This woman is a Unitarian Universalist.

And you probably know more about this than I do. I've just been reading up over the past couple of weeks, but, you know, the Unitarian Universalist Church, I put it out in air quotes, in my town here in Manassas, Virginia is one of the most trafficked buildings in our city, you know, a parking lot full every week, because it is a spiritual institution that has no rules, no creed, you believe in everything and nothing simultaneously. You know, like if Christians worship the cross, Unitarian Universalists worship a question mark. We don't really know what they're about, but it reflects this desire that people have, particularly on the left, because that's what this institution caters to, to believe in something, but they are not willing to commit to a specific idea,

and they are imposing that on one of the greatest Western tales of the last century. She is making Aslan a Christ-incarnate in Narnia into a big question mark. Could be everything, could be nothing, maybe female, maybe male. Who's to say? Maybe God is a woman. That's where this is all coming from, is everybody right now across the culture left to right are in a seeking mode they're seeking for something bigger again and we got to lead people to truth but that also requires saying what the lies are well the idea of cast i think i said this on my ex account the idea of casting meryl Streep's voice for aslan it's like you know casting robert de nero for the voice of the

virgin mary um yeah you could do it but it's beyond dumb I hate when people use Beyond as an adjective, forgive me. But it is so dumb that it just beggars belief. But then you realize how lost Hollywood is. Folks like Greta Gerwig, they're just so lost. And they're really just casting about for something. I think part of it always has to do with wanting to be provocative, thinking that people will talk about it as we're talking about it now.

if we're provocative, if we make, you know, Helen blacker than Wesley Snipes, hey, that'll get people to talk, you know. And if we cast a woman as a Homeric hero, that'll get people to talk. It's kind of pathetic. I mean, it is pathetic. And then when you examine it, you know, you realize there's no there there. What is the point you're making? I have a more basic question is how in the world did C.S. Louis,

as a state consent, how much money did they need? How badly? Is there a drug problem? Why did they need this money so badly that they would allow Hollywood, basically, in the person of Greta Gerwig, to destroy a tale, not just to not do it justice, but effectively to destroy it. Because if you can't get that right, if it bothers you that Aslan is a male lion with a main, hey, with Maine, ladies and gentlemen. I think he's identifying as a male lion. If that bothers you, you've got bigger issues. So it's crazy to wonder what will the story end up being? Well, Gerwig was quoted as saying in a past interview that the idea of God the father was always somewhat alienating for her. And so what we are seeing is that put into action under the guise

of reverence. And it's a serious question about C.S. Lewis as a state, I don't know if they needed payday. I have heard that the manager of the estate is in bad health, and it's possible they kind of didn't really understand what was going on, because I also have misunderstood over the course of a couple of years, Greta Gerwig's background, the degree of her religiosity and where it actually comes from. It's possible they were duped. But we also know, and I think Eric, you and I understand that since the early 2000s, the world of Tolkien has sort of grown and risen in cultural relevance, the movies, the Lord of the Rings films by Peter Jackson were a huge success in the 2000s. At the same time, the Chronicles of Narnia movies were out. Lying the Witch

and the Wardrobe was a big hit, Prince Caspian, less so, and then the voyage of the Don Treter was a complete box office wipeout. And the Chronicles of Narnia and C.S. Lewis really faded from the culture while Tolkien became a household name. So this was kind of the big shot, right, to do a big movie with Netflix and bring Lewis back into, again, the zeitgeist, make him a household name again for a new generation. And they're doing this, you know, a complete faceplant right out of the gate. And this is coming from people who, for them, culture is graffiti on a statue. And for us, culture is shining up that statue and restoring it to its original state. You know, I live in Washington, D.C. where there's been all this faux controversy

about Trump cleaning up the statue outside Union Station and getting the fountains to work again. And this was a huge controversy here with all the leftists and Democrats. Oh, he's spending money on cleaning up the statues and having the fountains run water. Meanwhile, I go to Barcelona for vacation this summer. Every fountain in this entire city, dry,

covered in graffiti, drugs laying at the bottom, of these empty fountains. It was a beautiful, beautiful place. I would never return there. The entire city is a graffiti smear. And that's what we're dealing with here, a culture of return versus a culture of vandalism. And they're doing it to Narnia now too. 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 metaxismeddles.com. That's metaxis metals.com. Well, I mean, it's so funny. I remember when Giuliani, I grew up in New York, and, you know, the New York of the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, it was Sin City, it was filth, it was just everything wrong with everything. I mean, it was, you know, the first example of what leftist policies will do to a city, which, of course, harms people. And so when Giuliani comes in and cleans it up, radically cleans it up, I mean, staggers everyone's imagination.

Nobody dreamt New York could be cleaned up. Bryant Park was a needle park that turns into this oasis and on and on and on and on. The left railed against it, railed against turning Times Square, which was a zone of filth into the Disneyfication of now. I have criticisms of the Disneyfication of anything. I'm not a big fan of Times Square today. But to compare it today with the disgusting, foul atmosphere. That was there.

I mean, you wouldn't dare walk with your family through there. It's nothing but horn theaters and on and on and on. That's what the left is complaining about the eradication of that. They love that gritty world. Why? Because they don't live there. Because their lives aren't destroyed as the lives of people who are denizens of the old time squirt. They don't care.

And it's always strange. I mean, we've seen this over and over. They seem to have no problem with, you know, homeless encampments, and they seem it's, they think it's somehow cool. Of course, they're not living there. They're not, you know, they're not ministering to these people. Anyway, your book is titled, Great Escape, 30 reflections on Stoicism, faith, and the wisdom of great stories. So talk about that. What is the basic thesis? Have you already laid that out when you referred to that, to the quote? Yeah, you know, we're called geeky stoics, and stoicism is sort of part of what

do here because, one, young men across America are very interested in stoicism as a philosophy. This started getting coverage, I would say, maybe four years ago. Stoicism gained a foothold in Silicon Valley, kind of took off on the TED Talk circuit. You have influencers like Ryan Holiday kind of going out and promoting, you know, like I would call pop stoicism, you know, the best quotes of everybody. but while I like stoicism, I think stoicism has added value to my life, focusing on the things that you can control, abiding by nature whenever possible, all that kind of stuff is good. But that pop stoicism, while people are hungry for it, particularly on YouTube and in the podcast space, ignores some of the divine claims of stoicism. Also, it's focus on things such as the logos. What is the logos? That doesn't really work well in a self-help book. I think of this philosophy as useful to young people, particularly men, so that they are focusing their energies on the areas in which they have the most agency

and affecting change in the world using the strength that God gave them. It's sort of like cleaning up your room, like Jordan Peterson would have said, that everybody needs to clean up their room, practice ordering a small space in their life. But then what do you do? What did Jordan Peterson say in his book Beyond Order? He added a new rule, which was make one room in your house as beautiful as possible. So the principle is not just to clean, but to beautify, to tap into something else once you have practiced restoring order. And that's what our book is essentially about.

It's taking that journey from stoicism as sort of a secular self-help way to order your life and restore your agency. But then what do you do with that? Where do you take that to? So the book is cut into three sections. Focus. Focusing on certain things that you need to order. Balance. Not going too far in what you do, right?

Not being totalitarian in the way that you clean your room and order your life. And also trying to restore roots, basically making sure that you have a foundation that is sturdy that you stand upon. And for us, that is, of course, Christ. And then the third section of the book is wonder. You've had the focus. You've had the balance. Now, what are you going to do? You're going to head for the mountains, the high country.

You're going to search for a greater meaning in life. And that's what that book is ultimately about. And we weave in philosophy, the Bible, and also really great stories ranging from Star Wars, Narnia, Avatar, the Last Airbender, all sorts of different stuff and IPs that people would appreciate from the past 50 years. And you have a co-writer on this. I don't want to. I do, yeah. Riley, who is Riley Blanton? Riley Blanton is an Air Force intelligence officer who I've known for a little bit more than a decade,

a really great guy. And he's been actively engaged in a lot of this stuff you've been seeing in the news for the past year. And him and I are just both fellow travelers in this space. And we work on geeky stoics together. There's, of course, a huge audience for the stuff that we talk about in the U.S. military and in the Air Force, and particularly in Pete Hegset's Pentagon. And, you know, that's been an area where we've just been trying to, again, get people to order their lives and directed towards the highest good and towards hope and optimism. You know, if I may, the book begins with

something that Riley always found really interesting, which was the meme about the nihilist penguin. Have you ever seen this, Eric? I have, and I know you begin the book with that. And I was actually going to ask you about it. For those who haven't seen it, but please describe it. So you might recall when Donald Trump was talking about seizing Greenland, this online, there took off this meme of the United States planting an American flag in the Arctic and this penguin heading towards the mountains and all this kind of stuff. And there was this viral clip from an old documentary in the early 2000s, narrated by, Warner Herzog, in which a penguin is seen leaving the safety of his tribe, the other penguins,

and he is, as Warner Herzog says, neither returning to his kin nor to the feeding grounds, but he's heading into the mountains, for God knows what. It's just this lone penguin that's going to head off into the wilderness. Now, this meme originated on Reddit in the early 2000s. And it was described in bleak terms that this penguin was running off in the mountains to die because the world is dark and bleak. And you might recall that this is the age of climate dumerism, that we're all going to be dead by the 2020s from climate change and the world is really just a cursed place. For 10 years, this was a dark meme about nihilism. Then enters the age of Donald Trump and the Greenland thing.

And someone on TikTok changed the soundtrack to the penguin going into the mountains. And they added the theme of interstellar, this big, soaring soundtrack. And it changed the context of the meme completely. It made it big, hopeful, wondrous. And then people started talking about it differently. The meme changed because the culture has changed,

Eric. That's like a long, sprawling monologue about weird, online culture. But the point is that our culture is different than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Young people are largely more hopeful and interested in the big mysteries of life than they were 15 years ago. We are winning. We need to keep the pressure on. So that's what the book begins with. And it's something that Riley turned me on to as a way of thinking about how the culture is shifted. Of course, I'm thinking about the actual penguin. What the heck was the penguin do? It seems like, you know, this was a troubled penguin, a penguin that had lost its way, literally, not a good thing,

but as a representative of, you know, ideas, it is interesting how the culture has changed and how we have hope. I mean, I have to say, I think of myself as a very hopeful person that's rooted in my Christian faith, but Donald Trump in many ways has exemplified that powerfully and helped us to remember that, hey, we can do great things. Because I've grown up in a world where every fountain is broken and there's graffiti everywhere. And I honestly had ceased to think that that could be fixed. In other words, I had bought into the idea of at least some level of managed decline,

certainly in places, you know, in the big, let's say, blue state cities. The idea that you could fix a fountain, the idea that you could get rid of the graffiti. Suddenly, I think many people thought, wow, you know, we'd forgotten that you could have working fountains. And why is that? What does that say about the culture? What does it say about the culture that, you know, in the in the 1950s, you know, Eisenhower decides we need to create an interstate highway system, this huge idea. It's almost unimaginable today. What is it Let me hit you with another meme. There's another meme for this, Eric.

It's called You Can Just Do Things. This is something that, again, took off in the online space as sort of a quip or a quote. And you'll see people like Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg post things like this online. It's huge in the tech and AI development space. You can just do things. The answer to bureaucracy and rules and the worry-wark behavior, And the idea that we're all just on this conveyor belt to annihilation is not true. And we have hopeful young people and entrepreneurs taking the helm at some of the biggest companies in America right now who all say this meme to one another.

It's on T-shirts. It's used in graphics. I saw a guy at the gym the other day with a shirt that had this just emblazoned on it because it took off from the online space, you know, down to gym and bro calls. culture. You have agency. You can affect change in the world. And this is, again, I mentioned the gundo, this tech town south of Los Angeles. This is another one of their guiding slogans that we don't have to embrace sort of this doom of the future where nobody builds anything anymore. And Donald Trump got people talking about this. He said, you know, he wanted to restore manufacturing and re-industrialize America. And he was sort of making a mistake by wanting to try and bring us back to previous industries and previous forms of industrialization. But his idea at the

core was still true that Americans long to build things. We don't just want to be consumers. We want to actually make things with our hands. Now, I don't think we're going to make chairs and tables again. That might be done. But these tech entrepreneurs today are all about building chips, building new technologies, building nuclear power plants, and they are excited about it, and they're flocking to places that have an optimistic vision of agency,

of us to stop following these weird bureaucratic rules that say we're never going to do anything ever again. I love it. It's one of the more uplifting things that I think I've seen in the culture in a long time. Well, to me, it's astonishing. I mean, you know, again, I was mentioning the 50s in Eisenhower. We acquired two new states.

You know, all the flags had 48 stars and suddenly Hawaii and Alaska are added. That kind of, you know, it's been derided mostly as manifest destiny or whatever it is. But there's something, of course, beautiful about the idea of wanting to reach for the stars, wanting to put a man on the moon. I think of all the bridges that were built, George Washington Bridge, which is magnificent. I see it, you know, every time I'm driving in. to the city where I live. Yeah.

It's magnificent, and it goes up in 1932. You can hardly believe the scope of it. Obviously, there are other bridges around the city. The last big one was 1964, the Verrazano Narrows bridge. But it seems like at that point, we run out of that kind of energy. I mean, we still put a man on the moon in 1969. But something happens. Once you get past the 60s,

And we settle into this idea that we don't do that stuff anymore. I think of Lincoln Tunnel built in 1939, just absolutely amazing things. So the idea, I interviewed Peter Thiel at Socrates in the city, I guess about six years ago now, with his book zero to one. Because he's talking about this in that book, that we've ceased to, you know, do anything. We've ceased to dream. Yeah. What's that? He's a huge driver of the cultural change on this.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, I just have to say, as much as I appreciate Elon Musk, I think his idea of going to Mars, of populating Mars, is incredibly stupid. But it gives me confidence. It makes me feel better about myself that you can be that much of a genius and a trillionaire and have a really big stupid idea. Yeah. People, there are a lot of people who share his stupid idea. Well, there's a lot of stupid people. That could be smart people who share the stupid idea. I take that back, but yeah. I was in Nashville the other day, and I was talking to Jeremy Boring on his show about this, the Greenland thing. And I had to be honest and say, you know, one of the most excited feelings that I felt in many years, I'm 36, but politically excited about the future was actually when Donald Trump was trolling Greenland about us taking it over. Now, why is that?

Because I felt the same way. I thought to myself, this is so glorious. It's funny. The map. It's delightful. What's that? Because the map is set and it's so discouraging, particularly for younger generations, to look at the world and go, the borders are all set. There's no land left to discover all the countries that we see now. Things are always going to be the way that they are.

And Donald Trump is a guy who goes, no, maps change all the time. Maybe there is a way in which there's a new front. for American expansion. And look, my wife would never consent to me moving to Greenland, but I certainly would want to, even if it was really hard and horrible, and there was an effort to colonize Greenland and start building out communities, my heart yearns for that kind of thing, because the American myth, the American story, is that exact story. You mentioned Manifest Destiny, taking these big risks and doing westward expansion. Now, look, Greenland may not be the big deal. But let's talk about space. You know, there is something to be said for that.

One of my favorite books is Joseph Campbell's The Power of NIF. It's this one here. I read it. I read it often. It's the old interview that he did with Bill Moyers. And he talks about cultural heroes in this book and how cultural heroes are the people who answer a yearning that has gone unspoken to. Donald Trump answered a yearning that was going unspoken to with competition against China and returning to building things with our hand. There was no one in the American political world who was saying what people were feeling. And Elon Musk is kind of one of those people.

We grew up on sci-fi stories, and we gave up on them. I was promised self-driving cars by 2015 when I was a kid, and it's finally happening, and we kind of treat it like it's no big deal. Yeah, I was in Jeremy Boring's self-driving. a Tesla truck when I was on his podcast

and I thought, this is crazy. But I did, there was a little bit of Chaden Freuda when the truck could do everything magical except it could not avoid a pothole.

I thought that's interesting. I'm glad to know, it's kind of like, you know, I'm glad to know Elon Musk's has one really stupid idea, the idea that I know is stupid, you know, populating Mars, but because he's so brilliant

in every other way. Yeah. Honestly, It is, Trump has embodied that, now listen, I'm no fan of Joseph Campbell. I think he's new age in a very bad way. But there's things that he does talk about. And of course, Bill Moyers would rive at the thought that Trump is one of these heroes. But the fact is that he is and he has sort of excited us to dream again, to think again.

You know, people like me having just written my book in the American Revolution, I'm thinking about, you know, we almost had Canada in several. 1775 and 1776. We were, we were dealing, wheeling and dealing trying to get Canada. I was just last night, I'm at this TPPUSA event, talking to some folks from Canada who are here, who would love, you know, their country to be taken over by Americans. They'd love to be part of what we do here. And I think that there's a yearning in the world for that. And Trump has extraordinarily embodied that in ways. that have really surprised me that I had forgotten that we could do these great things to some

extent. I'd forgotten it too. You can just do things. You can throw something out there and see how the world responds. I mean, there is a very, very high likelihood in the coming weeks that Quebec is actually going to a like a separatist government in Canada. That could actually happen. And again, maps change. But it does take people who believe that the impossible hard thing might be possible. And I don't really want to ever live on Mars. I don't want my daughter to live on Mars. But let me just tell you in the audience, there's no atmosphere there. It would be like, it would be like saying, I'd like to live four miles under the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Let's do it. Yeah. But the point of the dream.

breathe there. Breathing is pretty important. You know, after a minute or so, it's going to get difficult. So I think people, because we've watched so much sci-fi, we just assume that you get out of the Star Trek Enterprise and you breathe, right? Except you never do. There is no atmosphere where you can breathe, not one except the one that God has given us here. I think it needs to be, maybe I need to have a conversation with Elon at some point about

that lack of an atmosphere being a deal breaker for me. But I still find it, it is exciting to think about this stuff. Hey, there is an atmosphere in Greenland. There is an atmosphere in Alberta, Canada. There's an atmosphere in Cuba. Who knows what tomorrow brings? No, who knows? And, you know, the idea of, you know, pursuing Mars, I think the benefit of that is not that you actually make it there, but that you're going to put people to work on that vision. You're going to create jobs and innovate new technologies, the kind of stuff that you have to do to get there. I mean, that could be what helps us here on Earth unlock weird technologies that make it easier to fly across the oceans quicker, to cut down on fuel costs for planes, to get rid of technologies that are completely outdated.

a Mars mission may not ever actually succeed, but who knows? The technology you produce in the meantime could be the thing that helps cure cancer or something like that. Those are the things that you just don't know what you're going to unlock when you put human beings to work on big, big goals that are beyond themselves. Well, I want to talk more. We just got a couple of minutes about your book. It's called Great Escape, folks. It's called Great Escape. You can pre-order a copy right now.

Great Escape, 30 reflections on Stoicism Faith, and the wisdom of great stories by my guest, Stephen Kent, and his co-author Riley Blanton. What else will people find in Great Escape? You know, I think that they will discover in this book or rediscover the love for the stories that they grew up on and really want to spend time rewatching some of the things. from their childhood that maybe that they haven't watched in a while.

You know, something that C.S. Lewis touches on quite a bit in his essays, you know, particularly on writing for children, is that we, when we are younger, there are hints of the way that God really made our hearts to be. You can see in your childlike interests and your childlike hobbies and your dreams, maybe the most true version of yourself. I know that we grow and we matured, true and in many ways the things of our childhood are things that we leave behind. But there's like

this nugget in those years that reveals something powerful to us. And I think when you read this book, I know when you read this book, you're going to be wondering, all right, what are the movies for my childhood that I'm dying to rewatch and why did it speak to me? I recently rewatched one of my favorites, an obscure film from the early 90s called The Pagemaster, featuring Christopher Lloyd and Macaulay Culkin. And he goes inside the world of classic literature. McCulkin has turned into a cartoon character and transported inside Treasure Island and Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hyde. And he goes on an adventure from being a germophobic risk-averse young man who's afraid to do anything to being someone who can actually face a dragon in a fairy tale. And I went, wow,

I loved this when I was eight years old. Why? Because I do deal with anxiety and risk-averse behavior. That's still something that I struggle with today. And God did not make us for that. God did not make us for a cloistered life of total safety. We are meant to do big things here on this earth because we have to manage his creation and managing his creation governing this place that we are meant to govern the animals, the plants, this world, governments. It's hard. And And we are meant to do those things. Young people need to be reminded of that. With Export Development Canada, Canadian businesses are competing, leading, and winning in more international markets. Like how agri-food businesses are strengthening global food supply, and critical minerals are powering industries of the future. Their ambition can't be contained.

And with EDC behind them, neither can their growth. Export Development Canada is the financial partner for Canadian businesses going global. Visit edc.ca for more. It seems like the plot of the Pagemasters, a little bit like the plot of the story and the film that I love called the Secret Garden. Actually, there are two versions of the Secret Garden. One was made, I guess, around 1940, and the other one was made, I think, by Agneska Holland, the great filmmaker around 1992, 93, but just it's a very similar thing.

And we need these stories. As you know, I'm just an advocate of these kinds of stories of Lewis and Tolkien, of their stories and of their ability to write about these things in the two essays that you've just mentioned. They really understood why these things are so important and so central. And I'll just throw in that when I became a father, you relive your childhood through your own child.

There's another reason to get married and have kids because you rediscover these things. And it can be like a second childhood through your own children. It's an important thing. So we're out of time, but I'm just so glad to get to know you a little bit, Stephen Kent. Congratulations on the book, Great Escape. Is there another website that people should go to? I know we've mentioned geeky stoics on YouTube. is there another one?

You know, I think you've hit them. Geeky Stoics on YouTube. You can find the book at greatescapebook.com. And I'm always on Twitter mouthing off about something at Stephen Kent X. Stephen Kent X on Twitter.

And the book, you said, Greatescapebook.com. Yes, sir. Greatescapebook.com. All right, Stephen Kent, a joy to get to know you. Look forward to talking to you more and meeting you in person at some point. God bless you. Thanks for coming on today.

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