The Eric Metaxas Show - Craig Stanfill and Andy Erwin

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Andy Erwin, half of the film-making Erwin Brothers, talks about "The Jesus Music Movie;" and Craig Stanfill shares "Terms of Service," about artificial intelligence and government coercion.

to the Eric McTaxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey, folks, as you know, this is the Eric Mataxis show. And as you also know, whenever you read one of those websites, it always says Terms of Service. Have you seen that? And I just thought to myself, it's so annoying because it could mean anything. Nobody reads it. And I thought, what a great title that would be for a book. But I don't have time to write a whole book.

So I thought maybe somebody else would. And they did. his name is Craig Stanfill, and the title of the book is Terms of Service. Craig, welcome in the program. Thank you, Eric. It's pleasure to be here. This is a great title, Terms of Service. It sounds ominous.

Is this a dystopian novel? It is an extremely dystopian novel. It portrays a future that we might be creating where you've got these huge big tech companies that run everything in your life. And, of course, they're watching everything you do. and the final sort of turn of the screw is they've got these AIs that are constantly watching over your shoulders and monitoring everything you do. And that lets them exert an incredible level of control over your life. Okay, this, I got to tell you, you got your Ph.D. in artificial intelligence in 1983.

Before I think there was artificial intelligence practically. So you are at least an expert on this subject. Most of us, of course, know nothing about artificial intelligence. So why does it seem so scary to you? And obviously you put it in the novel Terms of Service, which I hope people will get a copy of. But what do you see that the rest of us wouldn't have a clue about? Well, first of all, there's nothing intrinsically evil about AI. It's sort of at some level just another technology.

It can be used for good or ill. But when you develop a new technology with as wide-ranging implications as AI, you really need to think about what are the risks associated with that technology and what could happen. Now, the important thing to understand about AI is in the context of social media and so forth is that it is a force multiplier, as they say. As an example, Facebook has only 15,000 content moderators. And they've got something like 2 billion people use their platform on a monthly basis. And you do the arithmetic. They can't watch everybody. They can watch almost nobody.

So what they do in order to enforce their reins upon you is they let their AIs do most of the work, I believe. And this is getting to be a more and more common phenomenon, I think, where technology companies have huge amounts of surveillance data that they collect on you. And they can't do anything with it with people because people are expensive and there's not enough of them. So they let AIs tap into all that information they're collecting. And at that point, you know, we've all read 1984. Big Brother never had anything like this. The surveillance state that we've created and throw in the AIs, it is far, far, far beyond anything that George E. ever imagined in his, you know, worst nightmare.

And why did you choose the medium of a novel of fiction to communicate these ideas? Why didn't you write a book about these ideas specifically? And instead you wrote Terms of Service, which is a novel. Why the novel? I would have a following conversation with a lot of my friends, particularly my liberal friends. And I would say the technology companies are censoring me. And they are telling me what I cannot say and what I can say. and controlling what I hear and sort of controlling my reality.

And I have a problem with that. I think that freedom of speech is an absolute God-given right. It does not come from the Bill of Rights. It comes from God. And I would just get these blank stares. What are you talking about? They're private companies. They can choose their terms of service however they want.

And I would come back at them. Haven't you read any of those science fiction novels where the companies and the corporations are running the world? you don't want to live in any of those worlds. And I would get blank stares. Like, what are you talking about? So I decided to write the science fiction novel that they needed to read in order to understand

where this might go. Haven't people watched Rollerball with James Kahn? Come on. It's kind of funny because that was the first time, and this is like, I don't know, that was the late 70s, I guess, or mid-70s. Rollerball was the first time that I saw a film, you know, fictional.

concept of the corporations had taken over. I remember the time thinking, well, that's a new idea. You know, the corporate, not some big state, but the corporations. And of course, that's where we are today. And yes, they write this thing, Terms of Service. These are, Terms of Service is always a fig leaf. They're hiding behind terms of service. They're basically saying, because we've got some legalese boilerplate here, we can do

whatever we like. We're a private company, which is really not very different from saying, I'm a private company, so I refuse to serve hamburgers to black people. Get out of my store. It's a private store. At some point, the government has to come in and say, well, yeah, that's fine, up to a point. You've passed that point. You cannot discriminate against black people when it comes to selling them hamburgers.

You don't have that right. And that's what these large tech companies seem to be doing. At least that's how I take it. Yeah, some of it, some of what. they're doing is sort of of their own volition because, you know, they've got a particular outlook. And, you know, some policing of, I suppose, the social media platforms is appropriate. But when they start taking their ability to censor people and using it for political purpose, I think we've got a real problem.

Right. And the other thing that is even scarier, I think, is the extent to which the government is deputizing private companies to do on its behalf things that the Constitution prohibits it from doing. You may have heard coming out of Washington recently, this notion of using OSHA as a workaround for the constitutional right to control over your body. Yeah. With regard to vaccination. And, you know, this sort of started back, I remember, with a lot of it's an operation

choke point under the Obama administration, and where they said, well, we can't outlaw these businesses because they're. they're operating within the law. But what we can do is we can lean on financial institutions to cut them off from the financial system and sort of cut off their air supply. And that sort of thing is happening more and more often and it becomes alarming, particularly when it gets into areas of free speech. And so you have Washington leaning on the social media companies to be ever more vigilant

in stamping out, quote unquote, COVID disinformation. which basically is anything that Fauci disagrees with. Right. I got to tell you, it's such a joy to know there are folks like you out there writing books like this, thinking the way you do. Ladies and gentlemen, the book is called Terms of Service. Now, I know this book is funny. It's captivating. Most books that are not fiction, they don't even try to be funny or captivating. But have you ever written novels before? What in the world put it into your head that Terms of Service needs to be a novel? Well, I've not written a novel before, so this is my first foray into fiction, and I enjoy the, I enjoy the process of writing.

I didn't think that there would be a way of reaching a lot of people with sort of another treatise or another polemic. People have, you know, written that sort of book, and there are people who are better at that sort of book than I am. But 1984, the novel, of course, by George Orwell, has had vastly more influence in alerting people to the dangers of of totalitarianism than a stack of polemics and a stack of learned essays. And I think that if you can write a book that people read and you can get it out there, you can get the idea out there. And maybe what I'm hoping is change the conversation because we do need to have a conversation in this country about our fundamental freedoms and particularly about the way in which

private companies and in particular private information companies are a bridge. our freedom of expression. You know, nobody owns the town square. You can say anything you want in the town square. Now all of a sudden, you've got these private companies that own the town square and are sort of taking over some of the functionality of the telephone company. And try to imagine the uproarer at a previous age if the telephone company was listening to all your telephone calls and they would just cut off your call if you said something

that they didn't want you to say, which either means something that they didn't want you to say more likely something that the government didn't want you to say. And again, we had pressure from Washington to the social media companies to monitor people's private person-to-person conversations on these messaging systems and to not let people say certain things and to report to the government and wholesale spying. Listen, we're out of time. We're going to get you back to do at least another 10 minutes. Folks, the book is Terms of Service.

The author Craig Stanfield. Craig, thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners, Pete and Seth Talbot, have never made a big deal about, but I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain, like

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go to relieffactor.com, relief factor.com, or call 800, 500, 8384, 800, 500, 8384, relief factor.com. I use it. It works. Hey, folks. Are you looking for a good movie? Do you like Jesus music? I've got an idea. Why doesn't somebody, I don't know who, make a film about Jesus music? They could call it, you don't even need a title. He could just call it the Jesus music movie. Well, I've been thinking that. And then it turns out a couple of guys, I think that they're brothers.

I think that they're the Irwin brothers have made just such a film for such a time as this. I think Andy Irwin might be my guest right now. Andy, is that you? Hey, Eric, good to be with you, buddy. I love all your ideas. We're on the same plane as usual. I think so.

I think so. I love music in general. but the Jesus music, the stuff that we call, you know, CCM, whatever, what made you decide to make a film about the music? You know, I mean, we love the music that has really shaped our career. You know, of course, John and I started out as music video directors, and Michael W. Smith was an artist that took a chance on us as kids and really kind of gave us our start in the industry.

And then that led to us telling the story, if I can only imagine, and the beloved song and the story behind that, and that was our breakout hit. And so for us, we have a deep affinity for this music. But when COVID hit, it kind of shut everything down. And we were at a place in time where we just said, what stories can we tell now that we couldn't tell any other time in history?

And somebody on our creative team said, nobody's looked at the origin of CCM Christian contemporary music. And for the first time in history, all these artists are off the road at the exact same moment. And so we reached out to Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith said, is this interesting? They said, not only is it interesting, but we want to produce it with you guys. And not many people knew it at the time, but Amy was about a month out from having open heart surgery. And she was a really reflective time. So we set up the cameras actually outside her house and filmed through the window.

of her house with a two-way intercom to get her interview. And she gave one of the most raw and vulnerable interviews I had heard an artist give. And it just spread like a wildfire. And next thing you know, we have a hundred different artists, about 300 hours of interviews to go through. And it kind of morphed into this beautiful, all-encompassing documentary. Okay. So who is going to be in it that my audience would know?

Just to wet our appetite? Well, it's kind of easier to ask who's not in it. Am I in it? You were the one that got away. You were the one that got away. I can't believe my people screwed that one up because I know I wanted to be in this thing. All right. They did.

He did. But it's Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Toby Mack, D.C. Talk. Kirk Franklin, Bill Gaither. It's a who's who of the 50 years of Christian music. And then more modern artists like Lauren Daigold for King Country and La Cray. it's an incredible kind of look across the whole history of Christian music. And kind of starting in the origin story of what happened in the 70s with these hippies that just discovered something really amazing where they had been self-proclaimed freaks and kind of burn out on the sex drugs and rock and roll.

And then they stumbled into this faith and this relationship with Jesus that was this real kind of love. And then that spread to their music. And it kind of just exploded into this explosion of the beauty. arts and that's where it all comes from. It was really cool to trace the history of that. And then the unlikely hero of Christian music is Billy Graham. And there's an incredible story that we tell about Billy that's just a beautiful kind of vignette of him being the person that said this has value. Where will people be able to see this? It comes out October 1st? Yeah, it'll be October 1st. And we're adding theaters daily. So it'll come out in a

a fairly large limited release, and then it will expand out from there. So October 1st, check your local listings, and then if it's not in a theater near you, kind of call your theater and make demands that you want to see it, because I'm really proud of how it all turned out. Well, I know that Chris Tomlin is in it, and that's appropriate, because he's an amazing musician. But here, I got a problem with you, Erwin, and your brother. I see that my friend Greg Lori is in this? And pardon me for saying so, but he can't sing. And when I say he can't sing, I'm being really kind about it. Why is Greg Lorry? I need to understand this. You're the filmmaker. I want answers. Why is Greg Lorry in this film about music? Can you tell me?

Well, we try to get him to sing the theme song for it, and he failed miserably. But Greg is kind of like the rain man of Christian art. He just, he knows so much detail. He's kind of a historian that knows detail on everything from movies to music. And so he kind of walked us through because he was a teenager at Calvary Chapel when Chuck Smith was one of the first pastors to say, hey, we want to invite these hippies into our church. And he said he got a chance to witness the birth of Christian music right there in Southern California. And so he kind of walks us through his perspective as a teenager and kind of is this beautiful historian to the early days of it.

But no, you're right. He can't sing a lick. Okay. Will the judges accept that answer? You're going to let that go? Okay, they're going to let it go. You dodged a bullet, big shot. Let me tell you right now.

Okay, seriously, though. Greg, of course, he's a friend. He is somebody that experienced that period firsthand. He has written about it. He's made a film about it. obviously. And you guys, were you involved in that film? Am I dreaming this? Yeah, we're actually, it's growing into a full-on feature based on his book, Jesus Revolution. And it's about those early days of the Jesus movement and kind of centered around a young Greg

Lori. So we're working on that now. I met you and your brother through Greg Lorry. So I knew, I knew the answer to the question, but I wanted to hear it from you. You're making a lot of films. It's exciting. The one with Greg Lory, I want to play Lonnie Frisbee in case there's a role. Is it a role? I want to play Lani Frisbee. We might have to die some of the gray blonde, but let's do it.

Hey, they have people that do that stuff, okay? But I think that it would be, it's going to be fun when that film comes out. But right now, this film by the makers of I Can Only, imagine. It is exciting, seriously, that this stuff is being treated in the way that you and your brother are treating it, because it does have a huge audience. And we know that Hollywood mainstream media, they kind of don't get this stuff. Or if they get it, they shy away from it. But there are so many people that love this music. Now, when you talk about this kind of coming out of the 70s, who are some of the folks in the 70s that were, you know, that became Christians who were

musicians and started writing Christian quote unquote Christian songs. Yeah, one of the most fascinating individuals was a singer named Larry Norman. And Larry Norman was just a complicated guy, but was an incredible musician and did like really great music. I mean, so he, his contemporaries, he ran with people like Bob Dylan and a lot of the major influences on, you know, 60s rock. And then he had an experience, came to Christ, and then started writing this music, and he was the first one to come on the scene and legitimately take it from just being kind of hippies playing their bongos and the instruments and singing, you know, kind of their music around a campfire and making it legit music.

And a complex individual, and we go into that in the dock for sure. But the cool thing that happened was there was all these little pockets of artists like Larry Norman. There was Andre Crouch, who was an amazing crossover between the traditional gospel world and Christian contemporary. And then he had people like Johnny Cash that kind of came back to his faith and started singing about about his faith around that time period as well. And so one of the cool moments that happened was at Explo 72 was kind of the Christian Woodstock. Billy Graham called for a rally. It happened in Dallas, Texas. They estimate anywhere between 200 and 250,000 people show up in Texas.

and then Billy put on the stage all these eclectic artists from Larry Norman, Andre Crouch, Johnny Cash, Chris Christofferson, and said this music has value. And it was just kind of this seminal moment that launched, you know, kind of Christian music finding its voice. And kind of going back into the archives and finding all that, for me it was fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.

Chris Christopherson wrote a song called Why Me Lord. I don't know if that's in the film. But when I saw that, I bumped into him in the hip-eastern, House of the Berlin Zoo about three years ago. Sounds like a joke, right? And a friend of mine send this music to me. I was blown away by that song. When I think we had mainstream artists like Johnny Cash, Chris Christopherson, creating this kind of music. That's the one thing that's sad to me is that we've kind of become our own thing. And in a way, there's been a division

in the culture. Can I grab you for one more segment? Are you okay? All right. I'm with your Well, folks, the film is called The Jesus Music Movie. Are you confused? The Jesus Music Movie. It's a movie about music. It's not music about a movie. It's a movie about music. The Jesus Music movie.

Incredible stuff brought to us by the Irwin Brothers. It's going to be in theaters around the country. You really don't want to miss it if I can use a cliche. And I often do. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Andy. Irwin of the famous Irwin Brothers. You probably remember the film I can only imagine.

There's a new film out called The Jesus Music movie, obviously self-explanatory. It's about Jesus music. We were just talking, Andy, about this strange moment in the culture. And to me, there's something sad about it, where we had people, mainstream figures, Billy Graham, to some extent, was a mainstream figure. But we had Johnny Cash, we had Chris Christopherson, singing, unapologetic Jesus music. Maybe the issue is that we have separated it into a genre. I think a lot of people think sometimes that when you do that, you sort of marginalize yourself. In other words, it would be wonderful if everybody in the country was listening to the music rather than just people who listen to CCM. So I don't know, where do you think we're going with that? Because I feel like

you don't reach people if you're just in your own little genre. Yeah, I think we explore that in the documentary for sure because there was there was this purity that where it started and you know that people that there wasn't an industry around it it was this people that kind of organically started kind of expressing their fate and then there kind of became something where it became a little bit more formulaic and then people would blaze trails in new directions and then it would become formulaic and then you know that was always the struggle between you know the commerce of it of just kind of play into your base and then being able to do really great art. And I think, you know, the exciting thing about it is I think, you know, we try to find something

that was universally relatable. And the idea of, you know, outside of it being kind of a niche genre of these trailblazers that said, hey, my voice isn't represented and I would like to form something that doesn't exist. That's incredibly romantic. But along the way, you know, it can get kind of formulaic and just kind of play to the base. I think that, you know, exciting thing that's happening now with the arts, you know, across the board, not just with music, but also hopefully, you know, heading that direction in film is there's been an opportunity to kind of branch out beyond the walls. And so we kind of go into where it has started to make those steps in that direction, like with the Lauren Daigles and the, you know, for King Country,

Lecraise. There's these modern artists that are beginning to kind of blur those lines a little bit more and reach a broader base. You know, we're trying to do that with our films as well. So in addition to the Jesus music, we have a movie called American Underdog, the Kurt Warner story, that it's coming out in theaters Christmas Day, and Lionsgate is giving us a mainstream release. And Christmas Day releases have never gone to anything doing anything with faith. But they felt like it had a lot of crossover appeal.

And so the idea is to be able to reach out beyond the church walls and to begin to invite more people in. And you know what that's called? I'm going to coin a term. evangelism. It comes from the Greek word EU, which is good, and Anglos, which is message or news, good news. So I'm going to coin that word now, going outside the church. We're going to call that evangelism.

Anybody who wants to use that word, go ahead. I think it's a beautiful thing. I really do. Tell me again, now I know you made this big, you and your brother made a huge deal with Lionsgate. I was there when it was announced. I was so thrilled, not for you guys, for America, because this is so important. What is the film that you just mentioned, the Kurt Warner? Talk about that for a second.

That comes out on Christmas. It's called American Underdog. It stars Zachary Levi from the movie Shazam, Dennis Quaid, plays Dick Vermeal. There's a whole list of really great actors in it. But it's American Underdog. It's the story of Kurt Warner and his well-known struggle of going from the supermarket to starting in the Super Bowl. He was working in the supermarket and out of football for five years, struggling to make it and then finally got his second chance. And it's just really the story

about their family kind of struggling through it together and kind of uniting. And it's just a beautiful story. Lionsgate loved the story so much that they said, we feel like this really belongs in that blindside category to be able to reach out in a much broader sense without watering down, you know, the importance of the faith of the warners. And so we made the movie in COVID. They got fully behind it. We did the test screenings for it. And they said, guys, we're going to go way out on a limb.

We're going to give you a Christmas Day release, which that's like the Super Bowl for our industry. It's Christmas Day. And, you know, Fourth of July are the most coveted territories, as you know. And they've never done anything like that for anything having to do with faith. And so what I think I've seen, as I've gotten to Linesgate, to have a studio that so firmly believes, not just in the product, but in the size of our audience. and the ability to kind of grow the size of that audience. They've really backed us up completely. And I think as Christians sometimes we can believe

that there's kind of some sort of boogeyman that's saying, you know, that they don't want to have anything to do with us as Christians. But a lot of times it comes down to just business sense. You know, is there a potential for them to show profitability? And then they really believe in those products. So much so that this year they have a big event called CinemaCon in Las Vegas where they present to all the theater owners,

like the new line of products. Well, a third of their CinemaCon presentation this year was Kingdom Products, our company, Kingdom Story Company, of Faith products. And so they've really gotten fully behind it. So we're excited about the opportunities and to have a, you know, a lot of studios would not take a chance on our kind of thing.

Right. But Lionsgate fully bought in. Well, look, and but sometimes it takes a really smart, courageous person even to be able to see the market. I think there are a lot of people that they don't want to see it. So God bless Lionsgate. I just want to say we're about, I'm on the same page with you. We're just about the Greenlight, the Bonhofer film.

It's a big deal feature film. And you know, can I tell you something? If you give me a role in one of your films, we still have not filled a role of Hans number three in the Bonhofer film. Hans number three, I'm telling you, you could eat that up, and you could get a career out of that. So Andy Irwin, that's called quid pro quo. bless you, Andy Irwin. The film is the

Jesus music movie folks. Check it out. Andy, congratulations. Eric, your good friend, buddy. Appreciate you. Hear the latest reporting and analysis on the big stories of the day. On the Daybreak Insider Podcast. It's top-notch reporting from SRN News, along with the sharpest insight

from Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Sebastian Gorka, and the voices of Townhall.com. The Daybreak Insider, It's your first look at today's top stories. Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, and at Salem Podcast Network.com. Oh, hello. Albin. Yeah. Did you just see, now we just talked to Andy Irwin.

Irwin, right? And he's one of the Irwin brothers. He is. That's why his last name is Irwin. But did you just say that you and Anne, your current wife, watched another film that they're making? Yeah, coming out Christmas Day is American. Underdog, which he talks about it. You guys just talked about it in your interview.

But it's coming out Christmas day, but you saw like a pre version of it? Yeah, we saw kind of a preversion so we could talk about it, you know, leading up to it. We're going to try to obviously get some of the stars on there, Dennis Quades in and playing a famous football coach. But it's about Kurt Warner and how he went from supermarket to Super Bowl. It's very, very uplifting film, by the way. It's based on a true story. Kurt Warner's story. It's a very exciting movie.

We were both moved to tears. It's really a wonderful. Really? Yeah, it's really a wonderful thing. Both of you were moved to tears. Yes. Four eyes. Yeah, that's four eyes. Wow.

Yeah, and then with the glasses, that's eight. Wow. Oh, man. Incredible. Incredible. Very moving. Yes, all right. So I think we need to talk on this program about what we watch sometimes.

Yeah. Because Suzanne and I were exhausted. We say, what should we watch? And if you watch something that's good, you want to tell people about it, right? Yeah. So we, somebody said to us, you should watch the Rick, we've all heard of Ken Burns. His brother is Rick Burns. and they both make documentaries.

And a friend of ours said, oh, you should watch the Rick Burns documentary on New York. I've been meaning to watch that for like 21 years. I mean, I remember when it came out. I was like, you know, I can't watch it now, but I'm going to get to it. Yeah. 21 years past. Boom.

And so we're watching it. And it was made in 1999. So they keep having the shot of New York, New York with the Twin Towers. And you just think, whoa, suddenly 1999 is like another era, even though it was 10 minutes ago it was another era but it's really good and it's about the rise of New York

it's just simply called New York it's Rick Burns I actually met Rick Burns like in 1991 I remember that when I was working for Rabbit Ears Productions but anyway he and his brother can make these documentaries but it's really cool so if you're looking for something to watch just what they say

about the Erie Canal I gotta say there are things that have happened in the past and we kind of move on yeah yeah the Eerie The Erie Canal is the most insane thing. I mean, at the time it was like the biggest thing ever, and now we kind of act like, what big deal. The Erie Canal, imagine they said, okay,

the Hudson River goes from New York all the way up, up, up, up, up, up, up. What if we could build a canal, 300-something-mile canal to connect to the Great Lakes? We could ship stuff inland all the way down. I mean, it's kind of crazy when you think about it. It made New York, New York. because the shipping all went through. I mean, otherwise, you'd have to get across, what is it, the Alleghenies? I mean, you're talking about going over mountains.

So pulling, you know, whatever it would be over mountains was way too expensive. So they said, let's do it on barges and we'll build the Erie Canal. That alone, the governor of New York was DeWitt Clinton. And you think about the effect that some people have on history, and then nobody knows who they are. Now, by the way, there's an air. area of New York, it used to be Hell's Kitchen. Now they call it Clinton. It's named after him. It's not named after Bill Clinton. But anyway, we learned so much. So that's the documentary, Rick Burns,

New York. I also wanted to say if we have the time, and I think we have the time right now. We have the time? Okay. I got a list. One of our main sponsors, as you know, is Nutrimetics. And I said, can you send us a list of some of the stuff that you carry? Because often I'm on the program and I'm sort of fomfering around for, you know, I take vitamin D, I take Dita, but what do these different things do? So I said, if we have time and you're telling me we've got a couple minutes, I'm going to read this. Quercetin, quercetin, okay, supports the absorption of vitamin Z and zinc and immune system support. Now, whoever thinks about this? You think if I take vitamin C, that's good enough. Yeah. But what if your system isn't absorbing it correctly?

When none of us thinks about that, right, that's corsotin. Burber Panella. Berber Panella, not to be confused with Lou Panella, who played for the Yankees. Berber Panella is a number one detox product. Now, I have this at home. I've not tried it yet. But Berber Panella, it says the air we breathe is filled with so many toxins. It's even in our drinking water and food. Berber Panella is a detox product.

And by the way, not to be confused with Mike Berber, whose name I just made up. Right. Or the Berbers were, I think they were, I always got them confused with the Bedouins. I think there was a test in eighth grade where I was responsible for the Berbers. Okay, they also have a sleep support kit. It's melatonin and relax medics. One study said 38% of American workers report feeling tired at work. That's me.

I'm exhausted. But if you sleep well, but honestly, people don't know what to take. like they're taking over-the-counter stuff that's maybe like too strong or whatever. So the folks at Nutrametics have created RelaxMedics, and of course they sell melatonin. Yeah, Ann and I take melatonin, and it works like a dream. It does, it does. And then there's a thing called glucometics. Great for your blood sugar support.

Now, when I took that test, they suggest that I take glucometics. I don't know why. Yeah. But this is, this was kind of a cool test. But anyway, I just wanted to mention a couple of these things. Magnesium I take every day. One study says 75% of people are magnesium deficient. It plays a critical role in brain function, mood, and energy.

That's kind of important. Every now and again, I want to refer to what they have because I think otherwise people get confused. Neutrametics.com is the website. If you use the code, Eric, you get a big discount. But I just want people to know what they have. They have something for men called Natural Boost, a unique blend of nine herbs for male health support.

Do you know what that means? Because I don't. Male health support. Anyway, they've got all the other things that I don't want to. They've got something for kids, antioxidant. Anyway, Nutrimetics.com. If you go to the website, you can find more. So do your research.

But my advice is go to Nutrametics.com. Check it out. We've gotten to know the folks behind it. We've had them on this program. And I keep saying, I'll say it in the next segment if I have time, we need to support companies that we believe in that are giving their money to good causes and not using their money to support things

that go against our values. Most companies in this day and age, unfortunately, fall in the latter category. So those companies that fit in the former category, like nutrometics.com, like my store.com, like my pillow.com, like any sponsor on this program, we want you to support them. No, by the way, that when you support them, you're supporting this program, and we can use your support.

But also, we deliberately partner with folks we believe in because we need to support those companies and we need to not support those companies that are working against us, folks. We're all in. Okay, final segment, be right back. Calvin, I hope you don't mind if I read something on the air. Do you mind? I do not mind. you have a radio voice. You would mind, but in this case you don't mind. Okay, I want to read this.

And go. Well, because I want my audience to be familiar with, sometimes we have sponsors on the program. And I thought, let me read this because I don't want to get it wrong. Okay, I know we've talked about this on the program, right? There's a major crisis in the West and specifically in America, and I would say that is marriage. There are all kinds of of marriages that are on the rocks. Families suffer, kids suffer, okay? The reason I want to read this is it says that, which is the collapse of healthy marriages and families, is the single biggest driver of church attendance decline in

America. So how bad are things? For the first time in history, a majority of Americans say they don't belong to any house of worship. That's actually a huge metric, okay? Well, okay, I wanted to end with some good news. So there's a new book, Endgame. It reveals how our churches can revive marriages in our communities and drive up church attendance too. Now, the church attendance is secondary, but the marriages. Okay, so it's called Endgame. It provides us with proven solutions to inspire us to take action. And I know a little bit about this story. It's why I'm excited. There's an example of a group of churches in Jacksonville, Florida, reduced divorce, rates 24%. There's just a few churches in Jacksonville in three years. 24%. So the strategies they used were put in a book, which is why I'm excited to talk about. It's called Endgame, the church's

strategic move to save faith and family in America. You can get it at endgamebook.org. I want to be clear. This is where you need to go. Endgamebook.org. Obviously, if you use the promo code, Eric. Holy cow. Big savings, endgamebook.org. I say this just because you, I mean, I talk about this all the time, but we want to have sponsors on the program who are promoting things we believe in. So endgame is the most recent, endgamebook.org. But if you care about families and how to save marriages,

and who doesn't, folks, honestly, if somebody tells you there's a way to do this, you don't want to get me started. Families I've seen fall apart and you think, oh, if there were any way, So endgamebook.org. But most of the sponsors, actually all the sponsors on this program are folks we believe in. It's why we promote them. I wanted to say that nutrometics.com, I took a test. Did I talk about this in the program?

I took a test. You took the test too. And they tell you specifically what you should be taking. And they told me Rogaine and they said they don't have that product. Oh, wait a minute. They told me that. Just kidding. Just kidding.

No, but it's kind of cool because they have stuff tailor-made, whatever. I take, because I don't want to have a weak immune system, every day I take vitamin C. Yeah. I take vitamin D. I take zinc, magnesium, and what else? Other stuff. I forgot. Oh, yeah.

But I want to say, folks, if you go to Nutrametics.com and use the code, Eric, whopping savings. I used to say whopping. Now I know it's whopping. Wapping. Stopping savings at Nutrametics.com. And then since we're talking sponsors, because however you spend your money, folks, if you give it to a company that's using your money not to help people or to promote things that you don't believe in, you should think about it. You might want to spend another nickel and give it to a company that cares about you. So it's why we promote MyPillow.com, MyStore.com.

Neutrametics.com, they give 50% of their profits to missions organizations. That's amazing. So if you're going to buy, I don't know, melatonin, stevia, like basic stuff, get it from Neutermetics, tell your friends. We need to support those companies that are doing good. Use the code. Eric, you get a big savings. And I think we may be out of time. Let me check.

Oh, yes, we are. Thank you.