The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - Marc Barnes in conversation

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Marc Barnes is giving two talks in Adelaide in the coming days (one of them is today actually) and I recommend going along if you can.Talk number one: On The Family, Tradition and Rebuilding Christian Community + Q&ATuesday, July 15th7pmChurch of the Holy Name, Ellengowan Hall80 Payneham Rd, Stepney, SA 5069Drinks & discussion to follow at Ern Malley Bar137 Magill Rd, Stepney 5069Talk number two:MARC BARNESAgainst Cars, Consultants, Stocks, Dishwashers, and Drones + Q&AWednesday, July 16th7pmErn Malley Est. 1943137 Magill Rd, Stepney 5069 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. If you'd like to listen to bonus episodes, go sign up to the Patreon. That's patreon.clom. Clom? Ah, we f***ed it. Anyway, you'll look, you'll find a way. Catamaran home! Don't panic, the podcast is not going to sound like this. I'm recording this straight to my laptop. I've lost all my podcasting equipment. But before I lost all my podcasting equipment, and that's a story you'll get in the future. Before I lost the podcast equipment, I recorded this podcast coming up with Mark Barnes. We had a beautiful chat. Mark lives in Steubenville,

Ohio. He's very brilliant. He's a great writer. And I note that he's giving two talks in Adelaide. So Wednesday, July 16 at 7pm, you can hear him at Earn Malley in a speech entitled Against Cars Consultants Stocks Dishwashers and Drones in a Q&A and then he's also giving a talk Tuesday July 15th which I think is today the day this comes out in Australia at the where is it now where is it now it's at the Church of the Holy Name. There we go, it's in the hall at Holy Name and that's on the family tradition and rebuilding Christian community. So if you want to see a Catholic talk or a secular talk, you can go. That one that's on July 15th is at 7pm at Holy Name Church in Adelaide. The other

one is at Earn Malley at 7pm on Wednesday. Yes, all right, now you can stop listening to this very appalling sound quality, and here is me talking to Mark Barnes. I had a nap, and I've woken up, I think, better than I went down, which is always a risk. You slept like a big baby. I got to see you. I was writing while you were napping,

and I think that a large Australia napping nearby is going to become An essential part of the process for me because I really did well huge part of our economy moving forward Is being napping near people you got two essays done you got the air conditioning essay? Yeah I've forgotten in my waking up haze what the other essay was about it was about Being a professor in the age of AI cheating. For or against? Both. I feel I have a... Mike, you're often against things. You're not in real life. Now, there's essayist Mark and there's having a chat Mark because the essays are usually not usually but

the ones that stay with me and I remember several instances of here's something I bet you think you can do well guess again you can't be doing that and I love that it's surprising great invective and then in real life I think you have a more permissive disposition. Yeah entertaining things. Yeah, but I think maybe only Well, look James that that's just I've been unfair. No, it's a phenomenon of writing when everything is going well I don't think let's write something. It's it's only the things Dusty abski wrote what I think is his finest demons. It's his amazing demons is number one Well, I mean there's there's Demons. It's his best. You really think Demons is number one?

Well, I mean, there's number one, there's number one. I mean, obviously Crime and Punishment is the best novel. As novel. Well, see, I agree with that, but the Kurimovtsev people want stuff. But it's an unfinished. I love The Idiot. I'm a big The Idiot fan. But in terms of just raw... When he's trying to kill himself and he can't do it right?

When the money goes in the fireplace? Come on. Having epileptic fits looking at crowded Christ. Sometimes you've got to choose between a lady who doesn't want you and money in a fire and all you can do is have an epileptic fit. We've all been there. But Demons was written in a fury and really Dostoevsky's, I think what makes him great is that he always wrote when he was angry. He always had a point to make. He was didactic, he was grumpy and he would be against the nihilists, he'd be against the atheists and he'd write a novel. Now I don't write a novel, I write an essay but I think the same way that sounds really arrogant. I don't mean to say I'm the Dostoevsky of essay writing. I just want to say that anger is a motivator.

I think considering some of the things happening in his private life, if anything, you lower yourself to say that you're a Dostoevsky. My favorite Dostoevsky story is the degenerate gambling. Yeah, right. And I read this in a book about gambling, I haven't seen it anywhere else, but he apparently wrote in a letter to somebody

that he sat down at the roulette table, he lost everything, and upon losing everything, he spontaneously ejaculated. Oh no. But it was like such a relief that he without friction emitted. Yeah that follows. Gerard Andostavsky says that the man was really about a process of conversion. Like he wasn't writing novels because he was a great novelist. He was writing because he was a man who was

spiritually struggling to become Christian and through a route of Immense what's the word mimetic rivalry and envy and and Nihilism and so he kind of wrote it all out. So I just to say he wrote the gambler. Yeah after presumably that experience So there was also some other fruit that was more fruitful from the experience. Judging up for him in literature courses

is between Christ and the truth, I choose Christ. Which is really, it's not really the message of, Which is really, it's not really the message of, Christ doesn't come and say, I have my bag of lies now. You know, he's struggling, he's really, and then you've got to disregard the end of crime and punishment, because I don't know how many arguments like that I had in university with people going, crime and punishment is great

until the Coda. Oh, I loved the Coda, I think the coda was more than anything made me a Was the event that I pinpoint is going I have to become a Christian. Yeah, I mean I think they're on to something which is that so People listen to this podcast right? I mean sometimes okay, so for those who don't know crime and punishment ends with what gets critiqued as just a happy ending of Christianity yeah comes in and just happy ending of Christianity. Yeah. Comes in and just makes it better. The punishment section.

Yeah. He gets punished by going to prison, and he becomes Christian. I mean, he converts at the crossroads. It's one sliver back from that. All the ingredients are there such that, that's why it's so lovely. And they go, well, it's all prepared for him to have his conversion.

And then they go, but that is another story. Yeah. I don't wanna talk about that, but it's so beautifully done. Because Dostoevsky really is a Christian. I mean, he really does transcend the literary hope in salvation, which is that you can be happy simply by virtue of writing pretty books and he actually says no I'm going to become an apologist for a religion at the end and it's like well there goes the aesthetic thing. You're right there it goes.

That's the Christ coming in over the... but he really captures the suffering But he, I mean, he really captures the suffering of it. And I sort of, this is maybe a personal problem. But I think if you're writing on pornography, Mark is an outstanding writer on pornography. This is your writing, this is your writing on pornography. You've written extensively on pornography. But there is a real difference between the way your writing on pornography, but there is a real difference between the way you're writing on pornography and its issues and how to live without pornography and what that life looks like versus I think

other griftier people in that sphere whose writing seems to bear no... I read their writing and I think, wow, that's a good guy, but it just has nothing. I mean, we came into this hotel, we came into the hotel room, and the first thing you said was something like, gee, aren't hotels very sexually depraved? Yeah, there's a... Just blockgations. They are a hotel. Don't you feel... It's something like, don't you feel a weird sexual anxiety being in a hotel? It's like, yeah! Every time. A huge wave of it.

Hotels as hotels are near occasions of sin. Yes. This is... Well, and why, but you know, because... It's undeniably so. Yeah, so obviously there's like an associative aspect the hotel is the promise of an amenity, right? So you are entering into a room that is not a home Yes, it has the bed which is of course the symbol of homemaking including the act of lovemaking But then it is an anonymous bed, right? Which is the symbolic definition of prostitution, right? The woman

Say that you treat as wife who is not wife. No, I appreciate it. Who's not wife. Little gay dick, please go. Well, I'm just trying to be open to other possible prostitutions. And that, I think, afflicts man because we are symbolic creatures.

You don't get, you can pretend you're not, but you are. And a bed in an anonymous place is itself an incitement to lust. It is a sign of loneliness, right? And loneliness is properly understood as a lack of communion with the other. And sex is one of the, because it's a, it is a form of communion, but it's also a form of communion

that's very easy for us to believe is like within our control It's like I can I can I mean we'd certainly desperately want to think that it is well you see this all the time I mean it explains a lot of perversions right that you have That Often the feeling of being alienated from a phenomenon Sex steps in as a way of regaining lost communion over it. I see this a lot with the sexualization of childhood. Often people think that things become pervy over time, Disney becomes pervy over time

because, I don't know, they don't necessarily give a direct reason besides just the corruption of the world in general. But actually I think it's because intense relationships of belonging you cartoon characters to to to places and people becomes Disappointing as you become an adult you don't actually get the world that you were delivered on TV You don't get the fictional you want to juice it up with some extra. Well. It's not just juicing it up

It's actually trying to retrieve it like something. I mean, think about the amount of fan fiction that's pornographic. Why? Because it seems like, at least on a rational, if we're just going to guess, it's like, shouldn't there be about the same amount of regular fan fiction as there is pornographic fan fiction?

But in fact, it seems like a chief motivator for the existence of fan fiction at all is the pornographizing of fictional accounts. Well, I would say two of the biggest media franchises of the 2010s are both essentially erotic pornographic. You have Fifty Shades of Grey, which is a sexualized Twilight and starts out as a fanfiction of that. And the entire work of Game of Thrones is sexualized. He's just putting sex into Lord of the Rings where sex was not.

And it must be said, Lord of the Rings is a weirdly non-sexual... It really disregards that dimension entirely. And there is something, I mean there's got to be a happy medium point where it's not. James just wants a little sex. Well, I just think back to all the women in Lord of the Rings. And to be a world without sex, it sort of has to be a world without women. It's true, but there was a difficulty that they tried to solve in The Hobbit where a lot of the women and men belonged to different kinds of creatures.

Yes. And they tried to solve that in The Hobbit by having a dwarf fall in love with an elf and it just seemed wrong. Oh, this is in the cinematographic version. Still trying to inject that. But just to finish the thought, because the thought should be finished.

Yes. You believed that, go on. No, I think that's true the the hotel room has this Has this effect because we're symbolic creatures, so you can't just tell people to wear a mask Yes for a year without also bringing in the image of mask wearing as Criminality as being suspicious in a similar way. You can't simply live in an anonymous room that is like, but not like a home. I think without the loneliness, lack of communion as that, that's the symbol you're entering into. And then sex appears as a relief from that lack of communion because that's

very often what, what sex does. Sex seems to be a, can be used as a means for establishing community or really, I think f faking community and that's not there. However, one must travel. Sometimes. Not everybody, some people, they get to live in a hermitage type.

James, I get it, you've got a life to defend. Go ahead. What is the practical means forward of being able to be in a place? What would be a better way to live in a place? I once stayed at a pub. Cool. How'd it go?

Filthy. Yeah. But great. But chased. Well, it was quite nice to be in a place that during the day, you know, just downstairs people having pints and all pubs I think, or like this at one point, public houses. But it really felt more like a third space

rather than a pseudo first space. Yeah, and then I think lust very often operates when you're lonely and pubs seem to at least be already working against loneliness. I'm not saying that it couldn't be. I mean it must be said, I think it hostiles the loneliness is decreased but the opportunity for... Sure, no, no, no. I mean look, there's always many near occasions of sin, they're not all the same, right? Yes.

Now what strikes me about our society is that sex becomes a very grasping, medicinal sort of sin. Like we're trying to heal ourselves with it, as Marvin Gaye would say. But it's not like the lusty, look at this bar wedge, is not also an irrevocable sin. It's an entirely, it's a relief of anxiety, more than a desire for the other.

Yeah, exactly. I was thinking about why... There are some sins that are better than others. Yes. Certainly the sins against nature are further down in hell than lust. Loving too much in the wrong direction. I don't know how many gay churches I have seen in America and England and Australia at this point. Not one gay mosque, but so many, so many trans flags

outside of Episcopalian churches. My favorite one that I ever saw was in Auckland. There was a big sign out front that said, "'All is welcome' and it was a gay thing. And it was the Ark and it was the animals marching up the Ark two by two. But it was obviously the same gendered animals There were two lines with mains very quickly you go well

What will that do for the future of lions when they come off of that arc this falls apart? Immediately yes, I remember it was several years ago in Auckland Can I I'm having a weird I haven't been back to Pittsburgh in some time. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. And I, it's lived very large in my memory. And this is the first place. It's beautiful.

We're in a sort of development by the river. I think the, I don't know if we're by the Ohio or the Monongahela, but we're at the river front. And then they merge into the? Yeah, they become one big mess, and then they become another river, I think. Eventually they become the ocean. It's a beautiful city.

So one of my, I went to LA the first time I came to America, and I wandered around Inglewood for a while. And it was very fun and very strange, and Venice Beach. But then the first place I came to America and I wandered around Englewood for a while and it was very fun and very strange and Venice Beach. But then the first place I spent any serious time was Steubenville and Pittsburgh of course being in the greater Steubenville economic zone. But I got to come through that airport that I've just gone back to. And that really inside of me has been, it's this weird, you go to a new place and it's a place that everyone around there thinks is crummy.

But it's new and so all the things about, it has all these virtues that people have become blind and numb to. So the Pittsburgh airport, people go, I hate the Pittsburgh airport. Yeah, blah, blah. It's like very 90s. And I remember my first time seeing it, I couldn't, I think the first time I was in your car when you picked me up I taking me from on a very cold winter morning I was raving about how much I loved the airport and this was a very this is strange because it's you know, it's dark It's Unusual this a train that seems kind of pointless there And they're now updating it, which is breaking my heart. But I now see

it having, it was the first proper American airport that I walked around in, and now I see it having seen 60 or 70 American airports. And it is dark, and it is strange, and it does have, I still love what I saw about it to begin with, but I can't help now but see it not as, you know, the American things about it that really buoyed me are gone in becoming more American and being here for longer. I can't see the American things. I can only see the Pittsburgh things about it. I'm getting somewhere. I don't know how to, and this is sort of disenchanting. Like I walk around, it's a very hot day and it's been very dusty, but the bridges seem less yellow to me somehow. They're so yellow in my mind,

and I seem now, yeah, they're pretty yellow, but they're not that same yellow that they once were. And the airport, I go, you know, I do think we could clean this place. They go, let's get a broom going through here. And I do think, you know, when I saw the big fat people of Pittsburgh, the weird, that Appalachian, that real Appalachian thing, I was so charmed by it and so pleased by it. And now I think, good lord, what are we's that's brush our teeth

Yeah tattoo there. Yeah No, I mean look Creatures of comparison. I mean, there's no there's no denying it. This is one of the problems with Our society is that we have too many comparisons to make We can't help but I've become a ruthless cosmopolitan. Look at you, you're the global financial class. It makes me feel... You come from everywhere and nowhere. You're at home everywhere and nowhere. You're homeless. But never homeless. But never homeless. Because the world is your anti-home. This is a... I'm in

exile. This is a temporary exile and we only rest in God. Well that's convenient. Yes It's my anti nationalist argument, I'm a I am a nationalist but in heaven we're making this place a strip mall because our only home Is heaven I think I've heard this argument from the evangelical Republicans for a while. It's like yeah Walmart Costco box store highway paradise. It's a boring awful paradise. This is a what hair shirt It's just where you know in heaven. That's when the good stuff happens. No worry. Don't don't try to do things here Don't don't don't cry about it. It's all gonna be great I Think this is foolish. It's foolish for several reasons. I mean if

Earth is preparatory for heaven. Yeah, then you are slowly building up whether you like it or not your expectation of box stores as Heaven heaven, right? You can't you can't just sort of undo the habits that it's forming in you Oh, there will be no Costco in heaven. No there won't. But I will be very upset if there's not a home depot. No, there's nothing. There's nothing. Well, there's everything. Every man under his fig tree. And I presume every man has his own little home depot. Well, someone has to tend to the fig trees. I don't understand how time doesn't work in heaven. Oh, I think it does Well, I mean, I think people get confused about the difference between time without change and heaven. Okay, right and God is in his heaven It's a world but it's a world that's populated. I mean, so we're still angels They're saints. I mean, how are you gonna conceive of well, they sing. How you gonna conceive of singing without time? How you gonna move from dough to ray? Never mindmind rate of me it's just one big chromatic chord

going on forever yeah I don't think that's true I think I think you know the human person you know sophisticated enough to understand it he's a subject and so he makes time wherever he goes that's what he does but it will have no way I mean how can it have no end if it has no time? I think it can have no end and have succession. I want it to the next. Have you seen Severance? I've not, but I also haven't seen anything.

No, I was going to say, I was going to caveat that with. I don't know someone with more cultural impact who's Keeps up with the culture less and I respect that my would that that was the case for me Oh, I think it it's the only In some ways, it's a selfish response. Sometimes people ask me how do you do so much which is Embarrassing to me because I do many things badly and so they don't know that necessarily because they often are on the sort of sort of more superficial like list of things I do yes but I do think there's a I do remember I remember

a as landlord yes there with a bit of roof fell down and I remember seeing the blast Just before we left yeah, what happened to the blastering? What's that state of that? That's fixed. All right. Yeah. Yeah Not by me, but my money and my brother-in-law. God bless him You do you are the busiest man You know one speaks more about the importance of leisure and I know no one with less time to themselves. I don't think. I got to see you live. I live next to Mark. Do I speak about the importance? I don't think I've ever done that. Leisure is the basis of culture. That's Joseph Peepern on me.

Now you talk about that you reference him. That's the only reason I know it is from you saying it over and over again. Leisure might be the basis of culture. I don't know, but Jerry's out on that. Labor seems to have a lot to do with it, anyways. I think I also understand in a greater sense than when I first came here where you and as a result of knowing you, I sit within the broader Catholic

American The I don't know tribe is the wrong way the people of God in America there There is a there's a real religious thing here there's like there's money and there's organizations and there's a real religious thing here. There's like, there's money, and there's organizations, and there's like, think tanks and public groups and agitating and like, it's a bit, there's like four right-wing thinkers in Australia, and they're either, they're either very poor or they're on the hook to a one lady who works in a mining company and here the Landscape is I've met the neo cons. I've met rad trads. I've met

People doing a very strange ambiguous dance To just keep everybody happy all the time and you really I think the the instance the new polity thing is except a very strange and exceptional and if I can get more people to know about it I would be very happy great so perhaps we could discuss that for a moment new polity calm there we go we've done it it'll get you started Get you finished It's very easy to to recommend to people I never quite know what to say when people are going. What's a good podcast? I say new polity

Less often the people ask me what's a good magazine or a publishing house? But if they did if they did I would be ready with an answer But in the company that I keep it's often. What's a good podcast? Yeah, I mean you polity is a name for a group of people in student will Ohio who Really do think that Christ changes everything and I don't mean that as a sort of Obviously, I hope I don't mean that as like a arrogance like unlike you losers who don't think it But you don't let's be honest you don't whoever you are

And I know that because I don't Christ changes everything changes us Changes the possibilities for social order changes economics changes politics everything that is Through his grace becomes different. But unfortunately we live in a liberal society which takes as one of its premises the idea that there are certain parts of reality for which God is irrelevant, to which God is irrelevant. Yes.

So God is very relevant to your private sense of peace and wellbeing, but he is very relevant to your private sense of peace and wellbeing, but he is not relevant to politics. God is extremely relevant to belief as like propositional belief, as the epistemology that you've got going on. Values. Yes, but he has nothing to do with money.

Yeah. So we, you can understand why we do this. And it's also deliberately done. Like, this is a group of men with post-Protestant Reformation in order to avoid the authority of the church, made up a particular ideology in which the church is irrelevant to certain factors of life, which just happen to be the factors that matter most to temporal power.

I found myself in the position of defending your position on this. That's what Neupholite is just to finish. Yeah, all right, all right. That's the idea, is that because of that difficulty, we need a lot of thought about issues that have, for a long time, simply been thought of as secular. Thought of as godless, thought of as sort of

only extrinsically related to Jesus Christ and his church. And we're trying to, one at a time, with great difficulty and labor, say, let's think about it as Christians. I think you do a very good job of addressing those things. And there is a subset of the audience that you have, that I assume you meet or write to you from time to time, who will say, this is the sort of new polity person I have in mind, the person who will say something, oh, they're very good, but not on the money stuff.

Or, well, about the stock market, we have a differing view. But I think on that trans stuff, they were saying some very interesting things. You must have had, you must have encountered. Yeah, and it goes both ways too. But to it really the money thing seems like the central Point of difference from another I Don't know anybody else who's arguing the things that you're arguing there. Yeah there That seems to be the the really strange

That jumps out as opposed to other journals of post liberal thought wherever we may find them yeah compact is not saying get out of the stock market you know uh so i would like just to dig down into that for a moment because it it annoys me when that happens because i don't think any of these people that I've had this argument with about have a coherent argument against it, other than, but I have money, and it's nice, and they need to shut the fuck up

and leave me alone with my money. Yeah, this is the argument from current use, which is, I get this with AI a lot of the time, where I say, well, it seems to me to be fundamentally disordered to relate to a machine as if it's a person. And it seems to follow from that that no machine should be designed to imitate a person and therefore

elicit the kind of trush that comes from conversation. And that should just be normal. And what people say is, yes, but look, I used it here to decorate my wall. It's an argument from use. Now, it's interesting because that's not actually a counter argument, but it's an argument that the thing must be good because it feels normal when I do it. Which, with technology, it presupposes that the world simply is not a human world. It's a technological world. So we're living amidst a great evolution of technique from nothing to microwaves to AI. And so if I can convincingly say, hey, this

is a normal part of this motion, this is working, then that's sufficient to argue that a critique must be wrong. Something similar is happening, I think, with the stock market, where the normalcy of it seems to suffice for evidence that a critique of it cannot be right. If it was so bad, wouldn't I feel weird doing it? Which is fair. I have to bring up examples to kind of trouble. Maybe at this point, the easiest example is just to say, you know, I live in Steubenville. It's a very impoverished area and it has very little access to capital. And one of the ways that this becomes very obvious is actually in trying to get capital. So I run a grocery store. And one of the chief ways that we've been able to find investors in the grocery store

to build a commercial kitchen have been to ask people to stop investing in stocks, to take that money and invest it in building a commercial kitchen, and then they'll receive a return on it, but they're actually enabling something real, something local, something whose value is both in the profits it will produce, but also in the thing itself. It's not simply valuable because you can trade it for more money later, the way stocks are. That might be going too fast, but stocks are only valuable as a commodity on a market. They're valuable insofar as you can buy them low and then sell them higher

You can have a dividend on many stocks, but I would say certainly on the tech wave of stocks I don't believe Google has ever managed to pay anybody a dividend sure it's an entirely speculatory Yeah, yeah, and even dividend well. Yes, I think okay All right, we don't have to go down that but you you've got something on. Dividends are interesting, but I think they ultimately work because they don't. A dividend just considered as a small share in the profits is good. Praise God for it. Dividends that are really tiny and ultimately seem to be utilized to incentivize stock ownership, while not in themselves, I think, unreal in the way that I was describing stock ownership, do, I think, fundamentally serve

getting people's money into the major corporations of America, getting people's retirement invested into the major powers of our technological overlords, and making sure that it is not put to anything that is directly useful to them and their community. The moment you have a community, the moment you love people around you and want them to flourish,

capital loses its abstract quality and it becomes something crying out to be built up and distributed. We need a swimming pool. We frickin' need a bar that isn't frightening to the elderly. I think they should harden up and it's a sick bar. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

They should. My wife did not love going to that bar. My dad loved it. No, but this argument is not an argument for why the stock market is bad, but it is an argument rather to show what we are not doing because we're doing stocks. When you take your labor, which you've either inherited, or you take your labor or inherited labor in the form of money. You're taking work that people have done in the world or you yourself have done in the

world and then you have a choice to make. And when you make the choice to speculatively invest it, I used air quotes. The question of whether speculation, so buying low to sell high later without increasing opportunities for labor thereby, without increasing labor value in the world thereby, is one question. But then I think there's a more obvious question that people can more readily assent to. So it's that we are neglecting our neighbors. Yes. I would feel very similarly, I think, if, oh no, I just think that there is a use of our labor for the sake of strangers rather than as a response to real and concrete needs. And I think that it is normal for people to become investors in, and I use those scare

quotes, to become investors to kind of hitch their wagon, as it were, to the success of large multinational firms that make up their retirement funds. And it has become abnormal to give a loan. It has become abnormal to genuinely invest in someone's aspirations, who you know, and for an investment which part of the return of the investment is the existence of the thing that you have helped to create.

I mean, we live in such a loveless world, and people are actively invested in things they hate, or at least don't care about. I mean, no one who's invested in just the standard stock portfolio is there. I mean, some of them do ideologically after I call them on it, but before that, they don't think about Apple, they don't care about Google,

they're not there just experiencing and desiring them to succeed. Very often the people who are invested in such a manner are apocalyptic doomer people who are kind of waiting for and enjoying to hear about Google collapsing in this way or being disrupted in that way. I mean, there's, and yet their fortunes are tied to them. I mean, I can think of counter examples with people

who are fanboys for a particular. That's true. But this is obscene I would say. Now to zoom out one level which is people love Steubenville who have never been there. I mean I know several people who are like a shining city on a hill. Oh it's not. It's in a valley. Yeah it's there of elements of it that shine I would say but you know, so you you have a People are investing in a brewery. Yeah in student bill well pledging to invest Pledging to invest in a brewery working on which I would like to do as well. Now. I do not live in studentville at the moment That's correct. And also I know all these people in Australia. Yeah.

Now that would be foreign capital. Oh yeah, we'll take it. For a community, now see that's- Trump baby is looking for you. Now hold on. America needs your investment. But this is, I mean that's literally international finance for people that they never know.

But they obviously do it with love, and they're not gonna get the same return that they would get elsewhere. Yeah, well look, I think several things. One is that if there's an opportunity to help someone in need through giving a loan, more locally, then I think you have a certain obligation to do so.

Not invest in something else. Now, if there isn't that opportunity. What, are you saying we should order our loves? I think we should order our loves. Order them right. It's heresy. I mean, the idea of the just man throughout the Old Testament is the one who takes pity and lends Now this is this is an investment in someone that's motivated out of pity

So that what makes him just what makes him worthy of building a statue of him, right is That he hears a cry of the poor and uses capital, right, for the sake of that poor person. And so throughout the Bible, loaning is not primarily the thing you do to receive a great benefit, right? It's the thing you do in justice because of the needs of your community. A great difficulty we have is the lack of community, or certainly the lack of ability to invest

meaningfully in the community. I think that's real. That's true. So there is a way in which investing in things that we are connected to when we don't have closer, more local connections available to us does make sense. But I think that's remedial. I think that's because of a lack of community. It's because of a lack of sometimes the legal possibility of giving loans to help out particular members

of your community. I think we live in an odd world. I mean, no doubt. And so certain odd things happen. I think he's a true American, because Americans love each other. Americans would die for each other. That's what constitutes them as a people.

Black people are so good at this and going, that's my community, I'm gonna lift the community up. Totally. I'm gonna give out 10 pairs of Jordans and they probably have what we talked about within Christianity that kind of light coercion that Is proper I think to people that love each other is that you have examples of it going before you you would feel ashamed To do otherwise. Yes honor its point of pride These are all the things we associate with properly belonging to a people and then you have our billionaire class, our elite,

that seems to think that there's no obligation, like their success doesn't require a reciprocal turn to the streets and as if they got their language from nowhere, as if they got their abilities from nowhere. I mean, they should be shot, James. Anyway. Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. I'll let it around then for you.

Are you open about that? Well, I mean, by, like, after being tried. Thank you. So long as it's not extrajudicial violence. No, I would. I had a bit that wasn't working that I may try and do tonight. But it was about this CEO who gets shot by the Italian fella. Yes, yes.

And all these people are going, Huzzah, he's killed the CEO. And I'm like, no, you kill a CEO. That board just hires another CEO at an increased rate to do the same job. You have to kill the board. And if you kill the board, what do the shareholders do? They'll elect a board with the very same interest you have to Kill the shareholders you know and who the shells whites that man with a hat with an app on his phone

We must kill the CEO who lives in our hearts And people were just quiet and I stopped saying it That's very pleased. I thought you might like it That's really quite good. I was reminded of the Russian folk tale about they kill the dragon and then they come back and everyone's still afraid of the dragon. Now we just kill the dragon in your heart. It's beautiful. A lovely ex-white nationalist told me about that. He really got into Russian folk tales for a time. Which by the way, I did start reading and they're not appropriate for children. They are. There's so much violence very terrifying. There's no sense of warmth in the rush

I forget It's killing co's you had a call I think I want to I want to We want to wrap up. So you think you think very carefully about technology and I really i've tried having a dumb phone on the road Yeah, that's not so Naughty getting an uber Seems yeah, sadly. It's a part of my yes. I Think I started reading even ill each yes because of you and he writes in tools for conviviality about the two

thresholds where you have the first threshold where the tool really improves the world and the second threshold where the world gets worse because of the tool. There's probably a better way to say that but you know there's no cars you get a car zoom zoom fantastic the whole world is built for cars we're all in traffic right I'm very upset and this is so with the phone you know you get the phone and you go hey I can do everything Wonderful. The world is built for a phone. Hey, guess what? If you don't have a phone, it's harder to tell where you're going. There aren't proper signs anywhere You can't get a boarding pass on time. There's not a taxi cab to pick you

I just can see a guy and say I'll get in now totally and yet, I mean I I Don't like I maybe this is a that wise phone I distrust the business model because they they rent seekers it seems I don't understand why that's their business model. It seems evil and wrong I think I found a phone that's gonna all right with no sacrifices Allow me not to just lose myself into the phone forever It's ah allow me not to just lose myself into the phone forever

I'll let people know if it works, but you know you're on a different flip phone now Yeah, it hasn't it hasn't gotten me yet. Although it is it is definitely dying and it's mechanical kind of way You're on the phone a lot You have a lot of calls literally yeah, and the battery life on that must be poor it is Often the phone just dies and that's the end of that When did you charge the phone today? It feels like when I had a flip phone I was on the phone a lot. I feel like I was on dialysis I needed to be plugged in every well I borrowed my brother's car and he had a little you had to charge while driving Yeah, it's very cool

I'd like updates on Steubenville. I may as well do it here. In public. In public. I got many of the updates that I saw. Yeah. But, the mural behind the altar? Still. Wow.

Yeah, sorry. It's a personal failure at some point. At some point we have to take responsibility for that one. Post-mass meals. this was happening sometimes, but not all the time. Is it every week now? There's a coffee and donuts? No, no.

It is monthly. OK. And then Lent is an advent. Absent? Weekly. Advent. Really? Not absent, advent really and Not absent Advent and I was absent like nobody would think in Lent. We give up hanging out with each other. No we don't

That's like wait, so you get more meals provided during Lent. Yeah, I meant they just seems liturgically Suspect they're meatless. No, it is sometimes hard because I'll go to the the Friday potluck. Yeah enduring lent. So at the end of fasting I love that but boy people are great cooks. They're making great stuff. It is not a sacrificial experience trying everything It's always fun because they got these creative way. We're doing it with chickpeas, you know, doing it with fish nuggets What about the spirit of land? I knew a couple who they would fast Insanely, but then such Incredible weird, you know, this is better food than you were eating, you know, man spent $150 on sun dried tomatoes to make this weird focaccia.

We're eating better than we were before. I mean, that's the tradition too. The Knights of Columbus fish fry. They love the fish fry. They love their fish fry. It's an institution. Post football game fish fry at the Catholic school I felt unusual going when I went to the Catholic high school football game But they were having a fish fry afterwards and to sit with a bunch of strangers and their children

After a 62 nothing loss Who are you? I've come from Australia. I just wanted to see what's going on. I love kids playing football. I Heard on the side of not going I Keep thinking about how to get back to Steubenville. Well, and it's really hard with work. I would imagine It's because we don't have a good comedy club. If you had a comedy club, and you could just like book it for You know three evenings and then you're making money Throughout the whole year. I would throw. I would it's the doing it over and over again is the hard It helps to get it. I'm finding that it does help to do it on a regular if you do so I always hoped

That I could just do stand-up very little and then be great when it counted and it turns out that it's good to do a thing over and over again, which is devastating. And you can't do it in Pittsburgh. You can do it a little bit in Cleveland. It's a four hour drive back and forth. Yeah, that's tough. I hope that one day, at some point, you get worse as a comedian because you're older

and people aren't as interested. And then I can move on to something else. It's like being a rock star, I think. You can pass your prime and then I can move on to something else. Mm-hmm. It's like being a rock star I think where it's you know that you could pass your prime and there's time to do your next yeah But I feel shackled to being in one of three American cities at the moment. Yeah, I get that You ever gonna go back to Australia? I yearn to one day make it back to Australia Yeah, my family would love us to get back to Australia Yeah, and there is some sense in which I am a creature of that soil, and that's where my blood is.

Yeah, that's where people love you without really checking on whether you merit it. That's not true. It's also where people hate me for not checking whether or not that's merited as well. There are so many things that were novel about being in America that I now consider sort of non-negotiables and I'm very angry that they exist. This is the corrupting influence of the immigrant. No

one should immigrate. Immigrate? No, there should be no immigrates. It's an act of violence and I'm opposed to it. But I've obviously loved it, but as I come to love America more I come to hate things about my own country The bureaucracy is nightmarish And there's no real sense that I could change that right The cameras everywhere the expense the million dollars for a Bad house the the thought that I'd have to I would have to get A mortgage which I don't want I don't want a more. I mean is a mortgage a lesser ill than renting Yeah, okay, I mean Yeah, totally

Better to buy outright But I'm participating in usury. Yeah, but you know, you got to make good use of another man's sin, as Aquinas says. Should I not draw him into a near occasion of sin? It's not that near occasion, he's already... He is sinning, yeah. Thank. I mean, am I sinning by entering into a usurious relationship where I'm being ripped off?

No. I mean... Say that loudly so my wife can hear it. You'll back her up on this one. No. I was saying it was. No, I mean. Say that loudly so my wife can hear it. You'll back her up on this one. No. I was saying it was. No, it's not. I mean, there are a few questions

that Aquinas really takes directly, but that's one of them, about entering into a usurious contract. And he says it's not the fault of the person who needs it. It's the fault of the person charging interest on the loan. Need is a straight answer. Need is a tough one, but I think people need houses.

I need my ships to go to the new world and bring back fine spices. You're right. I think that there are some Some occasions at which it doesn't quite make sense, but I do need a house you do need a house Dang My credits just recovered in Australia. Oh, that's great. I was Defaulted on some credit card things, which I would recommend for everybody who's in their 20s. Get what you can get. I mean, when they were calling me trying to get their money back,

in Australia it works like this. You start out with perfect credit, or good credit, and then you get into trouble with the credit and they go, for seven years there's a blot against your name and then you are completely back to where you were. So this lady, I was just before the birth of my first child and I had absolutely no money or prospects and there's this lady at the rent collection place going, please, you don't want bad credit.

I go, don't I? I mean, I'm not going to get another credit card. I've learned my lesson. And she goes, but what if you want to buy a house? I go, I don't think I could buy a house in the next seven years. And she goes, and then she starts to lift me up. She starts to go, you don't know what you're capable of doing.

You can do anything you set your mind to. One of my better financial, if I had gone into that planning to one of my better financial. If I had gone into that planning to defraud someone, terrible. To extricate yourself from a bad situation like that is I think I'm fairly happy. They ended up getting some money from me. I don't know, excuse me.

But anyway, it's an option. I have to at some point draw, I seek your counsel on this, maybe better done privately, but why not people are backing the career. They're they're invested. All right It's at what point do you go? And I suspect the answer will be at no point and that it's all been a huge mistake Okay, but at what point do you go? I've gone away. I've done the work. I've reaped this. I've climbed the ladder. I've captured this way. This is, I don't like that. It's a horrible thing to think

of oneself as like working, ah, just, just to profit, you know, so that you can move that over somewhere else. I see this, corporations do this all the time and it's terrible. It doesn't actually work out. Um, in my line of work, I don't think I've had a choice, but I've had, uh, everyone has a choice, but I've had an ability to travel and to make money and to grow some sort of career thing from it and that could go on interminably. But at some point you can go, that's enough. I returned to something or you go, there is no end to that. Or you call it too soon or you call it too late you've done damage to yourself.

I don't know how to prudentially make this decision and I feel adrift. People in Adelaide, people close to me just want me back which is very nice. People in America just want me here. I'd like to be able to provide for my family what that looks, I mean, does your family need a beautiful leather couch and a fine Volkswagen? What is the level of material provision? It's very rare to get that choice,

to say how much should I be providing for my family? What am I willing to do? You know, usually either you have to work too much or too little and you don't actually get to decide how much you end up doing. But I have no, I am totally adrift on this. Well, I think you're right to try and look for a limit that you could reasonably determine with your family,

with your wife, because it's like, it's sort of the first step if you simply say, I mean, if you just start this route of like, it is, the idea of like a limitless, I do everything for my family, right? Very quickly become, I never see my family because I'm doing everything for my family. And then it's like, well you're doing nothing

for your family, in fact. So you avoid that trap by saying like, well no, let's determine what the family needs me to do. But I think that's a question. I mean, this is interesting. This is a difficult. This is I mean, it's infinite, right?

I mean, there's no there's no amount of time I wouldn't like to be spending with my children. Yeah. And I don't think there's an amount of time that I could be spending with my wife and children that I'd go. I mean, sometimes, yeah, you go, I need to go for a walk because this house is very loud This is a cudgel that everybody could take to their conscience that I don't get to spend enough I mean a man must it is it is right for a man to work But I think yes it is and and it's also right to have a community that transcends the family

Yes, right. We our hearts long for that And it's also right to have a community that transcends the family. Yes. Right? Our hearts long for that. The family is an intense love, but it, by its nature, produces a desire to expand itself, the kind of love that's experienced in the family, outside of itself. It's a fruitful thing. And so this idea of like, it's part of the problem in the modern world that you're facing is that there isn't community out there. And so work becomes guiltily set against family life, instead of family having a natural transcendence into the greater community so that you're always

making a choice between family and then... A work-life balance. Yeah, but like where life is like, but where life doesn't involve the family. I mean, maybe the best way is just to explain it. It's like, I have a luxury because there's a strong community in Steubenville that many people don't experience, which is that there are many times where I get to leave the family to work on what I know my family wants to receive

in the community itself, not just abstractly as money that they could translate into consumer goods. They get nicer groceries. Right, like they get a place to go, they get a place to walk, they get, and it's a place that I'm, like to serve the city, to serve the community in which the kids are growing up is also to be with the children in that sense of like,

I'm gone, I'm preparing a place for you. And I think Jesus said that to me. The family needs to transcend itself. Like it needs to have a larger thing into which it's growing. Yes. I think part of the difficulty is that it very often doesn't. It's a smaller paltry money world that it's not growing into. Instead it's sending people out to go grab from it and bring back. Yes. Which is an unfortunate and unnatural way of being. So I'm not giving you advice I'm giving

you sympathy no I look I ever we are we are sent out into the we're sent out into the world he I would be easier if I were an evangelical mm-hmm and I thought my work, uh, uh, and by God. I, I mean creatively, and maybe this is lack of imagination on my part, I just don't believe that he needs stand up. You know? I, um, I can't see it. And there'll be evangelical friends who are like, oh, these incredible things are happening in your career. God wants that for you. I don't. Tired to say it.

I don't see it. I don't hear it. I try not to say anything particularly scandalous against my faith or that I wouldn't agree with. and I think people have a right to go and have a To pay money and see a show that makes them feel happier That's a nice that's a nice thing to be able to do that's now. I think we don't believe the theaters should be shut down But like me specifically doing the jokes I think the world goes on just fine without that. I can't see that this is I think sometimes we get scared of how free human freedom really is like

We can just do things. Yeah, and so we look for the sanction of God's providence not because we genuinely think that there is a we genuinely think that there is a particular calling, but because we're scared that what we're doing is in fact free, like we are making it up. We're going out there and doing stuff. And I find that there's a way of thinking about it that can, I suppose, be a little bit atheistic, right?

Which is that there's this realm in which God doesn't really care, right? But I don't think that's the only possibility. I think there's also the possibility of realizing that God loves your freedom. He loves mankind so much that he's given them a gift of doing what they will. And that's very hard for us.

Because we want to do the will of God, but the will of God includes our creativity. Personal freedom and creativity, yeah. So it's very paradoxical, but it seems to me like the answer is somewhere in this direction. And I've had this thought before. It's like, you know, I'll often end up doing things

that I just love doing, knowing full well that I am immensely and probably preferably replaceable in the doing of it. Yeah. You know, like. But you can delight in it and you can give thanks for it. Right, and I think that's important to and giving as opposed to I mean It's not you know

The workers are day worth the workers ordain if you have to go and do the creative work that God wants you to do Then you you know, how can you give thanks for that you are you you get a pat on the head for having done a good job But you're not Delighting in creation and a godlike activity. Yeah, I mean there's that part in the book of Samuel where Saul who admittedly an ambiguous character by all accounts is Anointed by Samuel and Samuel tells him go and do what you will for the Lord is with you This is a terrifying but delightful thought. Can you imagine the kind of feeling of liberation that my will You know sort of has a sanction. I can just go do what I want

What he actually isn't doing is dancing and singing with the prophets. It's a very obscure. That's beautiful I'm not sure what what it all means to be frank But I think it's what he dances and sings. It's what he do with the freedom. That's beautiful. Yeah, I think that's something that That we can forget which is that when we say something like God is with me What we often mean is I have a didactic sanction of a plan I made up And the thing I'm doing you shall not question because God is with me Yeah, an actual fact it seems like when God is with you you are liberated into a space of

creative freedom like you don't have to worry about whether you're doing the right thing anymore because you're in conformity with him already yes it seems to me that Christianity is a great defender of doing things on the basis of vibes feeling it yeah you're good at it so so do it. Don't overthink it. I mean this is within a culture-rated framework, I think that's easier because it's harder to get lost in... We are concipiscient and it's very easy for the will then to love... Love and do as you will, okay, but do not love immoderately, do not love excessively, do not love, you know, to the pure, all is pure. But really, who's, come on, who's that? So that is then, to be in that world is...

I mean, there's no answer here easily. What you've said is very beautiful And I appreciate it and that will that will buoy me in the that'll do days to come But it is I do have to figure that out sure yeah, and I think I think it's I Think that your conscience will guide you my son I Think my conscience might guide me to a boy is a beautiful Olympic size swimming pool That I with great Generosity allow my friends and neighbors to participate. You're becoming an American This is it's a marvelous transformation that idea of like I will be I will receive everything that the world has to offer But as a blessing is like peak

Americana Look at how the Lord has blessed my bank account Lord It's really sick and weird the I Think this is I mean it was easier for me to tell if I was with the vibe that I was on the right road Because of the the suffering I continue to suffer in different ways But for a while there with which you got to witness real strange material Why am I here? What's going on? What choices have I made? Yeah, this is agony

And then great beautiful Epiphanies as a result. I mean, I don't think I've, I'll never be able to, there's a, with, and then, you know, some success and comfort, it's, when it's, to have that given is a great gift to, to choose something recklessly and to and to throw your family into a bizarre situation where you don't know what you're gonna do it that's being a bad father I think if it happens and you respond as best you can what a beautiful opportunity for struggle and taking up across and these sorts of things but to then go we're doing it we're doing it now that way I mean where does the Holy Spirit start and the Manec episode end?

Oh man, that's another great American question. Yeah, you know, it's like you are to take up your cross, but you're not supposed to crucify your children. That's great! Is that yours? Yeah, I was just thinking about it. Filipinos- Literally do. Sometimes disagree with this at a certain level. No, I mean they're doing it themselves too.

I believe actually that that's- The Filipino tradition, which I shouldn't say, I mean I know it's contested there. I think the bishops are against it, etc. But it is- So cool. I have to say, like there's this thing that happens where everyone is like, oh, yeah That's they don't understand Christianity. That's it taking it. They don't think it's wrong, but it's like Yeah, that's extremely manly. Yeah

There was this Jewish comedian named John Sefran who at the end of one of his shows his series He went did it he went to the Philippines and was crucified his series He went and did it. He went to the Philippines and was crucified He was always doing strange thing, but like I forget the context of it I think it may have just been a cool thing right to close the show but it was about him like feeling bad about being Jewish and being interested in non Jewish women and being constrained by his Jewishness and then at the end he He goes and gets himself crucified and they really drive nails through his hands. Yeah

Well, I guess you know, it's great footage I Don't remember I wish I could remember the point I think he probably started out by going wouldn't be cool if the show ended I've heard they've crucifying people in the Philippines, right? Wouldn't it be nice to go and do that? Wouldn't that be a cool end to the show and then probably justified that yeah in reverse but I war I bet that as you're getting closer and closer to the nail coming into the hand do you think this might not be yeah yeah let's stay with me wait now we have a wish we have dinner yeah we have a dinner right James

thanks for thanks for having me on my podcast a heavily edited podcast to come all right God bless