The Eric Metaxas Show - Kathie Lee Gifford

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Kathie Lee Gifford joins the program from a HOSPITAL bed. How and why, we may never know. She discusses her new book "Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Risen Savior (Ancient Evil, Living Hope)"

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Here comes Eric Metaxis. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. It's August 6th, Tuesday in the United States of America. I don't know what day it is in the rest of the world, but here it's Tuesday. Please be advised. It's Tuesday. If you have any appointments on Tuesday, today's the day. Tuesday, August 6th.

I also want to be clear that I'm talking to you without my friend. He has been my friend for over 20 years, Chris Heimes, because at the end of this week, his daughter Emma, I'm going to say this publicly, I don't care, is getting married. This is a monumental moment in the life of my friends, Chris and Tiffany Heimes. We have been friends with them, as I say, for well over 20 years. There are dearest friends. We love them.

and we are so proud of them right now. Like this is an amazing thing. So we get to be at the wedding at the end of this week. And Chris is, I don't know what he's doing right now. I think he's like filling up goody bags or something. But he's, you know, he's a good dude. You know, they've got six kids. And so they're just getting the first one married off now.

And so pray for Chris. He's got a lot of work to do to get rid of these kids to get them out of the house. But we're just excited. I'm just excited. and it's why I'm not talking to Chris right now. So we figured he needs a little break. He's got more impressive things to do. Okay, so today we have two spectacular guests,

not like most days where we don't. Today we do. Today we have, first of all, in a couple of minutes, my friend Kathy Lee Gifford. Kathy Lee Gifford, when I think of a trooper, she's a trooper. She's a trooper. And one of the reasons I say she's a trooper is

because today, the interview I'm going to do with her in a couple of minutes is from her hospital bed. Yeah. She had like a hip replacement. And then she like fell and broke a bone and she's back in the hospital. So literally, I'm talking to her. She's in her hospital bed. I think she refused to come on camera. Doesn't matter.

We know what you look like, Kathy Lee. So you can't fool us. But the point is that I'm talking to Kathleen Givert. It's a lot of fun. I tease her just because I've known her for a long time. So I tease her. And it starts out. very silly, and then it gets very serious.

In hour two today, talking to my friend Roger Kimball, Roger Kimball, he is an amazing voice. You can find more of him at Socrates in the city.com. I interviewed him for Socrates in the studio a few months ago. He is brilliant. He runs the new criterion. I recommend it highly. He's a brilliant cultural voice. voice, conservative Christian, really just very impressive. And I feel delighted to call him friend.

In fact, as I was flying back from Europe just a couple weeks ago, who was seated right behind me, Roger Kimball? And I think I said this on the air the other day. I was shocked to see him. He had his glasses off. I was like, what? That's Roger Kimball. And so we started talking. And about two hours before he landed, he put his computer in front of my face, said, look at this. And Joe Biden, I guess they just sent the letter out saying that Joe Biden was not going to run. I guess God told him. You're out. Anyway, we have Roger Kimball an hour two today.

So both hours are something to look forward to. A couple of comments. A couple more comments, I want to say, I want to comment on the Olympics. I don't know about you, but I have mixed feelings about everything, especially the Olympics. opening ceremony was so vile and satanic and sick that it made me want to boycott the whole Olympics. Okay. The idea that we have dudes punching women in the face makes me want to boycott the Olympics. So I haven't really boycotted the Olympics, but I have almost boycotted the Olympics.

I haven't paid much attention. but there are a couple of things that I saw that kind of sum up what I don't like about the Olympics beyond the satanic opening ceremony and dudes punching women in the face. And my, my, the center of my criticism of the Olympics is it has become increasingly less classical and beautiful and noble, because it's a noble tradition when Kubertin in the latter part of the 19th century

said, we're going to bring the Olympics back, this beautiful thing from ancient Greece, we're going to bring back the modern Olympics, we're going to do this. They were going to do it in Greece every four years, and then they changed it. But the point is that there's something noble about these athletes, about athletes from different nations coming together. And there's something just beautiful about it. And I watched the Olympics growing up, but it's become increasingly like the Super Bowl. It's becoming increasingly like the Super Bowl. It's becoming increasingly commercial, and I've become really, really disgusted. In other words, if it weren't, if the opening ceremonies were fine and if you didn't have young men punching young women in the

face, I would still have a problem with the Olympics because it has become supremely commercial. It's like watching the Super Bowl. It's kind of disgusting to me. The athletes, there's a lot of showboating. There's a lot of chest beating. There's nothing noble about that. The idea of It's like spiking the ball in the end zone. That kind of stuff is, I expect that from, you know, pro athletes that getting paid zillions of dollars. And they think that they're, you know, they're the greatest thing in the world and they're so great. And I don't expect that from Olympic athletes. But I've seen a little bit of that.

And that's part of what I'm noticing, the commercialization generally, the way they kind of try to sell it like it's the Super Bowl. A couple days ago, they had the 100 meter. final. And I don't even remember the name of the guy who won the gold, an American, but the level of showboating from this guy was unbelievable. It was so tacky and awful. He's like beating his chest and acting like, I don't know, like there's no humility. It just struck me as ugly, as tacky as, it's like, it's like commercial. And it was so, the lack of humility, you know, when I think of the great athlete, of old. I don't, you don't see this, you know, you don't expect Lou Gehrig to be behaving like that,

or Jackie Robinson to be, I'm talking about baseball, it's my favorite sport. But even Simone Biles, I was upset when she won the gold and the all around, I guess, she wore this goat, greatest of all time, little pendant. And I just thought, you know, and she showed it on camera, like I'm the greatest of all time. And I thought, you know, I expect better from Olympic athletes. I expect a little humility from them. You are the greatest of all time, but let others praise you. You don't have to tell the world, look, look, I've got this. I just considered it tacky. So I just had to say that. I feel the Olympics have become horribly, horribly, horribly commercial. NBC, obviously bears, you know, 90% of the guilt for that and getting these athletes to, in a sense, just

to be like these performers in some kind of a show rather than these noble athletes performing in the way they do. So I just had to get that off my chest. Okay, this week, by the way, I'm going to replay my conversation with Megan Basham. If you haven't read her book Shepherds for sale or haven't bought it,

it's at the heart of where we are today, folks. Take it seriously. I've got a hilarious conversation coming up with Jared LaMaster of the Babylon B. This week, a lot of great stuff coming up this week. In the meantime, you know, we're doing a fundraiser with food for the The poor, I said it yesterday, I'll say it again today.

One of the big reasons we do the fundraiser with Food for the Poor is Guatemala. That's one of the 17 countries that Food for the Poor works in. Okay. The level of poverty in Guatemala in our hemisphere is sick and it's something that we can do something about. So I guess I have a statistic here. It says half of the kids under five years old, half in Guatemala suffer from chronic malnutrition. How sick is that, folks? How sick is that that they're kids in our hemisphere, five-year-olds, an under suffering from malnutrition. In rural communities, it's up to 80%. This is horrible,

and we can do something about it. And we need to do something about it. So I'm going to ask you to go to metaxis talk.com. If you give, for example, $100. You don't have to, but if you can, they're asking, give $100. It will feed a kid for an entire year, two months. healthy meals a day for an entire year and help their village get access to clean drinking water. We've talked about that. It's a real problem. You can save lives. So I'm asking you, please, please, please go to metaxisotocot.com, or you can text Eric to 51555. Again, text Eric to 51555. Text Eric to 51555. Please do it. God bless you. Americans are tired and frustrated by a stalling economy.

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who's in the hospital. So she couldn't be with us by video because she looks hideous. And she normally lives beautiful and whatever, but she's, this is my sources tell me that she, by the way, I'm speaking of Kathy Lee Gifford, that she's been in the hospital, I believe, I don't, don't quote me on this, but that it's been breast reduction surgery. And she's my guest right now. Kathy Lee, welcome to the program. Yeah, no, that was years ago.

No, this is a different one. Really? This is a mommy. Sometimes they say it grows back and you have to do it again and again. And so that's, you're telling me that's not right that my, my, no, you're wrong. You know, I had to have a major hip replacement, which I promptly went through by the power of God and an amazing. amazing that the best surgeon in the world are just a great man here down in Tennessee and literally was finally recuperating from that when I took a fall and and crushed my pelvis. So I back in

up. Yeah. Yep. And so I'm getting out today. I'm getting out. I want to go. You're getting out. I mean, obviously be more fun to talk to you when I can talk to you and we can see you. But for now, I guess, you know, my wife, Suzanne, she had an injury. She had a had her hip replaced. And they did such a good job on that hip that for a short season, she was just walking in circles. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I would suggest you get my surgeon next time. He has made mine like the Iron Dome. I pray to God. I love this man. So it's all, it's all in the help you get and the prayers that people pray for you, isn't it? Well, amen. And now listen, we're here because people know you've just had this extraordinary, eclectic,

background in show business and that you are you are net you're starring uh in a great sitcom called herod and mary and i guess you're playing mary yeah i'm playing mary would you please be serious for a little bit why i took i was in the middle of promoting my book herod and mary it was number one on all genres the first day it came out and then i had to uh i fell and i had to go right back into the hospital. And so please take this seriously for a little while. I know it's hard for you because you're always channeling your inner, you know, guys that you love so much, but mostly Dick Cavett. But right now, I need you as my friend to help me get my book back on it. I mean, it's number one is number 91 in all books in the whole world. So it's not, you're telling me it's not

a sitcom called Herod and Mary on NBC following Cheers. It's not a sitcom. No, it is not, my sweetheart. It's a book. It's more like the Housewives of the Old Testament. In all seriousness, I was very intrigued. Of course, it's a book. But it's a very, very interesting idea to write about Herod and Mary. So why don't we start there? Tell my audience why you chose to write about Herod and Mary, because I would think that it's difficult on some level.

These are two. No, it's hard to wrap your brain around it. And it's the great first question because the person that was responsible for it was my, and is my son, who actually went to Oxford and studied. He got his master's in all these things, all things, you know, story, all things, just smart, really, really smart. He's brilliant in understanding what makes a great story, how to bring that story to life, how to bring that story visually ahead and tell a thriller. And I've never written a thriller before, Eric.

my stories are basically, then I got kicked out of Sunday school, then I got kicked out of, you know, I tell stories like that. You know, my life was prime. Oh, you were a bad girl. We know. We know. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. I was kicked out of more stuff who kicked out of brownies, kicked out of McIntyre. And I'm proud of all of it, I must say, truly. And there was a reason that I was kicked out of all those things, because I was a rebel. I was a rebel even then. When I got kicked out of Sunday school, I would think I was 10. but I was always asking questions that nobody else was asking. And when I was given an answer, it was not a satisfactory one. And it used to make me angry. So I, you know, I just kept asking the questions.

And finally, when I started studying rabbinically in Israel, I started getting the answers I'd been looking for my whole life. Now, you would understand studying rabbinically, but most people say, well, what do you mean? Did you become a rabbi? No. studying to study the origins of scriptures. Of course, it's the New Testament, of course, it's the Greek. But it's the original not the bad, bad, bad translations. In fact, the hideous translations we have out there today,

which only cause confusion, which only cause anger and frustration and wars and crusades and divorces and, you know, the church is falling apart. I mean, I have, nothing drives me crazier than a bad, bad translation of the word of God. And the only way we can know if it's a good translation is, is it the original Greek? Is it the original Hebrew? So I go to Israel to study with the greatest biblical scholars in the world, I think. And people say, well, you're such a biblical scholar.

I go, no, not at all, but I study with them, boy. And if I can glean anything from them and learn great things that I can just pass on to other people, then I want to do that. I don't want other people to say what I've said most of my life. Why didn't anybody ever tell me this? You know, I get so frustrated about it. So when I went on one of my first trips like that to Israel, I learned about Herod. Herod is mentioned only a few times in scriptures in the New Testament.

And they're bad things about him, but nothing compared to what his life was. I say in the promotion of this, if Jesus is the greatest story ever told, which I believe, and I know you do too. And you've told some great stories in your time. Herod's right up there with among the greatest stories, never, never told. And Cody thought it would be a brilliant idea to juxtapose the genius of Herod and the incredible impact he had on the Roman world and the, on the Judeo-Christian, not Christian, yeah, basically Christian world and all of that. But the evil of the man, the incredible evil of the man, right up against, while he was dying,

is our story opens while he is dying. His genitals are rotting while he's at his palace in... This is a family program, Kathy Lee. I need you to just... I dare you to show me anybody in your family that doesn't have genitals. Okay, may we continue? All right. We're going to have to edit that out in post because she can't keep it clean.

This is the Red Fox of the daytime set. Go ahead. Yes, well, it's true. I mean, the man is... When Jesus said, what does it profit a man if you gain the whole world and lose his very soul. Nobody, nobody epitomizes that more than Herod. He gained the whole world. Everything and lost. I mean, it is an awful. It's painful, really. I mean, because I've said it a little bit, but I want to be clear. You said your son, Cody, came up with this concept to tell these two stories.

Yeah. Well, to juxtapose them together. People ask me all the time, Kathy, do you think there's more evil in the world than there used to be? And I go, no, no, there was evil in the, in the Garden of Eden. It's always been here. It's just, you know, now we have so many television programs that are 24-hour cable and everybody's got a cell phone that catches everything and it seems like there's more evil. But no, Satan is Satan and he always has been and he ever will be until he's destroyed and thrown down to everlasting hell. So, you know, for me, sometimes it can't happen soon enough. For many people, they feel that way. It seems like the world's getting darker. It's interesting, though, when you say this, because when I wrote a couple of books ago, I wrote a book called Is Atheism Dead?

And I wrote about Herod. And when you think of the evil that has happened in history, it's mind-boggling. In many ways, we've been sheltered from it in our own lives, you know, unless you're really familiar with the Holocaust or whatever. We pretend that things are getting better. We pretend that things are better. There's exactly as much evil in the world today as there was one. when the Romans, you know, butchered a million Jews in 70 AD.

There's so much evil that has happened through history. But Herod, as you say, just one of these really dark, wicked figures, unbelievable. So when he's dying, this horrendous death, which he deserved, he brought all of that on himself. What he did to others was far worse than what happened to him. I mean, the torture that he murdered every single person that got in his way to keep.

to get his power than to keep his power. And that included the only woman he ever loved, Mary Omne. That included all his children. That included his brother. That included almost anybody that was he considered because he was paranoid. That included almost anybody. He was constantly looking behind one shoulder at the Romans who wanted to kill him. I had no idea about his relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

And Cleopatra tried to seduce him. She might, he might be the only man who never said yes to her because he didn't want, he didn't want Mark Anthony mad at him. You know, I mean, these, all of these things that happened in his life, the legacy of, of architectural genius that he left behind, I don't think has ever been surpassed in, in all of, all of history. So the man had great, great, great gifts that God gave him. And he used all of it for evil, almost all of it for evil.

Everything, he, I had no idea what a political, uh, enormous political. influence he was in that whole part of the world. The Jews hated him. He was not the king of the Jews. The Jews hated him because he was not a Jew. Kathy Lee, hold on one second because we're going to go to a break. Folks, the book is are you getting this?

Herod and Mary. If you're not excited, keep listening. This is amazing stuff. Be right back with Kathy Lee Gifford. And your aunt had helped me safe from a romance scene. There's always been a quiet place to

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or is it Gifford? My staff tells me Gifford. Kathy Lee Gifford, you're always fun to talk to. I joke with you too much. I know it annoys you, but I can't help myself. You have done so many things, and you've now written a book. I just, I love it already. It's called Herod and Mary. So, Tell us more. Here's the subtitle of that. What's that? The subtitle. That's the true story of the tyrant king, right?

And the mother of the risen savior, something like that. I don't have the book in front of me. My staff, which will be fired in a moment, they've not provided that for me. Okay. Maybe Cody can come to work for me. Could he produce my radio program? I would love that. He sounds like a bright young man.

We need him. Okay. It's, no, but so I have. I have Herod, Mary, Tyrant, Mother Ancient. That's what the Amazon link does. Oh, right. Well, there is a true story of the Tyrant King, juxtaposed against the purity and beauty and glorious purpose of Mary.

You know, this teenage girl from Nazareth, born into poverty, born into, you know, just to be forgotten by history, who's become the most famous woman of all time. Because she blessed God. and she honored the angel that appeared to her and said, you will be with child. Well, that meant in Mary's day you will have a death warrant on your life. Because in those days, if a woman was not married and she could not be pregnant,

and they would assume, you know, the culture of her day would assume that she had had sex with somebody that was not her husband. And they had the right then to stone her to death. So when she said yes to the angel, let it be unto me, as the Lord has said, she was saying even unto death, I will honor this, this, this, this, this vision you have given me of what the Lord God has for me. She knew the scriptures. She knew that a Messiah was coming. All of Judea, all of the world longed for the Savior to come. That's why when the angel appeared to the, to the shepherds in the fields, and they said, you will find the church. child wrapped in a swaddling clothes. They knew those were Levitical priests out there. Those were just

regular Bedouin priests out in the Judean wilderness. They were there to take care of the sheep that were born and keep them from getting one blemish anywhere on their body so that they could be slaughtered, literally slaughtered in the temple to have a perfect, perfect sacrifice for sin. And when they heard about the baby being born in Bethlehem, they knew what that was. That's why they went there and went and threw themselves down and worshipped. They knew it was the Messiah. It's really unbelievable when we think. I mean, when you get into this as history, because sometimes the problem, of course,

with reading the scripture, it has this quality to it. We forget this really happened. That's one of the great things about, you know, when you put this in film or when you write about these details. It brings us in to understand these were real people. These aren't cartoon figures. Mary's not a cartoon figure. She was a real woman and she was living under this tyrant Herod. And we barely know even what a tyrant is. When we think of the tyranny of Herod, it's scary. It's a scary thing to live under that. What a deeply wicked, wicked man this was. And to think that she lived this. And so you bring this to life in the book, Herod and Mary.

And, you know, Kathleen, I was going to say that lately, I've been thinking about this. It's an interesting thing how, you know, I wrote a biography of Luther and how we kind of threw Mary away. We forgot that this is the model that God gives us for women. This is the model for women. And there's just something so. beautiful about it. The mother and the child, you know, we really need this in our culture today because women are more and more being encouraged, you know, to be men. Mary is the ultimate example. And I think that for evangelicals and others, we need to rediscover Mary. So that's,

I wanted to say that. We've given her over to the Catholics in a sense, you know. And I have many, many Catholic, dear brothers and sisters who happen to be Catholic, love Jesus and love their liturgy and all and all those things. And I, you know, I say, bless you in the name of Jesus. But, but, you know, people think that because they say blessed mother and all of that, that they that Mary belongs to them. Mary belongs to the world. She belongs. And men too could learn from her obedience. You know what they could learn from her? Humility. Humility. Most, she just bowed to God's will in her life. How many people, male, woman, any, you know, female, whatever, that's what we all need to do in our lives and our walk with the Lord is bowed to his, to him. And he knows better. He loves us

with an everlasting love. And she believed that. What are some of the things that we might not know about Mary? We've got less than a minute left and then we'll have another segment. But what are some of the things that we might not know about Mary? Well, we know very little about it. We know tons about Herod, because Josephus wrote about him at great length, at great length. And so we had a lot of source material there. When I got home from that first meeting in Israel, that first rabbinical trip, I ordered every book there was about Herod and devoured them because I wanted to make a movie about him. I wanted to call Mel Gibson and say, this is your next movie. You've got to make a movie. You've got to make a movie. on Herod. And, you know, life gets away from you. And I wrote like 10 more books that were not

about Herod. And it was Cody that came up to me and said, Mom, remember that passion you had about Herod when you got back from Israel that time? And you couldn't get enough of them. He said, I really think it would make such an amazing book if you wrote a thriller for the first of your time in your life. And again, I have to give credit to Dr. Brian Litvin, who I had to, I got to co-author with this with me because he's got all kinds of PhDs. in all the things I do not have. We'll be right back. We're talking to Kathy Lee Gifford.

The book is Herod and Mary. Don't go away. Back, I'm talking to Kathy Lee Gifford. I got it right. Gifford, Gifford. And she's in the hospital bed. And we can't talk about, it was kind of a woman.

We can't talk about that on the air. But we're here to promote your book, Herod and Mary. And you were just saying that you worked with Brian Litvin, Dr. Brian Litvin, so that this is accurate, not like all those other books that you wrote. Exactly. Not the stuff that's full of lives like I've been feeding everybody. Right. Exactly. Exactly. I have such respect for him. And he was the tool we were missing in our workbookshop box. Cody found him amongst many, many other fine authors. But he said, Mom, I really believe this is a man we need to work with.

He is a magnificent writer and a magnificent thinker and visionary, but he also is a humble man that, you know, we all had to leave our egos at the door and become an ecosystem that worked really, really well together. So I want to thank him always. You describe the book as a thriller. It is a thriller. It's written that way. And it intermittently, it's mostly about Herod's life because it was just so. unbelievable you can't. It's a page turner. You kind of go, what? What did he do next? And how did he get out of that trap from Julius Caesar? How did he get away from the Romans? How did he get the Jews? Now the

zealots are after him. Now all of his wives want to kill him. Everybody wanted to kill him. So who's he said out of a movie? Well, the book, thank, thank goodness, is doing it incredibly well. And I had my doubts that people would be interested in something like this, but it's doing extraordinarily well. And we have a deal to do. The next book would be on Nero and the Apostle Paul showing people and giving them hope that at all times in this thing called life, there has been evil. There has been unspeakable evil. Look what happened on October 7th, you know, and unspeakable evil going on right now in Africa still. You know, people just being butchered and left it.

Just it's unbelievable. It's still here. I think that's why the, if you think of so many in the American church, it's such a shallow faith. It's because we pretend like there's no evil. When you understand the satanic evil that is out there. That's exactly right. You want Jesus. You want God.

And I actually believe that's why the Lord is allowing some of these things to happen to drive us to him. Because many people really still think like, everything's fine. You know, I can just, Jesus will help my life be 10% better somehow. They don't understand he came to defeat evil and sin, death. And when you read about this kind of stuff like you do with King Herod, you realize we need a savior. And obviously, that's the plot of the story, which is a true story. Folks, it's called Herod and Mary. And so, but when you say it's a thriller, that's just interesting to me. So what is the arc of it? Where does it start? Does it start with It starts with Herod dying in his palace in Jericho and literally trying to end his life because he's in such unbelievable agony.

And, you know, very similar to the agony, he had put hundreds and who knows, maybe thousands. Yeah, thousands of people because on the day that he said he was going to die, he insisted that, I forget it, hundreds and hundreds of people that were good people and beloved people in Israel be murdered on the same days so that there would actually. be mourning in Israel because nobody would mourn his death, but people would mourn the death of these good people that his soldiers would go and murder. And so he was that kind of guy. Hey, if you want, I want to be remembered. Murder all these other people, so I'll be remembered. So, I mean, you just can't even fathom such evil. And it's juxtaposed with Mary bringing her baby Jesus home after the same angel had let them know, go home to Nazareth.

Those who would kill the babe are dead. And so she's passing by in Jerusalem, the road that leads to Nazareth, which basically has to go through the area where all the crucifixions are held. And people don't know that when you were crucified back then, well, they are crucified still today, but back then you weren't up on a hill somewhere

where people could just see you from a distance. The Romans wanted everybody that passed by at eyes length, eyes distance. They wanted people to see the agony in these beds, everyone that was being crucified. They were stripped naked, so they had no dignity. All of they were stripped. You see Jesus hanging there with this thing wrapped around his loins. No, he was totally naked. And not only that, but they, well, that's enough, isn't it?

Right there. You're at eyes length. And that's where Mary was passing by with her baby. maybe when she sees the agony of what was going to ultimately happen to her son. I still, you know, it's interesting. You mentioned wanting to make a movie. Who's to say that somebody like Mel Gibson couldn't make a movie? This is very powerful stuff, and I do think it needs to be put on the big.

Well, it had to start somewhere, and it started with my son's having this truly beautiful concept of Kathy. Take the evil, the evil that fascinated you so much. And I know evil, but he had so much beauty in him, too. You can go to Israel now and go to the different palaces that he had and see the mosaics on the floor, see the fountains. He put in gorgeous pools on, on Masada, on the top of the desert, you know, just blooming, everything. He put in Cessaria Maritime. Nobody knew for 2,000 years how he put concrete in the Mediterranean Sea and built and built. a literally an unbelievable maritime area for Caesar's ships to come in from Rome.

How did he do that? He did it because he did it because he was a genius. That's the horror, isn't it? That God gives people this talent and then they use it for evil. Yes. For evil. But it really would make an amazing movie as you're describing it. But of course, it is now a book.

It's called Herod and Mary. and you said that you want to write another book about Nero and Paul, did you say? Yeah, we wanted to be a series called Ancient Evil slash Living Hope, because there has been ancient evil since the ancient days and before. And Living Hope lives with us every day in the form of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus left, he said, I will send you a comforter. I will send you my Holy Spirit. You will not be alone.

And we have to find hope in that, you guys. And especially you, Eric, you know, you and I have taught. Nobody has been a bigger fan of your books than I have been. I'm just amazed at the genius that the Lord has given you to write these incredible stories. You write biographies like nobody that I know writes them. That's so kind. You know it's true. I've told you that in private.

I know, but, you know, it just means a lot to me, frankly, that you would say that. Thank you. I'm so sorry that we can't see you in person right now. But we're going to be, we'll be. We'll be bugging you in the future, Kathy Lee, because we love you. We're grateful for you and grateful for the book, Herod and Mary. Folks, I don't need to tell you get a copy. I think you're already ready to do that.

Kathy Lee, God bless you. Folks, final segment with Kathy Lee Gifford, and you just were saying, Kathy Lee, that you did the audio version of this book. I now do all the audio versions of my book. I really enjoy. enjoy it and lots of people love to listen to books and they always apologize say oh i only listen to it what who cares like that's just as good as reading yeah i've ever since the uh that kind of technology was available i have done my audio books i think it's part of uh writing your book now

a lot of people cannot read or can't or don't like to read or but and or people just for all kinds of reasons it makes great sense i was just a few days away from having my hip surgery uh so I was in agony. It took me four days because the names alone in this story. There's not, there's Herod and there's Mary, and there's no other name that's easy to pronounce. It's Archelaus. It's Aristobulus.

It was, you know, it takes place in that world. And there's not a Fred in the story. You know, nobody's name. Don't you hate that when there's not a Fred in the story? You know, my contracts from here on in, all my books have to have Fred in them. You've got to have a couple of Freds. Give me a break.

I mean, literally I can do it. do my audio books usually in a day, day and a half. Because I wrote them, so I know the material, you know. Yeah. But this one, this one took me forever. And I would just suggest, because I'm an actress as well. And so I acted this book out. I play every role.

And it was not easy. And I was an excruciating pain. But I listened to it. Even Cody, who's tough on me about everything, listened to it back and said, Mom, you did an unbelievable job. You know, especially the people who were being tortuating. and they're in pain. I can play them. I was in so much pain them. But anyway, God got me through, just like he's getting me out of the hospital today. He's taken me home. I'm going to be very,

very careful about everything I do going forward because I have a long recuperation from injury. Yeah, but it's okay. God goes with me. You know, he goes, he's already there. He set up my hospital bed for me. So it's all good. Amen. Amen. Well, I still, I still can't believe that I'm talking to you. You're in a hospital bed. Obviously, we can't. see you so you could be faking it we have no idea we have no way we need a photo somebody sent us a photo just so we know my my assistant just sent me a picture uh she took a picture of me because my son wants it so i will send it to you now but you have got to promise me and you know you know you you know you know what do you think you're talking to howard stern you think i would do that to you

howard apologize to me Howard and i are buds now well i know that but i know that but i know that but I'm just saying like he would, you know, he'd get a picture of Kathy Lee. He'd put up, you know me. I'm your friend. Oh, he'd send it over to AI and put huge breasts on it, you know? He's sitting in my, my mouth. No, but I mean, it's just so you, you are literally in a hospital bed right now. You said you're getting out today, correct?

Yes, did you send it to him yet, sweetie? She's sending it to you right now. Oh, okay. I don't have. I don't need proof. I actually believe you. I actually believe you. Why didn't I say to you when we got on first before we started taping?

If you want to give me 10 minutes, I'll throw some makeup on. But I haven't had makeup on my, you know, for three weeks while I've been, you know, had many, many more important things to do. But for you, I put makeup on. And I'm covered with makeup right now. I can see that. I've got a George Hamilton tan. I said, make me look like George Hamilton and hurry up.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, George Clooney. George Clooney? I'm not as a fan of Clooney as I am. You know what? Maybe a lot of us, a lot of people do not appreciate his politics, but his look, hard to get past that. He looks damn good. Yeah, I don't have any problem with his Marxism.

Listen, unfortunately, we're out of time. You know, I love you, Kathy Lee Gifford. It's fun to talk to you. I want to talk to you more about this stuff. If you get to New York City, we're in these gorgeous STBN studios here. Oh, honey, I've been there twice with you. I know that. But I'm just saying if you ever feel like it, you can come

by or we can do it by Skype or whatever. But I want to read the book. Nobody skypes anymore. Nobody skypes. They Zoom. I want to. I prefer Zoom. But here we are on Zoom.

But we'll talk more. The book is Herod and Mary. Kathy Lee Gifford. God bless you, my sister. Talk to you soon. And you too. My brother. Bless you.

Shalom, Shalom. Shalom. Shalom.