The Eric Metaxas Show - Ask Metaxas - Premiere

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

It's the premier episode of a fun new hour, "Ask Metaxas," where listeners email questions and Eric takes a stab at answering them -- and producers Albin and Chris are on hand to help with the stabbing!

Hey, folks, I challenge you to think of at least one thing you no longer do that you wish you could. Do you miss like playing golf, maybe long walks with your spouse sleeping through the night? Are you ready to start living without pain? My colleagues and friends, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Mike Gallagher, have been talking about their own successful experience with Relief Factor. And you can add Eric Mataxis to that list. Relief Factor is changing the lives of tens of thousands of Salem radio listeners by reducing and even eliminating daily aches and pains.

Relieffactor.com is full of great success stories, and now I am on board. For just 1995, ReliefFactor is offering a three-week quick start that could help you live your life with little and no pain. Go to ReliefFactor.com to see testimonials from folks all over the country. I love reading them. Over 70% of those that try Relief Factor continue as a customer. Feel the relief and get back your independence and freedom from the aches and pains of everyday life. Go to Relieffactor.com. Read the testimonies.

I tell all my relatives to take it. relief factor.com. Tags are, anyway, a friend of mine said he could get them off way cheaper than some dumb doctor, and I've got a ton of them, which would be real expensive. So I went over to his house, and he pulled out some dental flaws and wrapped it around each of the tags. And out, it hurt like heck. Speaking of infected, and now you're host, Eric Montaxter. You know, that is probably the sweetest introduction I've ever received.

Todd, man, you're just, what a sweet man. What a sweet, wonderful, sweet person. Yes. He is. Hey, we've got, this is a great day. Oh, it is. Can I tell you why? Can I tell you? Are you ready? I'm excited. I'm excited. I know. I know. We are launching. And I mean launching, Kapau, launching into the stratosphere, a new feature on this program. We're going to be doing this probably once a week, I hope. We'll do this once a week, which is where we spend a better

part of an hour with people who send in questions, and I'm going to answer the question. So if you have a question. You send it in via my personal website. This is my personal website. I don't even let Suzanne, my own wife, look at this website. It's personal. Ericmetaxis.com. You can go there because you were friends. Even Eric Mataxis. Even Eric doesn't go there. Even I try not to. I feel uncomfortable because it's so private. Ericmetaxis.com. There's tons of stuff there if you want to read poems that I've written. If you want to read essays I've written, if you had this all kinds of videos, my testimony. But the point is that where it says contact, if you send you in a question there, we will try to answer it.

And when we come back, this is starting in the next segment and for the rest of this hour, I am going to answer questions we've received. If you don't have fun, something's very wrong. Very wrong. Something's very wrong. Now, Albin, you know what? We could kick this off with letters because I've received letters from people, and these are some kind of questions.

And because I think on Fridays we're going to try to do this where we just have fun, whether it's a Fun Facts Friday segment, or we're going to do that in an hour, too. an hour two, we're going to do a truncated version. I've got some interesting things to bring out. We're going to do fun facts. Okay, so here's the thing. Well, two quick reminders, and then I'm going to read three. We got three letters.

Some of these are very provocative, even nasty. Are you ready? Okay. Before we go to those letters and before we go to Ask Metaxus, I want to remind folks, honor-bound coffee gives all of their profits. Not a typo. I'm not miss speaking. 100% of their profits goes to help,

military families, how could I not rave and rave about honor bound coffee? Now, it's coffee connoisseurs coffee, so this is like really very high quality coffee. Suzanne and I drink it absolutely every day. We wish we could drink it in the afternoon, but we can't because, hey, we could drink decaf in the afternoon. You could. I just thought. Yeah. What's wrong with me? You got to order decaf me. Okay, well then let me just say that honorbound coffee gives 100% of their profits to helping military families. And this is the coffee from the top of the the pot. It's not that bottom of the pot coffee. This is the talk. It's not the dregs. This is the best coffee. Actually, it is. Okay. So I'm, I'm going to be shamelessly pushing honorbound coffee. You go to

honorbound coffee.com and check it out. This is just, it's just a tremendous thing. And, you know, by the way, the other day we ran my interview with the people behind it. That's Pete and Seth Talbot. Pete is the father. Seth is the son. These are just tremendous human beings. They're behind relief factor and they've launched this new coffee company to help military families. And in the interview that I do with them, which you can see at our YouTube channel, you get to know them and you just think, man, there are some wonderful people out there. These are two of the most wonderful people. When you hear their stories, and Seth, the son, is a big advocate of adopting special needs kids. He talks about that on the program.

So if you want to watch that video, I highly recommend it, honestly, just so you understand who you're dealing with. Pete and Seth Talbot, I interviewed them recently. You go to YouTube Eric Metaxus show and check it out. Okay, so before we go to Ask Mataxis, we're going to read some letters. Albin, are you ready? Oh, we're ready. All right. First, I'm going to read the mean one first.

Okay. You ready? This is V. Groff from Aya, Hawaii wrote. He says, you don't realize that you've been pushing a relief factor with testimonials. And then you interview Dr. Minto, that's Linda Mintel, about her book on pain management without even bringing up relief factor. Who should believe a word you say when hawking products looks to me like you're a phony. Fony signed V.

Now let me tell you, V, that hurt my feelings because you saw right through me. I am a phony, but not when it comes to relief factor. Now, this is interesting. I was doing the interview with Linda Mintel, I thought somebody's going to be thinking this. So I'm actually grateful for V. Grave for writing this. Well, I'll explain it. It's very simple. First of all, not everybody is helped by relief factor.

Most people who take relief factor like I do have aches and pains that, you know, are easily dealt with, I would say, okay? Because relief factor, which I do take all the time, and I notice when I don't take it for my lower back pain and that kind of thing, it really does work, okay? But Linda Minnell is talking about all kinds of stuff. I mean, I have a friend, a dear friend, Eva, listens to this program. she's dealing with either bone cancer or some really horrific stuff. Relief factor is not like a cure-all. I mean, if you have pain from cancer or whatever it is, there's all kinds of pain. So I think it would have been unseemly for me in the middle of an interview with a woman who's literally written a book on the subject to say, hey, what about relief factor? I mean, first of all, it would be self-serving because a relief factor is a sponsor of the program.

But secondly, there's a whole world out there of pain management. And I can't really say that, hey, pop an aspirin or take an Advil or take a relief factor. I mean, of those three, I would pick relief factor. But there are cases where you really are very, you'd be very, very short-sighted if you thought that that's the only way to deal with something. Yeah. And she was touching on the opioid crisis as well a little bit. Yeah. So Vigraf in Iowa, thank you for your mean-spirited note to us.

Thank you. We forgive you. We're obliged to. Yes. But I don't want to, but I do. And actually, I thank you for your letter. No kidding. Because it gives me an opportunity to explain.

Other people were thinking. Explain that. Yeah, but I mean, again, like we're talking about hardcore pain issues and relief factor. The people, Pete and Seth Talbot, whom I just mentioned, they would be the last ones to say that this is like a cure all, whatever you have pain. I mean, you know, folks that we're trying to. Anyway, but I guess I'm glad that when we do this Ask Metaxus thing, that we have an opportunity to answer all kinds of. of questions and and and i we're not starting that officially till you know three minutes from now but just to say that i we appreciate these letters we got another letter um wow this is as positive

as that one was harsh uh this is from mark st paul minnesota when i read this stuff i almost got tears on my eyes he says dear eric i've been listening to christian talk radio for eight years now over seven thousand hours and you yours has become my favorite show You are Robin Williams, clever, quick, funny with a C.S. Lewis vocabulary. I'm going to get that printed up. I'm going to have that stitched onto a sampler and hand that down to the generations through my family. That is the nicest compliment. Robin Williams with C.S. Lewis vocabulary.

Your commitment to Jesus is inspiring. Your guests are amazing. Kudos to Albin or whoever finds them. I'm a member of your podcast app and try to never miss an episode. I just donated to Steve Stewart's ministry. We played that this Monday. Wow, do we all need to hear these stories? You'll be in my prayers.

Keep carrying the torch. The light of the world shines bright in the darkness. You're very appreciated. God bless you, your family and your marvelous team. Mark St. Paul, Minnesota. Ladies and gentlemen, you know, we get a lot of different letters, and I'm going to try to read as many of them as I can. But that means more to me than people probably realize.

They probably think Eric is a full of himself jackass. And the point is, look, I am a jackass, but I'm not full of myself. I've been humbled by the Lord more than you realize. So imagine how horrible I would be if I weren't professing faith. We got another note here. Actually, we're not going to have time to get to that one. Let me just say, in the weeks ahead, I'm interviewing Ross Douthit. He's a New York Times colonist, just came out with an extraordinary book, Ross Douthit.

We have Charlie Kirk coming up next week. We've got a number of pretty outrageous guests. Do we have Denise McAllister coming back? I thought she was going to be back. I think she's coming back. I remember she was on the, yeah. And, of course, KT. McFarland coming. Oh, KT. McFarland.

And don't forget, Ken Fish. Yes. Ken Fish, he'll be in the studio the end of next week. I don't think we'll be able to get it on the air that day, but very soon, I cannot wait to see Ken Fish talk to him again, share that with you. Oh, before we go, a couple of seconds, just to remind you, we're doing a fundraise with food for the poor. They are feeding families starving in Guatemala.

This is real. We hope that you make it part of your giving to do this kind of giving. Go to our website metaxis talk.com. Metaxistalkis talk.com. You'll see the banner. God bless you. We'll be back with Axe Mataxis. Hey, folks, we are launching a new segment on the Eric Metaxis show.

It's called Axe Mataxis. All right. Or Ask Metaxus. But people are going to be able to write into our website. Ericmettaxas.com and ask me any question you like. We're not going to get to all the questions today, but we're going to do our best to get to as many as possible. I have in my corner to help me my team,

Albin SADAR, is that how you say it? Seder. Yeah, hold your applause. And Chris Himes. Hello. Chris, you know we try to get Artie Lang and we couldn't get him. So we got you. But you're unshaven.

You got the leather jacket. We also had hoped to get. I want my crew to be. here, you know, I wanted Robin Givens, Rob Bartlett, and Bernard McGurk, and Artie Lang. And you know what? None of them were available. So I'm stuck with you guys. So Albin and Chris, you guys, you ask me the questions. And I'm going to do my best to answer them. Some of these will be very serious and long and others will be less serious and short. And they're real questions, too. They're not ones we may not. These are people that have written into us. Some give their names, some don't, right?

So I just want to add, since I haven't met these people, when I ask the questions, I'm going to do my best impression of them. Of that person, just based on the name. I think that that could be racist and potentially something that gets the show canceled. But you know what? You only live once. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah.

Okay, Paula, don't know her background, but Paula asks this, you have interviewed so many incredible people. But what three people from any time period would you most like to interview if you could? That is easy. Three people I would most like to interview from any period in history. Jesus, Buddha, and David Niven. Next question. Actually, I'm not kidding. The reason I say that is because I remember once about 30 years ago, I was in a Chinese restaurant in Boston, in Brookline. And they had one of those mats that says like the Chinese horoscope, right? And we're reading it. And it says like, you're the rat, you're the monkey. And then it tells you famous people born during that year. One of them said Jesus, Buddha, David Niven. And I thought something is wrong with this, because the idea that you would have Jesus,

Buddha, and David Niven, it doesn't make sense. I know Jesus personally, I've never met David Niven or Buddha. But, okay, now I have to answer the question seriously. Yeah. I don't know. That's a question. I'll have to answer that at another time because people. People always ask that, and I don't, I actually don't think there's an answer.

I think there's an infinity of people that I would love to interview. So I'm not going to answer that. I'm going to take a, I'm going to pass. Are there three people you definitely don't want to interview? That's a flip side of that. Jesus, Buddha, and David Niven, ironically. Yeah. Okay.

So, Chris, you ask the second question. Yeah, okay, this question is from a guy named Pete. How is Ilan Omar still in office? shouldn't she even be a citizen, according to numerous press articles, unless it's all fake news? By the sword and the scimitar is an excellent book. My family escaped the slaughter in 1921 in Asia Minor. They managed to escape to the Greek mainland. Some of the atrocities my grandmother talked about, which I thought were tales, are mentioned in that book.

How is she still in office? I'm sorry, what? Hey, Pete, was there a question there? I assume Pete is Greek. And Pete, as your fellow Greek, when you're asking a question, you need to form it in the frame, you need to phrase it in the form of a question. I think the original question was how is Ilhan Omar still in office? And the thing is, she was elected, and until they unelect her, she will be in office. I have great hope that the fact that, I mean, this is not a joke.

We are now almost certain that she did marry her brother for fraudulent reasons, you know, and we're looking into that. But I have no idea. I didn't want to talk about the slaughter in Asia Minor, horrible, horrible stuff. But so I, that's all I'll say on that topic. In the interest of getting further in this list, because we've got so many questions, I will say she's still in office because she was elected. And in America, you know, it's hard to. to get somebody out of office until they get unelected. Unless you impeach them. Or you can impeach them. That always works. Okay. Okay. Now, here's question number three. Are you related to Ionis metaxus?

Ionis. Yeah. Did I pronounce it correctly? I think you mean Ionis. Ionis. And it's metaxas. The Greek people say metaxas. A little rusty over here with you. Metaxis. Metaxas. All right. People often ask me if I'm related to Ionis metaxas. The answer is no. I probably am distantly related he is from the same island as we're from or at least he's from Ithaca which is the neighboring island but a lot of people in Greece are named Metaxus is kind of like Kennedy in America

you know there's just like there are Irish names you hear a lot that that's a Greek name that's not that rare but Ioannis Metaxus for those who don't know he was a fascist dictator in Greece but he was kind of a good fascist he was not one he was not a brutal totalitarian dictator and this was one fascism you know, was kind of a political movement before Hitler and Mussolini gave it kind of a bad name.

But I'm not related to him. He died in 1941. And famously, he said when the access forces still included Italy, before Italy broke with Germany, Mussolini to impress Hitler decided that he wanted to march through Greece. And so he sent his foreign minister at 3 a.m. to knock on the door of Ioannis Metaxis to wake him up and to say, you know, we want to march through Greece to the south to go to Africa. and if you don't, you know, do this, it's going to be war. And Metaxus said, say la Gere, then it's war. But it was made famous by the word Ohi. The Greek word Ohi means no. And every year we celebrate Ohi Day, which was the day that Metaxus stood up to Mussolini and the Nazis.

And I think many people would say that because the Greeks, heroically fought the Italians, they enabled enough time to pass because of their heroism so that by the time Hitler marched to Moscow in the Barbarossa campaign, winter set in. So the Greeks in their heroism, in their ability to say no, they were able to help the allies win World War II, just saying. Okay then. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Chris, your turn. All right. What motivated you to become an author? What motivated me to become an author? That is so easy.

Hunger, fear of starving, fear of being put out on the street. But to be more, you know, rambling about it, I guess when I was in high school, I always gravitated toward the humanities. And then when I got to college, I realized this is just, all I care about is reading the great books. And so at some point, I'd want to be a political science major, but I took one political science course, hated it, and decided that I wanted to be writer. I didn't know what that meant at the time. I didn't know that it would mean decades of penury and misery.

Had I known, I might have become a banker or a lawyer. But I just had a love for writing. And sometimes, I think, to be perfectly honest, you don't know what else to do. I really think that that's the only thing that I could do. And so that's why I did it. There you go. Thank you. Did you ever work anything on anything particularly menial, like a Chinese food?

Menial. I had nothing but menial jobs. Oh, my gosh. I did every menial job. I mean, I even was working when I was 12. You know, Greeks don't believe in the law. The law says you can't work until you're 16. They're like, you work as long as you can, like, if you want to eat in this house, you work.

So I got a job as a, I was washing dishes for Joanna Biniaris. That's a friend of the family. She had a diner in a coffee shop in Bethel, Connecticut. So on Saturdays and Sundays, I washed dishes there at age 12. Uh-oh. And until ICE found out I was there. And then I had to get out, had to get out the back door. And then.

That was your personal Oki Day. I've had a million, I've had a million menial jobs. I did house demolition. I did painting condos, which was. was really horrible the summer of... My wife and I need our condo painted this summer. Really? I know I can hook you up.

Thank you. No, I did so many other jobs. And that's why people say becoming an author, like, first of all, you don't become an author. You become a writer because to be an author, it's like, I think it's three levels up. First, you have to write, you have to get somebody to pay you to write. It ain't easy.

It ain't easy. Do we have time for one more question? Real quick one. Can you explain to me what you mean when you say, I am very pro-Catholic. Well, I think there are some people who used to be, who grew up Catholic, who hate the Catholic Church. Then I think that there's some Protestants that are so theologically hidebound that they are

anti-Catholic in their Christianity. I am not. I sat at the feet of the great Chuck Colson, who always saw a coalition between serious Catholics and serious evangelicals. So I have many Catholic friends and respect for the Catholic Church. Obviously, I'm not ready to swim the Tiber and become a Catholic, but I have tremendous respect for the Catholic Church. We're out of time. I will leave it at that.

We'll be back with more Axe Metaxus. It's the Eric Mataxis show. I can barely hear myself in this microphone, but I am assured that you can hear me. This is the Ask Metaxus part of the show. We're going to do these. I'm sitting here with Chris Himes and Albin Seder, and we get all these questions. in and I'm I'm flattered that people want to know my opinions on these different things. Some of these are serious. Some of these are less serious.

But I thought we need to do this once a week because people write in, you have to write in via Eric Mataxis.com. So let's go to the questions. Let's go. All right. The next one is, I wanted to ask, what is the brand and model of your glasses? The brand and model of my glasses. What glasses? Are the ones you're wearing? I can't see them.

Oh. Yes. Oh, these glasses. They are, these particular glasses are Oliver Peoples, L.A., O.V.5183, O'Malley. Does that mean anything? I don't know. Oliver Peoples. I've worn other glasses that look like this.

But I don't, you know, I don't shop for brands, but I pretty much get the same. same glasses. That was a very specific question, and I could answer it very easily. You knock that one out. Okay. Yeah, here's question number seven. Now, this is going to take a little more thought. Have you noticed, and I think you may have, but have you noticed the war in America on masculinity? What should we do about it? That's two questions. I know. First one, have you noticed the war in America on masculinity? It's not ringing any bells. Oh, the war on masculinity, yes. Not only have I noticed it, I've written two books, at least, that purport to deal with it. It seems to me that there is a war in masculinity. I think anytime there's a war on anything that God has made, God created men and women in his image. And a war on masculinity, just like a war on femininity, which we're also seeing in a way, these are, these are, these. These are attacks on God himself, in my opinion.

And the question of which we should do about it, many, many things. First of all, we need to be aware of it. And the Bible says, for example, honor your mother and your father. We live in a culture that denigrates men, and that's not what God commands us to do. He commands us to honor our parents, honor your father. A lot of TV denigrates dads and stuff. and understand that that's just wrong. Being respectful to your father is a way of honoring him.

But in my book Seven Men and in my book Seven More Men, which is coming out soon, I lift up what I consider ideals of manhood. These are great men. They're not perfect men, but they're great men who've done great things. And I think one of the ways you combat the negative stereotypes of men is by forcing yourself to look at positive models of. men. And in my first book, I have Jackie Robinson. I have Chuck Colson. I have people that lived beautiful, heroic lives. None of them is Jesus. They're all, you know, men like we are

sitting here, but they really did some heroic things. And we need to celebrate that. And in the new book, I write about George Whitfield and a number of others. So what I do about it is I talk about it. And I've had guests on this program that have dealt with these issues. Mary Ebersstadt talked about it a little bit. And I think that the main thing we can do is just be aware of it. And understand that when you hurt men, you're hurting women. There's no such thing as being able to hurt one group and hurt the other. We're both created in God's image.

And when you attack one, you hurt the other. So I'll leave it at that. Would you consider growing a mustache as some way to fight against? it with that. You know something? I am considering that. I'll be honest with you, and this is totally true. I'm growing a mustache this second. I am. You can't see it, but it is growing imperceptibly. Now, probably tomorrow morning, I'll shave off what I've grown, but that doesn't mean I'm not growing it. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you hear me? Okay.

Well, put a pin in it. Okay. And then you have a question. I do. This question, I don't really get it, but I'm going to ask it. How can you run a restaurant when people can eat for free? Okay, the question that has come to us via my website, Eric Mataxis show, sorry, Ericmataxis.com. The question comes in, how can you run a restaurant when people can eat for free? Yeah. Okay, so far, so far, that's the dumbest question we've gotten. That's funny.

I'm not trying to put you down, but by submitting that question, I think you may have put yourself down. We don't know what you mean. Can you make head or tail of this? Well, it's a, you know. The person who asked this question is probably the- Some people are opening these like pay-what-you-want type restaurants maybe. Oh, you think that's where this is going? I don't know.

Or it's maybe when people can eat for free? First of all, where can eat people eat for free? At home, I think is what they're saying. But they're still paying for the food. It's not free. They've missed the, if they're being funny, I think that's what they mean. I can eat at home for free. Why do I go out for us?

I have no idea what that question means. So we're going to, I'm sorry. A cranky dad, my house. I'm really sorry, but we don't have a clue. We don't have a clue. All right. Here's question number nine. Can you come to Oklahoma sometime?

You know, that's easy to answer. The answer is no, I can't. There's something in my contract that says no to Oklahoma. I thought there was a warrant out. And I have to tell you that it may have to do the fact that I was caught speeding there. No, actually, not only can I come to Oklahoma, I've been to Oklahoma. I was there this past year. And whenever people say, can you come here, can you come there?

My answer is always, I'd be delighted to come, but somebody has to invite me. I can't just show up and be like, hey, I'm in Oklahoma. Where's the crowd? You have to invite me. So if anybody wants to invite me to speak at a church or at any event, you have to go to our website, Eric Mataxis.com. Contact us. And I'd be delighted to come to Oklahoma.

Why wouldn't I? We'll be right back. This is the Eric Mataxis show, and we are doing a special show called Ask Metaxus. I guess that's a Metaxus. And when we do Axis metaxus, my friends, Chris and Albin, you ask me questions. And you can participate in the conversation if we have time because these are questions we get from our website, Ericmetaxis.com. If you want to ask me anything, we'll write it down. If we don't get to it this week, maybe we'll get to it next week or the next week of the next week.

We're going to try to do these every week. All right, what's next? Okay, let's go. This is question 11. How do you handle criticism, especially in regards to your writing? How do I handle criticism? You know, the more time passes, the less I am bothered by criticism. I think it's because you get used to it, and you start realizing everybody has a point of view.

So the criticism may not be valid at all. It may be simply somebody's opinion. You like red. They like blue and they criticize you, you know, for using too much red. I think that you have to try to weigh what they're saying is what they're saying true. And if it's true, I got criticism for my Bonhofer book from a number of circles. And I thought, is what they're saying true or do they just dislike me or dislike my thesis or something I say? And I came to the conclusion because I really do care if you're writing a book of history.

that most of them, they just didn't like, you know, the cut of my jib. And so they were looking for nitpicky stuff. And they would make grand claims. Like I paint the picture of Bonhofer as an American evangelical, which is, frankly, nonsense. I use so much of his own writings, his diaries, his letters, whatever. He's the one that paints himself that way. But people are going to think what they're going to think. I think ultimately you have to be honest with yourself and say, like, do I care what's true?

If I care what's true and I care what God thinks to me, that's the only criticism that I'm going to let get to me. And just because there are people out there who are, you know, angry or nasty, you have a different point of view. You can't really let it get to you. But I think you have to have a deep sense of who you are in God. Otherwise, you will get rattled by that. Not that I never do, but I can. Yeah, yeah. All right.

Chris. All right. I've started writing my first novel, but I get distracted or discouraged. I'm still in that stage when I only feel like writing when I'm inspired. How do I develop into a real writer? Well, first of all, what makes you think I'm that kind of a real writer? I think writing is so hard. Most of the time I'd rather go to the dentist, and I'm not joking.

It's not just because I have a great dentist. It's because writing is really hard. I think that this is not a joke. If I didn't have bills to pay and debts to pay, I don't know how I would have gotten through writing my first book on Wilberforce or my book on Bonhofer. It was a financial gun to my head that forced me to do something that if I had freedom, I would have wandered off to do a crossword puzzle or to turn the TV on. I think that this idea that we're supposed to be able to just write whenever we're supposed to be able to write, I think some people are able to develop good habits. And I think that developing a habit

of sitting someplace for a certain period of time of day, no matter what you're writing, just don't get up. You're just going to be stuck there or you may get up to get a glass of water, but you come right back. I think good habits are very, very important, but I think that it's a normal thing. We can talk about more of that another time. So do they sell financial guns at Walmart, or is that word of? Financial guns. Where can I get one of those? What you have to do is get either a mortgage or rent, and that's pretty much, that's pretty much what we're talking about. Yeah. Okay, here's a, here's a serious one. We got this question a couple of times. This is from Ron. He says, I'm having trouble reconciling Trump's evangelical base and Hitler's embrace of the Reich Church.

Right. Do you, Eric, see parallels between Hitler's embrace of religion with Trump's in their rise to power? Well, you know, I have to say that I've only written one 600-page book on this period in history, so far be from me to understand it. But from what little I know in the years of research that I did, there are parallels. But when you look more deeply, you realize that they don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. When I first encountered Trump on the national scene, I thought the same thing. I actually had to be honest and say, are there parallels? Could this be the guy that I feared when I was writing my book on Bonhoeffer, that this could happen anywhere? And I think that there are parallels, but the parallels are superficial.

It took me a while to get that. So I understand why people quickly say like, hey, what's going on? He has these authoritarian tendencies and on and on and on. But when you look a little bit more deeply, it's laughable. And so people who say this as though I don't understand my own book, let me tell you, it is you who don't understand history. Adolf Hitler, if you really understand that period of history, you'd be embarrassed. embarrassed to make the parallels because we have a constitutional government here. We have 250 years of stability. And the idea that somebody could just come in and snap their fingers and do what they

want, Trump has critics on the left and on the right. We have three branches of government. We are not about to lie down if somebody were to come in and to do what Hitler wanted to do. And as far as the church goes, you really don't understand what the Reich Church was. The Reich church was a fake church. The serious Christians in America who support Trump are very serious Christians. The Reich Church was basically a nationalistic church. The idea that we have anything that amounts to that in the United States is wishful thinking on the parts of Trump haters. Honestly, that's nonsensical. And the idea that Hitler was expressly anti-Christian. He and all of his top lieutenants despise the Christian faith and only use the church cynically.

There are enough people that I know around Trump who are sure that that's not the case. He has surrounded himself with a vice president, with Secretary DeVos, with Secretary Carson, with Mike Pompeo, and on and on and on, down the line of people who are very serious Christians. Hitler was surrounded by people who were far more anti-Christian than he was. They despised the Christian church. He was the one that told him, no, no, no, let them. Let's play patty cake with them until we can use them for our purposes. But this kind of overstatement, this exaggeration of the parallels is something that I want to say, and I have said, is really ridiculous.

And if you understand how governments work and if you understand how the Nazis did what they do, you would never make this. In a sense, when people make this claim, they are revealing their historical ignorance, I want to say, as somebody who studied this period. So you can have all the criticisms you want, but this ain't a good one. I think we're out of time. Yeah, we're out of time. Holy cow. Well, thanks for listening to our first episode of Axe Metaxus.

It's tastes as long as like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither wild day as they slip away across the year. Today's Friday, which can only mean one thing. Yesterday was Thursday. Actually, it can mean two things. Tomorrow's Saturday. All right. In hour one today, we did ask metaxus.

All right. So this is still hour one. In hour two today, we're going to continue the fun. Ladies and gentlemen, you thought that was the end of the fun? Oh, I beg to differ. Excuse me. Excuse me. I beg to differ.

Fun facts Friday. coming up in hour two albin how can we possibly cram this much fun i don't know i i do not know i mean it's like you need a shoehorn we do like this is not normal it's not um fun facts friday and actually if that's not enough man we got a couple other things to share with you this is this is straight up nuts it is in our two alvin you are alvin you are alvin you are alvin you are going to share it's albin with a Well, you know why, because what I'm going to say has an AV in it. Oh, that's right. You're going to share an avocado, your personal avocado story.

Oh, who doesn't have 100 avocado stories? But Albin is going to share his avocado story. Wait till you hear this. I'm not kidding. I find this funny. So you've got to share it. So in hour or two, you're going to do, we're going to do Fun Facts Friday. We got the avocado story.

And if that's not enough, oh, my goodness, part three with Ezra Levant. We have not finished with Ezra Levant. You yesterday you heard his story, but we still have a little more. We'll play that in the next hour, a couple of segments coming up with Ezra. It is nuts. We'll start with Ezra Levant. We'll get that out of the way because that's like the really serious stuff. And then we're going to have so much fun.

It might hurt. I just want you to sit down, get comfortable. You might want to have a cool beverage there. And, man, we're going to have so much fun. Since we're going to have so much fun in the next few minutes, I think it wouldn't be a bad time to mention. that we're doing something with food for the poor. Now, I keep saying this is an opportunity for you. The reason it's an opportunity, I'll be honest,

it's because people in Guatemala, where Food for the Poor is currently focusing their efforts, people are so poor in Guatemala, and the economy is so broken that our money in the West goes extremely far in Guatemala. So it's almost crazy not to take advantage of this horrible situation to bless these people. What am I saying?

I'm saying that food for the poor right now through this program says that for $80, this sounds like I'm making it up, for $80 you can feed a kid for one year. That is, again, how the economy is so broken in that place that $80 American dollars can feed a kid for a year. Most of you listening, you've got some American dollars lying around. For four times that much, $320 you feed a family of four. for a year. Now, the $80 and the $320, I didn't mention that you feed them for a year and you give them water for life. These places, most of them do not have clean sources of drinking water or sources of clean drinking water. They have to walk for miles. I mean, these are such heartbreaking stories. All I can tell you is if you have any ability to give, this is just one of the

greatest leveraging opportunities to take the little money that we have and to bless and entire family. There are people out there who can give a lot more. We always say anything you give, you're entered in a grand prize drawing. We have five huge grand prizes. You can visit the studio. We're going to send you tons of signed books, you know, all kinds of stuff. All you do is just give anything, right? You don't even have to give $80. Anything you give. But I want to say that anybody who can give $10,000, that's dinner with us, spend the evening with us. It's just a wonderful thing. It's tax-deductable.

Think how much that translates to helping people if you can give more than $320. So we want to encourage you. You go to our website. It's just metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner metastastalk.com. Or you can call the number 844-863 Hope. Again, 844-8663 Hope. 844-863 Hope.

Dial it now. 8463 Hope.