The Eric Metaxas Show - Michael Pack (Encore)

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Michael Pack talks about Clarence Thomas and "Created Equal," his new book based on hours of interviews with the famous Justice and his wife. (Encore Presentation)

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. The Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, I am so excited right now. I get to talk about one of the greatest men alive today. His name is Clarence Thomas.

And I get to talk about him because I'm sitting here. With the filmmaker, Michael Pack. Michael, we've had you here before. Welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be back, Eric. You've made a lot of films. People can look you up.

Michael Pack, P-A-C-K, your company's manifold productions. But I know you, principally at this point, because of this magnificent film that you made about the great Clarence Thomas. It's called Created Equal, Clarence Thomas in his own words. It appeared on PBS, which is a miracle of God. If you don't believe in God, this story about Clarence Thomas was on PBS. That was a big deal. I watched it on PBS, and I thought to myself, this is probably the first time that many Americans are getting the actual story

on this magnificent hero of our generation, Clarence Thomas. Thomas, and it's because you, Michael Pack, were able not just to make the film, but to get PBS to air it. That's true. And so a lot of conservatives don't watch PBS too often. My wife, who is also Gina Pack, who is also my business partner, heard from a lot of people who would say, I don't think I get PBS on my cable system. But in fact, every cable system has to carry PBS. They just had never bothered finding it before. But I have to say that I've been making documentaries for many decades, and over 15 and all but one have appeared on PBS.

And this one, PBS was actually enthusiastic about. I actually think it might be different today. This came out just before the beginning of the pandemic. Things are really gone out. So this is two years ago that this came out on PBS. Two years ago. Well, look, first of all, who cares if conservatives watch PBS? The whole point is reaching everybody else.

most of whom have no clue about the story of Clarence Thomas. The man is a legend, a genius, a hero, tremendous courage. His actual story is astonishing. I don't remember the title of his book. My grandfather's son, his memoir. My grandfather's son. It's an amazing story. Now, the reason you're here today is not to talk about the film,

although we will talk about the film. The film is created equal, Clarence Thomas in his own words. I'm holding the DVD in my hand here, and I saw it, and it is worth seeing again and again, and it's fantastic, and it's called Created Equal. But the reason I have you here today is because of a book. You've just put out a book with Mark Paoletta.

The title is Created Equal, Clarence Thomas, in His Own Words. So it's the book version of the documentary, and I, as a writer, can say the book always has tons more stuff because you don't have the room in a two-hour documentary or whatever it is, 90-minute. You don't have the room. And so what was your thinking, you and Mark Payoletta, when you said we want to create a book with the same title about Clarence Thomas? Well, the book, as you know, is based on a long interview with Justice Thomas and Ginny. they're the only interviews. It's called Clarence Thomas in his own words because he looks right at the camera, tells his story in his own words, talking to me with archival footage and recreations,

but it's basically the way he saw his life. And that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to present to the audience, both it was in theaters before PBS, now streaming, all those audiences, chance to hear directly from Clarence Thomas how he sees things. My feeling is that those people who I'm particularly anxious to reach people who don't necessarily agree with them and let them hear his side and decide what they think of it. So we were lucky in that Justice Thomas gave us this great long interview. I interviewed Justice Thomas for over 24 hours, over multiple months, and Ginny for about six. And that's a longer interview than any Supreme Court justice has ever granted anyone in the history of the court. And that's from someone who doesn't usually like interviews like Justice Thomas. so it was a great honor.

And he had no editorial control on the film, a scary thing for them. So it was a great honor. And as you implied, Eric, a lot of that material didn't make it in the book. It was 30 hours of interviews. It's a two-hour film. So Mark Paletta, who was an advisor on the film, a close friend of the Thomas's, a friend of mine, suggested that we take some of the outtakes and put them into a book. Because many, many people had asked us what else is in the interview.

So the book has 95% new material. So not much of the actual film is in it. A lot of other stuff talking about his life, his years on the court, his judicial philosophy, what he thinks about issues like abortion. It's a lot, a lot of material. And he is a great American, and he has a great life story. And we are honored to be able to tell it. He's one of the greatest Americans who've ever lived.

He's a hero in our time, Clarence Thomas. And this becomes more and more evident in the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade and in other things that he has said, he is a man of courage. And we need men of courage. We don't just need smart people. We need people who have hearts, people who have real courage. And he is one of them. And it's extraordinary. I had the privilege of meeting him once briefly.

I have met his wife, Ginny, a couple of times. I spoke to him on the phone. I'll tell that story later. It's insane that I got to talk to Clarence Thomas on the phone. I'll tell that later. So this book created equal. When you made this film, obviously, you didn't think that in a few years you'd create a book version. That's true.

Absolutely. That's the best of both worlds, frankly. It is. But it was a challenge to put it together. I mean, we had to, even now, their material, I mean, it's a 30-hour interview, so even now, not all of it is in the book. Right. But the book is structured like the interview. I mean, it's my interview with Justice Thomas.

It's really excerpts from it. My questions are there. Justice Thomas's response is there. So you get to, unlike in the film and unlike in his own memoir, you get to hear him think about things. I ask him a question and you watch the process of his mind. and he starts in one place, goes to another place, comes to a third place, and comes back of the beginning. And we left that in the book so that you could see how he thinks, how he arrives at his opinions. So I think it's a fascinating insight into him.

And in some ways, a deeper insight into the film, although in the film you get to see him in person. I mean, they're both worthwhile experiences. Let me ask you why the title created equal. Well, really, the book tells Clarence Thomas' life story and how he comes to the principles underlying the Declaration, you know, which is where that quote comes from, obviously. Just to review the life, if I may, briefly, Eric, for your listeners and viewers who don't know. So Clarence Thomas was born in Pinpoint, Georgia, a Gullah speaking area outside of Savannah in 1948. So English wasn't even his first language. Now, ladies and gentlemen, did you hear that?

Because listen, when I had the privilege of this conversation with him on the phone, he said this to me. And I thought, wow. It's amazing. He lived in a rural, black community so rural that they spoke Gala. That's right. And he says English was not my first language. He's not kidding. Right.

I mean, so, and, you know, all the people who are, all the people who are, up with, we're largely illiterate, uneducated. And to go from that to the Supreme Court is just an incredible story. And it's the segregated South. There's really nobody I can think of in American political life who's made that big a journey from the bottom to the top. I mean, even Abraham Lincoln, a person I revered, did not grow up in segregation and had at least as good a house and as rich a family as Justice Thomas. So it's an amazing story. And it has a a lot of twists and turns. I mean, he, so he's born there. His father leaves before he can remember, barely knows his father. His mother takes him from pinpoint to Savannah, where, as he said,

he exchanged rural poverty for urban squalor. And in Savannah, he didn't have enough to eat. He was cold in the winter. I want to, we're just going to pause here much more to come, talking to Michael Pack. We're talking about Clarence Thomas, the book Brand Newt's Created Equal. Our love is a flame. 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. Oil prices have skyrocketed,

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Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Michael Pack. You could spell it, P-A-C-K. It's very simple. The book is created equal Clarence Thomas in his own words. So Michael, you were just giving us a presci, a nutshell version of the life, the early life of Clarence Thomas. So you just said that he, in his own words,

he he goes from rural poverty to urban squalor. So he's in Savannah. He's in Savannah. I think squalor is almost an understatement. He talks in the film and the book about they had a toilet at outhouse and it flushed into the yard. Didn't even go into a sewer system. Their yard was full of what you get when you flushed a toilet and they had to walk over that and he didn't have enough to eat. He was cold in the winter.

His mother would drop him off from school. No one paid any attention to leave. And let me get this straight. He became a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. I mean, people need to know this is one of the most amazing stories of our time. It is. And it's the segregated set. The Ku Klux Klan was marching once a year in Savannah during those years.

There were places he couldn't go. There were colored only bathrooms, the whole thing of Jim Crow. And so, but that kind of grinding poverty, he experienced that for a few years when his mother decided she couldn't take care of her two boys and brought them to her father, his grandfather, to raise. And Clarence Thomas always says that that walk from his mother's house to his grandfather's house, a short few blocks walk, was the transformational experience of his life. Because his grandfather turned his life around. That's why his memoir is called my grandfather's son. And his grandfather was this powerful figure. And as soon as he comes in, he says to the two boys, the damn vacation is over. And they're thinking, what vacation?

That's what the grandfather says, like, welcome. But that's pretty, that's. And it's rules and regulations, manners and morals. And he makes them work all the time when they're not in school. They're working on his home heating oil truck. So it's disciplined. It's hard work. It's tough.

and then he's a Catholic, an unusual thing for a black man in the South in those days, but he loved the discipline of the Catholic Church. And although he himself was illiterate and had less than a third grade education, he had valued education. This is the grandfather. The grandfather. And he sent Justice Thomas to parochial schools, you know, then all black and run by Irish nuns. And they too gave clearance these core biblical values and hard work. and discipline and a rigorous curriculum, and that changed his life. And he harks back to that all the time, the values of his grandfather and these nuns. And he thrived so much under those circumstances that he wanted

to be a priest. And he actually entered the seminary. And his grandfather had said, it cost money to go to the seminary. And his grandfather said, well, if you're going to do it, you have to have a vocation and stick with it. So he goes off to all white seminaries because they were just desegregating. This is the late 60s now. And there he experiences racism. And he believes the Catholic Church is not doing enough just for the cause of integration and desegregation in the South. And it reaches a peak in 1968 when he is watching on TV the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr. and one of the white seminarians says to him. I hope that SOB dies. Dies. One of the white seminarians said that.

Right. That's pretty horrifying. Pretty horrifying. So it completed his disillusionment with the church. As he said, that tore it. That tears it. So he lost his vocation. He became a, he started embraced black radicalism. He went and told his grandfather who was leaving. And his grandfather They said, well, kicked him out of the house and said, if you're making your decisions like a man, you can live like a man on your own. His grandfather was not happy, an understatement. And Carnes Thomas had to go wherever we can get a full scholarship, which was Holy Cross in Worcester Mass.

And he pursued his interest in black power and black radicalism. And he invited a Black Panther to come to Holy Cross to speak. He helped form the black student union. He engaged in a student walkout. You'll remember these events of those times. And as he said, he supported everybody. The more radical better is Stokely Carmichael, H. Rep. Brown, Angela Davis, Malcolm X. And he felt race and racism explained everything.

He was, in his own words, an angry black man. I think we can understand in modern America. We've seen that point of view in a lot of contemporary people. And that's where Justice Thomas was. And then the film and the book follow his transformation back to his grandfather's values and the nuns values. And that journey is a complex one and an important one. It is amazing really how true greatness is always formed in a crucible. It's extraordinary to me. When you think of his story, the hell he suffered, what he went through on various levels,

as a little kid, and then this experience, the anger, and then the nightmare of his confirmation, which I remember vividly and what he went through. But you realize that God prepares people. He allows them to suffer for his purposes. And today, Clarence Thomas is overseeing the restoration of what I like to call the United States Constitution. I mean, it's an amazing thing. You talk about a redemptive story, and I want to be really clear.

He's a man of profound faith. Clarence Thomas is a man of profound Christian faith. Well, that's the thing. It's his coming back to the faith, having left it and come back to it. I think that in some ways makes your faith stronger to have been on the other side. And he talks about one moment, for example, in college when he went to an anti-war protest in Cambridge near Harvard. And he got caught up in the madness of the crowd. It turned into a riot with tear gas. And he was into the violence. They had gone to a liquor store. They were drunk. And he saw what he was becoming. He was becoming one of the mob. And although, he had fallen away from his Catholic faith. When he went back to Holy Cross, it was the middle of the night, it was early in the morning, you know, the wee hours in the morning. The chapel was closed, but he knelt in front and said,

to pray it to God and said, if you will take anger out of my heart, I will never hate again. And for him, as he says in the film and the book, that was the beginning of his slow walk back to his faith and the principles of his grandfather and the nuns. And I think that's right. And his faith is forged that way.

You are right to say that. Eric. Yeah, no, it's amazing. His story is just amazing. And so I'm in awe of him in a way. And I want to ask you, how did you come to the idea of making this documentary film about Clarence Thomas? How did that idea form for you? Because you've made so many films over the years for PBS. How did this idea come to you? Well, it was several years ago. And Clarence Thomas's friends had the idea that it was, that his story was being told by the left by people who hated him. What do you mean his friends had this idea? You mean his friends told you that this was true because it's true. It was true. And it's true every year. But you knew it. I knew it. I had not

paid that much attention to Clarence Thomas to that date. And they were particularly focused on an HBO movie that was coming out called Confirmation, where Kerry Washington played Anita Hill, which thankfully was not a huge hit and was very anti-justice Thomas. They wanted to get his side of the story out. I mean, he had done his memoir. His friends did. And they approached you, maybe you could do this.

That's right. They approached me, and I didn't know that much about him. I had seen the hearings in 91. I did not know that much about him. But when you meet him and do a little bit of research, you can see he has a great story, just telling the bare bones to you. It's apparent.

And as you will see in the film, he has a great personality, a great voice, and is a great storyteller. So it may seem obvious to let him tell the story in his own words, but it took me a while to come to that form. I originally was going to tell it as a traditional documentary interview, friends of his way back, and people on all sides of issues like affirmative action and the Anita Hill charges. And I realized his voice would be lost, and it's his voice that I wanted to communicate. And I'm proud to do it both in the film and even more so in a while. way in the book. So that's how I sort of came to it. I have done documentaries on other great

Americans. This may be airing around the 4th of July, and we did documentaries on George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, also Great Americans. If people want to find your other films, where should they go? They should go to our website, Manifold Productions.com. Manifold Productions.com. Yes. And I see the list you did Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton. You did rediscovering George Washington. But I think what's amazing to me is that this documentary created equal, Clarence Thomas in his own words, and the new book created equal. We're talking about a living figure who, I think I can say, is one of the greatest Americans who's ever lived. This is a genuinely great American and a true hero.

And his story, his biography, which you've given us, the bare bum. of, it's an astonishing thing. I mean, when we think about it, we have to go to Abe Lincoln. You can't really think of another story that compares to it. And Abe Lincoln did not experience the humiliation and the genuine squalor and degradation that this man did. We'll be back. We're talking to Michael Pack. The new book, Created Equal, Clarence Thomas. in his own words. There comes a time. Tell me, Eric, why is relief factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain?

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wonderful relief. So if you've got back pain, shoulder, neck, hip, knee, or foot pain from exercise or just getting older, you should order the three-week quick start discounted to only 1995 to see if it will work for you. It works for me. It has for about 70% of the half a million people who've tried it and have ordered more. Go to relieffactor.com or call 800, 4.5.4.4.5.com. relief to find out about this offer. Feel the difference. Welcome back. I have the joy of speaking to Michael Pack, filmmaker, and the man behind created equal

Clarence Thomas in his own words. And now the brand new book created equal Clarence Thomas in his own words, which gives you way more than the documentary. But this documentary that you made, most of this stuff you have done, you know, you're conservative, but you make films that air on PBS, which is vital. And it's, as we've talked privately, very close to my heart, the idea that we need to get the truth out. And we need to try to speak to everybody. We need to talk to people in the middle who are open to the truth.

And when people watch created equal, they're going to get a new view, most of them, of who this man is, where his greatness comes from. And they're probably going to be slightly embarrassed about what they didn't know before. It gives you a different view of him. where has this been airing since it was on PBS? Is it on Netflix, on Amazon Prime, Hulu? I mean, where do you find it? You can go to our website, Manifold Productions.com, and find out where it's streaming. It is on Amazon.

It's on a bunch of other services. It's on Fox Nation, Newsmax, Salem, voodoo. The list is on the website. There was a bit of a controversy when Amazon canceled it. not this last February, but the February before. The beginning of Black History Month, they took it off. It had been streaming on Amazon, and they took it off Amazon. Because obviously Clarence Thomas is not black enough.

Not black enough for Amazon, because we know Jeff Bezos, very black. It's kind of amazing, really, that we're dealing with this stuff, because you can't think of a greater story of redemption and of what this country is for a black man like Clarence Thomas. I mean, it's just one of the most amazing stories of triumph over adversity that you can think of. I agree with you.

But I want to go back to a point you made in setting it up. We need to tell these stories and tell them to all of America. I mean, we were happy to get it on PBS. We, on the conservative side, have done a very bad job telling stories, especially in the form of documentaries and films.

And we need to do what, do way better. And it's a matter of which stories you choose to tell. I tell this story allows him to tell his story in his own words. It's very straightforward. It's not an advocacy piece where it wouldn't have been on PBS. And there are a lot of other great stories. I say that, for instance, people on the left have done a great job telling Ruth Bader Ginsburg's story. It's obvious why they pick that one. We picked Clarence Thomas, and it's obvious why we pick that. But there are other great stories out there, and we're not telling them, and we're not reaching the middle. I mean, and it may be even bigger than a middle, but it's at least, if there's a third on the right and a third on the left, there's at least the third in the middle.

And we're not reaching them, and we need to get these stories out in a straightforward manner. And there are a lot of them out there, you know, going back in history and up to today, you know, and we're, you know, my company and my wife and I are redoubling our efforts to make sure that these stories are told. one film company is not enough. The left has literally hundreds and hundreds of such. You know, we have a handful. We need way more. And I think that in just funds spent on documentaries, they're spending tens of billions a year.

We're spending tens of millions. It's a thousand-fold difference. They're living out their faith. They're living out their faith. They're living out their faith. Are you? It's kind of amazing. I mean, look, we've talked about this.

I believe firmly in everything you're saying, and I try to live it out to the best of my ability, because I think that it is really astonishing how we have allowed the left to tell stories. And listen, we have to be honest that, you know, partially it's our fault, but it's also the fact that we're living in a world now where Amazon, they are so dumb that they would cancel something like this because they're virtue signaling and because there's such advocates for kind of a cultural Marxist anti-American view, whatever Kool-Aid they have drunk, they are making it difficult for folks like you and me to get our stories out.

But that's the same thing. I mean, we need, so over the decades of spending, outspending us 1, starting in the 60s, over the last 50-plus years, they have not only created a cadre of very talented progressive filmmakers, but they've created the rest of their echo-s. system, including distribution sources like Amazon and funding sources like the Ford Foundation and training programs and film schools and film festivals and the whole educational distribution

companies, the talent agencies, the whole network of them. We do not have enough of that. I mean, we haven't made the investment. We need our own streaming services. You know, originally, conservatives thought Amazon and Netflix, they would be without ideology, and they would simply let all films on. But it's obvious Jeff Bezos, Reed Hastings, they have their views. They've made them public. And that is their right, running a private company. We can start those things, too, or take one over. I mean, look at Elon Musk taking over Twitter. If we had somebody taking over a mid-sized one like Hulu or something, they would find a place for these films.

And I think that we need to be way more serious about this process on our side. I simply couldn't agree more. Our hearts beat as one on this issue because I do think that it is criminal. Listen, there are a lot of deeply misguided people on the right who don't, they don't get this. They don't care about this. It's almost like they're in love with failure. They're like, I want to go down in flames. It's all going to hell anyway.

Why should I do anything? If that's your attitude, step aside because you're just. You're just wasting everyone's time. There are people, however, who understand that if you care about this country and you care about truth, you have a duty to spend your money and your time in trying to reach people. And so what you've been doing, I want to talk to you more about it. It is hugely, hugely important. We're talking about the film, Created Equal.

Clarence Thomas in his own words on the brand new book, 95% new material. Created Equal, Clarence Thomas, in his own words. We'll be right back. Angie baby When he walks and moves like he walked into a play. My pillow is having their biggest sheet sale of the year. You've all helped build my pillow into the amazing company it is today. Now Mike Lindell, Inventor and CEO,

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I'm talking to Michael Pack, P-A-C-K, who is the filmmaker behind many wonderful documentaries. The one we're talking about is created equal. Clarence Thomas, in his own words. It's magnificent. It was on PBS. It's now available all kinds of places. And boy, do you need to see it. But there's a brand new book out now.

Two years after the film, it's also called Created Equal, Clarence Thomas, in his own words. We will have Mark Paoletta, who did this with you on the program to talk about this. But I guess, you know, when I ask you, how did you get the idea to do this? You said, friends of Clarence's Thomas approached you. So they must have had the idea that he would be open to this. because he's so famously tight-lipped that it's interesting that, you know, he was willing to do this. Well, he wasn't that open to it. I mean, initially they wanted me to make the film without interviewing Justice Thomas.

Mark Paletta, who was the advisor and a friend of the Thomas's set at the time, well, Michael, you've done films on Hamilton and Washington. You didn't interview them. Didn't you? How could you? Okay. And then it was originally going to be a short interview. It took a while to evolve.

Did he have to learn to trust you? I think so. And what a fool he was to do that. No, seriously, I mean, I can imagine he has been so mistreated and wounded that you could imagine that he would just be like, everybody just leave me alone. I'm going to do my job and history will take care of it. That's exactly his attitude. He claims not to care what people think after he has a job for life. But it is, but it's not, you know, some of his.

his friends thought of it is setting the record straight and making sure people know the truth about him and that it's good for him. But in my opinion, it's important for America. And it's important for the young people of America. Of course. It doesn't matter that much to Clarence Thomas. But it's important for the rest of us to understand his story. There's a thing called truth. And you know that. The fact that the truth get out, that is very important. And that's what you've done here. It's inspiring on other levels. And it tells you things. about America, about the history that he lived through from the late 40s to today, about affirmative action, about race in America, about what it's like to grow up in the South, about how you can go through those things without being a victim, about if you can fall back on your faith and make it through difficult moments. I mean, it's got other things in it that are inspiring and it's important to tell not just because Clarence Thomas should or should not want to tell it, but for the audience. And as we were saying earlier, there are other such stories. But the Clarence Tom, this project, in my opinion, is kind of a model. It proves that you can

do these things and reach an audience that's not only conservatives, not only people who agree with you. And I just think more people have to do it and has to happen more often. And I mean like a hundred times more. Oh, yeah. No, there are people, I hope there are people listening to this right now who have a lot of money who say, how can I help? And I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. If you care about your country, you care about truth, you have faith, you need to put your money where your mouth is. We need to get very serious about this. This is what has been missing. You know, when people talk about, what's the missionary strategy? What's the way in? This is it, or this is a huge piece of it that has been neglected.

And if we want to know how things got so bad, this is how they got so bad, because people have not been doing what you've been doing and what I try to do. I want to it would be the dream of my life to interview Clarence Thomas at a Socrates in the city venue, probably in D.C., or something like that, if he would trust me. I don't know. But just to show another side of him, I think I mentioned I had the privilege of speaking with him on the phone some months ago, and I will, I'll tell that story in the next segment, but it reveals, yield to me things about him that I didn't know about the miraculous nature of his life and about his self-consciousness of the fact that God's hand has been on his life and also his sense of

humor. And obviously that comes out in the film and in the book. It does. I mean, it was a tough interview for him. He had a hard life. So the humor comes out at the very end. We have him talking to a group of his law clerks and he's laughing and you hear that great booming laugh of his. But it's more common when you see him not in a formal setting, like your phone call, really. We always tell the story that, look, he wanted to do the interview in four-hour trunks, an amazingly long time to sit. And he wanted to do it from 8 a.m. until noon in a series of over several months. And Ginny, his wife, made me promise to shut the camera off at noon. because, as you know, producers are very deceptive about it.

They asked five, six, seven last questions. But I promised Ginny, who said to me, you know, he has a day job, which I knew, because I had done all the research, I knew he was the Supreme Court Justice. So I shut the camera off at noon. And then my son, Anguson Alexander, who was a production assistant, would go up to him every day and say, Justice Thomas, their lunch is being catered. You know, they're having Indian food and butter chicken. and do you want to stay?

And he would say, oh, I love butter chicken. And he would stay for another hour, another hour. And he would primarily talk to the young people, like my son and another production assistant. Because he cares about young people and their lives. And it was a great honor for them. And he remembered what he said the last session, and he asked them things. And that's where you saw his laugh, his love of humanity, his humor, more than in the interview. I think it would come out in a more informal setting with you, Eric.

And in fact, you know, the other production assistant who was a young Mexican-American woman, who was a Catholic too, Justice Thomas convinced her to give up the film business and go to law school. Whoa. And I like to say her parents owe me, you know, great debt of gratitude for that. That's hilarious. That's just amazing. And he would remember what Mimi had said to him last time. I mean, he has so many other things, but. He's a big deal.

He is. Let's face it, ladies and gentlemen, he's a big deal. and his story hasn't really been told until now Michael Pack made the film created equal, Clarence Thomas in his own words, and of course now the book Created Equal, Clarence Thomas in his own words with Mark Paoletta. We'll have Mark on the program. That's it for today, but we are going to, I'll tell my wacky story of talking him on the phone in our next segment, which will air, I think, Friday. But if you want to see this whole thing as a video, folks,

You know, you have to go to Eric Mataxis.com, sign up for my newsletter. We will send it to you. You can watch this whole thing. It is gloriously filmed in living color. Okay, the book has created equal. Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta. Michael, until we speak in a few minutes, thank you. Thank you.

It's great to be on your show, Eric. Hey, Albin. Hey, Eric. We've got some things to communicate. Okay, ready? Number one. I would just want to say if it's still July, only in this month, Nutramedics is doing 30% off. Ladies and gentlemen, 30% off.

If you use the code, Eric, please take advantage of it. I take their stuff every single day. Stevia, melatonin, natural boost, all the stuff that they recommend I take. But if I didn't take it from them, I'd be taking it anyway. like vitamin D, vitamin C, magnesium, zinc. All this stuff is important for immune system. So my attitude is like, get it from nutrometics.com because they give 50% of their profits to missions, organizations.

We have to support those companies that we believe in. Same thing with Mike Lindell, mypillow.com, my store.com. Please spend money in the places where it does good. doesn't just get you a great product, but it does some good. MyStore.com, my pillow.com. You can get all my books at MyStore.com. People say, I don't want to go to Amazon. I think, well, go to my store.com.

Yeah, and I see that. Mike also, right. Mike also has my coffee now. And you have to use the code Eric. What I like about the code Eric, it's only four letters. It's so simple to type in. Eric, E-R-I-C, Eric. You know what I never thought of that?

It's just four simple letters, folks. What are you waiting for? just four. If it were five, I could see hesitating. It's four. Four. Four. My goodness. There were no numbers. No numbers. No gospels. How can you, it's a biblical number for E-R-I-C. So use the code, Eric, my pillow.com, my store.com, neutromedics.com. We got to say that. Also want to want to remind you, if you go to SalemNow.com, there's a new film right now called Michelle Obama 2024. for folks, you know, I'm in Washington State today.

I was in Las Vegas. Everywhere I go, I see people getting activated. They're understanding, I need to get involved. We've been sitting back and we need to get involved. We need to fight. You know, we need to get involved locally. We need to get involved in elections. We need to informing ourselves as part of that.

So if you go to SalemNow.com, Michelle Obama, 2024, is one of the films there. There are other films, but we need to get aware of what's, happening and figure out our role in fighting against it. Alvin, before we go, I also want to mention two things. Socrates in the city, we're going to be sending out an email to everybody on the Socrates list. We have an event coming up September 27th with Andrew Claven. We have an event coming up in October in Houston with James Tour, who's in my book,

is atheism dead. I cannot wait for that. We've got an event in New York in November with David Burlington. who is, trust me, there's nobody like that. He is amazing. And then we've got an event December. We're not clear yet. I don't think it's going to be Jordan Peterson, unfortunately, but we'll get him in the spring. So we've got those events coming up. I also want to mention if you can conceivably get to New York, August 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 8th, or any of those dates. We need happy studio audience to film the talk show. That's the late night show that we are launching the talk show starring Eric Metaxis.

That's me. I'm playing the role. And it's going to be crazy. Albin will be there. We can't share who the guests are going to be. But this is a big deal. I like to think of this as historic because these shows, you know, we already got John Cleese and Caratop, right?

We know that. But the rest of it, it's just looniness. We're going to need you to be there. So we're going to give you the information. If you're signed up for Eric Mataxis, dot com, Ericmetaxis.com. We'll send out all this information, but just to prep you for those dates, August 3rd, 4th, 5th, that's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then the following Monday, August 8th, we're going to be in the TBN studios on 15th Street. We want you to be there. We want you to send

your friends there, tell your friends. This is going to be really exciting. All right? All right, to the deal? Okay. Thank you.