The Eric Metaxas Show - James Tour

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

James Tour, professor nanoengineering at Rice University, recently sat down with Eric at Socrates in the City to discuss the origins of life. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. We'll get you from point A to point B. But if you're looking for point C, well, buddy, you're on your own. But if you'll wait right here in just about two minutes, the bus to point C will be coming right by.
Starting point is 00:00:40 And now here's your... Ralph Cramden of the Airways, Eric Matt, Texas. Hey, the folks, welcome to the show. We've got an actually special show for you today. We do this once in a blue moon where we air my Socrates in the city conversation. This is one of the most amazing people I've ever met in my life, not making that up. Dr. James Tour. I write about him in my book, Is Atheism Dead.
Starting point is 00:01:04 I did a Socrates event with him October of last fall. It is amazing. you need to hear this, which is why we're playing it. So here it is. Socrates and City with James Tour. Go. There's so many of you. Thank you. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:01:22 There's so very, very many of you and so few of me. I'm overwhelmed. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to do Socrates in the city in Houston. We have done it in other, you know, backwater. There's no way, once you use the adjective backwater, there's no way to redeem it. No, we've done these events not just around the country here and there, but also in the south of France, in Oxford, England. If you go to the website, Soxas and the city, you'll see those.
Starting point is 00:02:02 But we love doing them in places other than New York, usually fewer stabbing incidents. Not that I'm not here to judge, okay? I'm just saying. But we really have never done one here. And I've been to Houston many times, and I know I've met many of you in my various visits to Houston, but it just thrills me that we're doing this here. I apologize for the club.
Starting point is 00:02:30 It's the best we could do. Is Dick here? No, we are so thrilled that we could do it here. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Socrates' in the city, let me say, get out. I can't believe you would show up here having no idea what you've stumbled into. But it's your own fault because you are now part of a UFO cult, and the mothership's going to come from behind a cloud in about an hour, and we're all going back to our system, our star system.
Starting point is 00:03:02 I hope you don't mind because you're in. No, actually, what Soxacchek's city is, some of you are familiar with the concept. Socrates said the unexamined. life is not worth living. And then he blew his brains out in an alley. That's not true. That's not true. He said the unexamined life is not worth living. And I, about 22 years ago, thought, you know what, most of us are living rather unexamined lives. Wouldn't it be a nice thing to have a forum where I could have conversations with people about what we call the big questions? Sometimes we say life, God, and other small topics. And over the years,
Starting point is 00:03:40 we have done that. We've asked big questions. We always try to ask a question, right? Tonight we're asking the question. I forgot. What was it? Something along lines of, how did life begin? Where did life come from, right? That's kind of a big question, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:04:01 So we've asked the big questions. Who are we? Where are we going? What's the capital of North Dakota? You know, the stuff that's really gets you. My favorite question is, are you going to finish that burger, honey? And of course, the follow-up. What about the fries?
Starting point is 00:04:24 I say honey, because I'm currently married to my current wife. Today is our 26th wedding anniversary. Yes. Don't applaud. We're just through the first 26 years. But I think we're going to make it. You know what I'm saying? I think we're going to make it.
Starting point is 00:04:47 Suzanne knows me at my very worst, and for that I resent her. But I also know her at her worst, and so, you know, we've got this stuff on each other. It's just such a crazy thing that it happened to be our 26th winning anniversary tonight, but we really have together been through thick and thin and also through greasy and stringy. I don't know if that's, yeah, because it's been rough. thick and thin, what does that mean? But the secret to our success in marriage, and I don't mind saying this publicly,
Starting point is 00:05:27 we have an open marriage. I have from the beginning remained open to the idea that Suzanne's relatives could have me killed. If I looked at another woman, you know, in the wrong way. And I've been open to that idea all these years that it could all end with a blunt instrument if I'm out of life. And that has really worked for us. And the most amazing thing I just want to say that is that, you know, when I say 26 years of marriage, I should be really clear, since I'll be talking to a scientist tonight, I want to be accurate. 26 years, I'm talking
Starting point is 00:06:09 consecutive years. Do you understand what I'm saying? If you're a math person, we're not, we're not skipping around. Okay, this is one after the other, after the other, with no exceptions. 26 years today. And let me say to Suzanne, baby, you're the greatest. And she really is. I'm not just saying that. She really is. I, uh, Socrates in the city is about, you know, when Socrates said that, it's not just that he said the unexamined life is not worth living. He also was always in pursuit of the truth. In other words, he had this idea, as most Greeks like myself do, that philosophizing is worth doing.
Starting point is 00:06:58 It's worth thinking about things. But he was kind of relentless, and he got in trouble for seeking the truth, as you inevitably will, because we live in this fallen world. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they killed Jesus. Yeah. And Socrates actually was also,
Starting point is 00:07:19 killed. And Diogenes, you know, he was searching for an honest man. He was killed in a knife fight in downtown Athens. And you can laugh at that one. That's not true. But the point is that when we're talking about truth, you realize how serious it is. Because oftentimes when you
Starting point is 00:07:34 pursue the truth, whether in science, as we'll find tonight, or in other things, there are people who don't like it. And I find that idea itself fascinating. So maybe we'll talk about that I want to tell you how I came to know Dr. Tour, which really led me to write my book as atheism dead.
Starting point is 00:07:58 It's kind of crazy. It was about four years ago. We have a dear friend Elizabeth Blakemore, who's right here sitting next to my current wife of 26 years. And Elizabeth invited me to a dinner to meet a nano scientist named Dr. James Tor. And, of course, being Greek, I know the prefix nano means one billion. that means really, really, really super tiny, right? And I confess that when I met him, I was surprised that it was about my size. And I thought, I don't understand, you know, and as I spoke to him, I understand that it was, it was,
Starting point is 00:08:34 nanoscience really has nothing to do with the size of the scientist. I realized that. But he, he, of course, is a super genius. I'll read some of his credits in a minute. And I find it ironic that our friend Elizabeth introduced us, because Elizabeth, you know, kind of dull. She's got, as we like to say, splinters in the windmills of her mind. Is that not true, Elizabeth?
Starting point is 00:09:02 Three bricks shy have a full load. How can I put it? How can I put it kindly? Her pilot light blew out. That's how you know, you're my friend, if I make fun of you in public. Okay? That's my love language. That's my love language.
Starting point is 00:09:16 But in all seriousness, that evening I just thought, oh, I'm just going to a dinner. And I met Dr. Toro, and we got into a conversation, and somehow he starts talking about the concept of how life began, not what happens once you have life. Because you can get into all kinds of arguments and conversations about the concept of you have life, and then it evolves in this direction, or God directs it or whatever. There's all these conversations about intelligence and science. But he wasn't talking about that. He was talking about the concept of you have no life and then suddenly being you have life. And we're going to talk about that tonight. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have no clue how to fix it.
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Starting point is 00:12:06 send food banner. You can text. You can also text the keyword Eric to 911999. You'll get a link to make your life-saving gift. Text Eric to 911999 or to give your gift by phone. Call the toll-free number 844-863. Hope. 844-8663 Hope. 844-863 hope. God bless you. How did life begin? Not human life, how did life begin? So it's a fundamental question. And so I got excited about it, and I talked to Dr. Tour more and more and more about it.
Starting point is 00:12:49 And of course, I said, listen, this is so exciting. You need to write a book about it. But Dr. Tour is too busy doing actual science and writing peer-reviewed papers to waste this time writing some crappy book, which I'm personally insulted by that because I'm an author. And so I thought to myself, the more I learned about what he was doing, the more I thought, maybe I need to write about this. And so I did, there are two or three chapters in my book, is atheism dead, where I talk about this issue. Because it really is an extraordinary concept.
Starting point is 00:13:27 And once I realized the depth of it, the more I thought, we've just got to kind of tell the world what Dr. Tour knows. about this. Now, I say I put it in my book, I stole everything, of course, from Dr. Tour and other scientists. I don't know that much about chemistry. I think I got as far as 11th grade chemistry. I did for a season.
Starting point is 00:13:50 I knew Avagadro's number. I never met Avogadro, but I knew his number. I spoke with him on the phone. And then, of course, like an idiot, I lost Avagadro's number. and we haven't spoken since. And I feel what a fool.
Starting point is 00:14:09 What a fool I've been, because he's a pretty important guy. I remember once in 11th grade calculating molality. Does anybody remember that? Yeah. I remember there was a brief moment where I understood molality, and then I forgot all about it. I believe I once dated a lipid. I'm not sure.
Starting point is 00:14:29 I don't know if that makes any sense. But I'm not exactly a chemist. So everything in my book, obviously, I take from Dr. Tour. To tell you a little bit about Dr. Tour, officially, and this is the least interesting, he's the T.T. and W.F. Chow professor of chemistry at Rice University. He's also professor of material science and nanoengineering. But I found an article, some of you are familiar with George Gilder, the economist and genius in his own right.
Starting point is 00:15:02 and I thought if I read this to you, it'll give you some sense of whom I have the privilege to converse with this evening. So this is from the George Gilder Report. He writes, just over a year ago, the world changed. History turned a corner. A new age dawned. So far, few have noticed. In due course of time, history will record that the new age was midwifed in the world. the laboratory of Dr. James Torr, Professor of Chemistry, Material Science, and Nano Engineering at Rice University,
Starting point is 00:15:38 a chemist with some 700 scholarly papers, if you understand what that means, your mind is blown, and 150 patent families to his credit. Tour, George Gilder writes, is a modern-day Isaac Newton. Now, if you know who George Gilder is, you don't take that lightly. He is leading a scientific revolution at the smallest of scales with deep roots in chemistry and physics and grounded in carbon the most fundamental life-giving element in the universe. Tour is ranked today in a drastic underestimate as one of the top 50 most influential scientists in the world. He will soon prove to be the most influential.
Starting point is 00:16:26 His innovations promise to defeat deadly viruses and superbugs, overcome cancers and genetic disorders such as Down syndrome, displaced ineffective diagnostic technology, heal severed spinal cords, we'll talk about that, clean, dirty air and water, trivialize excessive CO2, obviate all convention trash disposal, render rare earth materials abundant, retrieve unrecovered heavy materials, replace existing electrical wires with fabrics a million times as conductive, revolutionized construction materials, boost battery performance, eliminate toxic organics, re-energize depleted soil, banished rust, and in a wonderful parallel to Newton's demonstration of gold's immutability and counterfeiting of both your Gucci purse and its contents.
Starting point is 00:17:24 Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. James Tour. He's really here. He's really here. Dr. Tour, I'm so thrilled finally to get this chance to talk to you about some things that are really hard to process. I think I want to start maybe with the evening that my former friend Elizabeth Blakemore introduced us. I'll never forget how you started in on me on this issue of the origin of life. It seemed like you had a bee in your bonnet. In fact, anybody who watches your videos knows you have many bees in your bonnet.
Starting point is 00:18:29 And that's why I love you. You're delightful to listen to. But do you... I mean, I want to talk to you about nanoscience, but can you just give us just a taste before we get into it of, you know, what you say to a stranger like me on the issue of the origin of life? I don't even remember our conversation. Well, you don't have to remember the conversation.
Starting point is 00:18:52 I don't remember the conversation. Actually, I remember not being that impressed with you. No, but what I'm saying is that you kind of gave me the rundown of, you know, Miller-Uri and what we know today. Can you give us the paragraph version of before? before we get into the deeper stuff? We're clueless on the origin of life. We don't know how to make the basic four classes of molecules
Starting point is 00:19:20 that are needed for life. People have never made them in a prebiotically relevant manner, which means that using chemistry that would have been available on an early earth when you didn't have all the big machines that we have now, how you could ever make those four classes of molecules. Okay, in a spirit, filled church, I would say, and now can we get the interpretation?
Starting point is 00:19:47 I thought I was... No, I know. I know. I know you were dumbing it down for us groundlings, but not low enough. Not low enough. Let me, I think that's why I'm here. I realize there's a reason I'm here. I guess, let's, before we get into that, because that's the real subject of our conversation, I want to talk to you initially about what you do as a national. I heard about your work, I guess maybe 15 years ago through some potential investors, they were talking about nanotechnology and some of what you were doing. When I just read what George Gilder wrote about you, we're talking about really astonishing things.
Starting point is 00:20:37 We know science has done astonishing things, but you now are doing some things in that world. Maybe talk just about the nanocars, because that struck my, that struck my... Sure, these are single molecule nanocars. They have four wheels, independently rotating axles. They have a motor. You shine a light on it. Hold on, hold on. You see, you already lost them.
Starting point is 00:21:01 Trust me. We're talking about a single molecule. This man makes molecules in light. But, I mean, you know, most of us don't make molecules like at the office. right? So why don't we, before we get into that, maybe explain the idea of when you say you make
Starting point is 00:21:22 molecules, we know you don't have incredibly tiny tweezers. So can you help people understand you you make molecules in the lab? Molecules, they're pretty small. So can you, is there a way
Starting point is 00:21:41 you can help us understand how you do this or how you got into this? What you do is you make Avogadro's number at a time. You do six times ten of the 23rd at a time. You don't, you just swallowed 10 to the 18th molecules of water, at least. I can tell. Yes. I can take. But it tastes like 10 to the 17. So what I'm saying is that, is that when you do this, we work with molecules in mass, Just like when you drink water, you don't just drink one molecule of water. You drink many, many of them. And so what we do is we do chemistry on groups of molecules that are in a round bottom flask,
Starting point is 00:22:24 and there's solutions in there, and we add different reagents. And then their structures change based on the reagents that we add. Their structures change. And we plan this out, and then whatever doesn't make what we want, we separate out, and we take it and we go to the next step. But again, to be clear, when we're talking about it, talking about nanotechnology, you cannot see a single molecule? Can you see a single molecule? You can see a single molecule by scanning tunneling microscopy, or AFM, you can, but that's not how
Starting point is 00:22:54 you do chemistry. Oh, AFM, yeah. Atomic force microscopy. You can't. Okay, so you can see. But you don't do chemistry on one at a time, because it'd take a long time to get a bunch done. All right, so we're not going to make that mistake. Suzanne, make a note of that. We're not going to, we don't want to screw that up. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question. Well, the owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal.
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Starting point is 00:25:20 He's last. Again, use code Eric and Save Mypillow.com. Today's program is a special airing of My Socrates in the city conversation with the amazing Dr. James Tour of Rice University. He's unbelievable and what he has to say is unbelievably important. So here it is. What you did was you meant, in other words, it's conceivable maybe that you can make molecules or manipulate molecules. You made molecules where each molecule, I know, look, you did this 14, 15, 16 years ago. This is like no big deal to you.
Starting point is 00:26:21 But you made molecules that each molecule is a car. Yes. So let's go back to that. Describe molecules that are effectively cars. You were able to do this. Yes. So each molecule, it's one molecule. They're very small.
Starting point is 00:26:43 You can part 50,000 of them across the diameter of a human hair. 50,000 of them on the diameter. Side to side, parked since they're cars. Yes. 50,000 of them across the diameter of a human hair. Yes. Okay. So they're that small.
Starting point is 00:27:01 Yes. But you were able to manipulate things so that they function as cars. How do you mean that? Okay, so they all have four wheels. They all have four axles. They have a chassis. And on that chassis is a motor.
Starting point is 00:27:23 Okay, what kind of a motor? I mean, what do you mean on that chassis there's a motor? It is light activated. You shine a light and the motor spins at three million rotations per second. And what is the thing? the motor comprised of? Carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur.
Starting point is 00:27:41 Is there a glove box? No? We can put one in. A teeny we like. A teeny we need. We could. Anyway, I just wanted to give you all a sense. I mean, so imagine
Starting point is 00:27:56 a single molecule that has four wheels and it's one molecule and you're telling me it's so small that it can fit across, that 50,000 of them would fit across a human hair. So that's the scale at which you are working. Yes.
Starting point is 00:28:14 Keep it simply yes or no answers we'll do. So what are some of the other things? Tell us about graphene, because in the article by George Gilder, he talks about this recent development where you can make graphene very inexpensively, which is going to revolutionize our lives. Yes. So graphene is a single atomic sheet of graphite. Graphite is a chunk of material that's made up of sheets.
Starting point is 00:28:47 If you take off one of those sheets, it is graphene. Graphene is one atom thick. It's a sheet of carbon atoms that are arranged like chicken wire. One atom thick. Yes. That's, I mean, that's extraordinary. Yeah, it's, and so, but this material, when you put it into other things, strengthens it, strengthens the other materials a lot. So you can put 0.01% into concrete,
Starting point is 00:29:20 and you can use 30% less concrete, just by putting in a very small amount of this material, for example. And that's a big deal from an energy savings side to use 30% yet less, because concrete is 8% of all CO2 emissions in the world come from the making of concrete. and what we'd like to do actually is replace concrete so that because concrete's been around for 2,500 years, and I think it's time it got retired. And we can use another material which would be much lighter weight and equal in strength or stronger. And then we can also just modify the material and use it for an airplane fuselage. It's all made out of carbon, these sheets of graphene.
Starting point is 00:30:06 That's the hope. That's the hope. We're not there yet. That's what it's projected toward. But it's not far from some of those applications. Right. Well, you and I also, we met subsequently in New York City at the Second Avenue Deli, which is not on Second Avenue. It's so famous that they moved it, but they still call it the Second Avenue deli. And you and I met there with... With the folks from Mitch.
Starting point is 00:30:32 Mitch from Chosen People Ministry and my son. Mitch Glazer. And we had matzabal soup. You're Jewish, I understand. Yes, but I had a salad. All of my... All right. So, but while we were there, you pulled out your phone, and you showed me a video of a...
Starting point is 00:30:59 I was trying to eat my food, and you showed me a video of a white rat. Can you describe that and the technology, the graphene technology? Yeah, so that was with graphene nanorribbons, ribbons of graphene, not individual square or cylindrical sheets, but ribbons. And so what was done with the rat, and I told you earlier, the whole process behind this,
Starting point is 00:31:28 why we were going down that line, but the spinal cord was completely severed in two with the scalpel, and then we put one... At the T-5. Yeah, C-5. Yeah, C-5. Did I mispronounce C?
Starting point is 00:31:40 Yeah, because if you do so... You said tea, I thought. Oh. So you did this intentionally to... How'd you remember that? To sever... How'd you remember that? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:31:53 It's in my book. If not for you, babe, I lay awake at night. Tonight. To shining through would not be new. If not for... You intend... I just want folks to track with what you showed me on the phone while I was trying to eat my soup.
Starting point is 00:32:42 You, in a lab, intentionally severed the spinal cord of the rat, which would paralyze it, right? Yes. Okay. And then with nanowribin, with these graphene ribbons. A 1% solution of graphene nanoribins in another polymer. We put that in the gap. And then what you do with the gap is you just, you just. open it and close it.
Starting point is 00:33:12 So you've got the spinal cord's been cut into, and now you open it and close it. Just by doing that, just by that action, it gives you something called sheer flow where these long, thin structures of the graphene nanoribins will organize longitudinally. They'll organize in line with that spinal cord.
Starting point is 00:33:31 It's like logs in a lake, and don't interrupt me. Let me finish this. I'm just, they understand logs in the lake. When it goes down a river, the logs start orienting with the flow of the river. That's called sheer flow. They all organize with the sheer flow. So just by opening and closing, it organizes in line with the spinal cord.
Starting point is 00:33:57 And then you just, they just, I don't do the work. I mean, the people in the lab stitch the head back, allow the spinal cord to reheal. and then it takes off from there. Okay, but the point, of course, is that because of the nature of graphene, it provides a kind of armature over which the nerves that have been severed can regrow together. Exactly, because what happens is they will normally grow, but then they miss each other. As they're growing, there's nothing to line them up, and they pass like ships in the night.
Starting point is 00:34:39 And that's it. So what happens is these act as avenues upon which the neurons like to grow. They like to grow in graphene because graphene is conductive, and they're sending out electrical signals, so they enjoy growing on graphene. And so they're growing from each side, and all of a sudden they now collide. And when they collide, they refuse. And then they heal. That's it.
Starting point is 00:35:07 So the idea is that with this technology, you will eventually be able to do something, you know, virtually unthinkable, is that people who have been paralyzed because their spinal cords have been severed, this technology makes it possible to heal those folks. Well, that's certainly the hope. because you never got to the key point
Starting point is 00:35:39 that after two weeks, the rat got up and started walking around. We forgot that part. And then after three weeks... How are you trying to not to interrupt and thought you would get to it? After three weeks, it started running. And so the first two weeks, the rat just was sitting on the bottom of the cage, moving in sort of a scattered sort of way.
Starting point is 00:36:03 But the brain was remapping the connections, because the connections were not the same as they had been originally. So just like a child has to, you give a child the food, they stick it in their ear originally. But as they learn, they learn where to put that food. And the rat had to remap the connections, and the brain has the plasticity to remap the connections. Once it remapped, and it learned which leg was which,
Starting point is 00:36:29 and then it can get up and just start walking again. So the hope is that injured spinal cords could be, could be healed with a technology like this. It's not there yet, but that's the hope. But you did it with the rat? Correct. So, you know, previously when people talk about somebody having their spinal cord severed, there's no way to get the nerves to grow back.
Starting point is 00:36:57 This makes that a possibility. Correct. I'm not overstating the case. No. You're not overstating the case. case. You also said that, you know, if somebody has their optic nerve detached, they're instantly blind because optic nerves can't grow back. They can't be reattached. You, I believe, said that this graphic, this graphene, these nanoribbons could also help with that. Well, yes, I had a student
Starting point is 00:37:29 working in a lab in Colorado who were an expert. It's working on whole eye transplant. So the idea is, if you have a whole eye transplant, you have to join the optic nerve. The person has an optic nerve coming from their brain, and the other side is to the eye. So you've got to cut at that point, at some point along that, and reconnect the optic nerve. And so the idea would be to have optic nerve reconnection through these as well. And that's never been done. That's never been done. So it would be a big deal. He's a real showman. I just love the understated way you say it would be a big deal. The blind will see.
Starting point is 00:38:19 It's going to happen. This is big stuff. It's big stuff. I just wanted to give people a taste of some of the stuff you're working in. It's really amazing. And I just encourage you to look up Dr. Tour and you can read about all this stuff. We have a TikTok video coming out of that rat walking again, actually. It's just about to come out.
Starting point is 00:38:38 It's a TikTok video. Yes. Don't applaud. I'm disgusted. So what really, the reason I ended up writing my book is atheism dead is because when we had that conversation about the original life, I was so astonished that I thought nobody talks about this.
Starting point is 00:38:59 So let's talk about this. You, in the restaurant in Houston, New York. No, no, no. This was when we were with my former friend Elizabeth Blakemore. Oh, okay. You started explaining to me because I think all of us in high school were forced. It was on the test.
Starting point is 00:39:18 It was always on the test. How did life begin? So what is the standard model since 1952 when people say, you know, to high school students, to college students, how life began? What do they say? It's not only the standard model to high school students. This is a standard model to college students. It's a standard model to graduate students. It's in all of their textbooks.
Starting point is 00:39:38 and from middle school through graduate school. And it is the primordial soup model. There is a pond. There's a body of water, and there are molecules in that body of water. There are some lightning strikes, and the molecules start coming together, and then they assemble into cells. Those cells start coming together, and you get little creatures that start swimming around in that pond. and then those creatures end up coming out of the pond and start populating the earth.
Starting point is 00:40:12 That's the primordial suit model. That's what's taught. Hey there, folks. Hope you enjoying today's crazy special show. I've been in North Carolina, Albin, that's often where I am. If you ever want to know, I'm in North Carolina. Last night, I spoke on my book, Is Atheism Dead. Normally I'm speaking a letter to the American Church, wherever I go. I'm speaking letter to the American Church. Last night I spoke on, is atheism dead?
Starting point is 00:40:59 And I got two things to say. Several people came up to me in the book signing line and said, thank you for putting this in your newsletter. Because I get your newsletter, I'm here tonight. I drove like from an hour or two away. Amazing. So if you're not signed up for my newsletter at Eric Mataxis.com, I'm traveling all around the country.
Starting point is 00:41:17 We try to keep you updated Socrates in the city events, wherever I'm going to be, please sign up for my newsletter. And speaking of his atheism dead, because I don't get to talk about that as often. So last night I'm talking about the archaeology chapters in there. And I keep saying to the crowds that I'm talking about, I can't wait to go back to Israel. Writing this book just made me flip out over wanting to get back to actually see what I'm writing about in the book as atheism dead. So I've mentioned a few times I'm going to Israel next year, at least once.
Starting point is 00:41:54 at least once. I may have to go back twice because we want to film a TV streaming TV series based on his atheism dead, in which case I'm going to go to the sites and film it and whatever. But anyway, if you're interested in going to Israel and why wouldn't you be, of all the places you could visit where Jesus walked, that would be the one. You can go to a website. It's holyland.israel.com, travel. We recommend that you go to holyland.israel. It will reinvigorate your faith. I think most of us need that in more ways than one,
Starting point is 00:42:36 but that's something you can do that would be fun and beautiful. Another thing you can do that would be fun and beautiful is you could help us out in our campaign with food for the poor. There are starving kids who depend genuinely on your generosity. We do a campaign once a year. And this is sort of a big deal. because most of us, even going through hard times, are relatively blessed. There are kids and families in Central America.
Starting point is 00:43:07 That's where Food for the Poor is focused on right now. In Central America, that they're starving. We do this campaign because we believe it is our job to do what we can for folks who are suffering like this. and it's just an unmitigated good. It's a beautiful thing. The only question is how, where, that's why we teed it up for you.
Starting point is 00:43:30 Food for the poor. There's reputable as a guest, an amazing Christian organization. There's a number of ways you can give. And I hope everyone listening will feel compelled to do something, a little thing, whatever you can do. A few dollars helps.
Starting point is 00:43:49 If you can give $72, that feeds. two children for an entire year. This is how Food for the Poor leverages our funds. That's why I'm pushing everyone to give something, because they leverage it so far that it's amazing. I want to hear Food for the Poor's CEO, Ed Rainey. We have a clip. Let's play that.
Starting point is 00:44:14 We work in 20 countries in the Caribbean and Latin America, and people who have no other resources, except the incredible generosity of typically Americans, who, you know, time and time again, you know, really just give from the bottom of their heart and through their love for thy neighbor. And so this is a faith-based organization. And through our church networks and all these countries, we're able to get the aid to where it needs to be. Okay, so you can text the word Eric to 911-99. Text the word Eric to 911-99. The easiest thing is go to metaxus talk.com and click on the banner. We genuinely need your help. We need your help. We need
Starting point is 00:44:52 your help please go to metaxis talk.com click on the banner we're behind if you want to call you can call 844-863 hope 844-863 hope we need your help 844-8663 hope god bless you as you give thank you

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