Theology in the Raw - U.S. Intelligence, Guantamano Bay, the CIA, and the Rise in Christian Extremism: Elizabeth Neumann

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Elizabeth Neumann is a national security expert, violence prevention advocate, and author of the new book Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. She served on White House Homeland Security Council in the George W. Bush Administration, and as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump Administration. She is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for Moonshot - a tech-enabled company supporting governments and community partners to understand and prevent violence.  -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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show. There's too many to list here. Just go check it out at patreon.com forward slash the odd and draw, or just click on the link in the show notes. My guest today, Elizabeth Newman. Oh my word. Elizabeth is a national security expert, violence prevention advocate, and author of the new book kingdom of rage, the rise of Christian extremism and the path back to peace. She served on white house, uh, on the white house, Homeland security council in the George W. Bush administration. And as the assistant secretary for counter terrorism, hashtag Jack Bauer at the department of Homeland security during the Trump administration, she

is currently the chief strategy officer for moonshot, a tech enabled company, supporting governments and community partners to understand and prevent violence. This was a wide ranging conversation. We talked about the CIA. We talked about the deep state. We talked about the autonomous Bay and some of the complexities with all those issues. And then we finally got into themes related to her book that talks about the rise of Christian extremism. This was a fascinating conversation. I really found Elizabeth to be wise, well-learned, experienced and very fun to talk to you. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Elizabeth Newman, Elizabeth Newman.

I'm very excited about this conversation. How are you doing this morning? I'm well Preston. Thanks for having me. So you have one of the most unique backgrounds of any of my guests that I've had on the podcast and I've recorded over 1200 episodes. So why don't we begin with, yeah, what line of work have you been in the last couple of decades or so? Let's start there. Yeah, I've been in the counterterrorism homeland security space for the last two decades. I started in college, worked on the George W. Bush campaign. And in doing that, when he won the presidency, I had the opportunity to move to DC and worked on domestic policy initially,

the Faith-Based and Community Initiative, if anybody's old enough to remember the compassionate conservative agenda, I worked on that. And then 9-11 happened and the priorities dramatically shifted as they should. And it was kind of an all hands on deck thing and Homeland Security was the new thing and nobody knew how to do it. So it created opportunity that perhaps somebody as young and inexperienced as I would not normally have the opportunity to do now. But I ended up working for the Homeland Security Advisor in the White House, and then later

worked in a directorate that was called the Domestic Counterterrorism Directorate in the Homeland Security Council, which is now part of the National Security Council. And I just, I got to work with some really incredible people like CIA operatives and FBI and secret service and special forces. And the function of those National Security Council offices is to bring in all of the operational expertise from all of the agencies that the federal government has. And then we work on the policy. And those guys, I mean, these guys are legit operators, like great war stories, and they

hated writing. So I was like their scribe. I would work the policy piece of it. They would tell me what was broken and what we needed to fix. And then I would help them run the process. So I learned a lot from them and really became kind of a, to the extent that I'm a policy geek, I'm a policy geek for getting it right for the operators. That is my passion is how do we make it work so that the people that are on the front lines keeping us safe can do effectively. And they're empowered to keep us safe. So you, you were not Jack Bauer, but you worked alongside Jack Bauer. That's right. That's

right. For free. But he was familiar with the show. Oh my gosh. I love that show. But yes. Those early days, people would always be like, is it really like that? And you're like, yeah it really like that? And you're like, I was going to ask that, but yeah, I don't want to be too cheesy. But what's that? There are some cool stories, but I can't tell you that. But there are some really cool stories every once in a while, you know, early on in my career, it was, this is really cool. Cause it was new to me. And I, you know, you kind of look underneath the hood and you're like, wow, we can do that. That's really, that's really impressive. And I, I left government, well, I was a contractor for a while and then my husband and I got married, we moved outside of

Washington, DC. And so I, and I was raising kids and I was just kind of out of the, the space, other than like very consultancy private sector stuff. Like, how do you protect your power plant? That kind of stuff. I worked on that for a while. And I got recruited to come back into the Trump administration, was recruited by somebody that I had worked with in the Bush administration. And I was like, no, I'm not interested.

I don't want to uproot my family again. And you know, Trump's not my guy. He's not my type of Republican. And they asked me twice. I said, no, the third time was right before the inauguration. And it was a much different call. It was this crew doesn't know what they're doing. It's very chaotic. There we have some active threats that are of grave concern. And I don't know who will come in. And there's not many people I can trust. Will you consider coming in? And that just, look, I was there in DC on 9-11 and there's just this thing that pulls

on me having experienced that to just want to do what I can, however the Lord is calling me to keep our country safe. So, well, my husband and I fought about it for a while. But then we decided to move and went into the Trump administration. And I will tell you, aside from the fact that it was very chaotic and some of the hardest times of service I've ever had, there were these bright spots where I would, I was older, had higher title jobs,

and so I would get to go on tours and I would get to see some of the things that we can do. And oh my gosh, those moments where you're like, oh, we have some really smart people that do really good things, that nobody's ever going to hear this story, you know, but I'm so grateful for their service and how they keep us safe. I mean, it's the military, it's the intelligence community, it's the people that get slammed as the deep state, but they're not the deep state. Like these are just like, look,

everybody, government is incompetent because it's made up of humans, and humans make mistakes. And sometimes every once in a while, there are corrupt people in government. But there's no deep state that's out to get you like it really is a perversion and kind of a slanderous evil to demean and belittle the public servants that are trying to do their best to make government work, whether that's making sure the social security checks go out or making sure that the missile doesn't hit our homeland. These are people whose names you'll never know and they do it without the

public recognition because they just, they love their country and they want to take care of their families. So I just, I really, as hard as those three years are, like that's the bright spot is getting to meet the men and women that are on the front lines of keeping us safe and man, they can do some cool stuff and it makes me proud that we can do that. I would love to come back to the whole deep state conversation, but are you allowed to talk about some of the specifics or no? Like, is there some things that are just like,

I cannot go into that at all. They would come after you or me. I mean, I can tell you. Could you give me some examples of what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah. This one's kind of a funny one. I had the responsibility to review the cases of the individuals that were in Gitmo. So this is our, these are people that were affiliated with Al Qaeda that had been arrested and taken to Guantanamo Bay to stay at our military base there. And during the Obama administration, decisions were made to start a process for reviewing

who could be returned to a third country and either rehabilitated or perhaps live in a situation where they're monitored in some way. Third countries don't have as many constitutional protections as we do. So some of this was about offloading responsibility for caring for potential terrorists, to partners and allies who might be better suited to deal with the challenge. It was also about recognizing that some of the individuals that we needed to charge, needed to prosecute, we were never going to be able to prosecute. In fact, you actually see some of this still playing out today where there are some of

the bigger names that should be charged. I'm not a lawyer, but it is a completely thorny legal issue of how they will ever make it through a successful prosecution. There's ongoing conversations with the families of the victims of 9-11 and the government about how to prosecute. But there's this whole category of people who were not directly involved in the 9-11 plot or attack, but were affiliated with Al-Qaeda and they ended up in Guantanamo Bay. And we need to figure out how to eventually move them out of our care because we didn't want to be locking them up in perpetuity. There was a whole legal process that was done. The Department of Homeland Security had to review

those cases and every agency has a say, has either an approval, yes, this person can go to this third country or no. And I was a part of that process. And in doing that, the military took us to Guantanamo Bay to show us how the facilities were set up and how we treated our prisoners, detainees. And I will tell you that I walked away from that experience really comforted in a strange way by as a country. We've gotten a lot of stuff wrong and I'm not at all intending to whitewash that. But we do care for the human dignity even of terrorists. And we look after their medical care, we look after their physical care, spiritual care,

that they have access to practice their beliefs, their religions. So in much darkness, right? Some of these individuals are, I believe, directly responsible for killing nearly 3,000 Americans. I don't have much pity for them. And yet, because we're the United States of America, we're going to still treat you like a human being. And we're going to offer you that dignity and respect, even

though you did not give that to us. And the protections that are put in place to make sure that they are treated that way. It made me proud that that's how we are trying to do that. Now, that does not take away the fact that we screwed a lot of stuff up right after 9-11 and we didn't offer that dignity and respect out of arguably fear. One of the things that I think is really interesting about our country is we do have the capacity to learn from our mistakes and to change and to incorporate, especially some of our institutions like the military, rigorous processes for incorporating those

lessons learned, you know, and saying like, no, we can do better. We can do this even hard things like having to deal with people that want to kill us we get we can still do that in a way that is respectful of their human dignity so that's just one example of some of the things that I got had the privilege to see and just walk away from From that going, you know, there's a lot of reasons to beat up on the United States our history history, our current activities, but there's also a lot of good people that try to do the right thing. And I feel like those stories are often left untold. What do you do with the, and here you're going to know way more about this than I did. I mean, with the Guantanamo, the, I guess, allegations, I don't know if it's been completely

proven of torture and just really abuse and everything. Like, is that part of the dark side that you're talking about? Or has that been proven? Or I don't... It has been disclosed. And one of the reasons that the prosecution of guys like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are so difficult is because that evidence would get introduced in court and then make some of his admissions inadmissible. Like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, part of the reason we're in this kind of no man's land at this point with some of these prosecutions is because of the mistakes that were made in the immediate aftermath. And there was a whole bunch of like pseudo psychology around, oh, this works. And, you know, it got debunked pretty quickly, but they didn't act on it. Like there's a part

of, you know, I, I was so young at the time that it's, I actually, I don't know, maybe 15 years later kind of went back and started reading some of the journalistic stories that were coming out. There've been some documentaries that were out and I, in going through that, have had like the adult recognition that, oh gosh, I can both empathize that the driver there was fear and this desire to just make sure that America was safe no matter what. But in living and out of that fear, they ignored some of the evidence.

There was pretty early on evidence that waterboarding doesn't work, torture doesn't work. It doesn't actually result in good information. Oh, it doesn't. So it's not because there's the moral, the ethical question, but there's also the pragmatic. But you're saying even pragmatically, it doesn't even work. Exactly. Pragmatically, then you're like, well, why did you still do it? And, you know, maybe there were some sadistic people who just wanted to met out revenge. But I think honestly, it just is more of like a product of we were really scared.

And I and I when I talked to younger people and we now they're in the workplace, like they were born after 9-11. They they don't know they don't know what that felt like. And so, it's not to give people an excuse, but it's to learn. When we get really scared, we are willing to compromise our values. We ignore evidence. It kind of goes back to some of Jonathan Haidt's research about our moral reasoning is actually much more emotional than it's like, and then we let the reasoning come out afterwards. It's important for us to know that, especially as leaders, when you're making decisions in a time of volatility

and emotions are high, that if we're not really careful, fear drives us. Even if you've made some other rational argument for why like no No, I'm not being driven by my fear. I'm actually you know This is the right thing and I think that's like one of those lessons that I take from that time period is how easy it is To compromise values when you're scared. So I'm hearing you say if I could summarize it let me know if this is accurate like you take something like what Guantanamo and You know some of the torture stuff comes out the people have in their mind like this is accurate. Like you take something like Guantanamo and some of the torture stuff comes out and the people have in their mind, like this is just one big torture chamber. I'm hearing you say that those are the exceptions to the norm.

The norm was actually pretty humanizing of these people who have done very evil things, but there were a dark side, but that is sort of the exception to the rule. Would that be inaccurate? Yes. I think that's right. None of the torture, by the way, happened at Guantanamo Bay itself. It was all black sites. Guantanamo Bay was the place where we brought people to house them as prisoners. There's a legal reason for that. It has to do with if you're on US soil, you have constitutional rights or you have lawyers

who will try to say that you have constitutional rights. And Guantanamo Bay as a US base is considered US territory, although not nearly as strongly as say if you were brought to Florida, which was another argument that was happening during our tenure is like they wanted to close down Guantanamo Bay and the only options were going to be to move people to US prisons you know the American public didn't love the idea of al-qaeda terrorists hanging out in some of You know their their prisons in Kansas. So like that there's all these sorts of interesting challenging things That but the reality is we've made a ton of mistakes. We've also expressed remarkable

restraint and remarkable, by and large, remarkable attempts to try to do things the right way. There are so many examples of individuals or, you know, maybe certain leaders in the military who don't abide by that. And the reason they end up in our headlines is because it is outside of the norm. And I think one of the things that's hard about the moment that we live in where our feeds are constantly telling us all the bad stuff. And is that we hyper focus on all of the bad as opposed to that's an anomaly. It is an anomaly that should be treated seriously. It needs to be addressed. Justice is needed to be handled. But that is not a representation of how the United States operates or the men and women who are in the intelligence community or in the military or in public service.

Those are anomalies. When we get into the deep state argument, that's, I think, where I get really upset. I feel like it's slanderous to besmirch the character of you're talking about millions of Americans that serve in some form of capacity in local state or federal government, millions. And you're just kind of broad brushing saying they're the deep state and they're out to get you. And you're like, no, these are the people that allow your Amazon package to get delivered the next morning. These are the people that make sure that your roads are getting paved or that the airport works the way you expect

it to work. These are the people that make sure that the bad guys overseas stay overseas and don't show up in our country and blow up bombs like they do in other parts of the world. These are people that are day in, day out, doing things that make you free to be able to spend your time the way you wanna spend your time. For you to be able to not worry about where am I gonna get food or groceries

because it's available down at the store, because we have this amazing global system to be able to deliver fresh food to the neighborhood store down at your street. Like, I think we forget that the world we live in today system to be able to deliver fresh food to the neighborhood store down at your street like I think we forget that the world we live in today is like I Mean mind-blowingly different than what my grandmother grew up with right? She was born in the 1920s And we were just explaining to our daughter like imagine what it was like for her when she was your age

This is what she did every day. This is how they had to prepare for winter because there was no fresh fruit that she could just pick up at the store in mid-Missouri in December. You're just kind of going through and you just watch her eyes explode. But I think we all collectively have forgotten, like this, this luxurious life that we live doesn't exist, but for some, you know, infrastructure and protection. And it's, yes, there's so much brokenness in our system, you have huge, huge blessing that we take advantage of every day. I first heard about AG1 from Dr. Andrew Huberman, who's like a world renowned nutrition expert, has a super popular podcast. And he's been advertising AG1 for the past few years. But what blew me away was that he has been taking AG1 for like 10 years, like long before he started to advertise it. So I ended up trying it and I've been hooked ever since.

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So this holiday season, try AG1 for yourself or even give it as a gift to someone special. It's the perfect time to focus on supporting your body with an easy and surprisingly delicious daily health drink. And that's why I've been partnering with AG1 for so long. Every week of November, AG1 will be running a special Black Friday offer for a free gift with your first subscription,

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of the whole. We see this now with so many church leaders that are abusive and narcissistic and having affairs. And we hear all the stories of all the famous people, even though that might, and I'm not citing data here, but just kind of like, what if that represents one to 5% of all church leaders. The 95% that are pastoring churches of 120 people in Kansas, not, not whatever, you know, like that have prayed for the congregation, you know, hours and hours a week, a week and are faithful to the wife have been the loving husbands and mothers and fathers and white, you know, those don't make the new cycle. We only hear about the few bad apples. And so it sounds

like you're saying like that's with the brand branch of government involvement you've had that oftentimes all these negatives are what's front center. And yet that represents maybe a small portion. Was that, would that be an accurate way to describe what you get? Yeah. Yeah. And that, so that, that is a, and Patrick and I have talked about this a lot. I don't know. You might've talked about Patrick Miller on his podcast, but like this is, he's facing that as a, as a, as a pastor, a church leader, that now there's a profound just distrust for anybody, any institution, anybody in authority. And he's like overly talking about or focusing on the negative reports has caused the backlash

on the people doing good work. And doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about the negative reports has caused a backlash on the people doing good work. And doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about the negative. And this is the kind of quandary we're in. Like, you don't want to cover up all the abuse that people are engaged in, but then what do you do with the impact that has on all the people that aren't doing that? Anyway, that's my, I really appreciate that. What is so like, so you've been knee deep in this. So this is, I hope I just read, I read books, you know, I read other people, I listen to stuff you're, you've been in it. But is it like what I think of something like the CIA, assuming there are many, many really

good people in that we also do have a history of like regime changes. I mean, you know, coups that we have, the CIA has been involved in in foreign countries. I mean, I think it like 1953, where we overthrew the democratically elected leader and installed a brutal Shah that oppresses people for decades, which led to the revolution in 79. And, and then all the, all this kind of animosity that some people in the Middle East might have towards America. It's like, well, is that just intrinsic anti-Americanism or is it blowback from kind of stuff we've been doing over there? You know, like is it blowback?

And not that that justifies the blowback, but it's like, sometimes I wonder is our foreign policy, CIA involvement, you know, democracy for me, but not's like, sometimes I wonder is our foreign policy, CIA involvement, you know, democracy for me, but not for thee, you know, like what we've done in Guatemala and Argentina and so many countries. It just, it seems like it's been brutal. And again, I'm just going to stuff I read. So I don't know if you have any hands on thoughts like what, maybe it's more complicated than that. Like, could, so, so could there be something more systemic that's problematic, even though there's lots of really good people that are doing good things within that problematic system, if that's the right way of putting it?

Yeah, I will say, I mean, I'm a conservative by philosophy, maybe is the way to frame it. I do think this is true of US government officials. I think this is true of our country in general. We underestimate sin, and we underestimate cultural differences. We tend to think that everybody operates by Western individualistic cultural mindset. Even when we talk about things like today, like Iran or Israel, and you'll hear people say, well, they'll never do this, or they'll never do that. And you people say, well, they'll never do this or

they'll never do that. And you're like, oh, you're underestimating the religious drivers there. And because you probably came out of a culture where maybe you were exposed to religion, but it just wasn't that deep for you. You can't examine, if in foreign policy and in national security, you have to know yourself and know your opponent, right? That's one of the first steps, and is like, what are their drivers and motivations? We the United States have a lot of pride in thinking that we've got it all figured out and that everybody thinks the way we do. So I've watched that both in my, 20 plus years of work in the national security space, but certainly when you go back through history, you're like, yep, that was the wrong call. Because you thought that a culture that

is very communal or has a very different value system than we do would respond the same way that we did. And I don't necessarily think that I've never studied in depth some of those examples that you raised. So I'm not suggesting, though it could be, that the people that planned those things and executed them were nefarious in their intent. Usually what you see is more of a naivete, right? Like it's a, I'm trying to help because I want people to have freedom, but you naively think that doing this one thing is going to fix it all. To be fair too, like a lot of these regime changes, I think there were 72, 74. Is that right? regime changes, I think there were 72, 74. What would be between, between, um, in the

cold war era, between 40, 40, I think 48 to 99. And yeah, then this is not, you can, it's well documented now. Um, but you think about, okay, cold war. So most of these regime changes were because another government was getting chummy with the Soviet union. They were going communist. And again, looking back now, I think there was lots of mistakes, lots of mistakes done. But if I put myself in that world, it's like everything's seen as good, evil, capitalism, communism, you know? And so if you have that mindset, then when, you know, Guatemala democratically lacks a leader that maybe is more sympathetic with

the Soviet union than it is. Like, well, those are the bad guys and they're after us and they think we're after the, you know, so again, I'm not justified at all. I looking back, I think a few people could justify it, but if you put yourself back in that era of the cold war, you could see at least the rationality maybe of the intent, which is saying like that we're not just horrible people wanting to harm good people. It's like, well, no, we're we're from our perspective, we are fighting against this powerful evil that if it doesn't go unchecked is going to take over the world, you know, and maybe there's some with some legit legitimacy to that. I guess I'm more concerned with some of the post cold war regime

changes that we've been involved in Ukraine and in many, in several others. But, um, anyway, we don't, we don't need to linger on that. I've love our questions. I'm curious. We've gone in a different direction than we expected, but we haven't even got into the main point of your book that we're going to talk about. So I do have one more political question I have to ask? And I just for our audience, we are recording this on October 29th, pre-election. My audience is listening post election. So as we talk about politics, we don't know who's going to be in the office, who is in the office at the time of my audience listening. Anyway, what was it like working under the Trump administration?

Did you hang out with Donald or, uh, I just have to ask what was that like being in that environment? I mean, I was in the room with them a few times. Um, I was always the staffer, right? So, um, I was the deputy chief of staff to John Kelly. He was, uh, the secretary of Homeland security first before he became the chief of staff at the white House. So being his Deputy Chief of Staff meant that I was responsible for running all of the teams that support the Office of the Secretary, including prepping the Secretary before he goes to brief the President. So often in the room when the Secretary is talking to the president or occasionally in the room

when he's briefing the president. That was 2017, so it was the first year that he was secretary and I was in that role. I know General Kelly would say he was naive, didn't understand who Donald Trump was. I knew who he was, but I also was naive in that I thought, you know what, he'll get into the office, he'll realize how serious this role is and he'll rise to the occasion. He'll stop tweeting. Right. Or that he'll just let, like the stuff that he doesn't care about, he'll just let the

adults in the room steer him in the right direction. It operated that way in the first year or so, but we certainly had to learn. We had to learn how to staff this president. That's true for every presidential administration. The differences here were the learning curve was not like, oh, this president prefers written briefs over PowerPoints or four pages versus 20 pages. Some presidents love to read, some presidents just want to talk through things. Every administration to read, some presidents just want to talk through things. Like every administration has to figure out

how they want to be supported. This was a little different. This was, you learned that if he had too big of a room for a briefing, he would move into entertainer mode. And so he wouldn't actually discuss the issue. It was like he was performing for an audience. So we learned you have to keep the room really, really small if you need a decision from him. We learned you have to avoid certain trigger

words and the trigger words were things like Russia or domestic terrorism. It was anything that he had felt particularly attacked by. Like so early on, you know, there were the conversations around Russia collusion and he gets defensive. So even if you're briefing, like Russia shot a missile and it violates this treaty and sir, we're going to get more information for you. Like we would be off on, I won the election, Russian didn't get involved. And you'd just be like, okay, so let's figure out how to have this conversation without mentioning the word Russia. So like, it was very much like you're managing. And I don't mean this demeaningly, I'm just drawing a parallel as a parent, you're managing a toddler or a teenager, right? Like you're having to think strategically about how I'm going to address this issue that is likely to cause a tantrum,

but he's the leader of the free world and constitutionally, he's supposed to make this decision. So I need to figure out how to get him the information so he can make a wise decision. Usually when you brief presidents, you would give them options. And those options would be weighed in by the agencies. So you would have the Department of Defense wanting option A. And as a backup, we can live with B, but absolutely we can't do with C. And then everybody weighs in. And you get briefed on, here are your options

and here's what the support is from the different secretaries. And then you might, in the meeting, you'd be asking them questions. Well, why state do you want to do it this way? And let me hear you guys, argue this out. That's, that was my experience with George W. Bush. That's my observation as a contractor with the Obama administration. Um, in Trump, what we found is if you gave him three options, um, he would usually just gravitate towards the worst option. Usually when you get, I mean, you know, like, you know, like, like, like naively or just yeah, yeah, just like, so, you know, psychologically, when you somebody's like trying to sell you

on the one that like everybody's in agreement with, they create two options that are like clearly not good options. So then you're like, oh, well, this really is the good option. So that was kind of the MO for the community is like, oh, well, clear. Nobody would choose that option because that's really bad. We've explained to you, here are all the negatives, why you don't want to do this. And he would choose that option. We're like, oh, shoot. Okay, well, we can't put any bad option down. We can only list things that we can live with. We also, one of the things I'd never seen the interagency do before, and I'm sorry, that's kind of an inside baseball term, but it's the term we use for all of the agencies

that make up the national security community. They all have equities and they have authorities and they have perspectives that they fight for. And usually, there's a lot of consternation between those agencies. You know, state and DOD are going to disagree on the level of force that should be used. And you work it through a policy process. As an assistant secretary, I was responsible for leading one of those policy processes. And then if we couldn't reach agreement, it goes to the deputy secretaries, and it goes to the secretaries.

And then finally, a decision, if it either is legally required by the president or we can't get an agreement at the agency's level, it goes to the president for decision. What I saw in the Trump administration is instead of that process working, it was we need to reduce the number of decisions he has to make. So we've got to come to an agreement on our own.

So my level would work through come up with the options, come up with the places where there's disagreement, and then we'd kind of just go directly to the secretaries. And the secretaries would get on the phone, and they would reach an agreement so that we could avoid having to take things to the Oval Office. Now, I'm not saying that we did any of that in violation of the constitutional role that the president has to make decisions. I'm just saying that for those things where there's discretion, the default was avoid going to the president because it just was not... You didn't know

where it was going to end up. It was a very unhealthy, chaotic environment. You saw this in the public's eye where he would send out a tweet and all of a sudden now we are withdrawing from Syria and There had been no discussions, no national security planning for something pretty consequential that most Americans probably aren't tracking, but had a significant homeland security implications. By withdrawing from Syria, we have a whole lot of ISIS soldiers that are being detained by our allies, the Syrian Defense Forces. When we withdraw, the Syrian Defense Forces, And when we withdraw the Syrian Defense Forces,

we're not going to be able to hold those prisoners. Those prisoners were going to go free. Those prisoners had desires to kill Americans and to get to the US homeland to do so. And by withdrawing, we basically were opening the prison gates and saying, hey, have at it, try to come kill us. I mean, there were such monumental, on a whim, I taught he talks to a, you know, often it was like Lou Dobbs or like some Fox News host and decisions that had been made that morning would

be reversed by the afternoon because Lou Dobbs told him he didn't like the decision. So like, utter chaos, no uniform way of getting him to make a decision and stick with the decision. And then a whole system trying to adapt to that and figuring out how do we try to keep the guard rails up while in the midst of this chaos. That's fascinating and disturbing and interesting. It's so funny about the Russia thing to avoid trigger words. In my limited anecdotal experience listening to Donald Trump, and I try to listen to more long form conversations, not the sound bites online. I listened to the whole recent Joe Rogan three hour conversation with them and he's been on other podcasts that I've listened to and, and try to get the full, like, I just want to lay, I want to like, who is this, you know,

who is this guy? And it's, it's a mixed bag. You know, I thought, I think some of the accusations from his opponents are pretty accurate. And other times I'm like, no, I think you're maybe spinning thing in the worst possible direction, whatever. But the one thing that it seems really clear and it is exactly what you're saying is that Donald Trump's world is centered on Donald Trump. Like anything he's thinking about it's is he just completely, and I would say narcissistically just focused on him, you know, a topical come up and he'll tell a story about him. And it's like, or that he'll hear a word about Russia. It's not even about him and he'll turn it story about him. And it's like, or that he'll hear a word about Russia. It's not even about him. And he'll turn it in on himself.

Like I mean, it's classic narcissism. I don't even think that's debated whether he's, is a narcissist. I mean, again, doesn't mean other options are better. Worse doesn't mean there's not other good or bad or whatever, but like, I think that's pretty clear. That's interesting. So, well, you know, I have more questions, but for the sake of, where do we almost 40 minutes in, let's, I want to talk about your book. You wrote a, I mean, the title alone is pretty provocative kingdom of rage, the rise of Christian extremism and the path back to peace. In the summary, if I could summarize it, I'd love to kind of just throw it to you

in your work of being very concerned about radicals overseas out there. You began to see that there is a lot of radicalization within our own country that is almost a greater threat and it's coming from self-professed evangelical Christians. Is that an accurate summary so far? And would love to have you... Yeah. Maybe just a slight nuance, which is, I would say that it is coming from the community in which Christians are engaging. So, it's not all Christians. It's that we are associating with or adjacent to movements that are, in some cases, very clearly defined as violent extremists, and in other cases

that are giving aid and support to violent extremists. And in so doing, we're opening ourselves up to being recruited in ourselves, sometimes unwittingly. And that's the driver behind the book is to sound the alarm that we have a problem and we need to get wise on that problem so that we can push back against it. Because I do think not only can we reduce the amount of violence we're seeing in this country, I think the church has the answers in Jesus to the underlying drivers that lead to that violence. And so I'm trying to apply my professional lens of what we now know about why somebody joins an extremist movement, why somebody commits a mass attack. It's not the ideology.

You want the cheat sheet for my book. It's not the ideology. It is underlying psychosocial drivers and it's complex. No one person's journey to radicalization or to mobilization to violence is going to be the same. Largely speaking, they generally fall into one of two drivers, a need for belonging or a need for significance or both. It's usually activated by some sort of life crisis, humiliation. it can be a group humiliation. And I do think that might be what has happened to our community where we feel attacked and we feel humiliated.

We used to be the majority norm. What it meant to be an American is you went to church on Sunday and you were a good person and you adhere to certain Christian values. And I want to be clear, that doesn't make you a Christian, but our culture was largely Christianized. And our culture is no longer a Christian culture. And so I think for a lot of people that change has happened very rapidly that creates a lot of uncertainty. And in that uncertainty and in that rapid change, people become vulnerable and very open to messages of the way that extremists operate,

which is very black and white thinking, very solutions oriented. I'm going to take things back by force. I'm going to protect you. And when you're feeling that great uncertainty, having somebody come alongside and say, I can fix this for you, that feels really reassuring. And so that's really what I'm trying to sound the alarm, is we already have a pretty significant problem in the country of violence being on the increase since 2015. And I think a lot of that is coming from

individuals that, well, the data says that it is coming from individuals primarily on the right, they're politically speaking. There are left-wing violent extremists, and I discussed that in the book too. They tend to not be as lethal. They tend to not be as premeditated in their plans for violence. That doesn't mean that they're not criminals, that they don't need to be addressed, but the mass attacks, the number of deaths, the plots, exponentially higher from those on the right. We need to see that and we need to stand up against it because we are supposed to be a people of peace and even just playing footsie with them is not okay as followers of Christ.

Can you give us specific examples? What kind of violent type groups are you thinking of? Yeah. So the two that are two categories that are the most responsible for deaths and plots are white supremacist extremists and militia violent extremists or anti-government extremists. Those categories, I will tell you, social scientists like things in clean boxed categories and in reality what you have is like if you're a white supremacist, you're probably also an anti-government extremist. If you're an anti-government extremist, there's probably a tinge of some sort of racial superiority. Maybe you're not a pure white supremacist. Maybe you don't want your own white nation. That's kind of what a traditional white supremacist

wants. But you're also looking for a return to when you had your power, more power than perhaps you feel like you do now. So, there tends to be a lot of overlap between those categories. Groups are things like neo-Nazis. The Proud Boys are designated in Canada as a terrorist organization. In the US, we do not designate terrorist organizations, but some Proud Boys members have been convicted of being involved in what we would consider terrorist attacks or terrorist plots. We have three percenters, that's a militia group, Oath Keepers, they became quite famous

after January 6th. But there's lots of different names for these groups. Some of them are much more violent than others. Most tend to not be overwhelmingly violent. It's more, they like to espouse and create the milieu where a lone offender usually goes off and does something. And are you saying that these groups are growing in popularity and in number? Is that kind of a sub-premise of your book? They certainly were beginning in 2009. We started to see an increase in people growing. There's been like two or three waves of organized extremist movements.

The first big wave in the modern era was after the Vietnam War. We saw pretty big spikes in the late 70s and 80s into the 90s. Everybody remembers the Oklahoma City bombing. That is a part of that wave. The bombing at the Olympics in Atlanta, another example of that. Then when 9-11 happened, and it's not abnormal when you have an external enemy for your domestic groups to kind of go quiet, right? Because you have something external to be focused on. So it has a unifying factor.

It does. It went a little quiet. I mean, they were still there. They still had their opinions, but they weren't as active. And then the two key drivers behind the current movement, 2008 financial crisis, we usually see spikes in domestic. This is by the way, worldwide. This is not unique to the United States. You tend to see spikes in domestic terrorism after a financial crisis and after war. So we've had both of those in the last 20 years. So it wasn't surprising that beginning around 2009, 2010, we started seeing growth in militia,

growth in people joining white supremacist groups. And then you add to it social media, which really comes into its own in the 2010s. And the movements changed. It used to be very much hierarchical. There was organization. There were groups that you actually went to go and meet with. Now it's almost predominantly online, except for some militia groups still get together in person. Some white supremacist groups live together on compounds. But most of the way that we're seeing growth is through people connecting online, not actually physically going in person.

I can't verify this, but I heard that my home state of Idaho has the most number of radical militia groups per capita than any other state. Is that true? Yes. Did you do some research here where almost all the population lives, especially where I live in Boise. It's just, I mean, it's actually more of a blue town, Boise. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing.

And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's a really interesting thing. And I think that's the population lives, especially where I live in Boise. It's just, I mean, it's, it's actually a more of a blue town.

Boise, uh, the greater, they call it the treasure valley is, is, you know, probably like a third of the population of Idaho lives here. So it's all, it's all the North and the mountains closer to like quarter lane. I've never even been up there. So yeah, unless you're like driving through deep mountain, you know, uh, roads that you wouldn't So yeah, unless you're like driving through deep mountain, you know, uh, roads that you wouldn't normally go on, you're not going to stumble upon some compound, but I've heard that I've heard they're there, you know, but no, I've never seen anything like that. But, uh, we do love our guns. I mean, our, our gun culture is for people that live in like a blue state or if they grew up in like New York city or something like it's not, we have a, I, last time I checked, you don't need any kind of permit to open carry. So you can

have 18 year old kids walking around, holstered up a couple of guns in their hips. You might, it's not abnormal to see it at church. You know, people bring in guns and stuff. I mean, it's yeah, it's a, I, you know, I grew up around guns and I, you know, people bringing guns and stuff. I mean, it's yeah, it's a, I, you know, I grew up around guns and I, you know, it's so, it's, it's not that shocking to me to well, not, not as I reflect on it. I'm like, that's the scariest thing I've ever seen. I'm way more scared of an 18 year old white dude with a couple of guns that I am of some potential like terror at middle Eastern terrorists in Idaho or something, you know, cause this kid's going to see some Brown person walk in with a squirt gun. And how do I know he's not going to get all Rambo

on them or, you know, it's, it's, it's, luckily we have not had hardly any instances of, you know, stuff breaking out here that, you know, is, I mean, every now and then, but yeah, anyway, it's, so going back, like, does this, I'm curious, does, does this almost make sense of not justified, but it makes sense of the rise of, we'll call it Trumpism, that you have a population that once had power. Now they feel like that power has been taken away culturally, even like educationally, you know, most university campuses are pretty left. You know, if you wear a MAGA hat, you're going to get harassed. You know, like it's, it's, there's lots of parts of our culture that doesn't like conservatives.

So now you have this group that feels oppressed and you have Donald Trump who is willing to be the bull in the China shop to be the kind of bully to fight for our rights again. So that he is almost a by-product of a much deeper cultural narrative. Is that, would you, how would, is that accurate at all? I totally agree. What we have today is not because of Trump, right? The underlying conditions were there. He just tapped into something that was already growing. It actually ties back to the conversation we started with, ironically. It's not just the United States. All of our, what I would consider Westernized allies, they're not all in the West, but Westernized allies are dealing

with the fact that their citizenry is saying these institutions that we set up, they're not working for us. This is, I'm not getting a good end of the deals. If you look at what happened in 2008 with the financial crisis and so many of the, basically Wall Street getting bailed out and the Americans having to deal with the financial fallout, very significant financial fallout on everybody. There's an aspect of just anger at our institutions either being incompetent or failing. And you know, that's, you know, I think one of the challenges of our present moment is not necessarily people in government serving maliciously or with ill intent. But when institutions weaken, they're not, this is the thesis behind, oh, I'm blanking, is it you've all of been? I'm looking for the book. Anyway, the thesis

that institutions used to form people, and now institutions are getting weaker and people are using them as platforms instead. But what that means is that in being platformed by an institution, if you look at Congress, now you can get elected and if you're just really good at social media and can get on Fox News, you can be a first time congressperson and have a lot of power. And just 20 years ago, nobody would have known your name, nobody would have given you the time of day. You have to serve for several terms before you can get a seat on the committee that's going to do X, Y, and Z. So it used to be pay your dues, learn

the institution, then you can have positions of leadership that might give you the prominence to have a public facing name to whoever you're serving, or the American people. Now it's like, no, no, you just have to be good at social media, and then you can have power, and then you can do what you want in the institution, but you don't know how that institution works. You haven't been formed by that institution. You are now deforming the institution

by using it as your platform. So there's this weird thing that's happening with our institutions that creates both weakness and mistrust in the institution itself. Then you also have people that are not being formed by the institution so they don't actually have the competence to do the jobs that they're being asked to do. And it's not just in elected office.

I do think this is throughout government, throughout maybe beyond government. And when we have people performing incompetently, then why would you trust that institution? Right? So there's this kind of vicious cycle of the more we don't trust the institutions, the more the institutions don't have the power to actually help us become more competent in carrying out its functions, which leads to people administering things incompetently, which leads to less trust.

And it's a cycle that we've been in for several decades. Now, I would argue that some of this comes from institutions making mistakes and not being transparent and owning up those mistakes. And so we might be in this period of just kind of resetting. And I don't know what it... Well, I buy into the theory that we're in a liminal age in a gray zone that Mark Zayers talks about, that we don't know what the 2B is. And that gives me some hope that maybe like we're moving to something new. And in so doing, our institutions are just crumbling because they're not serving us well. And in that space when our institutions aren't serving as well, we end up with a lot of

anger, a lot of righteous anger. Some of these are legitimate grievances, and a person like Donald Trump can come along and take advantage of that. And I think one of my great disappointments is that what we needed is we needed leaders to come alongside and rightly call out the failures of these institutions, but then also champion a vision of like, but we don't have to stay stuck in our grievances. We can repair this or we can rebuild. And I think good leaders can both acknowledge

the legitimate grievances and failures, but then they are offering solutions. And the solutions are not necessarily slanderous, burn it all down, but actual recognizing the complexity of the problems and putting together a plan for how you're gonna deal with that. And I don't think any politicians right now

have offered that. But Trump in particular has spent a lot of time sowing those grievances. He's aided and abetted by social media algorithms, which are designed to make the most money possible. And it turns out anger makes a lot of money. Anger gets you to vote. Anger raises your funds needed for your campaign So we have both politicians and social media who have a monetary incentive to just keep us angry all the time

So so there's a number of things that are kind of set up against us And I think Trump just happened to be right place right time right personality for a country that was right time, right personality for a country that was righteously angry. But we've gotten stuck. We've gotten stuck in the anger as opposed to moving towards solutions. And he's an intelligent entertainer. I know he's a buffoon. He's narcissistic. He's all these things, you know, like believes his own lies or country, you know, just, yeah. But, but in terms of like the ability to walk in and like tap into something and see something and bend the conversation and poke people where they need to be poked to gain allegiance. I mean, he's, that's why there's a, there's a reason why he's so popular among, you know, a decent percentage of the population. Yeah. It's, it's fascinating, our political scene.

You mentioned social media a few times now and how it feeds off of anger and is fueled by anger. And even the algorithms are wired that way. Where's this gonna end up? Like, I feel like studies have shown it, experts talk about it. Experts talk about it. I think we kind of all know that now that when we click on something that makes us angry, the algorithms are going to show us 10 more videos that are going to make

us angry. Then we keep clicking, clicking, clicking. And then you're, you know, it's midnight and you're just screaming out loud at how horrible the other side is. Where is this going to lead in two to five years? Just a completely divided country that's just hyper angry and depressed and on all kinds of medication to get them to fall asleep at night? What's worse is that AI is not going to help us with this. It's actually going to make it worse. The virtual reality component to this, which I don't know that my generation and I'll say I'm a Xenial, Gen X and millennials, I don't know if it's going to capture us as much as it will capture Gen Z. Like there will be a

whole generation, not the entirety, but some percentage that will really get sucked into this idea that I'm just going to live virtually. How that rewires our brains. We already know that cell phones are rewiring kids' brains, right? They have done brain scans and they're seeing differences in the way that our brains are being wired, particularly if you're going through adolescence and you're active on social media. I can't imagine what this looks like 10, 15 years from now when

your virtual reality is more of a common thing that we use maybe for practical work purposes, but also for some people just how they're going to live their life. They're not actually going to engage with real human beings. It's all going to be through this virtual environment. going to live their life. They're not actually going to engage with real human beings. It's all going to be through this virtual environment. How deformed will our soul become through that? One of the things that I talk about in the book, and I was clear, I don't have the data to prove this out yet, but I have a suspicion that some of the research that does show correlations and in some cases a causal link between social media use and increased anxiety and suicide among younger populations, so Gen Z predominantly is the group that came of age when social media was

a thing. I suspect that the the timing line lines up nearly perfectly. I suspect what we're going to find is that part of the drivers of violence. And like I said, what's the what's the underlying psycho social drivers, it's need for belonging and need for significance. If our phones are affecting the way kids are forming their identity in adolescence, if their identity is being formed through social media instead of peer-to-peer or peer-to-adult personal relationships, that leaves you lacking in actually developing the ability to figure out how I have significance. It certainly leaves you lacking in belonging. And so we see a whole host of negative outcomes, everything from drug abuse, gang violence, to I think probably the increase in mass attacks and targeted violence. And especially since our numbers are showing that the perpetrators of those attacks are skewing younger than they used to.

We haven't shown this to be true yet. The data is not there, but I suspect that it won't take too many more years before we can start to show those things. But another way, we are just beginning to understand how detrimental cell phone, social media use in an adolescent is. And it has a number of negative outcomes. We know suicide, anxiety, and despair are part of those outcomes.

I suspect the increase in violence might also be tied to that. I mean, Jonathan Haidt's recent book, The Anxious Generation, it sounds like you're almost quoting from it. If you're a parent, an aspiring parent, if you're a parent and aspiring parent, um, especially if your kids have not yet entered the cell phone age yet, uh, you have to read that book. You have to, it is, um, I wish I read it as a parent. Well, I wish it was written, you know, long ago. It's, it's apps. I mean, everything you're saying with lots and lots of data, it's no longer correlation like, Oh, we have cell phones and we also have anxiety and depression and

suicidality. It has been shown now to be a cause to play a causative role. Here's where I get depressed a little bit. I mean, I'm hopeful because of Jesus. I always got to come back to that on a societal level though. I mean, it seems like something has to change either the algorithms and all the machine behind all that has to change so that they're not feeding off of and feeling people's anger, but the monetary incentive seems to be so strong that this is producing lots of money. So what company is going to step up and say, well, even though we can make a lot more money by rigging the system this way, we're not going to do it because it's bad for people. I I'm sorry. You know, sinfulness of humanity. I

just don't see that happening or people are going to have to make a concerted strong effort to detach from being online, to put your cell phone down, to take media fasts and so on I've had, I know several churches that have done like a whole month long digital fast as a church, as a mega church. And some people, oh yeah. Yeah. And people are like, I feel so human. I feel so free. I could smell the air, you know, like, um, some go back, some don't. And then the ones that don't go back are living a more flourishing life. And we all know that.

And so I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. And I think that's a great thing. like I feel so human. I feel so free. I could smell the air, you know, like, um, some go back, some don't. And then the ones that don't go back are living a more flourishing life.

And we all know this, this is the thing, but still people that even do those kinds of momentary like detox, it's just like a rubber band effect. It's just like, we come back to it. Our world is so wired that way. So I don't, where's this going to lead? Like, do you have any, I mean, in 10 years, are we just going to be a crippling pile of human anxiety or? So I have two thoughts. One, what a great opportunity for the church to be so enlightened. Because we believe that you are more than what you do, that your soul is made in the image of God and that you are worthy of dignity and respect. What that means is that I want to get to know you, not through a virtual environment, but

just spend time with you, be with you. We get to model that for our kids. I mean, not saying this isn't hard, my husband and I really, it's probably me, I really struggle with this. I am a type A personality and I want to get it all done. Practicing Sabbath is really hard for me. I will tell you, nothing has driven me to say, I got to take this seriously than the fact that I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old and I only have five to eight years left with them and And then they've got to figure this out on their own and oh my gosh, I've got to be modeling

For them the the the vision of what Sabbath gives us and that rest And that we don't always have to be on in that like this this cell phone thing, this tech, this computer, like it's actually enslaved us and it is not what God intended for us. They should be tools. I really appreciate Andy Crouch's work, Mike Cosper's work, like just they are tools, but they should not own us. And they have enslaved us. And if we don't model that for our kids, like not I'm not looking for perfection, but fight, right? Fight for it so that your kids can see that you fight for that, because it's important for them to see us both struggling and but not giving up in that struggle, not succumbing to the enslavement that that tech can be.

I think also the church, you know, helping explain to the world why we have that Sabbath, why we cultivate and focus on in real life local relationships through the body of through the church as well as through our service to our neighbors. That is so countercultural and unique right now. Everything is focused nationally. Everything is all about, you know, if you're not doing it big, that you have a million followers on Instagram, then like it's not worth it. And that is just the opposite of what Jesus teaches us. What it looks like to follow his ways is not to have a million followers on Instagram so we can make an impact.

So modeling the way of Jesus in our communities should be an opportunity for freedom for so many people to say, like, you have a sense of peace that I don't have. What is that? And it gives us this opportunity to share the gospel. I'm practicing a way that's pretty ancient, and I know it's kind of cultural. But in practicing that way, man, I do feel tremendous peace. And I feel like I'm able to have much deeper relationships. And I find my significance in practicing this way. And I find my belonging in practicing this way. So on one hand, I share your concerns. I don't see a lot of positivity in the future

in the direction that we as a culture are going. But I do see in that darkness great opportunity for the church to stand out and offer hope and offer a different alternative to things that are otherwise crushing our souls. Maybe the other piece of quasi-hope, prayer, prayer probably it's like, Lord, please. There are historically points where things just got really dark, um, whether it's polarization, um, you know, just anger, just, uh, and, and then some, like, there's not a, there's not a historical event or a, um, you know, set a leader that stepped in and, you know, took

everybody in a different direction. It just changed. And the people that go and study these things, they're like, we don't know why. Confluence of events, but it's kind of like the pendulum swing, right? There's a point at which we all kind of go like, oh gosh, this is killing us. Maybe it is through the work of Jonathan Haidt and as parents, us going like, oh my gosh, I don't want to give my kids a tool that's going to increase their likelihood for depression, suicide, anxiety by 66%. No parent in their right mind would want that for their child. And so maybe it is just being a little bit educated and banding together with other people

in your community and saying, let's do better for our kids. The parents from 10 years ago, they didn't have this information. They didn't know any like, let's do better for our kids. Like, the parents from 10 years ago, they didn't have this information. They didn't know any better, but we do. We can do it differently. So maybe there are some moments like that where we can be empowered to effectuate that change. If that doesn't happen, then I'm praying for that, like, the switch to just flip and we all kind of get back to having a rational mind. I don't know. Like, that's where the prayer comes in, Lord. It looks dark. It looks dark and we need help. That's so good. I mean, we did have a civil war, centuries of slavery,

an East-West church split thousand years ago, the fall of Rome. I mean, there has been cataclysmic, the Black Plague, you know, like, humans have gone through some crazy stuff. So, yeah, this isn't the first time. This is a new thing, very new actually, but it's not the only major challenge that's faced humanity. And I just want to reaffirm, I mean, the church has a wide open door to embody a more sustainable, flourishing way. I think we need to elevate to the top of our list among Christian leaders the need for corporate communal discipleship in this area. If we just leave it up to individuals to do it, that's not going to have near the effect than something as simple as churches doing a digital fast, talking about how this is

very urgent and necessary. Youth groups. I just talked to a youth pastor friend of mine who he banned all cell phones from all youth gatherings. There's no, and kids hated it. And now they love it. They're finally free for a couple hours from their enslavement and just little things like that. Just like talking about it, you know, exposing people to the major dangers that living primarily online will have for your humanity where God didn't create God created us and body creatures to live in an embodied local world. And we need to get back to that. Elizabeth, I've taken over time. But man, this I feel like we're just getting warmed

up. Thank you so much for sharing. Again, the book is Kingdom of Rage, The Rise of Christian Extremism, and The Path Back to Peace. Check it out wherever books are sold. Thanks so much for being a guest on Theology of the Modern. I really appreciate the congo. Thanks Preston. And I really appreciate your ministry.

Keep at it. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the podcast, The Doctor and the Nurse. World renowned brain coach, Dr. Daniel Amon, joins me as a co-host as we dive deep into the mind and the brain of everything high performance. I've been fascinated for years as I've worked with top athletes, high powered CEOs, Hollywood actors and all high performers in all types of different fields of how they break through pressure, ignite drive, how they overcome distractions, how they put fear on the bench, how they tap into flow state and just dominate all these different areas of high performance.

So on this season, my good friend, Dr. Daniel Lehmann will break down what is actually going on in the brain in these different areas and I will give actionable tools to be able to use and apply in your life. So buckle up, the doctor and the nurse on The David Nurse Show coming at you. And together we will break down these walls by digging deeply into God's Word in a way that you can really understand it. If this sounds like the kind of journey you want to go on, please join us on the Hearing Jesus podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.