The Eric Metaxas Show - Stephen Iacoboni (continued)

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Eric continues his conversation with Stephen Iacoboni the author of Telos: The Scientific Basis for a life of Purpose

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, welcome back. I'm talking to the author of a book called Telos, T-E-L-O-S, the scientific basis for life of purpose. Stephen Yakoboni, the oncologist, scientist. who wrote that book. You were just talking before the break about the miracle. I don't know how else people can view it.

You say a three-inch-long salmon fry. In other words, we're talking about a newborn salmon that travels how far? 8,000 miles. 8,000 miles in the ocean. 8,000 miles seems somehow to know where to go. it's mind bending. They do know where they're going. And the book we were talking about,

it's called Animal Algorithms. Somebody, Eric Castle, is that it? From the Discovery Institute. Astonishing. But it gets to your point. Science says, oh, that's just instinct. That's just, and you think, well, what's instinct? What do you mean?

It has a brain the size of a grain of sand. And how does it navigate? A human being would have trouble pulling this off. and our brain is vast. So logically, you'd say, it seems to have been designed to do this. It seems to have been designed by someone for this purpose. Exactly. So the first chapter, there's several examples like that.

Just to get the reader comfortable with the fact that I'm going to talk about down-to-earth things that they can relate to. And then I say, I reveal to them, you may think that science has explained this. They have not. They do not have the slightest idea how this happens. They are misleading you. And so I said, but what we do know is what Aristotle knew 2400 years ago, which was everything is purpose-driven. Everything in life is purpose-driven.

The only creatures who sometimes do things that aren't purpose-driven are domesticated animals and humans. But if you go out into the wild, animals are always doing what they have to do to survive. Creatures at the top of the food chain like lions can sleep in the meadow for a while between kills, but everything else is constantly doing what it needs to do. If you watch an ant scurry around and find a grain of food and then come back and bring it to the hive, I mean, the ant hill, how big is an ant brain? They don't have brains, but they have a little cluster of cells in their belly. You know that they recently conceded something that,

It's been studied for 50 years. When bees are sitting in a hive, they send out explorer bees to find a bunch of flowers somewhere a mile away. A mile away. And the bees come back and they dance around. They do a jig that's so complicated that we can't figure it out. They finally figured out that the other bees can look at what the bee is doing and know where the dandelions are to go get their nectar. I think that's in animal algorithms. It is so astonishing.

It is very hard for us to process. It's the most astonishing stuff, and it's just more evidence. I mean, there's tons of evidence in every direction, but this is just one type of evidence that I think if you're honest, you say it doesn't make any sense that these things are the product of random processes that somehow over time these creatures evolved, not just to be what they are, but to do what they do. It doesn't make sense.

We don't have the time. I mean, if we had trillions of years of evolution, you could talk about it, but not with millions. Right. And so what's very interesting is that the astrophysicists like Stephen Hawking and Martin Reese, they're the really smart scientists. And so they notice that the biologists have taken over the narrative

of the most important question ever asked by a scientist. And so the astrophysicists, the really smart guys, said, wait a minute, we want to comment on this. And so Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind, Martin Reese, to a man, great astrophysicist, and of course, Polkinghorn. Polkinghorn actually conceded theism.

He's actually one of my favorite authors, he's astrophysicists. But the other three have said, the biologists are stupid. This is crazy. This is impossible, and they're the smart, and they're still atheists. So they're saying, you guys have got it all wrong.

You biologists can't do math. You know, that's our job, and we've done the math, and it's impossible, like Tewer says. Well, wait a minute. So you're saying that even these atheistic physicists look at animal behavior and this kind of thing or all this stuff, and they know, based on the numbers, this can't happen randomly.

There's not a chance. They say that. They know that. Paul Kinghorn, who had the pleasure of meeting a number of times, was a Christian. I had him speak at Socrates in the city. I mean, he was a Christian and a top scientist in the world at Cambridge. But you're saying that even those who weren't men of faith, nonetheless knew that there's just no way that the material world can account for what we see in biology. It's in print. Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind, Martin Reese. Martin Reese wrote a book

called Just Six Numbers, and you addressed this in your book. And Stephen Hawking, of course, probably the most famous or well-known astrophysicists. They all came to the same conclusion. None of this could have happened randomly. And so what they do is they do the most unscientific thing you can do. They invoke something like Maxwell demons. In other words, they invoke something unobservable. They invoke other universes, which is the greatest oxymoron ever uttered by a human.

And they stick to their atheism because they're not allowed to leave the reservation. But even talking in his book, and Reese, it's kind of embarrassing. Who's an Anglican bishop says, I still believe there are 10 to the 500 universes and there really isn't a God. It's embarrassing

to see someone of that stature, write something like that. Look, it's funny. You get to a point where if you're honest about it, it's hilarious. They have no evidence. They claim to be scientists, but they go beyond science,

into the world of sheer speculation, because where the science leads them and where the math leads them is too painful. They don't dare face it. So they invent something. It's deus ex machina. It makes the flying spaghetti monster look logical, frankly. But it is kind of amazing. Well, so what else do you talk about in the book Telos?

Well, first I deconstruct the myth that things are random. Well, first I talk about how we started out with Telos, embraced by science. until other intellectuals who formed modern science, Descartes and Newton, decided that telos was too complicated. And when Aquinas and Aristotle tried to talk about why there is a leaf, they couldn't understand it. And they said life is too complicated. Humans can only understand the inanimate world.

And organisms are alive because they have a spirit. I mean, that's what everyone believed. And when Darwin said, we don't have a spirit, and then Watson and Crick said, it's all chemical, then everything built up on that because they had an ulterior motive to replace God on the altar of the people who know everything. And so these scientists have misled us. They are not honest, as you said, and we're suffering from it in many ways that you see in our society today. It's just interesting to me that you come at this from the point of view of a doctor. In other words, that your compassion for your patients led you to dig deeper and then to kick against this false paradigm. So did you pay a price?

Have you paid a price in your field? Or are you just so good at what you do that they let you alone? I'm glad you asked that. I wasn't sure if it was going to come up. I addressed that in the book. It explains why I'm sitting in the same. beautiful little hospital in the middle of nowhere because it's the only hospital in Oregon that is not under the umbrella of a larger organization. I get to do what I want. I actually

finally left a reservation on my own and I am now one of the top integrative oncologists in the country. I studied under some of the great integrative oncologists. I ran a cancer center in Tijuana for two years. And there you can do research that doesn't require the FDA's approval. And so I have a few vignettes in my book about patients who I cured because the paradigm in oncology is lots of expensive drugs no matter what, and it's not all that necessary. You have to understand that everything that's in the pharmacopoeia has to be patentable. But the thing is that things that come from plants can't be patented so they're discarded. And so it's in my book. And we come back, we're going to continue talking about how to cure cancer.

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Vivalore.com, use the code Eric. Hey, folks, we're talking to the author of Telos, the scientific basis for a life of purpose, Dr. Stephen Yakoboni. Two things you just mentioned that I want to, I want you to touch on. First of all, you mentioned that, you know, going down to Tijuana, where you were able to kind of do your own thing,

you were able to try things that might work in curing cancer and experiment and so on and so forth, were you able to bring any of those things that you discovered there back into the states into what you do today? I have been able to, and it's important to understand that as a practicing oncologist, you can't just be like a naturopath and do what you think you want to do. We have different governance.

So I had to have data to show that what I'm I was doing was at least non-harmful and possibly effective. And so I write in the book several vignettes of patients who had incurable disease who I either put in remission or cured, and only because, I believe, only because of my protocol. Now, cancer medicine is complicated and you can't just throw things at patients. And so I only treat patients in this way in a very select setting where they have a have failed the standard of care and they want something more. But at least if I were to really do a scientific study, I would need to be at a university where I would have 500 patients to do,

gather enough data. But my point was that in oncology, when the expensive drugs went off patent, they just made more expensive drugs. And oncologists, we walk on thin ice every day. And we give people, drugs that could kill them. And so the average oncologist's only defense against not going crazy with a job like that is they follow the algorithm. And then no matter what happens, they follow the algorithm. And if you die, you die. Now, that sounds very cynical and I don't think oncologists are like that. But the point is they're very reluctant to deviate from anything. And so, yes, I got in a lot of trouble for that. In fact, not, well, you're not, you know, you. You're you call serious trouble, but I was ostracized by others who didn't feel that way.

And when I work with other people, they didn't like it and they made them uncomfortable. And I said, well, the patient's going to die. Can't we try something? One of the things that Trump did that I thought was great was to let them try a thing that he instituted, meaning you're dying. And you want to try something else. How can you deny experimental care to these people? And that's basically what I do in a very select small number of patients.

Well, you dared to care. And that's exactly what Trump did. I remember when he was talking about that. And of course, it's common sense. You talk to anybody and that they would say, well, of course, someone's dying. Let's try anything. If there's a chance it could work, let's try it. So I'm glad you did that.

I want to talk to you also about maybe you referred to it earlier, but that you've had end-of-life experiences with some of your patients. Anything bordering on the miraculous or anything like that that you can talk about? I haven't seen, I get asked that question a lot, and I have not seen someone who was really, really, really supposed to die who didn't die. I have had patients who have had a 5% chance of surviving who survived. But in medicine, we call that, okay, that's the one out of 20. The great miracles that I saw were miracles of faith.

Since we're talking about Ukraine every day now, I had a patient who was a farmer in Ukraine in 1995, who ate radioactive wheat after the Chernobyl explosion, and he got leukemia. And he went to a local clinic and they said, you're going to die. And as it happened in Walla Walla, I was in the district of Tom Foley, who at the time was Speaker of the House out of his district with Spokane and went down to Walla Walla. And there was a small Ukrainian community of Seventh-day Adventist in Walla Walla, and Foley got this guy brought over from Kiev to Walla Walla. and I treated him and it was the most impactful experience of my life

other than with my parents of course and my children this was a man with no food no money chabby clothes and he was the bravest happiest man of all and he showed me how to die and I wrote about that in the other book

that's the kind of thing that that changes your life So this book, of course, is called Telos. The previous book is The Undying Soul. What progress do you think we're making? In other words, when you talk about these kinds of things, I'm guessing that there are many, many scientists and doctors out there. Maybe they don't share the faith that you and I do.

But they have similar questions. They're frustrated by the system, by the protocols, by being forced to. to follow the algorithms. What hope do you see? In other words, you've dealt with the folks at the Discovery Institute. You know that there are answers and there are things out there,

but is any of this getting out? Actually, most of my colleagues run away from this, and it's kind of sad. Their comfort zone is, here's the algorithm, push the button, and the nurses and the pharmacists do all the work and you take all the credit.

In fact, I even say to my colleagues, when I become innovative, I say, I could get a high school student who knows how to push buttons because when I order chemotherapy now, I just push buttons on a computer. Now it's true that I have to think about it, and it's not random. I have to pick the protocol. But this algorithm says what protocol to use, what doses to use, and you should say, give this chemo. And the pharmacist and nurse could do all of it.

And yet they need our license in order to okay it. And so it makes it possible to see twice as many patients in a day as you should. One of the things I've done in my alternative practice or my integrated practice is I interview patients who are seeing other oncologists. You know, I see my patients. I spend 30 minutes a week every week with most of my patients. And a lot of these patients will come in and say, I see my oncologists for five minutes. Once a month. I come in, they walk in the room like they're in a big hurry, and I'm not important. They say, everything looks good. How are you today? Okay, we're going to go ahead, see you in three weeks.

And then all of the care beyond that goes to the nurse practitioner, the pharmacists, the nurses. It's kind of sad, but that's the business model. Not where I'm at. That's, well, right. And I think, again, most people, this is the world of science, this is the world of human beings. most people are going to take the safe path, the broad road that leads to destruction. But I know that there are always people out there, probably some listening right now, whose interest is peaked, who says, I've been thinking this. Maybe I should talk to this guy. Maybe I should read his book.

Because I think, I really do think that generally speaking, we know that people are not encouraged to talk about this kind of thing, but they think it secretly. There are people out there. They may never reveal it, but they're wondering. And maybe the reason they're so bound up is because they don't feel there's anything they can say or anywhere they can go. It's one of the reasons I want to have you on the show, because you've been a very successful oncologist for decades. You've thought outside the box. You've thought inside the box.

You've come to some conclusions, which I think would at least be a value to, to some people. When, we've just got a few minutes left, when did you, was there a moment when you knew you had come to faith from, from what you had read and studied, or was it a gradual thing? Great question. You know, in Francis Collins's book, he talks about having an epiphany while walking through the cascades. And in my book, The Undying Soul, I talk about how it took me many years because I'm so stubborn and was so entrenched. And I think for most, and the point of that was to make was you're not typically going to have an epiphany. It's a struggle to overcome the brainwashing and the conditioning that you've had and the pressures of society. It took a lot of

time and struggle for me to come to that point. But that's okay because it's like if you get up one morning and say, I want to run a marathon, you don't do it in a week. It takes a year to condition for something like that. And so the journey to faith requires effort and time, and that's the whole beauty of it like anything that you accomplish. I

want to ask you just about your relationship with others in the scientific community. Is that mostly Discovery Institute people or whatever? Because it's so important that people are on this page

have have colleagues and have people that they can share these thoughts with? So I'm actually very close aligned with Discovery. I'm a sustaining member. I have very erudite email conversations every week. I'm on one of their advisory boards. And I have to say, I've been a fan of Discovery since Jonathan Wells and Stephen Meyer started a long time ago. And I met both of them, and they're fantastic.

but it has really, really helped me. I have to say that I'm a huge fan of theirs and a supporter, and it's a wonderful organization. I want to drag you over for one more segment. Folks, don't go away talking to the author of Tellos. Tell me, Eric, why is relief factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question. The owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal.

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ordered more. Go to Relieffactor.com or call 800 for Relief to find out about this offer. Feel the difference. Folks, I hope you're enjoying my conversation with Dr. Stephen Iacoboni, who's the author of Telos, the scientific basis for a life of purpose. Just a few minutes left. I'm sorry to say, but there's a chapter in your book called Robert Rosen, Chapter 15, once in a thousand years. What is that about? When I was making my long, slow struggle up the mountain from atheism, the atheism gorge up to the heights of faith, I was driven to read authorities,

especially people who weren't just talking the standard stuff after I'd read all those things and found them wanting. And I think by Providence, I saw a reference in the back. of one of my books about this guy, Robert Rosen. And he, somebody wrote an article about him saying he's the kind of scientist that comes along once in a thousand years. He was a mathematician, not a biologist. And so, and I was not a biologist.

I was a chemist when I went into medical school. And so when you come into biology as a non-biologist, you don't have these preconceived biases. And Rosen, who's actually an avowed was, he passed 10 years ago, but he was an avowed agnostic. But he said that Darwin's natural selection just can't make any possible sense scientifically or rationally. And he was the one who basically said, in order to explain life, you have to invoke telos. You have to invoke final cause. And so he didn't want to, he tried the rest of his life to prove that that could be contained in a materialist mechanistic framework.

And he failed. And the reason he failed, because it's the same as the square peg in the round hole. So I'm trying to finish his work by saying, telos comes from God and you can never get to life. understanding the origin of life, why butterflies migrate, why people reproduce, why we all want to get up and live every day without understanding that life is purpose driven and there is a force, an invisible force of attraction that drives every single creature to fulfill its function, its desired end. And after this talk, I would like listeners to go outside and watch a bird, watch a worm, watch your dog, watch any creature in the world. the wild, and you will see it is busy living. It is busy fulfilling purpose. And that is what Tilos is. It's real, and we have to acknowledge it, but it can never be encompassed in a materialist framework. It virtually proves the existence of God. Well, it's interesting because I think if you're

honest, it does prove the existence of God, but there are people that they're just not willing to be that honest. But when you talk about Tilos in that sense and purpose, there's two pieces to it, right? In other is the idea is that we could not have emerged unless God intended. So we are God's intention. He intended for us to exist. It seems obvious when you do the math, when you do the science, we didn't just get here randomly. So God is the one behind that.

But then what we haven't talked about is the idea that we have purpose and that without purpose, you know, we want to die. Victor Frankel writes about that. that somehow inside each of us is a longing for meaning and purpose and love. And it's not deniable. You can try to deny it, but you can't deny it. And atheism just shuts it off. Boom.

It says, no, that's a figment of your imagination. But I think anybody who's honest says that, no, I'm made for more. I'm just not made to exist and die. So you're leaning up against that metaphysical stuff on the, the other hand, right? That even though life comes into being as a result of God's purpose, because he makes us in his image, we long for purpose and meaning. When I was six years old in Catholic school, I was taught that Adam took the apple from the tree of knowledge, and for that he was punished. And we were in school being taught to learn things. I asked the nun,

why was he being punished for seeking knowledge? And he didn't have a good answer. It took me 40 years to answer that question. The knowledge is owned by God. And you can sit at the tree of knowledge, but understand that it's God's knowledge. What Adam did, either really did or as a metaphor, is what scientists have done today. They've taken the knowledge of the tree of life, and they've called it their own. And for that, we are cast out of paradise, but they don't want to acknowledge that error because it's such an egregious error that they're stuck with it and their whole lives and their professionalism depends on it. Richard Dawkins isn't going to come around and say what Anthony Flew did. Anthony Flew is towards the end of his life and he was one of the few honest atheists and you reference him in

your book. He said, okay, there is a god. And it's course wonderful that he did that and I quote him in my book as well. And so they're stuck in that paradigm. People don't leave their. paradigms. In science, they don't. Einstein was called a fool. A lot of people don't realize that the whole theory of tectonic plates that we all, of course, understand now, was introduced in the 60s, not 200 years ago. And they called a guy an idiot. I learned that in the course of writing my book, actually. I was kind of amazed that we've only known about tectonic plates since my lifetime. And if you don't understand tectonic plates, you'd kind of wonder, why do we have mountains when waters eroding them. And it's just a part of the larger mystery. Everywhere we look, we see evidence

for God. And of course, if you come up with something new, people are going to try to take you down a peg because they don't like it. I'm just so happy that we've had this time. Congratulations on the book, Telos, the Scientific Basis for Life of Purpose, Dr. Stephen Yakoboni. To be continued, I hope. Thank you. Great pleasure, Eric. Real privilege. Thank you very much. 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.

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The offer will not last very long because these percal sheets are known to sell very quickly. Order now with promo code Eric at MyPillow.com. That's MyPillow.com promo code, Eric. I was going out. Hey, folks. We're going to do a segment here, a little segment that we like to call a listener writes. Because people who listen to this program or watch this program do write in.

We read everything. And some of the letters are charming and friendly and encouraging. Some of them are just peevish and nasty. It's amazing how many peevish, nasty people are out there. there and take the trouble, I guess they have nothing else to do, to just bring you down a little bit. But now and again, we get,

I mean, more often than not, we get wonderful letters. And we had one, I said, why don't we read this one album? Because people probably want to know what, you know, what I have to read on a daily basis. So this one, that's right. Actually, no, this is funny. This is good. Yeah. This one, a woman

named Lynn writes in and she says that the question, I mean, sorry, this subject header is, it says Martin Luther, but she puts in his original name. I mean, back in the 15th century, the name was Luter or Lutger or, you know, Luther was what it became eventually. See, I did not know that. I thought she had, you know, mistyped. Right. Right. Well, that's because he didn't read my book. I didn't. Which makes you a communist. No, but I did read it. Okay. I know, I know. Okay. But so this person, Lynn, writes, Eric, you signed a huge stack of your

various books for me at Calvary Chapel in Chattanooga last spring. It was a pleasure seeing and hearing you. I'm reading your Martin Luther book right now, and it is blowing me away. Now, I do have to say, people really, really love the Martin Luther book, and I think I'm particularly proud of it of all the books that I have written for many reasons, but there's just something about it, which I won't go into. But it makes me very happy that people are seeing it as kind of the definitive biography on him, which I think it is in some ways, only because I... He lived in crazy times, and that's why it's so much fun to read about the Times and the Man.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay, so this woman writes, I'm reading a Martin Luther book right now. It's blowing me away. The book is so interesting, like all your others. Thank you so much for writing it. Okay. Then she says, I just got off a six-week job for a, now I can't mention the name, but a major

magazine. A major magazine shoot, okay, photo shoot. One of the videographer's names was Martin. I asked him who he was named for, and his response was a very disdainful, I'm certainly not named for Martin Luther. Now, I don't know, maybe he was Catholic or something, I don't know, but he says, I certainly wasn't named for Martin Luther. and then he added probably my parents named me after Martin Luther King.

And now this woman, Lynn, says, I knew that was not true because of his age and the world of 1953, where I guess he was born in that era. And I was able to innocently ask him if he realized, you ready for the punchline, that Martin Luther King was named after Martin Luther. Now that is in the beginning of my book. that's one of the many shocking revelations you'll read in my Martin Luther book. Now, I joke, but it's actually true. I uncovered a handful of things.

And this happens almost every time I write a book that I am myself just astonished that I discovered something that no one had seen before. In The Atheism Dead Book, there are several of those. But in the Martin Luther book, there were a few things that I was genuinely astonished. Because Martin Luther, you know, it's like Abraham Lincoln, and how many people have written about Martin Luther? This is such a major figure. So I discovered a number of things, but one of them was,

which is what this woman Lynn is alluding to, that Martin Luther King Jr. And his father, Martin Luther King, Sr., they changed their names. Their names were Michael King and Michael King Jr. And Michael King, Sr., in the 1930s, went to, on a trip to the Holy Land on the way back, It was a bunch of black Baptist pastors, went to the Holy Land in the 30s, and then went to Germany. And he was so impressed by the life of Martin Luther that he changed his name as an adult, from Michael King to Martin Luther King.

And his son, around age 12, I think, followed suit and changed his name to Martin Luther King, Jr. It's amazing. And people called Martin Luther King Jr., MLK. they called him Mike. People who grew up with him always called him Mike. It's amazing. So anyway, so this woman writes in, I tried to explain to this guy on the photo shoot

about Martin Luther King Jr's father changing his name. But the guy was so confused by then he didn't know what to say. It can be confusing if you really don't like Martin Luther and you think, well, but I was named after Martin Luther King Jr. And then you find out, oh, that's a problem. So this is called ironic. Personally, though I, this is the writer Lynn, had heard of Martin Luther my entire life, I realized now I knew absolutely nothing about this brave

man who changed the course of the world and Christianity. The book is so interesting. Thank you so much for writing it, Lynn. Now, I just want to say again, it means a lot to me when anybody writes in, and we're still at a point where I'm able to read everything that people write in. So I don't want to encourage you to write in because then maybe I won't be able to read everything because it's getting tough. But I do, every now and again, we're able to respond or I respond. But when I, I think what the takeaway for me from this was that, you know, when you write these books, you put them out there and you never know when somebody's going to pick it up and read it. I mean, this book came out in 2017 for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. And I hope for decades to come, people will

continue to read about the great Martin Luther because I, as I said, there are things in the book that there aren't in any other books, and I'm really proud of having ferreted out these essentially important details. So I should mention, you know, before we close, if you want to buy any of my books, almost all of them are available at my store.com. You click under books, almost all of my books, the Donald books, the kids' books, the humor books, the Donald drains, the swamp books, the Donald the Caveman books. All that stuff is at my store.com. Use the code, Eric, and get a whopping discount.

All right. That concludes this portion of a listener writes. Thank you, Lynn, from Chattanooga. There's a must-see new movie on SalemNow.com called Michelle Obama, 2024, her real-life story and plan for power. Film director, Joel Gilbert, takes a deep dive into the life of Michelle Obama from Chicago to Princeton to Martha's Vineyard. He says Michelle Obama will run for president.

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Michelle Obama, 2024, watch the movie on demand or buy the DVD at SalemNow.com. SalemNow.com, Michelle Obama, 24. Check it out. Hey there, folks. Welcome back. I'm excited right now. You know that on this program, we're doing a fundraiser for food for the poor. But I said, you know, I want to bring somebody on who's a person. part of the Salem Radio Network, who's part of the brass. My friend Tom Treadup, he's the vice president of News and Talk programming. But Tom, you have a relationship with food for the poor. You understand why I'm going out on a limb and asking my listeners to reach into their pockets for God's purposes. So I wanted you to help us understand it in a way that I can't really

myself communicate successfully. So what do you know about this that I wouldn't know? Well, first off, thank you for having me on the show. I'm here in the I'm in the fortress of Metaxus. We've got the Mike Flag. We've got the travel bag. We're we're here pushing the Eric Mattaxas show every time we get. Now, by the way, if you go to Metaxistalk.com, ladies and gentlemen, you have access to all this swag, all this incredible product. If you go to Metaxistock.com, you'll see it. But we want you to go to Metaxistock.com, at least today in part, to click on the banner to help people who are suffering. That's right. Because of evil men around the world, there's suffering. And if you go to Metaxestock.com, you'll click on the banner.

But go ahead, Tom, Trot up, and tell us more. Well, thank you, Eric. You know, Food for the Poor is a nonprofit organization. They're based in Coconut Creek, Florida. We've worked with them for over a dozen years, and they helped the poorest of the poor in 17 nations here in the Western Hemisphere. And I've traveled with them to Guatemala, to Haiti, to a number of other countries with them, and actually seen their work on the ground. They're absolutely the best in the business. Their overhead is the smallest in the business. So every dollar you give really goes directly to help the poor. We've expanded because of the war in Ukraine. And regardless of what people think, and I've heard the debates back and forth, some of our talk show hosts when we started

the campaign, we're like, why do I want to get any money for people that are refugees in Ukraine when we're paying $7 a gallon for gas here in California? Well, it's true. America's got problems. and we all have to pay the light bill and we all have, you know, personal issues. But when you think about the children who have been displaced, there are over 500,000 Ukrainian children who've been separated from their parents. Usually the dad had to stay behind in order to fight in the war, so they were just with their mom, but now they've been separated from their moms. And if you had a 12-year-old child, either your child or your grandchild, and they were alone in a scary place, a bomb shelter, or in a foreign country where somebody's, you know, playing host to them, you would want people,

just like the men and women listening to the Eric Metax's show and watching you right now to open up your hearts and your wallets and help. And the fact is that because of food for the poor's donations, they already have a ton of food donated through themselves and their ministry partners, $1, $1 delivers four meals to refugees in Ukraine. $2 delivers eight. You know, you do the math. You can figure it out a $10 or $20 contribution, $100,000 would be fabulous. Thank you very much.

But we're here simply to ask you to think a little bit outside yourself, so many things going on in the world that are scary and crazy like the Mar-a-Lago raid that you've been talking about Eric. I know it's a tough time for a lot of people in this economy, but we are asking you to maybe dig deep, think a little bit outside yourself. We've all done it. I've been on trips with food for the poor, and as I said, seen them up close and personal. When you call Eric's number, which is 844-863-4673, or to make it easier, it's 844-863, hope, because you're giving hope to these children overseas, you are really being the hands and feet of Jesus, as we're called to. Eric was wise to mention that.

We're called to help the poorest of the poor, and there's nobody who does it better than food for the poor.