The Eric Metaxas Show - Michael Oren (continued)

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

Eric's conversation with Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador, continues, focusing on his book, "The Night Archer" and his view of the world from his many years of experience in government.

Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times. This is your final warning. Now here's your host, Mr. Thrill Ride himself, Eric Mataxis. Hey, everybody. Thank you, Todd. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, it's Albin Sater. I'm the producer of the Eric Mataxis show, and I'm here with the other producer of the Eric Mattaxas show. Chris Heimbs. Hello, Chris. Hello. Good morning. How are you?

Hey, good morning. Oh, good morning. Yes, now you have a background there of New York City. And of course, in a moment, we're going to talk about our experience of that particular tragic day here in the country. But don't want to have everything as a downer this morning. I happen to notice, because I'm looking at myself here on the screen, that a few days ago, I had a haircut. And when you have as few follicles on your head as I do, whenever you get a haircut, you kind of look like a balloon wearing glasses. So I'm wearing, I'm growing a goatee.

You can also notice that. My wife doesn't like it, but it makes me look like less of a balloon. Anyway. It looks good, Alvin. It looks good. Oh, really? Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that.

I think I look a little more adult. Anyway, and I'm not wearing my hat today either. If you're watching on YouTube, and by the way, subscribe to our YouTube channel, we really need the subscribers. And if you're wondering about Eric, I mean, he really wanted to be here, but he is traveling at this very moment. So we don't have the big man himself, Eric, the Texas. for you, but you do have Chris and you do have Albin, that's me. In about 10 minutes, we're going to get back to that wonderful interview that Eric is doing with Michael Orrin. The Knight Archer is his book, and of course he's a former Israeli ambassador, so he has a lot to say about what's going on in the

country and what's coming up down the road. So stay tuned for that. The other thing is we're trying to keep it fun today. This is Friday, and sometimes we have Fun Facts Friday. Today, I have my cardboard cutouts behind me, again, if you're looking on YouTube, and I have the Hamster Holmes box of mysteries, which, by the way, if you donated last month to food for the poor, you got a box, all six from Simon & Schuster, Hamster, Hamster, my book series of the crime-solving hamster. And we're having another campaign coming up in October, so if you donate a thousand plus dollars to Alliance Defending Freedom. And that's another big one.

Alliance Defending Freedom, you'll also get that. And so many other books by Eric Mataxis signed, of course. What else can I tell you? Oh, oh, don't forget. This is a bobblehead, of course, of Mike Lindell, and he's talking to a bobblehead of, well, me. But if you want the Mike Lindell bobblehead, go to Mypillow.com, use the code Eric. Eric, Eric, Eric, and get that in pillows and towels and all those other good things.

And so what kind of fun are you bringing today to the party, Chris? Well, I was just going to mention when you were talking about the Hamster Holmes as being part of the giveaway prize pack. There was a super pack, right? You know, that one person out of, you know, we announced the name, I guess maybe yesterday or a couple days ago. And just anecdotally, it was funny. The winner, when we reached out to her, was so surprised. She thought maybe it was a scam. I don't know if there are Nigerian princes out there using the Metaxus book pack as some kind of hustle.

But it was very funny. She couldn't believe it was true. Yeah, that's right. She wrote us an email and said, come on, come on, come on. Is this true? Did I really, really, really win? And, of course, she did. Yeah, so that was very sad.

Yeah, so next month, people have a chance to, again, donate to a worthy cause, Alliance Defending Freedom, and get a chance to win some donor prizes. And most people, of course, they don't give to get from us, but they give because it's a worthy cause. So, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, in terms of stories, I'll start with a story that's not actually mine. And we should probably have him on the show at some point. A friend of mine named David Angelo, who's one of the lone conservative writers, if you can imagine, there's such a thing at the Daily Show. He's a very talented comedian.

He went to my alma mater, GW. And so he was there during 9-11 as a freshman. So he had literally been, you know, on campus in D.C., as you know, across the river, the Pentagon was struck. So D.C. was very much affected during 9-11. And, you know, he was just sort of a wide-eyed, you know, typical freshman liberal type kid, right? Yeah. And 9-11 happened.

And people, you know, a lot of people just started, you know, got out of their homes and just started walking. So he was in the middle of D.C. And, of course, there were all these reports of, you know, a plane headed to the White House. Nobody really knew what was really happening. But everybody was just sort of repeating whatever that, you know, type of information that had heard just to try to help people out. Like, oh, I heard this. I heard that. So, of course, he just started walking out of the city.

And I think he walked for most, you know, for a couple hours, maybe most of the day. And when he started, when he started, he was very much. much a progressive, a liberal. And by the time he finished walking many hours later, he was kind of processing the attack that had happened. And he said he was like incredibly conservative. And he just went through this transformation in the matter of hours. And so now he's this amazing kind of conservative person on Twitter. But it was that day that changed him in a minute. Wow. My friend and someone I moved from Pittsburgh to New York City with Dennis Miller, yes, the dentist said that, yeah, 9-11 was what did it for him.

So, of course, he's a great conservative voice out there now in the media. Now, on that particular day, I was living just a couple miles north of there on 17th Street, which is just a couple blocks around the corner from the TBN studios. And I happened to have, I did a prayer time every single day for like an hour. and I happened to be in the Cabrini medical hospital, they had a chapel there, and I would go in there pretty much every day for an hour, or I'd go in another chapel somewhere else. But there was a little tiny nun. I'm not kidding, this woman wasn't bigger than five feet tall. And I was just finishing up my prayer time, and she came in, and she said, the World Trade Center has been hit, is on fire. Nobody knew what was happening at that point. I said, oh, that's interesting. So I left, and I'm walking back to my apartment.

apartment just a couple blocks away. And I looked up at the sky and noticed how incredibly blue it was. And most people will tell you this. They've never seen a blue sky, a sky that blue as it was here in Manhattan that particular day. And I passed a guy who's listening on his car radio to something about a plane. And I thought, this is very, very strange. And of course, I get home and I turn on the TV. And I was just amazed at what was happening. And it wasn't long after that. I went out onto the street, like you mentioned, and I went down to Fifth Avenue, and from Fifth Avenue, you could look straight down two miles, and you could see the World Trade Center. And I was there with a bunch of other people that were out there pretty much in the middle of the street stopping traffic. People were just

stopped. And we all looked downtown, and I actually saw the very first tower go down, standing on Fifth Avenue. And I was just, I couldn't believe it. It was like something so incredibly unreal. And another thing that a lot of people don't talk about, but for days and days and days afterwards, there was a sweet, sickening smell, smell in the air for days afterwards. And you would also see cars, buses and all that coming, being towed back up from ground zero that were just covered in this, in this dust. It was very sad, very sickening. And all the pictures on, everywhere you went on telephone poles, on walls, pictures of people saying, have you seen my mother, have you seen my brother? Have you seen my father? It's very, very sad. Yeah. So I,

I was working down in Rosalind, Virginia, which is about a mile or two from the Pentagon. And the guy who had the corner office up on the 11th floor where we were in our building could feel the window shake when the Pentagon plane hit. And a little bit before that, I had been on the phone with my wife who was watching the Today Show when the first plane hit. And they obviously cut to that. And so I was a video editor at a small little company there. And so we had a TV in our office, so we turned it on.

And so I was watching it real time on the phone with my wife when the second plane hit. And we both, you know, saw it together from our respective places. And that's when I knew, okay, you know, I mean, I think a lot of people knew at that point. That's something, you know, nefarious was going on. So, yeah. Yeah. Very, very, very sad day. 19 years ago today.

Just one last reminder, a little bit of an upnote. Eric, tonight on TBN. he's interviewing Mike Huckabee about Mike's new book. So don't forget 6 p.m. Eastern time for Mike Huckabee being interviewed by Eric Metaxis on TBN tonight. So we'll be right back now for Eric to finish up his interview with Michael Oren. Thanks, folks. Hey there, folks. It's Eric Matakas' show.

I get to continue my conversation with Michael Oren, author of fiction, short fiction, principally a new collection, the Knight Archer and other stories which we are discussing, and also former Israeli ambassador to the United States. Okay, Michael Oren, I want to keep talking about fiction because it's so rare that I get to do that. One of the things that I admire about the man we both know, Mark Helprin, is his short stories. His book, Ellis Island and other stories,

I think is one of the finest collections of short fiction in existence. tremendous range writing about different historical periods. His stories are certainly somewhat longer than yours. But tell us about other stories. You talk, tell us about the story that bears my name, which is the longest in the book, and you claim your favorite. But tell us what other kinds of stories are in this book tonight, Archer, and other stories. Well, we have stories that are ghost stories. I've had an interest in ghosts. I have an interest in God. I'm a person of faith. And I have a story called Day 8 about a conversation between God and Satan over whether to give human beings souls. And what will be the ramifications of giving people souls?

An interesting conversation. I have, I spent many years in the military. I'm a veteran of several wars. So war is a subject in this collection. Some from my personal experiences, some from the experiences of my final. I have collections that are about love and different types of love from different relationships, parents, children. I have a story about a homeless woman who lives out of a car with her daughter and has to travel

across the United States. And for me to put myself into that character of that woman and her daughter was, again, an act of freedom, not easy. Not easy. I have stories that are, I see more Jewish in content, dealing with the Holocaust. and stories that have surprise endings, a lot of them surprise endings. So you're the Israeli O'Henry, obviously. That's how we're going to sell you, right?

We need a hook. You've written a number of books. Have you published fiction before this? I have, I have published two works of fiction. One of them is called Reunion. It was actually based on my father's war stories. I used to attend his World War II reunions. he's still attending his World War II reunions at 95.

And the stories became the basis for this novel, which is set in one of these unions in Belgium. But it was very difficult. In Israeli government, as in American government, if you're in certain positions, you cannot publish novels. You can't publish at all. I believe in the Senate you can't publish. In the Congress, maybe you can.

The president never publishes a book while he's in office. So I had to wait. So every day while I was in government, I would get up very early and write these stories. And now that I have not currently in government, I may be in the future, I have the opportunity to publish them. Well, so obviously if the title of this collection of, you said 51 short stories, if the title of it is the Knight Archer and other stories, I assume one of the stories is titled The Night Archer. Can you talk about that? Night Archer is a story that's based on my personal experience. Ever since I was a little kid, I had trouble with sleeping.

I was never a great sleeper. I don't know about you. And I, you know, tried everything, the meditation and, you know, the warm milk and the bananas and everything. How about a tumbler of vodka and Kuala to try that? Yeah. And I don't know, several years ago, I began to picture in my mind an Archer is the strangest thing. Now, you know I'm an historian by training, and this archer was on the field of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 between the English and the French. And all I saw was this archer drawing back the arrow and aiming it into the sky.

And in my mind, I followed this arrow into the sky, and lo and behold, I fell asleep. So the story, which is a very short story. It's a page. is sort of my way of saying thank you to this anonymous archer who lived 700 years ago and who I know, man, I don't know his name, but it describes the experience of meeting him

and falling in debt to him. Did you sense, when did this happen roughly that you had this idea, this vision? Oh, probably four or five years ago. And by the way, Sleeping great. Are you kidding, really? Sleeping great.

Try the archer. But let me ask you, I mean, you'll sell this book just as a way to help people sleep. No joke intended, right? Because people often say, if you want to fall asleep, start Bonhofer by Eric Metaxus. But seriously, is it kind of a vision? Was it something mystical, or was it just your mind wandering as one's mind does? Totally mystical. Totally mystical.

Yes. But all of them are. All of them are. As I say, you know, when I write history, I think about history. I don't know how you wrote about Wilberforce. Did you sit down and think about Wilberforce? But when I write out history, I think about epaids. If I write op-eds, I think about op-eds.

I never have to really think about the short stories because they come to me. And now they come to me. They're very insistent. I actually have to write them. I have no choice. And I find that, you know, I'm, I'm a little envious because I don't have that problem. But so you say they sort of come to me.

But again, the reason I'm asking is because I wrote a book titled Miracles and I'm very interested in this kind of thing. And there are times when I have had actual visions, when I have had dreams that have been obviously supernatural, God clearly spoke them to me, very rare, but it's happened. And it's quite different. I'm fascinated by the, you know, the difference between, let's say, a day. daydream and when it just goes over into something that you would say that was mystical, that wasn't just a daydream, that just wasn't my mind.

And so you're saying that there seems to be something of the divine or at least the mystical in some of these experiences. But unquestionably, unquestionably. And what happens is I'll be sitting, as I'm sitting with you right now, there is no story right now, but in another split section, there will be a story. and it will appear to me inside me pretty much whole. I have to figure out how all the ends come together. I often liken it to building a construction bridge, an expansion bridge where you know how the bridge begins.

You know how it ends. You're not quite sure how it's going to meet in the middle. Sometimes it's that problem. And my first reaction, and I think maybe this is a reaction to people who do have, you know, revelatory experiences. is my first reaction is, oh, no, this can't be. That story is too outlandish. I can't write that. It's beyond my ability.

And you sit down, and I have to, over the years, I've developed faith. I've developed faith in the inspiration. And let it just speak through me. Let it come out on the paper. Don't fight it. Okay. Let it reveal itself. And it's truly a process of revelation.

I can't stress this enough. And very, it was also interesting. After it, I can't even remember it. I don't remember the process of writing. But I'm always at the end filled with gratitude. Filled with gratitude. That's, it's so amazing. I know you're a man of faith.

Do you pray that God would help you, or is this something separate from that? How does that work? It is among my prayers. I pray from many things, but it is certainly among my prayers, certainly. Well, what a crazy idea that the Knight Archer is a page long. And so let me ask you then, when you refer to this Knight Archer, he's a fictional character, but do you believe that there was an actual, in other words, did you believe that in this mystical moment

that you were encountering somebody who in fact had existed? Well, I picture him as he existed, and I describe him in the story. And again, I fall back on my historical knowledge because I know what the archers at Adjancourt look like, what they wore. I know a lot about medieval weapon. Remember, I taught military history at Yale. So I know about the longbow. I know how much it weighed.

I know what the arrows were made of. So there's detail in there. But I'm saying, but you're not saying that it was a, I mean, all the detail might be correct, but it still wasn't a specific historical figure that you were encountering. You were inventing a figure. No, there are actually no historical figures in the historical stories. There are a number of historical stories. I have a story about a conquistador in the early 16th century, going to the new world.

I have a story about a waste gunner on a B-17 during World War II. I have a story of a 14th century Ottoman sultan, a former slave. Now, I'm drawing on my history in all of these stories, but these aren't historic. figures. Okay, and you don't have a sense that they actually did exist and that you're somehow encountering them. No, but people like them, like them. Well, certainly people like them did. The reason I say this is because I once, in one of the rare times that I had an out-and-out vision, bizarre story, I won't tell it here. I think I'd, it's on the, I think I put it on my website, but I saw a cross in a vision. And it was, maybe lasted two seconds. And I knew that it

it existed someplace in the world. It wasn't just some projection of my mind, like in a dream or something like that. And two days later, I saw it physically. I mean, it was just completely mind-bending. So I'm just fascinated with this. We're going to go to another break. We're talking to the author of The Night Archer and Other Stories, Michael Oren. Don't go away.

Hey there, folks. We're talking to a fiction writer. Get it out of your mind that Michael Oren was the Israeli ambassador to United Nations. Right now, we're talking to the fiction. writer Michael Oren O-R-E-N-O-R-E-N. The book is The Night Archer and other stories. Let's talk about some of the other stories that are in this book. I'm really fascinated, Michael, by this process you've described. I think a lot of writers would be envious to hear of it. It's quite extraordinary, really, a gift. Let's be clear. It sounds like a gift.

But let's talk about some of the other stories in the book. So I've had a varied background, an interesting career path that took me, one point to Hollywood. I was, believe it or not, Orson Welles assistant. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now you tell me, are you, I can't believe you just said that. You're serious. It's not as glamorous as sounds. It doesn't matter. The very idea that you met orson Wells. What year was this? This was in 1970s. You remember the Paul Mason wine commercial? Unfortunately. Yeah, as Paul Massaughan said, 100 years ago, no wine before his time. I held the cards for that commercial. You did. Did what you held the cue cards for?

We don't know wine before it's time. You're an historical figure yourself. Forget about the ambassadorship. This is really something. Okay, so how in the world, sir, did you get to be working with Orson Wells? Well, I'll give you the short version. And the short version was that when I was 17, I made a film. A film set in World War I about an American soldier,

meets a German soldier. They become friends, very nice. And lo and behold, this film won the news. number one first place prize in the Young Filmmakers Festival of PBS. So I was on track. What was that? This was in 1973. So I was on track to go to Hollywood, of course.

I mean, I just won this big prize. And so I went to Hollywood, and I was literally crossing Hollywood and Vine one day, waiting for the light to turn. And all of a sudden, I hear a director and a producer discussing a scene. And I turned to them. And those days, I was a little bit, I think, more forthright than I am now. And I said, you know, how would you like to have a nice East Coast guy working on your set? And they said, okay.

And it turns out they were working with Orson Welles. So that's how I got the job. Now, first of all, Orson Wells, I don't remember him producing anything in those years. So is this a film that ever saw the light of day? It was commercials. It was a commercial. I'm sorry. I was shot in the Magic Council in Los Angeles.

A lot of fun. I was in charge of cutting a cigar. I was in charge of what's known as shammying his forehead because he sweat and he had little shammies. He shammered his forehead. And I had to decide whether to stay in Hollywood or not. I had this deep passion about Israel since I was a little, since I was a young man. I've talked about it earlier in the show. And I had to decide.

I was getting older. I wanted to be in the Israeli paratroopers. I had to be a paratrooper. So I said, okay, I'm going to go be a paratrooper. If I want to come back to Hollywood, I'll come back to Hollywood. So I went off to become a paratrooper. I fought in a war and decided that I really wanted to stay here, that I would keep writing. And I've had these two halves of my lives all the time, hence my interest, by the way, in Batakas, and the half-ness.

I'm never trying to, you know, trying to reconcile two halves of our being, say, you know, the politician, the diplomat, the writer. And sometimes it's a source of frustration and sometimes it's a sense of a very deep fulfillment. Well, it's strange because I feel, you know, that we're similar in that. I wear a number of hats and it can be confusing. And yet sometimes you just have to go with it. You have to say this is who God made me to be and it's his business to kind of sort it out. But it is extraordinary to hear about your career. So your experience with Orson Wells was obviously very very,

brief, but you did notice that he was overweight. Oh, boy. You got four or five hundred pounds. And his cape weighed more than I did, put it that way, and I had to help him on and off the cape. And I was so afraid he was going to yell at me because he was not a particularly nice human being. You may know this. Actually, I don't, I don't know this. I can only imagine that when you're kind of a, you know, who made, you know, who made the Citizen Kane, you know, at age 24, something tells me that that could turn you into a monster. Well, on that set of the Paul Mason wine commercial, you should know, he was just screaming and cursing the entire time.

And cameraman, sound man, light, and I was so afraid he was going to yell at the guy who's cutting his cigars. He never yelled at me. But what's interesting is that story then, my Hollywood experience becomes the background for several stories about Hollywood, about aging actors, about young personal assistance to these aging actors. I've had many, many, I would say even thousands of hours on television, talk a little about the experience of being on the television, of being on the news. Washington, D.C., being the ambassador in Washington, I have one story about a phenomenon that

exists probably only in Washington, D.C. I don't know if you've ever encountered it. It's the social climbers. These are people come to Washington with one goal, and that is to ascend the social ladders of Washington. And they spend an amazing amount of money. They hire advisors. So they will tell them which tables to go to, what events to go to, who to invite to their table, because the adage in Washington is to get good table, you have to give good table. And the name of the story is good table. I have never heard of this. I'm fascinated. It sounds grotesque. But it's real. You know many magazines they have in Washington for this Matt Washington's social life? You know, these high gloss magazines.

and you want to get your picture in those magazines. This is their whole lives. And, of course, the golden chalice of it all is to get invited to dinner at the White House. Well, I've done that. I think I have the card right here. Here's my menu, so I'm done. You've saved it. You've been to Everest.

Yeah, I thought, you know, I should save it since I don't expect it to happen again. Wow, wow, wow. We're going to go to a break. Final segment. Folks, I'm talking to Michael Oren. If you're not fascinated, you're not listening. the book is The Night Archer and other stories. So are you tired of being tired?

Well, then it's time to get the tea. Hey, it's Lisa here to tell you about this all-natural, all-organic tea I've been drinking that has had great results for over 20 years. It's called Life Change Tea, and it's specially formulated to help detoxify and cleanse your kidneys, liver, colon, and blood all at once. The colon is one of the most ignored organs in the human body. The faster that waste is eliminated from the body, the less time that waste sits in our intestines spreading toxins to our bloodstream.

This tea helps cleanse chemicals caused by outside intruders from our entire digestive system. And get this, weight loss can be a side effect. And with continued use of the tea, you can experience clear, healthier, younger-looking skin, increased energy, and a happier outlook on life. So if you're tired of being tired, get the life-change tea at get-the-tea.com. That's get-the-teteatcom. and like me, you'll be glad you did. Folks, I got some embarrassing news to share with you,

but you know what? This is just the kind of a show where I don't care. I'm willing to lay my heart, you know, on the line. Here's the issue. Mike Lindell with my pillow, you may notice that I have a bobble hell of him near me. He's here to remind all of us that when you go to mypillow.com, you get whopping discounts if you use the code Eric, okay? Now, there are a lot of people who haven't done that, and we have your names here.

And Chris Heim's and Albin pointed out to me that there's like three pages of you whose first name is Eric. You, you're saying, I mean, that's humiliating for me that even though your name is Eric, you're still not willing to use the code Eric. I mean, if you don't want to use it because it's my name, use it because it's your name. But the point is that I see who you are. I just feel humiliated by this. Please go to go to mypillar.com. It's okay, Mike. It's going to be okay. Go to mypillar.com.

Use the code, Eric. You're going to get whopping savings and really high quality products. Did I mention that? Thank you. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Michael Oren. The book is The Knight, Archer, and other stories.

Michael, you've had an extraordinary, varied life, tremendous variety of experiences. Do you ever wonder why that is? It seems, I have a little bit of that in my life. It's often hard to make sense of the whole. How do you deal with that? I would tell you a story that I never told anybody outside of my wife here, because maybe it's a little bit politically incorrect now. You may remember, if you ever visited the Museum of Natural History in New York, there's a statue there of Teddy Roosevelt. And it is reasonably during the whole controversy over statues and monuments in the United States, I turned to my wife,

and I said, watch, they're going to take down that statue. Oh, sure. Because it has him, you know, being guided by a Native American, there's an African American there, and people are going to take down that statue. They're going to say it's racist. And lo and behold, two days later, they took down the statue. What people don't see is that the base of the statue engraved in the granite are the words statesmen, frontiersmen, soldier, naturalist, okay, peacemakers. And my parents used to take me to that museum when I was a kid, and I'd look at all those at gravings and say, yes, that's what I want to do. I want to do all of that. Isn't that interesting? That's fascinating because Ben Franklin was like that as well. Goethe was like that. There are a number

of figures in history who really are all over the place. I mean, who were into science and into this and into that. Franklin, I guess, is the most dramatic example that I can think of. But I hadn't thought of Teddy Roosevelt along those lines. But he did all those things. He did. He was an Nobel Prize winner. People forget that. And as an older, younger man, when I began to read Mark Halpert and others, and again, I told you he was an influence on me because Mark Halper went off and joined the Israeli army. Oh, yeah. And that influenced his writing. I began to notice that so many fiction writers were graduates of English programs, creative writing programs. They were teaching in creative writing programs.

And I asked myself, what happened to the days when writers would go out in the jungle and writers would go into the ghettos? What happened when the writers were involved in life? Well, excuse me, but that's the reason people no longer typically read short fiction. It has become an industry. Poetry is the more dramatic example of this, right? Who even knows that there's poetry? Who cares?

I mean, you don't have popular poetry being written by people like Longfellow. And that's really the case with fiction. It's become kind of this cottage industry of people who write for other writers and who teach writing and so on and so forth. So you're exactly right in what you say. What happened to those others? So what happened to those others that couldn't support themselves? I mean, writing is very difficult. So writers to support themselves teach writing.

And their writing style, even their subject matter, became incredibly uniform to me and sort of insular. And there's a world out there. And, you know, except for writers and say like Tim O'Brien who fought in Vietnam or James Jones who fought in World War II, you're not going to be able to have a convincing war story because people actually haven't had that experience. You're not going to have an extensive experience of what it is to, I don't know, live in a different century. live in a different country. Much of the writing is about family issues and parlor situations. And to me, this was, it was just too narrow.

And as a writer, I thought it was incumbent upon me to go out and sort of learn something about the world. I just, I love it. I mean, when I think of the death of the short story, all I have to do is think of the New Yorker magazine, you know, in the 80s, just awful. I mean, really a kind of, I'm trying to think Bobby Ann Mason, Coover. There are a number of people writing stories that were just, they were depressing, almost intentionally depressing, and something the life went out of fiction.

It's almost as though to be too cheerful or hopeful or fantastical was thought to be passe. It would be like rhyming in a poem. We don't do that anymore. That's for the groundlings or the depressive. plurables. We just don't do that anymore. And yet, and yet, and yet. It's actually gotten much worse, because now if you are a person of a certain race or sexual orientation or cultural background, you can only write about who you are. You can't write about anybody else. Yeah. And it just negates the very neat, the very notion of imagination and creativity. Yeah. What they're trying to crush today

It is that creativity, what is imagination. And these stories, to me, to my mind, it's like a battle cry of freedom. It's not an original phrase, but I'm declaring independence with these stories and saying, no, I'm going to write about anybody, anytime, anywhere that I want to. Well, that is just so wonderful. We just got moments left. Let me ask you a really simple question. How did you get involved in government service, just jerking over in the other direction?

when was it and how did that happen for you? One of my dreams was to be Israel's ambassador to the United States. So what I studied in college and grad school was the history of the Middle East. I learned to write out beds. I learned to appear on television. Got the stuffing beat it out of me, you know, quite a few times on television before I got the knack of it. And prepared myself to be that ambassador. I became involved in Israeli issues here.

But the real watershed event was the publication of that book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy. which was read by everybody in the Bush administration. I was invited to the White House. And Benjamin Netanau, who was elected in 2009, saw that there was a new president, Barack Obama, who was going to be challenging for the state of Israel because of these ideological differences that we talked about. And he needed somebody who understood America

and American history. And he is a person who understands history very well and how history helps us in diplomacy. So I got that position. And then from that position, when I concluded almost five years in Washington, and I came back. I ran from office. I won an interesting experience, served in the legislator, served in the government. And now, after many years of service, I'm a private citizen again,

but could be called to the flag once again. Incredible. And you said you're in Jaffa. Beautiful Jaffa. Gorgeous Jaffa. I can see the Mediterranean from my window. Great food, beautiful architecture and history. One of the oldest cities in the world. you know, Jonah cast off him here in the Bible and was swallowed by a very large fish. And what is it called in the Bible? It's called Yafo. Yafo, but the word Yafo actually means beautiful. But we pronounce, I think in the United States, we pronounce it Joppa.

Joppa, yeah. Here's Jopho. Yeah, well, listen, unfortunately, we're out of time. But what a joy to get to know you. Thank you so much for everything, especially for your time. today. Michael Oren, I hope we meet again very soon. Thanks, thanks so much. Pttaxas, the story. Hey, folks. Hey, welcome back. This is Albin Sater. I'm here with Chris Hines. We're producers of the

Eric Metaxus show. We mentioned earlier, Eric is traveling, so he cannot be with us in this introduction, in this post show wrap up. But we do, we're happy that he's out there somewhere, the big boss man himself. So don't forget TDN tonight. He's interviewing Mike Huckabee. So that's going to be a fabulous interview. And then next week, you're also going to be able to see the interview that he's doing with Mike Huckabee. And we've got such a great lineup from next week.

Don't forget next week to stay tuned for the Eric McAxas show. Bill O'Reilly's going to be by. He's got a new book. We've got Oz Guinness. We've got Roger Stone, okay, and Byron York. and a couple weeks from now, Rod Dreher. So put this all on your calendar and make sure you're sitting in front of your radio

or your YouTube channel because you can catch the visuals of this on YouTube and make sure you subscribe. Chris, what do you have to say for yourself? No, that's a very exciting lineup. Who does the booking on this show? He must be pretty timely. Yeah, that would be, well, me and you,

and of course, Eric says, I got to get this guy. Like he said, I need Roger Stone back. You get me Roger Stone. Get me Roger Stone. And that's actually the name of a documentary about Roger Stone that Salem guy produced. That's actually quite good. That is.

That's actually true. Frank Corona. Oh, okay, right. And by the way, go to SalemNow.com. There's a great, there's a bunch of great films there. But Trump, 24, stars, well, it's a documentary. So I don't know if you can star in it. but Eric's in it, Dennis Prager's in it, Mike Lendell's in it, and you use the code Eric so you can get this big, I think it's 25% discount.

So that's SalemNow.com. All right, Alba, I'm going to play dumb now. Give me the elevator pitch for Hamster Holmes, your book series. Hamster Homes, you mean the Hamster Homes box of mysteries, well, from Simon and Schuster. Well, the elevator pitch is that Hamster Holmes is a, he's a crime-solving hamster, okay? He's got six books that are. involved in this and his sidekick this is the best part of this this is why simon and schuster wanted to do it the sidekick is dr watt and he's a firefly and he's like a one watt bulb firefly and he talks to hamster homes

in morse code so he blinks off and on and there's morse code in the book little words that the kids five to seven year old kids they can you know they can figure out what hamster homes is is hearing from or seeing from from from dr watt so hamster homes box of mysteries is out there right now you can get all six books it's uh at amazon dot com it's like 17 18 dollars or something like that that's amazing yeah and then next next month uh alliance defending freedom if you give a thousand plus you'll be able to get a box free and that'll be signed by the author which would be me as well as of course a lot of eric books signed by that author whoever that is yes anyway. I'm I think you know I always have kind of a non-sequitur ideas. I think Eric should should

seriously consider doing a pop-up book at some point. I think that would be it's sort of like the next uncharted you know territory right. You could do a little pop-up book of historical figures. You know, that would be so wonderful. Ford's theater. That could be very exciting. Lincoln, you know what I mean? Oh, oh, okay. I thought it would be, I thought Eric would pop up like and scare you like a Halloween book. Yeah. All right. We were talking about they live the other day, you and I, about how they live. Rowdy, Roddy Piper. What a great movie. What a great actor. Yeah. Anyway, oh, we're wrapping up for the weekend. Hey, folks, make sure you check out Ericmetaxis.com and sign up for the newsletter and watch

TVN tonight. We love you all. Have a great weekend.