The Eric Metaxas Show - Dr. Michael Caparelli

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

What is evil—and can even the most depraved among us find redemption? In this profoundly moving conversation, Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas sits down with Dr. Michael Caparelli, author of Monster Mirror, to explore the dark and sobering case of David Berkowitz—the notorious “Son of Sam” serial killer. Caparelli, who spent over 100 hours interviewing Berkowitz in prison, offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a man who once claimed to be possessed by the devil but now professes a deep Christian faith.

Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. They say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least to make it a double or triple line. But now here's your line jumping host, Eric Mattaxas. Typically, we frame Socrates conversations with a question. Today, given the subject of the book, The question is, I guess, centers around the problem of evil.

What is evil? I have as my guest, Michael Caperelli. Michael, welcome. Thank you for being here, big fan. Listen, you've written a book. There's a lot to say. I'll just try to get us started here by saying that we're going to be talking about, you did 100 hours of interview with David Berkowitz,

formerly known as the son of Sam. serial killer from the mid-70s. I remember it well. I grew up in New York City. The title of the book is Monster Mirror. You have a PhD in Advanced Studies in Human Behavior and your behavioral science professor. So we're going to be talking about mental health. We're going to be talking about the story of the son of Sam. I remember it so well, but it dawned on me just yesterday. that many people who aren't as old as I am don't know anything about this. So I want to start, if you would, and I can help you. But to people who don't know anything about this man, David Berkowitz, who was known in the 70s as the son of Sam serial killer,

tell me in the audience, you know, what's the story? What happened in the 70s? Who is this guy? and why do we know about the son of Sam? Well, David Berkowitz provoked the largest manhunt in New York City history. There are about 280 police officers, NYPD, that formed what was known as the Omega Task Force, and they were looking for this maniac who was gunning down victims

inside of parked cars, usually, not always, and would sometimes leave at the crime scene, a letter taunting the police, taunting the media, signing it with monikers such as Monster, Son of Sam. And at that time in New York City, as you know, growing up in the city, the media really, you know, took off with it. Disco clubs were closing early because- So this is the summer of 77.

Yeah, it actually started in 76, the Son of Sam massacre. It went viral in 77. It became big publicity, big news in 77. So he murdered six people. Is that right? Shot seven. Shot seven, murdered six. And then they caught him.

But I remember pretty well, you know, looking at the cover of the New York Post. And if you ever want to know if you can trust police sketches, the answer would be no. I'll never forget the picture they had. And I was, you know, when you finally saw him, you thought that it does look, looks nothing like him. But the bottom line is this was a bad time in New York City, the 70s. There was a ton of crime. But a serial killer, somebody murdering indiscriminately, not because he had a grudge, not because he's owed money. This was kind of like evil for evil's sake.

to murder people for no other reason. So the city was in an uproar. I mean, much of the country was interested in this. And it was, so Berkowitz, I mean, we now know it's David Berkowitz, but he was writing letters, you said, taunting the cops. Didn't he get in a back and forth with Jimmy Breslin? Correct. Was Brezlin with the news or the Post?

I don't remember. I believe he's with the Daily Post, and David Berkowitz had actually addressed the letter to, Jimmy Breslin, and Jimmy published that particular letter. And that's really what spurred on a lot of the mayhem in the city. I mean, it was like the city was having a nervous breakdown. Women were cutting their hair short, dying it, blonde, believing that he didn't kill blondes, although his last victim was blonde, Stacey Moskowitz.

So Jimmy Breslin's publication of the letters is really one of the big things that spurred on, the mayhem, the pandemonium all through the city. And to be clear, you know, whenever you're writing, whenever you're talking about something in retrospect, you forget. Like, now we know he killed six. Now we know who it was. Now we know that they caught him. But I remember before they caught him, the madness of the city, that you do not know who is doing this, why they're doing this. Are they going to get you next?

When are they going to strike again? I mean, it's one of those horrors, really. So the city's in an uproar. I mean, you mentioned that he stalked, you know, like couples making out in parked cars, basically. Wasn't that it, roughly? How old was he at the time? He's in his 24. He was 24 when he was arrested, convicted of six murders and convicted of seven shootings,

also 1,400 fires lit throughout the city. Excuse me. 1400 fires. Well, the fire starting goes back to six years old. He was lighting his toys on fire on his window cell. Also bugs. His mother would ask him why the window sill was chalk old in his apartment in the Bronx. And he would, of course, deny it.

But the arson started at a very young age, not just arson, but vandalism. His father often called him a spite worker, noticed at a very young age, that he was just a spiteful kid. For instance, he tells the story of painters inside of his Bronx tenement, and he was about maybe eight or nine, and they had a big drum gallon of paint, and David tipped it over,

got on the elevator and went into his apartment laughing. It just had that type of vindictive, resentful personality from a young age, and that resentment grew. It just grew. And as you know what resentment, it's, you know, anger's a funny thing. Anger has bad aim. I can be angry at you,

but if I hold on to anger long enough, now I'm not just angry at you. I'm angry at everyone. By the end of the day, I'm saying I hate humanity. It becomes generalized. And that's what happened with David's resentment and anger. It's no surprise that Ephesians, a book in the Bible, the New Testament,

the Apostle Paul warns that if you let anger sit too long, that you will give the devil a foothold or a place of occupancy. It'll develop from an anger that's psychological to die above. I mean, we see this with, like, for instance, the Columbine shooters. Columbine shooters did not show up at Columbine to kill bullies. They showed up at Columbine to kill everyone. That was the goal.

So, you know, anger can get to a point where it's so generalized that we have to ask the question, is this just a human emotion? Or is this Satan's frenzy working through an individual? The very warning within the book of Ephesians that anger can become a foothold or a vessel, a beachhead for Satan to work through. So, you know, I should say, as you're quoting the Bible, you also are a pastor. I was for 16 years. You were a pastor.

You are the author of this book, Monster Mirror. Let me ask you the kind of big question. Why is it called Monster Mirror? Well, this is probably the most radical claim of the book in our humanistic society. You know, in humanistic society, we think everyone is wonderful. or at least we think we're wonderful, and the next guy is the narcissist. And the idea is that David Berkowitz is not just a serial killer. He's not just a monster, but he's also a mirror.

And I challenge the reader to identify with the worst possible human being and even see reflections of themselves in David Berkowitz. Now, that might be a real tall order because, again, we see people like David Berkowitz as other people as some kind of species that's different than the rest of us. But what I'm challenging the reader is that our nature is people, just as the prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 17, the heart of man is wicked and deceitful, that there's a potential psychopath in everybody.

I know you're not talking about me. No. That's the only way I can process this. Well, not me, need, not us. So, but them. Them. So, all right, the story of David Burke, there's so much here.

So I just want to say that it came to my attention some years ago. I've corresponded with David Berkowitz, the former son of Sam, because I had heard through some friends, our mutual friend, Don Wilkerson, the pastor who married my wife, Suzanne and me, that this serial killer, this monster, had come to faith in Jesus in prison, that it was genuine. We now know that that's true,

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Is redemption possible? But you really have to talk about something which you alluded to the uncomfortableness of modern secular society to deal. with things like evil because it points beyond this world. You know, if you're talking about goodness pointing to God, evil points to the satanic. A lot of people are uncomfortable with those categories, and so they have this materialistic view of the world. But if you have a materialistic view of the world, there's no place for evil.

You just say, oh, it's behavioral. He was made to do this because of the way he was raised or whatever. is or you give it some term. You say, well, it's schizophrenia or it's this or it's that or it's this complex or that complex. When you talk, I know that David Berkowitz as a young man was involved with a satanic cult, genuine. He's talked about this a lot. You write about it in the book. But when you describe him, you know, at age eight, behaving in a way, most eight-year-olds, you know, devilish as kids can be. Don't. Don't do some of the things that you say that he did.

Is there any clue? You interviewed him for 100 hours. Any clue to what was going on in his family? Was he abused as a kid? I mean, for kids to behave that wickedly, you always wonder, was there something behind that? Because I would suspect there was. Well, the trap that we have to.

to be careful for is causal reductionism, to take a complicated phenomenon and to reduce it to one single factor. Our lazy minds as a society do that. We look for, was he sexually abused? Did this happen? Well, not to excuse it. No, no, not to excuse it. We know Hitler was oversimplified.

Routly beaten by a cruel father. Yes. It doesn't make anything that followed justified, but it does help you understand the development of a soul? Listen, the whole book is based on shedding light on the situational factors. My point is we can't find one thing and say it's this one thing. That would be as silly as playing the game, Jenga, and the tower collapses and you blame the last block and say, well, the last block is what caused the collapse of the tower? No, it was a buildup of blocks. So in answering the question, what made a little boy into a serial killer, what turned young David into the son of

Sam, answering that question, you can't fall into the causal reductionism trap where you're reducing a complicated phenomenon to one block. It's a buildup of blocks. Each chapter describes one of those blocks. I called it a recipe for violence. And in a recipe, there's a series of ingredients. Some of the ingredients that I found in my thematic analysis, collecting data for 100 hours, the themes that kept surfacing were isolation, shame, resists.

resentment, abandonment trauma, cognitive distortions. So I describe each of these ingredients, I named half of them, in the book, to talk about how when these things come together in the life of David Berkowitz, and as you said, making no excuses, but providing some explanation, shedding some light on situational factors, so any mom reading the book, any teacher reading the book, can say, you know, let me learn from this. God forbid my son should turn into the son of Sam. So you're right. There are no excuses, but there are some explanations. It's just those explanations can't be blamed on one single block. If the Jengatawa collapses, it's because of a build-up of blocks.

I've had the privilege of knowing Dr. James Dobson, who interviewed Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy. I was going to say Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy, not long before Bundy was executed for. 24 hours. Really, really horrible things. And it helps you get a glimpse into how might this happen, what's going on, when does somebody open a door to evil or to the demonic. So you're not justifying it.

You're not saying, oh, it's because of this or because of this. But it gives you some ability to understand. To prevent. How something this could happen. And in future, obviously, to do what you can to spot it or whatever. So when you sat down with David Berkowitz for 100 hours, you know, you got to know him as he is today. Very, very dramatically different than the man most would think of as the son of Sam. Most definitely.

Like all of us, he's still a work in progress, but he's a radically different human being. God came into his life in the late 80s, I guess. He was, when was he arrested? 1997, August. August. So that's the famous summer of Sam. I mean, again, I remember it pretty well. The city was just crazy with how can we find this guy.

He's leaving clues. He's taunting the cops. How was it ultimately that he was found? You said there were 280. cops put on this task force? 280 something. Yeah, it was the Omega Task Force. Ironically, it was a parking ticket. David parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant in Brooklyn.

And within the time frame that he parked in front of that fire hydrant, he committed his last murder, the murder of Stacey Moskowitz. Stacey Moskowitz was, I want to say about 20. She left the house that night, her mother, Nisa Moskowitz, who was a public enemy of David for many he is, I mean, for legitimate reasons, she said, Stacey, please be careful. And Stacey said,

Mom, don't worry, he's not hunting blondes. Well, now, wait a minute. Wow. Really? So, yeah, he shoots her mother remembers that she tells her daughter, be careful. And she says he's not hunting blondes. Because the profile

at that time had been that, oh, all of his victims were what, Burnett, with long hair. Yes. So if you get your hair cut short, if you're blonde, you don't fit the profile. Of course, his last victim was Stacey Moskowitz. So he parks in front of the fire hydrant. And while he's committing murder, a police officer writes a ticket.

He comes back, he sees the ticket. And when the police department decided to follow up on some of those tickets, figuring maybe they'll come across a witness, somebody who's seen something, it dawns on them that this particular car is owned by a Yonkers resident in Brooklyn. What is the Yonkers resident doing in Brooklyn at the time of the murder? That's odd. Maybe this is not a witness. Maybe this is a suspect.

They call the Yonkers Police Department. And another just active providence, if you will, his neighbor picks up the phone. She's a dispatcher at the police department. and his neighbors had some serious problems with him. In fact, he shot her dog. Okay, he shot her dog. He shot the neighbor's dog. The same dog.

Sam. Well, Sam's dog. Sam is the owner of the dog. Sam's dog. So son of Sam, let's get to it. Why is he called the son of Sam? What is that? It's a little bit of a play on of words.

Sam is obviously his neighbor, but Sam also was indicative of Sam Hain, a Druid God, that David said that he in the cult worshipped. A what? A druid god, a druidic god. A druidic god. A druidic god that demanded human sacrifice. Okay, so. Sam Hane.

This is why I bring this up. So, because I was not aware of the plan words, that his neighbor's name Sam, but this satanic cult, a cultic cult, worshipped a quote unquote god small g named sam something Samhain okay so then you know in his distorted mind he actually starts to believe that his neighbor the fact that his neighbor has the same name Sam

as this druidic god he starts to actually believe that his neighbor is the devil and that the dog itself is part of that whole scheme and he falls under the commands of the dog in his own twisted mind and at the behest of Satan he commends It's his crimes. Okay, so you got to slow down here because this is dramatic stuff. He believes that Satan is speaking through the dog, commanding him to commit murder. Is that a fair statement?

Yes. Okay. Now, you and I know the demonic is real. So it is your estimation after 100 hours of interview with him that this was genuine that he, at the time was consorting with demonic powers or was it hallucination? Well, you know, I'm not saying that everybody that has a hallucination is necessarily under demonic influences, although there are those cases where people have hallucinations and it is under the guidance of demons under the spell of the demonic. In David's case, I would definitely

to say that it was. But let's not forget, this is years and years in the making, years and years of resentment, years and years of shame, pulling away from society, this outsider mindset. I mean, he even puts that in the letters. I am an outsider, watching the world go by, program to kill. So he's got that typical outsider profile that you see in a lot of school shooters, a lot of mass shootings, you know, wanting attention, wanting to fit in.

I say all that because sometimes we think it's either the day. devil, the diabolical, or the psychological, but in David's case, and in probably every case, it's a dance or a tango between human personality and spiritual principality. When these two things come together, you know, the devil's not making David do it without David over a series of choices. The devil knocks, and David's letting the devil in. Okay, so it's both, and that's to me the key, is that if somebody has a pure material, mindset. They don't believe in the demonic. I referenced yesterday while we were talking a book that

was seminal in my coming to faith, written by M. Scott Peck, the Harvard psychiatrist, who before he wrote his blockbuster book, The Road Less Traveled, writes a book called The People of the Lie, where he recognizes in his psychiatric practice figures with stories that cannot be accounted for, in the psychiatric literature, something that seems from another world, something that he comes to conclude is evil, is demonic evil. And so there's this reality of evil.

If anybody who claims to be a Christian reads the Gospels, Jesus did not cast out metaphors. He cast out actual demons. We believe in the demonic and the angelic. So it's often a combination. So in the case of David Berkowitz, He's a young man.

Part of what gets him going down this path is he gets involved in playing with the occult, something satanic. When did that begin for him? Tell us a little bit about that. He actually served three years in the military. He was overseas in Korea and during the Vietnam War, the end of the war. He was also in the south in Fort Knox. And when he comes home, he's looking for friendship. He's hoping that some of the kids from the neighborhood are going to be there to meet him,

maybe even greet him, maybe even hail him as being a war hero. But instead he finds he's all alone. His friends have, you know, started families, and he's by himself. And that theme of isolation keeps popping up. So this is around 1973? 1975. Oh, so that late. Okay.

So he comes back. Comes back. He's looking for friendship, looking for community. And he finds what? He finds nothing. In fact, his father at the time was moving to Florida because his mom had passed right before he went to the military, a couple of years before.

And, well, when he was 14. So he comes back, dad's packing his bags, moving to Florida with his new wife. His friends have all moved on. David's in that place of just isolation, feeling very resentful at life, at himself. The military was a big disappointment. He was hoping to find more significance in the military,

but it was pretty humdrum. where he was stationed. And that time he meets a group of people. He was at a party in, I believe, Pelham Bay. And the people that were at that party, he was asking questions about the occult. At the time the movie The Exorcist came out, everybody was seeing it, talking about it.

It was a real conversation piece. And that led to an invitation back to one of their meeting places. They were meeting in several parks in the city, where David witnessed some occultic activity like, the sacrifices of animals. The killing of animals. Correct. As part of a satanic ritual.

To satisfy the appetite of the demons. So he sees this for the first time, having come back from Korea. Okay, so does he participate? Does he get involved? Yes. To what extent? Well, that's the thing about David Berkowitz is all throughout his childhood, he's got, you know, people have a profile.

a modus operandi, the way they do things, call it habit. And David had a modus operandi from the time he was a kid that he was a part of a group. Like, for instance, he was a part of the volunteer fireman club. They're helping the local firemen put out fires. But then alone, he's lighting fires. So he's a part of a group, but he maintains this sort of rogue status. He's never fully socially assimilated. And he said, you know, I could never bond.

I always felt like I was on the fringes of every group I was a part of. Same thing with the cult. He's meeting with the cult. You know, they go so far, but David's always willing to take it further than everybody else. Even when he was a kid, he said, we used to go riding bikes through the Bronx. He said, my friends would stay within certain parameters. Mom calls them into the house, and I take my bike all the way to Connecticut, cost Cobb from the Bronx. When I heard that, you said that yesterday on my radio program, I thought, what? Like that's nine. He was what, eight, seven, eight years old? Maybe, maybe ten. But I mean, that's just crazy. kid who'd ride his bike 40 miles away from home. Very extreme personality from the time he was young.

So here he is a part of the cult, but, you know, when he's on his own doing his own thing, he's taking these sacrifices to another level. Okay. He's not going to just give the devil an animal. He's going to give the devil a human being. So for him, the devil was real and he wanted to serve the devil? I think at the heart of it all. Because the heart of the matter is always a matter of the heart.

heart. And the matter of the heart for David was wanting a sense of significance. He derived a sense of importance in being a soldier of Satan. It's a very phrase he uses to describe himself. He described himself as a soldier of Satan. For him, it's real. For him, it's real. But I'm saying when you say wanted attention, is this to impress the other cult members? Possibly. Didn't say that specifically. I've had my own guess on that. I've thought just that thing you just said. But he's a little reluctant when you get too deep into the actual occultic activities in what was happening. So even after 100 hours with you, he's hanging back on some of this stuff.

Oh yeah, you don't get. I mean, listen, only on the day of judgment, are we going to have full disclosure? You know, for now we know in part and we see in part. I believe the 100 hours was very valuable and a lot of data surface, but there's still information that is yet to be known. I mean, the ego is a very fragile thing. And there's so many defense mechanisms we develop as a human being, the old metaphor of peeling back an onion to really get to the core of someone.

That takes time. It took a lot of time for David to come to the conclusion of what he is, who he is, what he did. Even in the time that I met with him, there was some real moments of meltdowns. I mean, when David talks about the murders, he gets this vein that bulges across his forehead like he's deadlifted in 300 pounds, and he just starts sobbing. Not a manipulative cry. I mean, a cry you can't fake, one that comes right from the gut. And I'm going to put my hand on his shoulder because the trauma that he inflicted on an entire city is also a trauma that he inflicted upon himself.

Just as sadistic as he was, he was masochistic. Why doesn't he go on TV and talk about the crimes more? He doesn't have that callous kind of personality. And I know there are many serial killers that can. do that in a very matter of fact callous manner but david has had his conscience awakened and he is believe it or not an empathetic individual which flies in the face of the psychopathy criteria well look i want to be very clear in case i didn't make it clear enough a few minutes ago um he gets arrested in 77 about 10 years later or 11 he genuinely

comes to faith in Jesus Christ and begins the process of sanctification. So he is, you know, according to how I would put it, he's a new creature. He is not, you know, when you, when you think of people interviewing, you know, whether it's Charles Manson or Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer or any of these figures, none of them had the experience that David Berkowitz did in repentance. of his evil, giving it to Jesus, wanting to live his life dramatically differently. So it's, you know, it's obvious that he's not, he's not yet perfect, but he's a dramatically different human being than the man who did this stuff. I mean, if you, I would say from a clinical perspective, okay, if he sat with a clinician,

You know, they would say that the old David Berkowitz was probably antisocial personality disorder, the cultural construct, psychopath. And you look at that criteria, what a psychopath is, what it entails. And then you look at the manias now. And even though the data says psychopaths make very little headway in therapy, they don't change. I mean, cancel culture will certainly say they should just rot in hell and die. But even the therapeutic community has given up on them. And then you look at David and you see,

characteristics of empathy, very empathetic individual. He can tell you the name and the stories of so many people in that prison that he prays for regularly. He'll ask me questions if I tell him someone in my life that needs prayer. He'll ask me with first name, with details, how are they doing? He'll stop and pray for them. I've seen letter correspondence between him and suicidal teenagers. People write him from all over the world. He gets two to 300 letters a week. And they write him because they figure he's he's a place where there are no stones to throw. How would David Berkowitz judge me? So they tell, they tell him secrets. He writes back very compassionately. He's talked people off of ledges. I mean, he has, he has been used in a very powerful way

and has demonstrated a very empathetic personality. That's not consistent with a psychopath. Now, I know there are those that will say, well, he's putting on an act that's a jailhouse conversion. I work with two other serial killers prior to David Berkowitz, who did use religion, and there were jailhouse conversions. They last about six months, and it's usually right before a parole hearing. It's hard to put on an act for 35 years and be as consistent in his faith as David Berkowitz. But not only have I seen actions, because you can't put on an act to some degree with actions. I've seen reactions.

A reaction is hard to fake. That's visceral. That's what you do when you're caught. guard, when you're taken by surprise, when life doesn't go your way. I've seen how David behaves when he's stress. I've seen how David behaves when he's angry. One of my sessions, I showed up. He had a verbal altercation with another inmate. The inmate said something horrible. David was in very bad headspace. I talk about it in the book, and I watch him navigate anger, not like a psychopath navigates anger. I watch him navigate anger like a man

whose heart has been transformed. So I've seen David's reactions. I've tasted the fruit and the Bible says you can only judge it by the fruit and the fruit that I taste is good. Well, I want to go back to before he commits these six murders, he is playing with fire literally and then playing with fire in the sense of playing with the demonic. He has entered that realm. Is there any specific moment or incident or story where he opens the door to the demonic, where he gets to this point where he's going to murder human beings to please Satan? Is there any moment where he does he talk about hearing the devil speak to him? Because that's the idea that Jimmy

Breslin's writing about this, I guess, in the Daily News, about that this guy is, that this guy is, is, you know, consorting with actual demons, hearing the voices of demons, telling him to kill. Can you give us any specifics on that? Because I don't remember. Yeah, I think you're going to put in context the fact that David was trying very hard to fill a void that had been there for a long time. So when he gets out of the military, nobody's there. He starts to search for his biological birth mother. I mean, he goes on a real hunt. In fact, actually, he was searching for his biological father.

because he believed his mother was dead. His adopted parents told him, David, when you were born, your mom died during the delivery. They told him that because they were advised by experts that it would take away the sting of the rejection if his mother had died. So he believed his mother was dead. He goes looking for his biological father.

In the process, he realizes his biological father is actually the one that's dead, but his mother's still alive. He meets with his mother. It's a reunion. He's hoping the reunion will fill this massive void inside of him. How old is he at this point? 23? 22. He meets with this. This is such a sad story. He meets with his biological mother. And biological sister, half sister.

And what happens when he meets with his biological? Well, there's conflicting stories on this. Back in the 1970s when he was arrested, he claimed that it was a big disappointment. He tells me today, that his stories back then were because he was mad at his biological mom, because I guess she had did a story with a magazine, and he saw it as a betrayal that she was putting the story out there for money. So he kind of had this resentful take on her,

but he tells me now years later that retrospectively the meeting was sweet, but it was still anticlimatic. It wasn't filling that void inside. And then he meets this call. becomes a part of it. And he said there were particularly evenings where in the middle of the occultic activity he looks up at the sky

and tells Satan, I'm yours. And he said he felt an energy. He said even in the crimes, he felt transfigured. It was as if there was some... You know, this is not unusual with serial killers. If you go back and you look at the data that FBI has on interviewing serial killers, Ted Bundy called it an entity,

this energy that came over him. when he committed his crimes. He said it was as if he was in the corner of the room watching himself, like this out-of-the-body experience. BTK, Dennis Rader, called it the X-Factor. He didn't quite know what to name it, but he put an X as the unknown, but something unexplainable. Folks, welcome back talking to Colin Plume with Noble, Gold.

And Colin, you know, you're sharing some stuff. I've shared on the program before about, when you talk about something like silver, I tend not to think about this kind of thing because I think about, you know, silver coins when, you know, Suzanne, a package in the mail of these beautiful silver coins that noble gold sent us. And I look at it and I think of it that way. But obviously, maybe not so obvious, silver is used in all kinds of applications. And so you're saying that because of that, it's going to increase in value. It's a good investment. and in your book, silver is the new oil, you talk about some of that.

You were just mentioning some of those. Keep going on that. So industrial demand 10 years ago to today, they have double the amount of industrial uses for silver than from 10 years ago. So there's just so many industries that are gobbling up silver that need it, including the government, including defense. The government actually last year bought $400 million in silver. and about $100 million in gold. It was a four to one ratio.

So they bought more silver than gold because they used silver, drones, warheads, all of these things. They actually, I tried to find it in my book, but I couldn't find anybody that would tell me how much silver they used because they don't want the public to know, right? They kept it under wraps. But that's just one of the areas and the government continue. And every year they're buying silver,

people don't realize that silver has doubled over the last five years, yet it's still half the price of where it was in 1983 when the Hunt brothers try to corner the market. So even though it's doubled in the last five years, it's still got a lot of room to run. So I really like where silver is sitting today. I like the price of it. But it has to do with the underlying value and why people continue to use it. If you just look at solar panel usage alone, that's 17% of the usage. it continues to grow as people add this to their homes, that's not going anywhere.

So they're used between 10 and 25 grams of silver and every solar panel. And then a little known fact, that's just kind of a silly thing, but it kind of adds to the values that most refrigerators today have one to two ounces of silver. And it's unlikely that someone's going to go to a place where the refrigerators, the old ones are, and pull that silver out, right? Because it's worth 60 bucks. if it was gold, they would do it. They'd rip that refrigerator open.

So what I'm saying is that they only recycle between 4% and 5% of the industrial uses. So as much as they're trying to find it in Mexico and in the U.S., they're not recycling a huge amount of it either, which means that they have to continue to find more, and mining gets more expensive. And obviously, everybody knows what labor, inflation is doing to everything. So the price, the underlying price has to go up because it just costs a lot of money. to pull it out of the ground. Well, your book is silver is the new oil.

Yes. Much more about it. But, you know, folks are basic recommendation here. You understand that, you know, the economy is, it's always volatile. But the next year or two, it's probably going to be tough in any circumstances, but especially now, gold and silver are the safest, bet. It's even safe. It's better than safe. So if you're interested in doing that, getting some gold, getting some silver in various ways, you can go to Eric Mataxasgold.com. Eric Mataskis gold. If you have

questions, you want to talk somebody, you can call 877-646-3-4-7-877-646-5-3-4-7. And again, the website, Noble Gold, you can go to Ericmetaxisgold.com. Ericmetaxisgold.com. It's an exciting opportunity. It's good, Colin, to be able to talk to somebody that I trust on these important issues. Thanks for partnering with us. And congratulations on the book, Silver is the New Oil. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you.