Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E150: Becoming Free Through Spiritual Minimalism w/T.K. Coleman

Transcript

E150: Becoming Free Through Spiritual Minimalism w/T.K. Coleman · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  You can adopt A legalistic approach to anything, and if you
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  look at minimalism as a religion, where the fewer things
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  I possess the better I am, that's not minimalism, that's
• 0:10
  legalism. What is minimalism?
• 0:12
  Is that just a fancy modern word for asceticism or for
• 0:15
  temperance? I think of the words of Saint
• 0:17
  Paul here, who says let us lay aside every weight and every sin
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  that does so easily beset us. What's clutter for you may not
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  be clutter for me, and vice versa.
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  And minimalism is the willingness to sit with the
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  following question. How might my life be more with
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  less? Every single piece of advice is
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  capable of making your life worse and possibly even
• 0:38
  destroying it if you don't think critically and creatively about
• 0:40
  how it uniquely applies to your life.
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  How many people have a mentor that really knows them and can
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  work with them closely on the things they need to work on?
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  I'm also dying to hear how someone went from being the most
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  unlikely person to become Catholic to here you are holding
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  your rosary. The church is not something that
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  is dispensable. It's not something that we can
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  take this approach of saying, hey, give me the Jesus, but not
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  the church. TK Coleman, welcome to the
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  podcast. Hey, I'm so glad to be here.
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  It's so cool to have you here. Yeah, this is this is going to
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  be a fun conversation I can already feel.
• 1:16
  It Oh, yeah, me too. There's a lot.
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  So the Minimalist podcast, your podcast, it has 100 million
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  downloads and there's a lot to minimalism today.
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  I think that word's thrown around.
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  It's amazing the success of the show, by the way, and what
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  you're doing. It's very cool.
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  Congratulations. So I wanted to talk about that.
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  You're a fascinating guy because you're coming into this, but you
• 1:37
  have your own story. You're you've recently entered
• 1:39
  the Catholic Church. That's right.
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  I hear February 20th, 2022. Crazy.
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  All right, so there's so much here, and we're both Southern
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  Californians. No, I'm I'm actually from
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  Chicago. But you're here now.
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  You're here now we're we're claiming you.
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  All right, All right. You moved here just a couple
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  years ago, right? That's right.
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  That's right. And you have St.
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  Michael's Abbey here and Father Ambrose, who I'm a really big
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  fan of. Yeah, so.
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  We share him in common, yes, but yes.
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  Yes. Been here for two years now.
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  Moved out here to join The Minimalist and team up with
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  them. We do our weekly show.
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  We also have live shows that we do every month in LA.
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  We've got a nice little theater out there that we do the shows
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  at. Yeah, I'm just excited.
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  It's fun work. OK, so there's a lot to unpack
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  here. Let's start with who is TK
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  Coleman? A little bit about your
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  background for people that aren't familiar yet.
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  Well, my father is a pastor. So I grew up in a Pentecostal
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  church with a praying mom and a praying dad.
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  And you know, I I think about is it the book of Proverbs when you
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  when you read the first sentence there where Solomon open UPS
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  opens up the book, He says, son of David, king of Israel, He
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  tells you who his dad is before he tells you what his job is.
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  And so I take a similar approach.
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  I think who my parents are are the biggest thing I have to be
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  proud of. They are the ones who introduced
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  me to a life of prayer. They are the ones who taught me
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  that the most important thing in life is is the spiritual aspect
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  of things. And everything else is the
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  outworking of that. And I'm still blessed enough to
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  have them with me. And they're just wonderful
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  people. And and they they raise my
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  brothers and I with a lot of love.
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  I come from a family where you've got four boys and we
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  said, I love you to each other every night before going to bed.
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  You know, I hugged my father, kiss my father on the cheek
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  every night before going to bed. And I didn't realize how rare of
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  an experience that was, how beautiful and to be cherished of
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  an experience that was. And so, yeah, I'm grateful for
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  that. Yeah, that's, so that's, that's
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  who I am, that aspect of where I come from.
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  Everything else are details that can change.
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  You know what my job is, where I happen to live and that
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  secondary stuff. But I am happily married to a
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  woman who is a cradle Catholic. And she had a, a great influence
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  on on my own spiritual journey. I I know we may talk about this
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  later, but one little thing that I've come to appreciate is a
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  year before my conversion, she followed the De Montfort way of
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  consecration and she committed to praying the rosary for a
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  year. And I knew that she was doing
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  that in a rather casual, non defensive, completely
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  disinterested way. Do you, I support you.
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  But it was a a year later after she completed that rosary
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  commitment that that it descended upon me.
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  You know that this is who I am and this is the step that I need
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  to take. And we can unpack that a little
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  later. But as time passes, I, you know,
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  because people joke a lot when you, when you're a non Catholic
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  and you're married to a Catholic, they, they assume, oh,
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  it's, it's the girl who made you become Catholic.
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  But I literally looked my wife in the eye and told her I'm
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  never becoming Catholic. No disrespect, no hate, but
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  that's just not me. And so if there was anyone in
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  the world, had you gone to her and says, who is to you the most
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  unlikely candidate to ever become Catholic, she wouldn't
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  have said, Oh, this person here who practiced this practices
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  this devious thing over there. She would say, oh, my husband.
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  And so when I sat her down to tell her that this was the deal,
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  she was absolutely floored, absolutely shocked.
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  But I give her credit. She hates when I do this, but I
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  give her the credit for my conversion because it was that
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  prayer. And I emphasize that aspect of
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  the story because I think there are a lot of people out there
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  who maybe worry about loved ones.
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  And I'm not the one to tell you don't worry about your loved
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  ones because I have a testimony of converting them.
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  I'm the one to tell you don't worry about your loved ones,
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  because I am one of the loved ones who was lost and whose
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  prayers brought him into Holy Mother Church.
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  Wow, I that's so beautiful because I think a lot of people
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  listening maybe they're not even Catholic yet and they're worried
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  about their loved ones for faith anyways, or they are practicing
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  Catholic and they're worried about those loved ones.
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  How does a guy like you, you end up on you end up doing this
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  minimalist podcast. You move out here to California
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  two years ago, which most people are moving away from California
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  and simultaneously you're having this incredible conversion
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  process. There's so much to unpack here.
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  So I want to start with you cheered about a little bit about
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  your background and being raised and sounds like an incredibly
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  beautiful family. How did your career take you to
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  the point where you are moving to Southern California for one
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  of the top podcasts in the world to be a host on it?
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  Sure. So one quick comment about
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  moving into a place like California when everyone else is
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  moving away. I, I think it's, it's quite easy
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  to approach one's life in the abstract by, you know, looking
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  at the statistics about where the happiest people are or what
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  are the cheapest places to live. And I think the, the best
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  approach to take with anything like this is to say, what is my
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  vocation? What is my life about?
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  Because God sends different people into different places.
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  I don't think Nineveh was Jonah's dream city, right?
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  I, I think it's a place that he was sent.
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  And so I think if you think about where you're going to go
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  in life only in terms of what's going to give me maximum
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  pleasure or what resonates with me, and you don't think about it
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  in terms of where am I being sent?
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  What does my mission demand of me?
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  Where am I willing to live? Where am I willing to go because
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  of the work to which I've been called?
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  And so for me, I don't care if California is going to hell in a
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  handbasket. I don't care if there's a lot
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  wrong with California. I'm not here as an endorsement
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  of the beauty of California. I'm here as an act of obedience
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  with the discernment I have of my purpose.
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  And if I'm called to go somewhere else, I'm out of here
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  because I have no loyalties to this place.
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  I have a loyalty only to that. But how did it turn about?
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  How did it turn out that I ended up with these guys?
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  So years ago, I did a series of conversations with my good
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  friend Steve Patterson, who has a philosophy podcast, Patterson
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  in Pursuit. And the minimalist guys heard
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  that and they thought it would be interesting if if we had a
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  conversation. And at that time, I was running
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  an apprenticeship program with my good friend Isaac Morehouse.
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  And we talked about education. And we just did a full episode
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  on that. And the the chemistry was so
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  good. It was the first time that I
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  went on a podcast and I didn't feel like a guest.
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  I didn't feel like I was being interviewed.
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  I felt like I was hanging out with brothers and we were having
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  a good time. And the cameras happened to be
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  on. And that went so well, we
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  decided to do a few more. Eventually I'm showing up on the
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  podcast every three months and we're just having a good time.
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  They then invited me out to do their Less Coast tour with them.
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  And, you know, we really got to know each other there.
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  And at some point it just started to make sense to have a
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  conversation about, hey, what can we do to make this more of a
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  regular thing? We love you, you love us.
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  We like doing this work together.
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  And we we worked out those details and it resulted in my
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  wife and I making a surprising leap from beautiful South
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  Carolina to Southern California. So, and just the mentioning of
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  those two places lets you know this is an act of obedience,
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  because South Carolina's beautiful.
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  All right, it's beautiful. But I, I mean, I love California
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  too. We're very beautiful here.
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  But what, what was it in your discernment process?
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  You mentioned it was an obedience.
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  I love that perspective, by the way.
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  Like we don't live where as Christians, we don't live where
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  we live because of pursuit of pleasure.
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  We should be living where we live out of obedience to our
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  vocation and Our Calling. So what was it about joining the
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  minimalist team? Again, super popular podcast.
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  Some people listening know all about it, or maybe they're not
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  in that space yet. But this is one of the top
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  podcasts in the world and especially in in the category
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  of, you know, the health lifestyle.
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  This is a top podcast. 100 million downloads is crazy.
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  So what was the obedience that you were practicing when you
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  said yes to that invitation? Yeah, so I've known these guys
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  for several years now. And so it was a gradual process
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  of getting to know them and so on.
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  But I, I think it really came down to where can I nurture and
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  be nurtured? You know, So I, I think of this
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  in a, in a similar manner as to like being part of a church
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  community. If you think about this only in
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  terms of what place is going to serve me and nurture me, that's
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  a problem. You're approaching it with a
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  consumeristic mindset that's not going to end well.
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  But if you only think about it in terms of where can I serve,
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  you're, you're thinking about it in a, in a sort of savior
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  mindset, which isn't going to end well.
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  You have to go where you can both serve where you truly are
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  needed and you need to contribute and where you will be
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  served as well. A place where you can be fed and
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  built up. And the combination of the way
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  in which I can challenge these guys and the way in which they
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  challenge me. The combination of how I can
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  invest in that community and how that community invest in me,
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  every aspect of that really lined up.
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  And there were a number of signal graces along the way too,
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  as, as my wife and I prayed about the decision that that
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  really confirmed things. And, and that could be worth
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  unpacking in this conversation as well.
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  The the role of the rosary and the signal graces that they've
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  played in providing guidance in my life.
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  All right, I'm excited to get to that.
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  What are the topics with a minimalist podcast that you most
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  enjoy exploring? And also what is minimalism?
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  Is that just a fancy modern word for asceticism or for
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  temperance? Well, that's good, that's good.
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  All right, let's let's address what is minimalism first.
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  So I think of the words of, of Saint Paul here who says, let us
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  lay aside every weight and every sin that does so easily beset
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  us. I think every life is, is
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  oriented or, or predisposed towards some kind of
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  teleological end. We can, we can refer to that as
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  a vocation or as a calling, but it's, it's the purpose for which
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  you've been designed. And on our road to pursuing that
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  or practicing that, we encounter a lot of temptations in the form
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  of things to be possessed, things to be pursued, things
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  with which to be preoccupied. And these become little traps
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  for us that lead to a life of defeat, a life of
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  discouragement, a life of distraction, and so on.
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  And so I see minimalism as the willingness to let go of
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  anything that gets in the way of that teleological end.
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  What is my life about? What is my why?
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  Why am I here? What is the impact that I am to
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  have? What is my road to sainthood?
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  And clutter becomes anything that gets in the way of that,
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  which means clutter is relative and contextual.
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  What's clutter for you may not be clutter for me and vice
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  versa. I may see you doing something
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  that you're at peace with, but my conscience won't allow me to
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  do it because we have different ends towards which our life
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  lives are directed. Another way to think about this.
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  Lots of Bible examples coming to me right now.
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  I think of the rich young ruler. He comes to Jesus and he says,
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  what must I do to be saved? And Jesus tells him, you know,
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  follow the commandments. And he says, well, I've done
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  this since my youth. And I always wonder how that
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  conversation would have turned out had he just said, OK, thank
• 12:51
  you for the answer. Thank you for the answer.
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  But he, but he, but he says, I've done this since my youth
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  and, and Jesus says, well, you lack one thing.
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  And it's, it's interesting that he, that he speaks of it as a,
• 13:01
  as a lack, because here is a man with abundance and Jesus is
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  describing him as someone who's lacking something, someone who's
• 13:07
  missing something. And he says, sell all that you
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  have and give it to the poor. And the young ruler was grieved
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  and he walks away. And I like the fact that he was
• 13:21
  portrayed as one who grieved because that indicated that he
• 13:24
  had a longing for this spiritual liberation that Jesus offered
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  him. And at the same time, he walked
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  away. And that illustrates for me
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  something that's crucial to the concept of minimalism, which is
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  our lives are not merely defined by what we long for, but by what
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  we're willing to let go of and the world of success, the world
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  of self help. He encourages us all the time to
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  ask questions like how can I be more?
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  How can I be more for my family? How can I be more for my career?
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  How can I do more? How can I save more?
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  How can I accomplish more? And minimalism is the
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  willingness to sit with the following question.
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  How might my life be more with less?
• 14:07
  Not merely in the mathematical sense, but also in the sense of
• 14:11
  what role does simplicity and sacrifice play in my pursuit of
• 14:15
  a meaningful life. And I think the willingness to
• 14:18
  be present to that question, not as a one time thing, but as a
• 14:21
  kind of spiritual practice. That's what minimalism is to me.
• 14:25
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  at sevenweekscoffee.com. How do you deal with, though,
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  that the spiritual realm of abundance and God wants to give
• 16:11
  us spiritual abundance. Of course, in the material
• 16:14
  world, that might look like poverty for some.
• 16:16
  That's why, you know, religious orders take a vow of poverty in
• 16:19
  pursuit of spiritual abundance, you know, to seek God in his
• 16:23
  fullness and not be distracted by the things of the world and
• 16:25
  to be fully focused on service. But I think for people maybe
• 16:29
  living the vocation of marriage like us, or, you know, people
• 16:32
  who are not maybe living in the religious, religious life, but
• 16:35
  they're people of the of the faith, right?
• 16:38
  I mean, wealth is not bad. We're called to have dominion
• 16:42
  over the world. That's a command in Genesis.
• 16:44
  God gave and trusted the world to Adam and Eve and their
• 16:47
  descendants to be fruitful and multiply and to be masters of
• 16:50
  creation. How does minimalism play into
• 16:54
  also the mandate for us to create more wealth, goodness,
• 16:58
  abundance? Not just for the our own sake
• 17:00
  but for other people to be creative and Co create with God
• 17:04
  in creating. By wealth I don't just mean
• 17:06
  money, I mean goodness, good in general.
• 17:08
  And that can obviously be money. It's currency for that.
• 17:12
  That's so good. Can be a currency for that.
• 17:14
  Yeah, I think the most tragic form of poverty are those forms
• 17:18
  which define wealth exclusively in terms of material goods.
• 17:22
  From an economic standpoint, money is a symbolic
• 17:25
  representation of our creative power.
• 17:29
  So how do you go from having no money to having money?
• 17:33
  Well, the way you make that leap is through value creation,
• 17:36
  right? And so the one could say that
• 17:39
  one of the highest expressions of our humanity is to take that
• 17:44
  which has been given to us in terms of the earth's resources
• 17:48
  and exercise the kind of stewardship over these things
• 17:52
  that transforms them, modifies them, rearranges them in such a
• 17:57
  way that we make it more valuable to someone else.
• 18:00
  That's what's happening economically.
• 18:01
  When someone pays us for something, they're saying what
• 18:04
  you were able to do with the resources of your life is
• 18:08
  solving a problem for me, creating value for me in a way
• 18:12
  that makes me willing to engage in exchange.
• 18:15
  And so when we think about wealth, not in terms of what I
• 18:18
  have, but what I do with what I have, then we have a more of a
• 18:22
  spiritual understanding of what wealth is.
• 18:25
  In fact, you could say if I were to give you a Tesla right now,
• 18:29
  that wouldn't make you wealthy. What would make you wealthy is
• 18:32
  your use of that Tesla to serve other people, to solve problems
• 18:37
  and to create value for yourself and others.
• 18:39
  That's what wealth is. It's defined by what we do.
• 18:41
  And so I like to think of minimalism as as not not
• 18:44
  scarcity, but abundance healthily expressed.
• 18:47
  Because the problem with anything in life, minimalism is
• 18:50
  no exception, is that you can adopt A legalistic approach to
• 18:53
  anything. And if you look at minimalism as
• 18:56
  a religion, where the fewer things I possess, the better I
• 18:59
  am, that's not a minimalism. That's legalism.
• 19:03
  Because it's, you know, that's just a means to an end.
• 19:05
  You're not, you know, I'm a good person because I only have 5
• 19:08
  things. And if I can get it down to 4,
• 19:10
  I'm an even better person. And if I can get that down to
• 19:12
  three, I'm an even better person.
• 19:13
  No, you can be a complete jerk with only three things.
• 19:16
  You can be very cruel with only three things.
• 19:19
  You can be very inconsiderate and unloving and selfish with
• 19:22
  only three things. And you could be very generous
• 19:24
  with thousands of things, Right. And so I think about that
• 19:27
  proverb that says wisdom is a defense just as money as a
• 19:33
  defense. But the advantage of wisdom is
• 19:36
  that it gives life to those who preserve it, which is why we're
• 19:39
  told elsewhere in Proverbs that wisdom is the principal thing.
• 19:43
  And to obtain that, and with all of our getting to get
• 19:45
  understanding. And so the kind of wealth that
• 19:48
  we should prioritize is, is the wisdom of discerning God's will
• 19:53
  for our lives. It's, it's the wisdom of of, of
• 19:58
  charity and chastity, that purity of heart and that
• 20:02
  sometimes leads to. What the world might recognize
• 20:06
  as status or abundance, but it sometimes might lead to what the
• 20:10
  world recognizes as a loser's life.
• 20:14
  But you can know that you are rich not because of how the
• 20:16
  world defines you or how the world sees you, or because of
• 20:19
  how many things you have, but rather what you're doing with
• 20:22
  the life that has been given to you.
• 20:24
  So it. Sounds like you're saying
• 20:25
  minimalism is not about per SE having less or doing less, but
• 20:30
  it's about anything that is maybe not oriented stripping
• 20:35
  away. I mean in your in your
• 20:36
  categorization or your definition, stripping away
• 20:38
  anything that is not oriented towards true wealth, which we
• 20:43
  can define as you know, relationships, love, service,
• 20:46
  the things that are more than material.
• 20:49
  Material goods are meant to serve the true wealth, which has
• 20:51
  to do with maybe you could say the flourishing of the human
• 20:53
  person, if we wanted to put a point on it.
• 20:56
  Yeah, that's exactly right. OK.
• 20:58
  And, and you know, you, you could look at it as, all right,
• 21:02
  here's this really unique framing that I'm giving to it,
• 21:05
  but you could also look at it as the logical response to a very
• 21:09
  reasonable question that one can ask about minimalism.
• 21:11
  And that is, what's the point? OK, if you're going to live with
• 21:15
  less, if you're going to own fewer things, if you're going to
• 21:18
  emphasize the role of decluttering and the role of
• 21:21
  simplify, what's the point? And the only reasonable answer
• 21:26
  to that is it makes more room for the things tangible or
• 21:31
  intangible that matter most to me.
• 21:34
  So minimalism doesn't begin with what can I get rid of?
• 21:37
  Minimalism begins with what's my life about.
• 21:39
  In fact, let's say that you and I are are talking and we noticed
• 21:44
  that on this table there's like a necklace.
• 21:46
  And I say, Lila, what should I do with this necklace?
• 21:50
  You don't know the answer to that question until you get the
• 21:53
  answer to a more fundamental question.
• 21:55
  And that is, whose necklace is it?
• 21:57
  And then if, if someone says, oh, that's Janet's necklace,
• 22:00
  we'll return the necklace to Janet.
• 22:01
  It belongs to her. Or we say nobody can figure out
• 22:04
  who owns it. Well, let's take it to lost and
• 22:06
  found. Knowing what to do with the
• 22:08
  thing only comes from knowing who that belongs to and knowing
• 22:14
  why it's there or not. We don't have to know why it's
• 22:16
  there, but we have to know who it belongs to.
• 22:18
  And in a similar way, knowing what to do with our stuff.
• 22:21
  It's like, well, whose is this? Why is it even there?
• 22:24
  Why was it bought in the 1st place and so on.
• 22:26
  And once we start to understand those things, we'll know what to
• 22:29
  do with it rather easily. And This is why, you know, going
• 22:32
  back to your earlier question of what do I like to talk about the
• 22:34
  most with minimalism, I like to shift the conversation from the
• 22:39
  stuff to the story. Because even when minimalism
• 22:42
  looks like it's about the stuff, it's never just about the stuff.
• 22:45
  It's always about the stories behind it.
• 22:47
  I'll give you an example, let's say, and this is a very common
• 22:52
  problem when people are trying to get rid of things.
• 22:54
  Let's say you have AT shirt that was given to you as a gift from
• 22:58
  a very good friend. And you're you're going through
• 23:00
  your house and you're decluttering and you look at
• 23:03
  this T-shirt and you kind of want to throw it away.
• 23:05
  But it feels like throwing away that friend or throwing away the
• 23:09
  love that they have for you. And so you hang on to it.
• 23:13
  One day your friend comes over and they see that T-shirt and
• 23:16
  they say, hey, Lila, I see that you still have that T-shirt of
• 23:19
  mine. And you go, yeah, Yep, I'm still
• 23:21
  hanging on to it. And they say, boy, that really
• 23:23
  means a lot to me. You know what?
• 23:25
  This reminds me? I never told you this, but when
• 23:28
  I bought that T-shirt for you, I was on vacation and I went to
• 23:30
  this auction and. And someone said, here is the
• 23:34
  T-shirt that Ted Bundy wore. And I bought that for you, and I
• 23:38
  got it. How do you feel about the
• 23:40
  T-shirt? Now get this thing out of here,
• 23:42
  Right? This is disgusting.
• 23:44
  What was indispensable a moment ago has now become
• 23:47
  reprehensible. What you couldn't let go of a
• 23:50
  moment ago is now something that you couldn't get rid of fast
• 23:53
  enough. And you might be pretty upset
• 23:55
  with this friend for not telling you this, but what changed the
• 23:59
  The T-shirt is still made out of cotton.
• 24:00
  It's still got the same logo. You still look the same when you
• 24:03
  put it on. What changed The story that
• 24:06
  you're telling yourself about that T-shirt and what it means
• 24:09
  for you to wear it. Now that may be a dramatic
• 24:12
  example, but whenever people are attached to things, whenever
• 24:16
  they are perplexed by things, whenever they are burdened by
• 24:19
  things, it's always because there is a story behind it.
• 24:23
  It's never about the thing. It's about what will it mean for
• 24:27
  me to let this go? What will it mean for me to take
• 24:31
  this in? What will it mean for me to
• 24:33
  receive it or to give it? This is what the rich young
• 24:35
  ruler struggle was. It wasn't just about the things.
• 24:38
  It's what does this mean for my identity?
• 24:41
  What does this mean for my future, for my life?
• 24:44
  What happens to me? Who am I when I'm no longer the
• 24:48
  rich young ruler? And I think that's a story for
• 24:51
  all of us. We all have to confront that
• 24:52
  question. What are the forms of freedom
• 24:56
  that are at risk for us and our unwillingness to let things go?
• 25:00
  So I think about this as kind of a countercultural movement.
• 25:03
  I think that's why the Minimalist Podcast has been so
• 25:06
  successful is because we are very materialistic society in
• 25:10
  many ways. I mean, I think the credit card
• 25:12
  debt is over a trillion dollars is my understanding.
• 25:16
  There's people that are constantly trying to buy, you
• 25:18
  know, fast fashion is in, fast food is obviously everywhere.
• 25:22
  Obesity is another issue we're facing and all the health
• 25:24
  conditions with that. But I think there's just a lot
• 25:26
  of emphasis on having things and having the best things.
• 25:29
  And in the social media world, there's a temptation to want to
• 25:32
  have more experiences, which are costly.
• 25:35
  Often vacations, events, whatever, have more products.
• 25:38
  It's all about buying stuff. But those things are not
• 25:40
  inherently bad, right? It's just a matter of how
• 25:44
  they're used and what end, to your point, they're used for.
• 25:47
  Are there sort of, is there advice, standard advice that you
• 25:50
  give for how to think about or make purchase decisions?
• 25:56
  Like, for example, should people buy Teslas or should they just
• 26:00
  get a used Toyota? Like what's the minimalist?
• 26:04
  You know your answer to that. I have to give that specific
• 26:08
  thing well that that would be like me saying.
• 26:11
  He's like an anti product ad right here.
• 26:14
  Yeah, well, that would be like me saying should you fly, should
• 26:19
  you drive or should you walk? What's your answer to that?
• 26:23
  I mean I what is the minimalist way?
• 26:26
  The the question we should ask in response to that is where am
• 26:30
  I going? If you're going next door, it's
• 26:34
  not just inefficient to fly, that's a very bad decision.
• 26:38
  You're wasting money, you're wasting fuel, you're burning
• 26:41
  time, you're going out of your way and you might not even get
• 26:44
  there because you're going to have to land the plan some plane
• 26:46
  somewhere further away, right. So that's a bad answer.
• 26:49
  Not just what works for you, what works for me.
• 26:52
  But if you're going to Chicago, I might recommend plane 1st and
• 26:57
  and driving as a kind of backup if, if you're willing to, to
• 27:01
  embrace the difficulties of that road trip.
• 27:03
  And so before we can answer a question like that, we have to
• 27:06
  come down to like, well, where? Are you who's asking it and what
• 27:09
  do they need it for? So what about your average,
• 27:11
  like, suburban family that commutes 30 minutes?
• 27:14
  I mean, I guess to actually live by the minimalist standard and
• 27:18
  to make concrete decisions like that.
• 27:21
  You mentioned the young rich man.
• 27:22
  He went away sad, but he didn't change his life, right?
• 27:25
  To actually change our life practically, what does it look
• 27:28
  like? People are like, OK, it sounds
• 27:29
  good, you know, you don't need everything and all these
• 27:31
  constant products. You shouldn't be going into debt
• 27:33
  for things you don't need anyways.
• 27:35
  But how do we define in the modern world what we need?
• 27:37
  I guess is the question because there's so many options.
• 27:41
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• 27:44
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• 27:47
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• 27:49
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• 27:51
  can have victory over porn addiction.
• 27:54
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• 27:57
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• 28:01
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• 28:06
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• 28:09
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• 28:12
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• 28:16
  Yeah. So one of the reasons why I
• 28:18
  really love, I do a lot of coaching and one of the things I
• 28:22
  love about this is that I'm able to to go deep with people on a
• 28:25
  one-on-one basis in a way that you can't quite do on a podcast.
• 28:29
  I think one of the problems with the politicization of
• 28:33
  everything, particularly in our country, is that we think about
• 28:36
  people in terms of categories and demographics, right?
• 28:39
  We talk about the poor as an abstraction, right?
• 28:41
  And, and people who don't even know any individuals that are
• 28:44
  actually poor are philosophizing about this abstract entity
• 28:49
  called the poor. We talk about people of this
• 28:51
  race, we talk about people of that political party, and we
• 28:55
  look for answers and, and solutions and recommendations
• 28:59
  for entire demographics. And one of the most important
• 29:02
  aspects of connecting with human beings and having meaningful
• 29:06
  conversations with human beings is to remember that you're never
• 29:10
  sitting across from a demographic.
• 29:11
  You're always sitting across from an individual.
• 29:14
  And when 2 individuals, even if they look alike, even if they
• 29:16
  vote the same way, ask you a question like, how do I deal
• 29:19
  with fear? Yeah, I know what the vocabulary
• 29:22
  word fear means. I, I, I can repeat back to you
• 29:26
  what the dictionary says. And so at a certain level, I
• 29:29
  understand what you're asking me, but there's another level
• 29:32
  where I don't understand what you're asking me.
• 29:33
  And it's not because I'm not trying.
• 29:35
  It's because curiosity is necessary to fill the gap.
• 29:38
  Respect for your human dignity is necessary to fill the gap.
• 29:42
  Having a sense of wonder about the multi dimensional nature of
• 29:45
  humanity is what's necessary to fill the gap.
• 29:48
  And that's where you have to ask, well, what are you afraid
• 29:50
  of? I can't tell you how to deal
• 29:52
  with fear in some abstract, universal way.
• 29:55
  That question sounds very meaningful.
• 29:57
  But you're not asking me that in the abstract.
• 29:59
  You have some feelings behind that question.
• 30:01
  You have a story behind that question.
• 30:03
  What are you afraid of? And for one person it might be,
• 30:06
  well, I'm actually not afraid of meeting new people at all.
• 30:09
  I'm not afraid of working hard. I'm not afraid of failure.
• 30:13
  I'm just afraid of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a
• 30:15
  talk. Oh, OK.
• 30:17
  That's a very different kind of fear than the person who says,
• 30:19
  oh, I'm, I'm not afraid of any of that.
• 30:21
  I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of losing this loved
• 30:24
  one. I'm afraid of being a bad
• 30:26
  father. And all of those have different
• 30:28
  answers, right? Because the individual behind
• 30:31
  them. And I think we are moving in the
• 30:35
  direction of becoming the kind of society where we're so eager
• 30:38
  to answer questions with talking points that we are not taking
• 30:42
  the time to hear the cries of the heart that are behind every
• 30:46
  question. Now, with that being said, let
• 30:48
  me give something. I think one of the reasons why
• 30:54
  we're so preoccupied with like a buying things is because you
• 30:59
  know, when I, when I, when I think about what Saint Paul says
• 31:01
  about the the weight and the sins that does so easily beset
• 31:05
  us in the in the next verse, he says so.
• 31:07
  So let us run with patience the race.
• 31:10
  And I think that's interesting language because it seems to
• 31:14
  imply that the opposite of a big distracted by all this stuff and
• 31:19
  held back by all this stuff is running with patients, which is
• 31:23
  different from what I would expect.
• 31:25
  I, I would expect him to say something like, Hey, lay aside
• 31:28
  the weight so you can run really fast, but he's saying lay aside
• 31:32
  the weight so you can run with patients.
• 31:35
  And many of the traps that we fall into are the result of us
• 31:39
  trying to accelerate or shortcut our way through processes that
• 31:44
  are meant to be slow. You know, Alan Watts said
• 31:47
  regarding music that the purpose of a song, if it were to finish
• 31:52
  it, the best musicians would be the ones who played the fastest.
• 31:55
  But there are some things in life that are not valuable
• 31:57
  because of our ability to finish them quickly.
• 32:00
  Some things are valuable because of our ability to be present,
• 32:02
  because of our ability to be slow, because of our ability to
• 32:05
  learn whatever that process is trying to teach us.
• 32:08
  And I think one of the things that the message of of
• 32:11
  simplicity has for this generation is the positive role
• 32:15
  that suffering and sacrifice plays in our pursuit of a
• 32:19
  meaningful life. What's happening now is that we
• 32:22
  are being fed messages by some of the most brilliant minds of
• 32:26
  our time who have a lot to gain by these kinds of
• 32:29
  indoctrination. We are being fed messages that
• 32:32
  you are what you have. You are what you have, and not
• 32:37
  only that, but you are what she has.
• 32:39
  You are what he has. You are what she looks like and
• 32:42
  what he looks like. And they present you with images
• 32:46
  of things, most of which aren't even real, telling you that
• 32:50
  unless you get that. Unless you get that, you don't
• 32:53
  get to be a player in the game. And one of the reasons why I
• 32:56
  take issue with this idea that that simplicity is only for rich
• 33:00
  people is because you don't have to possess something in order to
• 33:03
  be preoccupied with it. You don't have to possess it in
• 33:05
  order to pursue it. And most of the people that are
• 33:08
  preoccupied with things are people that don't possess it,
• 33:12
  but they're defining their lives by the pursuit of it.
• 33:15
  Because of stories that they're being fed by people who are
• 33:19
  socially engineering the world to get us to all ask the same
• 33:22
  set of questions, to get us all to debate the same set of
• 33:25
  issues, to all think in the same direction.
• 33:28
  And so a lot of our young people today are up against a very
• 33:31
  powerful force where it deals psychologically impossible to
• 33:37
  desire what is right. You know, there's a, there's a
• 33:40
  term called hyper pleasure that refers to the, the challenge
• 33:45
  that this generation is having to be satisfied with simple
• 33:49
  things that are more valuable and entertaining than the things
• 33:54
  they're accustomed to. So for example, one could make
• 33:56
  the case that sunlight is more entertaining than scrolling on
• 34:02
  your phone, but scrolling on your phone is a form of hyper
• 34:06
  pleasure. It's engineered in a way to give
• 34:08
  you these artificial dopamine hits that can't be matched by
• 34:11
  the sun, that by the sun, right? And so we're so addicted to
• 34:15
  artificial pleasure that whenever we get a dosage of real
• 34:20
  pleasure, like sunlight and and fresh water and clean air, a
• 34:25
  hike, going out into the mountains, mastering a skill, we
• 34:29
  say this is boring. Not because it's intrinsically
• 34:31
  boring, but we but but because we have to rewire ourselves to
• 34:35
  enjoy simplicity. It's like drugs.
• 34:37
  We're drug addicted. We're drug addicted and we
• 34:39
  suffer from a, a great, great disordering of our natural
• 34:44
  God-given appetites. And, and so, you know, we're,
• 34:48
  we're at a place now where things like the pleasure of
• 34:51
  mastering a new language or mastering an instrument, the
• 34:54
  pleasure of talking to a human being face to face and making
• 34:56
  friends. The pleasure of reading
• 34:58
  something that's not just a blog, but a, a long book where
• 35:02
  you have to stick with a train of thought for a really long
• 35:04
  time. The pleasure of going for a walk
• 35:06
  or going for a hike. These are hard pleasures, not
• 35:09
  hyper pleasures, but hard pleasures are the pleasures that
• 35:12
  last long. They feel the most rewarding.
• 35:15
  And what we need to do to counter the the world's message
• 35:18
  of hyper pleasure is to shift the focus from the stuff to the
• 35:23
  creative power that we have as human beings to make something
• 35:26
  of this world that it wasn't when we got here.
• 35:29
  And I think that's the direction in which the solution lies.
• 35:34
  That's so good. It's so.
• 35:35
  I mean, what you're talking about too is love like love
• 35:38
  like, like love is wanting the good for the other person and
• 35:41
  and just kind of being in the present moment with the person
• 35:44
  to accept them as they are, receive them and give your own
• 35:47
  self in that moment to coexist together.
• 35:50
  You know that word. And we are so distracted by the
• 35:54
  stuff, as you say, there's so much that you just said that I
• 35:57
  was I was thinking about that. I was like, Oh, that's such a
• 35:59
  good point. That's such a good point.
• 36:00
  When you were saying earlier when I asked about the practical
• 36:02
  like Tesla or Toyota, No, that I mean, it's all such good stuff.
• 36:06
  And I think your point there, and I want to go instead of
• 36:09
  multiple things, I want to come back to your point.
• 36:12
  There was really powerful too TK, because you were talking
• 36:14
  about, you know, you can't just give a prescription on a podcast
• 36:18
  that's going to there's no one-size-fits-all.
• 36:21
  Yes, don't buy this, buy that. Yes, live this way, not that
• 36:24
  way. You know, everybody has
• 36:25
  different needs. Everybody has different
• 36:27
  challenges, different callings, like you were saying earlier.
• 36:30
  And I do think there's a temptation in the podcasting
• 36:32
  media world at general, the self help world for prescription,
• 36:36
  right? Like this is what you guys
• 36:37
  should do. I mean, I don't know if you you
• 36:39
  see this, but I see this like especially like mommy Bob
• 36:42
  culture, like Instagram. This is how you should deal with
• 36:45
  your toddler. This is what you should do.
• 36:46
  This is what you should do here. And there's not a shared habit
• 36:51
  culturally of mentorship. You know, there's not like a
• 36:54
  relationship, mentorship habits that we have that we are
• 36:58
  intergenerational where it's like this generation is
• 37:01
  personally getting to know you understand you, you get to know
• 37:04
  them and they help train you in what they've learned.
• 37:06
  The wiser lady, wiser man training the younger 1, you know
• 37:09
  what I'm talking about. And we all go to the podcast for
• 37:12
  the advice. I mean, people listening don't
• 37:14
  stop listening, please. But you know, you know, they go
• 37:16
  to the middle most podcast, they're listening to their
• 37:18
  shows. Maybe they're reading their
• 37:19
  books. That's good.
• 37:20
  There's good stuff there. But how many people have a
• 37:24
  mentor that really knows them and understands them and can
• 37:28
  work with them closely on the things they need to work on?
• 37:32
  Like to really be seen with all of your issues and all of your
• 37:35
  challenges and be worked on with?
• 37:37
  I mean, I think that's an increasingly rare experience for
• 37:41
  people today. Yeah, you're exactly right.
• 37:43
  And and prescriptions are are interesting because they tend to
• 37:47
  make people feel very satisfied or very angry with you.
• 37:51
  When you're on the Internet and you give a prescription, you're
• 37:53
  going to have a whole lot of people excited to tell you how
• 37:56
  wrong you are. And you're going to have some
• 37:57
  people that say, great, I'm happy, I'm going to go try this.
• 38:01
  And that's very good for engagement.
• 38:03
  Both of those things are very good for engagement, right?
• 38:05
  So if you're, if you're making people mad, that's also good
• 38:07
  for, you know, social media success.
• 38:11
  But this makes me think. And so it's, it's a strong
• 38:13
  temptation for content creators to approach things that way.
• 38:17
  But, you know, this makes me think of what I call the mother
• 38:19
  of advice. There's advice, but the mother
• 38:22
  of all advice is that every single piece of advice is
• 38:25
  capable of making your life worse and possibly even
• 38:28
  destroying it if you don't think critically and creatively about
• 38:31
  how it uniquely applies to your life.
• 38:34
  So you give me dietary advice, you can give me relationship
• 38:37
  advice, and I can still use that information to make my life
• 38:40
  worse because it's my job to think critically and creatively
• 38:44
  about how does this map on to my life.
• 38:47
  And so advice is not a place to hide.
• 38:51
  We have to do the hard work of patient discernment, the hard
• 38:55
  work of evaluating things, of contemplating things, the hard
• 39:00
  work of building relationships where we can be challenged and
• 39:04
  where people can help us to see things from a different angle.
• 39:06
  So I agree with you there all the way.
• 39:08
  Well, it goes back to your other point you were making, which was
• 39:10
  brilliant, this idea. I, I haven't heard it couched
• 39:12
  that way, but hyper pleasant pleasure versus versus hard
• 39:15
  pleasure, You know, the, the natural experience that people
• 39:19
  have of like enjoying sunlight or a Walker, you know, playing
• 39:22
  with a baby, right? But then we're all, you know,
• 39:25
  literally we've been hijacked our brains with, you know,
• 39:27
  social media as an example. And certainly, you know, like a
• 39:30
  shopping addiction, consumerism or a food addiction, you know,
• 39:33
  obsessed with food and eating food, whatever it is, all of
• 39:36
  this stuff clutter cluttering up our our mind and our appetites.
• 39:41
  So we struggled to actually connect in real life.
• 39:45
  And I think that's connected back to what you're saying about
• 39:47
  the advice stuff. If you're like constantly hyped
• 39:51
  up, right, you're neurotic effectively like you're always
• 39:54
  going and it's hard to slow down and appreciate that laughing
• 39:59
  baby or being present in the moment, right?
• 40:02
  How are you going to take the time to apply that advice you
• 40:05
  might be getting from the self help world or podcast or
• 40:08
  whatever to your own personal circumstances?
• 40:12
  You don't have time to think carefully about your own life.
• 40:16
  Certainly not to be praying in silence.
• 40:18
  You're just going, I mean, do you, do you, do you think that's
• 40:22
  a big issue plaguing especially young people today where they're
• 40:25
  making all these decisions? But are they really taking time
• 40:28
  to just think and pray, certainly to get wise counsel.
• 40:32
  I mean, is that even a thing that young people make space for
• 40:35
  anymore? Well, we can.
• 40:40
  We can add a question to that as well, and that is, are we as
• 40:45
  parents, godparents, uncles, aunts, mentors, teachers,
• 40:51
  facilitating for them, a context within which they become
• 40:54
  incentivized to do those things? And I'm not asking about the
• 40:59
  emotional experience because it's very easy to be frustrated
• 41:01
  with people, but people don't respond to our frustrations with
• 41:05
  them. They respond to the boundaries
• 41:06
  and constraints that we impose. And I think there's a big
• 41:11
  conversation to be had about those of us who are in positions
• 41:15
  of influence in the lives of these children who are making it
• 41:19
  so incredibly easy for them to amuse themselves to death.
• 41:24
  And so I, I think that's the, that's the conversation, right?
• 41:28
  Because God's grace can make anything possible.
• 41:32
  But one of the ways that God works in the lives of young
• 41:34
  people is through the family. And if we are not modeling for
• 41:38
  them what it looks like to slow down and to pray and to put
• 41:42
  First things first, I don't know where they're going to get it
• 41:45
  from, you know, but we're certainly not setting them up
• 41:48
  for for success. Such a good point.
• 41:52
  So when you were you, you mentioned you were coming down
• 41:55
  to Southern California and you were praying about joining the
• 41:58
  minimalist team and you were talking about signal graces.
• 42:03
  What what are signal Graces and can you share more about that?
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• 43:27
  What? What are signal graces?
• 43:29
  And can you share more about that?
• 43:31
  Yeah, so Blessed Allen de la Roche has the 15 promises of the
• 43:37
  rosary. And you could just Google the
• 43:39
  promises of the rosary. And the first promise
• 43:42
  interesting enough from Our Lady is you will receive signal
• 43:47
  graces. And this is a promise that's
• 43:48
  given to those who pray the rosary daily.
• 43:51
  And so this is something that I committed to very early on.
• 43:56
  I was just, I'm, I'm very thankful for the grace to just
• 43:58
  be drawn to this. And the rosary is the rosary is
• 44:03
  a true lifeline. But the way I've heard signal
• 44:05
  graces described is they're kind of like supernatural
• 44:09
  synchronicities. Synchronicity is a meaningful
• 44:13
  coincidence. We could say that a signal grace
• 44:15
  is a kind of meaningful coincidence that is set on your
• 44:19
  path to either confirm the direction in which you're moving
• 44:23
  or to confirm something that God has put on your heart.
• 44:28
  And Our Lady promises those to people who pray the rosary.
• 44:32
  And I've, I've had a, a few different signal graces as a
• 44:36
  result of this. I'll, I'll give you 1.
• 44:38
  So there was a, there was a trip I was on in New Jersey to, to
• 44:43
  speak at a business conference. And I'm on this trip and I'm
• 44:47
  staying in a hotel that's sort of like downtown.
• 44:49
  It's, it's maybe like a, I'm told maybe like a 20 minute walk
• 44:53
  from like New York City, but I'm, I'm kind of on the other
• 44:55
  side of the bridge. And so it's a, it's a cute
• 44:58
  downtown, coffee shops, restaurants, big old churches,
• 45:01
  beautiful place. And every day I walk around that
• 45:04
  area to go to a cafe or something like that.
• 45:07
  And on my last night, I finished giving my talk.
• 45:11
  I go out to eat with the people that brought me there and I go
• 45:16
  to my hotel. I get ready for bed and as I lay
• 45:20
  down, I realize that I hadn't prayed the luminous mysteries.
• 45:24
  I still have that left and I just forgot.
• 45:26
  And I'm like, oh man. And I know that there's no way
• 45:31
  in my PJ's. I'm going to sit in that hotel
• 45:33
  room and pray this. So I get back up and I get
• 45:35
  dressed and I go, I'm downtown. I'm going to go for a walk.
• 45:39
  It's a beautiful place. It's night, but I'm going to go
• 45:41
  for this walk and there's still people out partying and hanging
• 45:44
  out and stuff like that. And so I take my rosary and I, I
• 45:46
  go, I start walking and I'm mostly just kind of going around
• 45:50
  the perimeter of my hotel, going around the spaces that I know,
• 45:53
  but it is pretty loud because there are a lot of people out
• 45:55
  partying. And so there's one point as I'm
• 45:57
  praying, I, I kind of see this more residential looking St. and
• 46:03
  it's quiet on that street. And I think I'm going to go down
• 46:06
  this street because I'll get away from the noise a little bit
• 46:08
  and, and continue walking and praying.
• 46:11
  And as I got ready to walk, I just felt something don't know.
• 46:16
  And I don't know about you, but when you have moments like this,
• 46:20
  your first thought is #1 don't ever tell anyone about this
• 46:24
  because I'm probably crazy or it's just me, right?
• 46:28
  And so I just kind of, you know, brush the thought off.
• 46:31
  And I just feel it really strongly, like, no.
• 46:35
  And I think to myself, OK, this is probably still just me, but
• 46:41
  I'm not going to go down the street anyway, you know, yeah,
• 46:44
  just in case. And so I, I continue to walk my
• 46:46
  normal path, finish my rosary. I go back to my hotel, go to
• 46:49
  bed. Next morning, I get up, Uber
• 46:51
  drivers taking me to the airport.
• 46:54
  And she says, so how you like it here?
• 46:58
  And I said, oh, I love it. I was like, especially this
• 47:01
  area, Like, I love this area. And she goes and she keeps
• 47:06
  driving and I say, oh, please, wait a minute.
• 47:09
  You can't just laugh like that and not tell me what the laugh
• 47:13
  is all about. And she goes, what did you like
• 47:15
  about this area? And I said, well, it's got a lot
• 47:17
  of cafes. It's got, you know, a lot of
• 47:19
  restaurants. It's just, it's a real beautiful
• 47:22
  area. She goes, well, OK, I see what
• 47:24
  you're saying. If that's what you like.
• 47:26
  She goes, you know, The thing is, though, at that hotel that
• 47:29
  you're staying, she goes, you just got to be careful because
• 47:33
  there are certain streets you go down.
• 47:35
  They look innocent, like nothing's going on, but it's not
• 47:38
  going to end well for you. And why did she have to tell me
• 47:42
  that? Why did the conversation go in
• 47:44
  that direction? And I just knew in my heart that
• 47:47
  it was a good thing for me not to go down that street another
• 47:51
  time. My my wife and I, we're driving
• 47:55
  and I'm telling her about this book that a friend had told me
• 47:58
  about. And it's called The Fire Within
• 48:00
  by Thomas Dube, St. John of the Cross and Saint
• 48:03
  Teresa Avila. And I'm just talking about this
• 48:04
  book and just being all excited about it.
• 48:06
  I haven't read it, but I have a friend who's telling me about
• 48:09
  it. And I'm and I'm telling my wife
• 48:10
  about it. And we ended up stopping at this
• 48:14
  monastery because she knew about this monastery in Indiana that
• 48:18
  she wanted to see and she really wanted to stop at it.
• 48:21
  So we stop at this monastery and I'm looking for the bookstore at
• 48:25
  the gift shop. That's what I always want to
• 48:27
  see. And they have one, but
• 48:29
  unfortunately, there's not a single book in there.
• 48:31
  They don't have any books. They've got all the other
• 48:32
  things, the rosaries and the cards and the icons and so on.
• 48:36
  And so I just look around and stuff with my wife and we go up
• 48:39
  to the register for her to pay for her things.
• 48:41
  And the lady sitting there, you know, at the register is reading
• 48:46
  a book. And I go, oh, what book are you
• 48:47
  reading? And she holds it up and it's The
• 48:50
  Fire Within by Thomas Dube. And I go, wow, I was just
• 48:54
  talking with my wife about that. And you know what she says?
• 48:57
  Because at this point, maybe you're thinking, oh, OK, just a
• 48:59
  coincidence. Yeah.
• 49:00
  That there wasn't a single book in that store.
• 49:02
  And the only book in that store wasn't for sale.
• 49:04
  And it was the book that this lady was reading, which is the
• 49:06
  very book I was excited about. But she says here, and she gives
• 49:11
  me the book, right. And so I could go on.
• 49:15
  I have a lot of these kinds of experiences, but they're they're
• 49:18
  not just coincidences, but they're coincidences that are,
• 49:21
  that are confirming something like, hey, you're, you're you're
• 49:24
  moving in the right direction. Yeah, that's coming from
• 49:27
  something higher than you. Yeah.
• 49:29
  I want you to look into that. You know, so that's, that's one
• 49:33
  of the many promises of the rosary.
• 49:35
  I would encourage anybody to, to, to look those up, but I
• 49:39
  would, I would encourage anybody to, how can I say this, to give
• 49:45
  the rosary a chance, even just saying a decade of it.
• 49:49
  Our Lady is, is, is beautiful and brilliant.
• 49:52
  And, and I don't think she is just, I don't think she's a
• 49:57
  supplement. I, I, I think she's, she's our
• 50:00
  health. And I think arguably the most
• 50:05
  underestimated truth in the world is the relevance of Mary
• 50:10
  to our our sanctification. That's a big statement and a
• 50:14
  beautiful 1 and I I want you to unpack that.
• 50:16
  I'm also dying to hear how someone went from being the most
• 50:20
  non unlikely person to become Catholic according to your
• 50:23
  lovely wife to here you are holding your rosary going on
• 50:27
  about how important Mary is. You know a lot of people who are
• 50:32
  not Catholic, especially our dear Protestant brothers and
• 50:34
  sisters, many of who listen to this show.
• 50:37
  They think there's an overemphasis on Mary among
• 50:40
  Catholics. I think there's an under
• 50:42
  emphasis on Mary. Wow, a gross under emphasis on
• 50:45
  Mary. Where are all the Catholics that
• 50:47
  are praying a full rosary every day?
• 50:49
  Very few, yeah. Why does the full rosary matter?
• 50:53
  Because she says it does. She talks about it all the time
• 50:58
  and, and she's given promises to those who pray it.
• 51:01
  It's a, it's a spiritual weapon, a spiritual tool that's been
• 51:04
  given to us. And it's a, it's a scriptural
• 51:08
  prayer that has as its center the mysteries of Christ.
• 51:14
  And the Saints have written about this profusely, you know,
• 51:18
  from Saint Louis De Montfort. And you know, I, I, I recommend
• 51:23
  people read his book. Who's interested in this, The
• 51:25
  Secret of the Rosary and maybe one that's a little more
• 51:28
  accessible that that's packed with testimonies throughout
• 51:31
  history as Father Don Callaway's champion of the rosary?
• 51:34
  I would say give it a chance in terms of just reading about it a
• 51:36
  little bit. But I, I'm, I'm, I'm not here to
• 51:40
  say that it's a necessary prayer in the sense that if you don't
• 51:44
  pray that you're a bad Catholic or that you're under the pain of
• 51:47
  mortal sin for not praying the rosary.
• 51:49
  But when you consider what the Saints have written about it,
• 51:52
  you consider the promises that Our Lady has extended to those
• 51:55
  who pray it. You, you look at Fatima and she
• 51:57
  encourages us again and again to pray the rosary.
• 52:00
  This is for our own purification.
• 52:02
  This is this is to render our hearts more docile to the graces
• 52:06
  that she wants to give us. And so I I I missed the question
• 52:11
  though you're asking me. Well, I was going to ask you
• 52:13
  about the conversion. Yeah, yeah, but I haven't.
• 52:15
  But but before we go to that, just on Mary, you know, a lot of
• 52:18
  evangelicals and non Catholics think, Oh yeah, that that they,
• 52:21
  that we overestimate Mary, that she becomes some kind of idol to
• 52:26
  replace Jesus and that there's more of a devotion to Mary than
• 52:29
  to Jesus. Of course, I think of some of
• 52:31
  the Saints saying you can't love Mary too much if it's really
• 52:34
  Mary because she's pointing you to Jesus.
• 52:36
  It only increases your love for Jesus.
• 52:38
  But there is this concern and fear among a lot of good people
• 52:43
  of faith. I would even say that you just
• 52:44
  you're, you're over emphasizing the wrong thing.
• 52:47
  Go directly to the source. Go directly to Jesus.
• 52:49
  Yeah. So a few things here. 1 You
• 52:54
  can't go the extra mile unless you first go the essential mile.
• 52:59
  And so before you tell me that you, I, or someone else is doing
• 53:03
  something too much, you first have to define for me how much
• 53:07
  is essential, how much is enough.
• 53:09
  And I don't really hear any conversations amongst those who
• 53:12
  make this objection for how much they think is enough.
• 53:15
  And when I do hear it sounds like it's nothing, right?
• 53:18
  What do you mean by that? Well, for me, I don't fear
• 53:23
  honoring Mary too much. I fear honoring her too little,
• 53:27
  and I think the fear of honoring her too much is presumptuous in
• 53:31
  both directions. I'm underestimating just how
• 53:34
  much honor she is due, and I'm overestimating the value of what
• 53:38
  I give. I mean, imagine if I owe a man
• 53:41
  $1,000,000 and I get ready to write him a check for one, and
• 53:45
  I'm worried that I'm giving him too much.
• 53:48
  The response to that is, brother, you ain't giving
• 53:51
  nothing. You know what I mean?
• 53:53
  It's like you're underestimating how much she is due, but I'm
• 53:57
  also overestimating how much I give.
• 53:59
  And so that's my fear that I do not honor her too much.
• 54:03
  But let's back up a little bit because that there's something
• 54:06
  more fundamental here. Why don't we go to God directly
• 54:10
  and, and, and through the source?
• 54:12
  I think the problem here is that we tend to treat Mary in a way
• 54:19
  that's similar to how many people treat the concept of
• 54:23
  church, right. Many people look at the idea of
• 54:28
  church as, hey, this is a man made association of people who
• 54:35
  get together of their own accord in order to celebrate common
• 54:40
  beliefs. And that's one way to look at
• 54:42
  it. And if that's the way you look
• 54:44
  at it, I totally get why church is optional, and I totally get
• 54:47
  why you would never put up with other Christians that are
• 54:50
  annoying. That makes sense.
• 54:51
  And it's the logical outworking of that ecclesiology.
• 54:54
  As Catholics, we don't see the church in that way.
• 54:57
  We see the Church as Jesus's idea, right?
• 55:00
  He says, upon this rock, I will build my church.
• 55:02
  This is something that he created.
• 55:05
  And so for us, the church is not something that is dispensable.
• 55:11
  It's not something that we can take this approach of saying,
• 55:14
  hey, give me the Jesus, but not the church.
• 55:17
  You know, an example that I example I give of this is
• 55:21
  suppose I go apply for a job and someone looks at my resume.
• 55:27
  They take me through the interviewing process and they
• 55:30
  say, TK Coleman, we love you, man.
• 55:31
  We think you'd fit in really great.
• 55:33
  You understand our mission. You're clearly a hard work and
• 55:35
  have all the relevant experiences.
• 55:37
  But hey, man, there's just one concern I have.
• 55:43
  I was, I was looking at your photos and I noticed that your,
• 55:48
  your, your, your body is black. And I'm just not, I'm just not
• 55:55
  so sure if that's going to work at my company.
• 55:57
  You know, I like you as a person, like I, I love your
• 56:01
  personality and your spiritual essence.
• 56:04
  But when I look at you and your skin color, man, I'm just a
• 56:07
  little put off and disgusted. So I'm, I'm, I'm sorry, man, but
• 56:11
  I love you. I love you.
• 56:13
  Now, this isn't a political conversation about this person's
• 56:17
  right to make that choice, but do you think it's possible to
• 56:22
  separate me in that way? Do you think it's possible to
• 56:25
  really look me in the eye and say, I love you?
• 56:27
  It's just your, your body disgust me.
• 56:31
  Your skin color disgust me. I'll use a I'll use a less
• 56:33
  loaded example that one probably.
• 56:35
  I mean, that's power, so, but you're connecting that to.
• 56:38
  I love you Jesus, but I I don't I don't like your body.
• 56:41
  I don't like the fact that you are a man, not just God.
• 56:44
  By body you mean like he was born of a woman?
• 56:47
  Us as a church with his body, right?
• 56:50
  So I think Christians are annoying.
• 56:52
  I don't really like them. They disappoint me all the time.
• 56:55
  They let me down all the time. So I love you Jesus.
• 56:58
  I love like all the spirituality.
• 57:00
  I like your words and scripture because I can separate all of
• 57:03
  that from having to deal with annoying Christians, right?
• 57:05
  I can separate that from the inconvenience of going to Mass.
• 57:08
  I can separate that from having to put up with priests who I
• 57:11
  don't like or put up with religious hierarchy who might
• 57:13
  make me feel embarrassed. Or I can engage all that without
• 57:17
  putting up with other Catholics who might make me feel bad.
• 57:20
  No, just give me like the scriptures and and and and give
• 57:23
  me the abstract faith divorced from the body with which you
• 57:26
  identify. You can't do that, right?
• 57:28
  Take a different example. Let's say, let's say someone
• 57:30
  says to me, Hey, TK, you're an awesome guy, man, I love you.
• 57:34
  I just hate your wife. I just hate her, man, but I love
• 57:37
  you. Can we still be friends?
• 57:39
  Oh, man, that's tough, right? It's she's not just a person
• 57:43
  that you hate, but she is the woman that I am one with.
• 57:47
  I've bound myself to her by covenant and she's bound herself
• 57:50
  to me, that there is a certain sense in which the hate you
• 57:53
  direct towards her is also directed at me, right?
• 57:56
  And so we're his bride, right? So that's one example.
• 58:00
  So that the question is, what has Jesus identified with?
• 58:04
  What has he given us? Is it his idea if it's man, or
• 58:07
  is it man's idea? So when it comes to our Blessed
• 58:09
  Mother, I would say, look, Mary is the mother of the church and
• 58:14
  it's not my idea, right? If it's if it is my idea, then
• 58:19
  it's wrong. It doesn't matter how valuable I
• 58:20
  think it is. That's the real question.
• 58:22
  The real question isn't like, would I do it this way?
• 58:25
  Because there are a lot of things I wouldn't do it this
• 58:27
  way. But the real question is, has
• 58:29
  God decided to do it this way? And God works through secondary
• 58:34
  causes. God doesn't always meet our
• 58:36
  needs directly, but he uses us to do these things.
• 58:40
  And so you, you have, for instance, in, in the scriptures
• 58:43
  where James says, confess your sins to one another and pray to
• 58:48
  one another or pray for one another that you might be
• 58:51
  healed. Now, if someone comes to you and
• 58:53
  says, Hey, man, can you pray for me?
• 58:54
  Like, no, I'm not going to do that.
• 58:56
  I, I, I don't want to mediate for you.
• 58:59
  You take that straight to Jesus. Well, now you're actually
• 59:02
  violating his will, right? That's, that's a level of, of
• 59:06
  pride and arrogance that says, I know better than you.
• 59:09
  And, and the church is a kind of family.
• 59:13
  And when, when you have a family, sometimes the parent
• 59:16
  will have another child do something that they're capable
• 59:19
  of doing, not because it's pragmatically necessary, but
• 59:24
  because there's something you're trying to achieve when you're
• 59:27
  building a family. When you when you tell the big
• 59:29
  sister to help the little sister tie the shoe, it's not always
• 59:32
  because you don't have time. It's not always because you
• 59:35
  can't do it, but because there's something special that can only
• 59:38
  happen when big sister helps little help your sister tie the
• 59:41
  shoe. Help your sister ick U her
• 59:43
  stuff. You know that you can do it.
• 59:44
  You can do it for them, but it's better that you do it for her
• 59:48
  through the other one, right? And so there are there are
• 59:51
  moments in life where God uses us to minister to other people.
• 59:55
  He uses us to bless one another. And you know, if, if I own the
• 59:58
  company and I'm the CEO and I say, hey, everybody, this is the
• 1:00:01
  manager I've appointed, take all of your problems to him.
• 1:00:04
  And then you say, well, I'm not going to say anything to that
• 1:00:07
  manager. I'm going to take all my
• 1:00:08
  problems to TK. You're not just disrespecting my
• 1:00:10
  manager, but you're also disrespecting me because I'm the
• 1:00:13
  one who said. This is my manager, right?
• 1:00:17
  And so it sounds flattering on the surface, but it's, it's
• 1:00:20
  disrespectful to me if I give you this person as a manager and
• 1:00:24
  ask you to work with them. So I know I'm in heated
• 1:00:26
  territory here. It's great.
• 1:00:28
  I, I, I know there are people that say that have listened to
• 1:00:31
  me up until this point and says, man, I might have been able to
• 1:00:35
  ride with you dude, until you start talking about this merry
• 1:00:37
  stuff. But blessed are those who have
• 1:00:40
  the honor of ever being misunderstood or harassed
• 1:00:43
  because of Our Lady, because of association with Our Lady.
• 1:00:46
  But I, I will say this, like for me, the critical question is, is
• 1:00:50
  this the mother that Jesus has given us as Catholics, we
• 1:00:53
  believe that with, with the ancient Church, that this is the
• 1:00:57
  mother of the Church. She's our model.
• 1:00:59
  She's the first among believers. And it is part of her job given
• 1:01:04
  to her to nurture us in the faith and to intercede for us.
• 1:01:09
  And so she becomes for us a kind of not just the supplement, but,
• 1:01:15
  you know, Saint Louis De Montfort describes her as as the
• 1:01:17
  living oratory within which all of our acts of devotion are
• 1:01:21
  performed. So everything that we do is
• 1:01:23
  contextualized by that motherly advocacy.
• 1:01:26
  Father Frank Duff, the founder of the Legions of Mary, says
• 1:01:29
  that Mary adds nothing to God, but she adds immeasurable graces
• 1:01:34
  to all of our efforts to please God.
• 1:01:37
  She adds nothing to him, but everything that we do for God,
• 1:01:41
  Mary adds graces to it through her intercession and through her
• 1:01:45
  advocacy. And so another reason why I
• 1:01:49
  don't fear honoring her too much is because honoring Mary for
• 1:01:52
  those who actually do it, not for those who stand outside in
• 1:01:55
  fear doing it because of what they think it's going to do to
• 1:01:59
  them, but for those who actually do it, they can testify from the
• 1:02:02
  inside out that the process of honoring Our Lady is a
• 1:02:06
  transformative process. What do I mean, I'm almost done
• 1:02:08
  with this. But what do I mean?
• 1:02:10
  Like, there are some kinds of processes that don't transform
• 1:02:14
  you in any way, but they're defined by whatever the end is
• 1:02:17
  that you seek. So for instance, let's say I'm
• 1:02:20
  thirsty and I want to go to the refrigerator and grab a bottle
• 1:02:23
  of water. I have to go through a process
• 1:02:25
  of getting up, walking to the fridge, opening the door, and
• 1:02:27
  grabbing the bottle of water and drinking it.
• 1:02:29
  That is a process that doesn't really change me, but it's a
• 1:02:32
  process that's defined by what I get at the end.
• 1:02:34
  But there are other processes that transform you so that even
• 1:02:39
  if you don't get anything at the end, the person that you are at
• 1:02:41
  the end of that process is different from the person you
• 1:02:43
  were at the beginning of that process.
• 1:02:45
  This is like learning a martial art, right?
• 1:02:48
  There are things you learn about the mind body connection.
• 1:02:50
  There are things you learn about discipline, about restraint,
• 1:02:52
  about self-control. So that when you're done
• 1:02:55
  learning martial arts, maybe you're like 3-4, four years in,
• 1:02:58
  you realize that you have more than just the ability to kick
• 1:03:01
  and punch and block a kick. You realize that there's all
• 1:03:04
  this stuff that's happened to your character as the result of
• 1:03:07
  you doing that in an analogous way.
• 1:03:09
  When we honor our mother, it is a process that transforms us and
• 1:03:14
  increases us in humility and increases us in our love for
• 1:03:18
  Jesus. I heard Gabby Costello say this.
• 1:03:21
  Show me a person who prays the rosary daily.
• 1:03:24
  I will show you a person who is deeply devoted to the
• 1:03:27
  sacraments. Show me a person who prays a
• 1:03:29
  full rosary. I will show you someone who goes
• 1:03:31
  to confession regularly. I will show you someone who goes
• 1:03:34
  to Mass regularly. I will show you someone who
• 1:03:36
  receives the Eucharist regularly.
• 1:03:38
  I will show you someone who makes themselves available for
• 1:03:41
  adoration to come and adore our Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament
• 1:03:44
  regularly. You know them by their fruits.
• 1:03:47
  And I think sometimes what happens is when people say all
• 1:03:51
  you guys do it too much. I think what's happening there
• 1:03:54
  is there's something strange looking that's going on.
• 1:04:00
  Any amount of it is going to be too much.
• 1:04:02
  I mean, let let, let's face it, holding up an icon of Mary is
• 1:04:05
  going to be too much for some people because that's so
• 1:04:07
  culturally shocking. It's so scary.
• 1:04:11
  But in terms of what are the fruits it's producing when
• 1:04:14
  people are truly devoting themselves to our mother?
• 1:04:16
  I think honoring Mary is, is something that transforms every
• 1:04:20
  person. You I, I would encourage people.
• 1:04:22
  There's a, there's actually a video on YouTube that's, I think
• 1:04:26
  it's called something like testimonies of praying the fool
• 1:04:29
  Rosary. And you have everyone from
• 1:04:31
  people that were struggling in their marriage, people that were
• 1:04:34
  addicted to pornography, people that were addicted to drugs,
• 1:04:37
  people that were battling depression, talking about the
• 1:04:40
  power that Our Lady of purity has to break them free from
• 1:04:44
  those things. So anyway, I I may have gotten
• 1:04:46
  you into hot water by talking about this but.
• 1:04:49
  It's so so, so good. I think I think about like the
• 1:04:52
  church, the church lady, stereotypical church lady,
• 1:04:56
  praying the rosary aftermath, you know, especially our elderly
• 1:05:00
  mothers and grandmothers who are in churches praying the rosary.
• 1:05:03
  Like across the world, there's going to be thousands, maybe
• 1:05:06
  more of them just praying the rosary in the church right after
• 1:05:08
  the Mass. You know what I'm talking about.
• 1:05:10
  They stayed behind and they're praying.
• 1:05:12
  I think those prayers are one of the reasons we don't see the
• 1:05:15
  consequence for our sin, like abortion in this country, like
• 1:05:18
  nuclear war. The horrible things that could
• 1:05:20
  be consequences for the evils we commit are because of the
• 1:05:23
  mercies through the Rosary. And I think the Divine Mercy
• 1:05:26
  Chaplet's very powerful too. But I just think those graces,
• 1:05:30
  we, we are the recipients of graces.
• 1:05:32
  We don't even realize because of the prayers, especially the
• 1:05:35
  prayer of the rosary. The other just quick thing is
• 1:05:37
  the Mary saying in the Magnificat, you know, my soul
• 1:05:42
  magnifies the Lord, but she says all generations will call me
• 1:05:45
  blessed. Yes, ma'am.
• 1:05:47
  And what does that mean if you if you're if you're a Catholic,
• 1:05:49
  you know what that means? We're we're literally calling
• 1:05:52
  her blessed in the rosary. If you're an evangelical, how do
• 1:05:55
  you interpret that phrase? I am.
• 1:05:56
  I mean, we should maybe have one on the show to talk about this,
• 1:05:58
  but what does it mean to call Mary blessed?
• 1:06:00
  Is that just some nicety? What does it mean to call the
• 1:06:04
  Mother of God bless it? And and if she's saying all
• 1:06:07
  generations will do this, have you done it?
• 1:06:10
  Yeah, that's. Right.
• 1:06:11
  Have we done it? Are we doing it?
• 1:06:13
  But what were you going to say? Yeah.
• 1:06:14
  That's so good, That's so good. I, I think language is a is a
• 1:06:18
  barrier here too, because, you know, I know my Protestant
• 1:06:21
  background. If you ask someone to define the
• 1:06:24
  word prayer, it will almost always be defined in a way to
• 1:06:29
  where God is baked into the definition itself, right?
• 1:06:33
  So to pray is to commune with God, to converse with God.
• 1:06:36
  It is something that you do exclusively with God.
• 1:06:39
  Whereas when Catholics use the word pray, they often use it in
• 1:06:42
  that etymological sense of like pray telly, you know, or, or to
• 1:06:47
  ask to make a request. And so when people say, well,
• 1:06:51
  why do you pray to Mary? I, I, I sometimes just sort of
• 1:06:54
  like change the language a little bit to, to let someone
• 1:06:58
  else hear it in a way that reflects how it actually is.
• 1:07:01
  And I say we pray to God together with and through Mary
• 1:07:05
  and the Saints. We pray together with the Saints
• 1:07:08
  because we are asking them to join in our ongoing prayer.
• 1:07:13
  The very fact that we're asking them to pray for us is an
• 1:07:16
  indication that we already have faith in the power of prayer and
• 1:07:18
  we have a prayer life that is already being directed towards
• 1:07:21
  God. So we're asking them to join us
• 1:07:23
  in our ongoing act of prayer. But we're also asked, we're also
• 1:07:26
  praying through them by asking them to pray for us.
• 1:07:29
  In the same way that I would ask you to pray for me.
• 1:07:31
  Knowing that the prayers of the righteous availeth much.
• 1:07:34
  Knowing that we're told in the scriptures to pray for one
• 1:07:36
  another that we might be healed. And so we're doing that.
• 1:07:39
  And so it becomes a kind of lost opportunity when we have the
• 1:07:46
  Saints that are there ready to pray for us to ever pray without
• 1:07:51
  doing it with or through them. Not because we can't go directly
• 1:07:54
  to God, we're always doing that, but rather it's an opportunity
• 1:07:59
  to have them go with us and on behalf of us in that same way.
• 1:08:02
  So that's, that's one way I like to, to articulate it because
• 1:08:06
  they, you know, Jesus says I am the, the God of the living, not
• 1:08:10
  the God of the dead. They are more alive than us.
• 1:08:13
  We're far closer to death than they.
• 1:08:15
  Are the Saints in heaven are more alive than us?
• 1:08:16
  Mary is more alive. Yeah.
• 1:08:17
  They're like, well, she's dead. Why do you ask for her prayers?
• 1:08:20
  She's dead. It's like she's actually very
• 1:08:22
  much alive in in eternity in heaven with, with God our
• 1:08:25
  Father. OK, so how did you just you just
• 1:08:29
  dropped it. You were Protestant and you
• 1:08:31
  became Catholic and you were saying your wife was Catholic
• 1:08:35
  and she said she'd never, he's never going to become Catholic.
• 1:08:37
  And now look at you, your hair with the rosary telling us all
• 1:08:41
  we got to pray it how OK first of all, how how anti Catholic
• 1:08:46
  were you? What did that look like when you
• 1:08:49
  say you your wife would have never said you become Catholic
• 1:08:51
  were you? Did you tell her this is
• 1:08:53
  ridiculous. I'm never going to do it.
• 1:08:54
  I respect you, but not this practice.
• 1:08:57
  Yeah, I don't, I don't think I was ever anti Catholic.
• 1:09:00
  I, I think I may have inherited most of the misgivings,
• 1:09:06
  particularly about the papacy, things like that, that, that
• 1:09:09
  most Protestants might have. I'm, I'm blessed to say that I
• 1:09:13
  never had any misgivings towards Our Lady.
• 1:09:17
  Devotion to her never really played a role in, in my faith
• 1:09:20
  and I didn't really think about her her much.
• 1:09:22
  But I never had any negative feelings towards Mary.
• 1:09:25
  I never had any negative thoughts towards Mary.
• 1:09:27
  And I'm, I'm thankful that I, I, I don't have to walk back
• 1:09:30
  anything I've ever said about her in some heated argument with
• 1:09:34
  the Protestant or with the Catholic.
• 1:09:35
  Or anything. But you were Protestant before
• 1:09:37
  becoming Catholic. Yeah, I was.
• 1:09:38
  And you were. Practice like that was a big
• 1:09:39
  part of your life. Absolutely.
• 1:09:41
  You were serious about your faith.
• 1:09:42
  It wasn't like you were atheist and became Catholic.
• 1:09:44
  Absolutely very serious about my faith.
• 1:09:47
  And I think part of that was part of the whole, I'm never
• 1:09:51
  doing this kind of thing. It's just growing up, I went to
• 1:09:56
  so much church, being a pastor's son and being Pentecostal.
• 1:10:01
  It wasn't just a Sunday thing. It was often, you know, four or
• 1:10:04
  five days a week, you know, being in church.
• 1:10:07
  And I was just like, church burnout, right?
• 1:10:10
  Another thing is I, I started to sort of gravitate towards the
• 1:10:15
  idea that like, hey, just my personal relationship with God
• 1:10:18
  is what matters. And I became very picky and
• 1:10:21
  choosy with regards to what Christians I associated with.
• 1:10:25
  If I didn't think they were mature enough, I didn't think
• 1:10:27
  they were righteous enough, I didn't think they were focused
• 1:10:29
  on the right things, I wouldn't really put up with them.
• 1:10:31
  I didn't have a strong sense of moral obligation to attend
• 1:10:34
  church services for sure, let alone to attend church or to
• 1:10:39
  stick with a church or put up with a church where there are
• 1:10:43
  people that I don't like. And that's not to say that now I
• 1:10:45
  believe that you should just deal with anything that comes
• 1:10:48
  your way, but you're certainly going to have to face the fact
• 1:10:51
  that no matter what parish you choose, you, you have some some
• 1:10:56
  moral obligations to the body of Christ that are going to cost
• 1:11:01
  you some convenience and that are going to lead to some
• 1:11:05
  interaction with people that are disappointing to you and vice
• 1:11:08
  versa. Because I think everybody is
• 1:11:09
  someone's reason for not going to church.
• 1:11:12
  I'm someone's reason for not going to church.
• 1:11:14
  You're someone's reason. And even the person who doesn't
• 1:11:16
  go to church, they're someone's reason for not going to church
• 1:11:19
  because if they did go and they were representing in the right
• 1:11:21
  kind of way, they might change the game for that kind of
• 1:11:23
  person. So we all have someone who looks
• 1:11:24
  at us and points at us. Like if that's if that guy with
• 1:11:29
  that girl is what it's all about, I want nothing to deal
• 1:11:32
  with it, right? Because we are someone else's
• 1:11:34
  definition of annoying. But I think I had a lot of that
• 1:11:36
  going on. A lot of that about Catholics or
• 1:11:40
  just a lot about that church in general.
• 1:11:41
  Church in general and when it comes to Catholics in
• 1:11:43
  particular, I when it comes to the church going experience, it
• 1:11:48
  seemed to me that Catholics were mostly just very machine like it
• 1:11:53
  it it it looked like they went out of duty and obligation.
• 1:11:56
  They're all stressed out and mad at each other when they're
• 1:11:58
  getting ready for church, and by the time they go they hate each
• 1:12:01
  other for making. Hey, not when there's doughnuts
• 1:12:03
  aftermath, OK? But even then, I saw it as like
• 1:12:06
  Catholics just, and they run after church, like soon as it's
• 1:12:09
  over, they're out of there. Before it's over, they're out.
• 1:12:11
  Because we got the Eucharist, we're like powered up and ready
• 1:12:14
  to go. You got to know the secrets.
• 1:12:17
  For why that is at the top right, These were the kind of
• 1:12:19
  perceptions. So I had a lot of those types of
• 1:12:21
  hang ups and I, I also, I also didn't see it as necessary to be
• 1:12:29
  committed to 1 denomination or another.
• 1:12:32
  I knew Catholicism did not claim to be a denomination in the way
• 1:12:35
  that Protestants speak of denominations.
• 1:12:36
  But you know, in Protestant ecclesiology, none of that stuff
• 1:12:40
  really matters too much anyway. All right.
• 1:12:42
  You're Baptist, you're a Calvinist, you're Pentecostal,
• 1:12:47
  you're non denominational. You believe in Jesus.
• 1:12:49
  We're good except for Catholics. All right, So what?
• 1:12:52
  What cracked the code for you? Man.
• 1:12:56
  How'd you become Catholic then? You know, it's, it's funny
• 1:13:01
  because 20 years ago, I, I took the philosophical journey.
• 1:13:07
  I had a brother who was in Bible school at the time and he was
• 1:13:11
  delving into like reading a lot of like Eastern Orthodoxy and,
• 1:13:14
  and introduced me to the church fathers.
• 1:13:17
  And at that time, you know, I was reading a bunch of stuff
• 1:13:20
  and, and taking that kind of like academic approach to it.
• 1:13:23
  And I was looking into Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism and I
• 1:13:26
  was going to Orthodox liturgy, Orthodox Vespers, then going to
• 1:13:30
  like daily Mass primarily because like nobody was there
• 1:13:36
  and nobody would bother me. So I went to daily Mass because
• 1:13:38
  I was like, oh, nobody goes to this one.
• 1:13:40
  So I'll go to that. And.
• 1:13:42
  You an introvert or you just didn't want to hang with more
• 1:13:45
  introvert? OK.
• 1:13:46
  And so I, I remember just sort of at that time, I, I paid a a
• 1:13:53
  hefty social price for getting pretty open about my exploration
• 1:13:58
  of Catholicism. I had a lot of people.
• 1:14:01
  Pentecostal kid? Yeah.
• 1:14:02
  I had a lot of people who were pointing me out as an example of
• 1:14:06
  like a man, this is this is what the devil can do if you're not
• 1:14:11
  careful. Look at this brother and how
• 1:14:13
  deceived he is. And I had, you know, people
• 1:14:16
  confront me, people challenge me.
• 1:14:18
  And at that time, I'll just be honest.
• 1:14:20
  There was a, there was a lot of pride, there was a lot of
• 1:14:23
  immaturity and how I handle that.
• 1:14:25
  And so sometimes when people challenged me, I treated it
• 1:14:29
  solely like an academic issue and I challenged back, but in a
• 1:14:34
  way that wasn't gracious, in a way that was characterized by a
• 1:14:37
  lot of bitterness and resentment for them not loving me or
• 1:14:39
  supporting me or getting me. And, and during that time, I
• 1:14:43
  just got so burned out on the, on the experience and the social
• 1:14:48
  cost that I was like, man, forget all of this.
• 1:14:53
  This is, This is why I hate church anyway.
• 1:14:57
  And I kind of went the opposite direction a little, you know,
• 1:15:00
  where watching the way my church people responded to me in that
• 1:15:07
  journey made me better, made me resentful and made me hate
• 1:15:10
  church. And I, I applied that to
• 1:15:13
  Protestants and Catholics. I'll Fast forward and give you
• 1:15:16
  the short term version because we're way past short, an old
• 1:15:21
  high, an old classmate from grade school and high school,
• 1:15:26
  Elizabeth Robinson Young. I reconnect with her, her and
• 1:15:32
  her husband. They run a camp called Camp
• 1:15:34
  Veritas. And they, they do this every
• 1:15:40
  year. And it's a, it's a Catholic
• 1:15:42
  camp, you know, and it's all about Jesus.
• 1:15:45
  But they bring all these different, you know, kids
• 1:15:47
  together, They do different activities and so on.
• 1:15:50
  And she invited me to come out and do a talk and I went out and
• 1:15:55
  for the first time in my life, I went to Eucharistic adoration
• 1:16:00
  and. That'll do it.
• 1:16:02
  That did it. That did it.
• 1:16:05
  When I went back to my room after Eucharistic adoration,
• 1:16:11
  This, this is a part of my story that it's tough for me because
• 1:16:17
  it's tough for me because of because of pride.
• 1:16:19
  It's tough to me because of ego. And I'll just be honest about
• 1:16:22
  this. What I want to tell you is that
• 1:16:26
  I read 1000 books. At the end of reading 1000
• 1:16:30
  books, I was like, all right, this is the reasonable choice
• 1:16:33
  and I chose that. I'm Catholic now.
• 1:16:35
  Yeah, because I like to think that if you try to come at me
• 1:16:41
  with those objections and questions that I could I could
• 1:16:45
  handle it. That's that's how I would like
• 1:16:47
  to see myself. And yeah, I did that like 20
• 1:16:53
  years ago. That'd make me Catholic.
• 1:16:55
  That didn't get me over the hump.
• 1:16:58
  There was more to it than that. And when I went to Adoration, it
• 1:17:03
  was just something that happened and I can't explain it.
• 1:17:05
  I remember coming back to my room and it was like a punch
• 1:17:09
  from the inside that said, you're Catholic.
• 1:17:14
  And just like that signal grace story I told you about, it was
• 1:17:18
  kind of like, you know, the crazy thoughts that pass through
• 1:17:22
  the mind sometimes. And it hit me again, you're
• 1:17:28
  Catholic. And I, I just knew.
• 1:17:34
  And I began to cry and it was like it was like the scale, the
• 1:17:39
  scales fell from my eyes. And it was like the if it was
• 1:17:46
  like it was like my skepticism became a kind of energy that
• 1:17:51
  dissipated. And my relationship to questions
• 1:17:58
  were were different in that moment.
• 1:18:01
  And, and here's the only way I can kind of give an an analogy
• 1:18:04
  to explain it. Imagine that my wife and I agree
• 1:18:08
  to have dinner at 6:00 and she comes home at 8:30.
• 1:18:14
  And when she walks in, I say, where the heck have you been?
• 1:18:18
  OK, that's a question, right? But there's an energy behind
• 1:18:21
  that question, right? And if she doesn't answer it a
• 1:18:23
  certain way, we we might not be doing too well, right?
• 1:18:28
  OK, now let's do the same scenario.
• 1:18:30
  Let's say my wife and I agreed to have dinner at 6:00.
• 1:18:34
  She comes in at 8:30 and I'm reading the book and I see and I
• 1:18:37
  go, hey, I said, where you been? What you been up to today?
• 1:18:41
  Same question, different energy behind it, right?
• 1:18:45
  The, the energy behind this question is one that says, look,
• 1:18:48
  I know there's an answer, right? I don't even know what it is.
• 1:18:52
  I know there's an answer. And I'm asking you out of
• 1:18:55
  curiosity, I'm asking you out of excitement, I'm asking you out
• 1:18:58
  of passion. I'm asking you out of the desire
• 1:19:00
  to connect. I'm asking you out of love.
• 1:19:04
  And I felt that energetic shift where the questions that I had
• 1:19:09
  about the faith shifted from having that sort of like
• 1:19:13
  antagonistic, suspicious energy behind it to having that energy
• 1:19:18
  of curiosity and love and passion behind it.
• 1:19:22
  And so it wasn't like a flash of insight where I just like knew
• 1:19:26
  everything. It was more like a, a falling
• 1:19:29
  away of that energy of skepticism.
• 1:19:32
  You know, it was almost like whatever was behind me doing
• 1:19:37
  this, those hands were removed. When you when you saw Jesus held
• 1:19:44
  up in adoration, the Eucharist, the host, Jesus Christ, body,
• 1:19:48
  blood, soul and divinity, that's what we believe is.
• 1:19:50
  Happening at no point that I understand any.
• 1:19:52
  Of you didn't understand it, but that it was after seeing that
• 1:19:56
  being in that room when adoration was happening,
• 1:19:58
  something just. Absolutely.
• 1:20:00
  And moved you. I listen, I was so ignorant of
• 1:20:05
  Eucharistic adoration that not only did I not know what
• 1:20:09
  Catholics were supposed to believe about that, but I had no
• 1:20:12
  concept of any stories about what's supposed to happen to a
• 1:20:16
  person when they're in the presence of the Blessed
• 1:20:18
  Sacrament. So I don't have any vocabulary
• 1:20:20
  of that. And if someone had tried to
• 1:20:21
  explain that to me, I would have been like, OK, that's great,
• 1:20:24
  that's great, that's great. You know, But I was there and it
• 1:20:26
  was just a part of my experience of being there.
• 1:20:30
  And Eucharistic adoration has played a huge role in my life
• 1:20:32
  since then. Even even while going through
• 1:20:34
  our CIAII looked at Eucharistic adoration as like the children's
• 1:20:40
  bread as as, as the mercy of Christ, because you're going
• 1:20:44
  through our CIA and you don't receive.
• 1:20:47
  But it's like, wait a minute, you mean that he is there,
• 1:20:51
  sacramentally present in the Blessed Sacrament, there in the
• 1:20:54
  Tabernacle? Are you kidding me?
• 1:20:56
  And I can go and I and I always think about St.
• 1:20:59
  Veronica, the woman with the issue of blood, who says if I
• 1:21:02
  can touch the hem of his garment, I will be made whole.
• 1:21:05
  I whenever I think about the Blessed Sacrament, I think about
• 1:21:09
  that story. And I think, man, if she can
• 1:21:11
  press through and reach out to touch the hem of his garment and
• 1:21:18
  experience the wholeness of Christ in response to that, how
• 1:21:21
  much more can I experience his wholeness if I can be present
• 1:21:25
  with him in the Holy Eucharist at adoration like that?
• 1:21:30
  And so I, I strive to, to make that a priority and go as often
• 1:21:33
  as I can, you know, and, and guess what brought me to that
• 1:21:38
  understanding? Guess what made me really
• 1:21:40
  passionate about Eucharistic adoration?
• 1:21:43
  Guess what made me really eager to read up on it?
• 1:21:46
  And, and guess what makes me devote myself to it, even when I
• 1:21:49
  get, get distracted? Our Lady, Our Lady, I I love
• 1:21:55
  Jesus more than I ever have because of, because of what Our
• 1:22:00
  Lady has taught me. Yeah.
• 1:22:02
  That is so beautiful. Thanks for encouraging me to
• 1:22:06
  love Our Lady more and everyone listening, I hope.
• 1:22:10
  I wanted to ask you one more thing.
• 1:22:12
  I know we're going along here. Thank you for doing this with
• 1:22:14
  me. You, you said this when you were
• 1:22:16
  walking and we didn't sit on the show yet, but I was like, oh,
• 1:22:19
  we, I've got to ask him about that.
• 1:22:21
  I know it's connected into all of this.
• 1:22:23
  You're not on social media and your podcast, which is again,
• 1:22:26
  this huge podcast, the Minimalist podcast is not doing
• 1:22:29
  Instagram reels. All of the little Nick tacky
• 1:22:33
  social media engagement stuff. I have a brother who does
• 1:22:37
  podcasting, sing the Hours, Liturgy of the Hours, and he
• 1:22:40
  calls it fast Media and how it's toxic for the soul is this whole
• 1:22:43
  thing. We talk about this, I'll be
• 1:22:46
  honest, we do fast media on the show.
• 1:22:48
  We put the show up on Instagram. We have it on YouTube and the
• 1:22:50
  shorts. But why are you off social
• 1:22:53
  media, especially when you're doing media, You're doing a show
• 1:22:56
  and you want, I'm sure people to listen to it, but you guys are
• 1:22:59
  all going dark on social. Yeah.
• 1:23:01
  How do you do a podcast? Will you go dark on social?
• 1:23:04
  Right. Well, it's not an act of
• 1:23:06
  renunciation, right? It's it's not a condemnation of
• 1:23:08
  people that are on social media. That's good because I'm still
• 1:23:12
  still here for now anyways. OK.
• 1:23:15
  For me personally, it started with Lent and me thinking about
• 1:23:20
  what am I going to give up? And I, and I want to give up
• 1:23:22
  something that is an actual sacrifice.
• 1:23:25
  And I, I think it might actually be good for me.
• 1:23:27
  I don't want to just make up something, you know.
• 1:23:29
  And so I decided, oh, social media would be really hard.
• 1:23:34
  That'd be very tough. But then at the same time, it's
• 1:23:39
  the amount of time to where it's just right.
• 1:23:42
  I mean, in, in this age, it can be easy to feel like you're
• 1:23:46
  going to die if you're off social media, you will cease to
• 1:23:49
  be relevant. You're only as significant as
• 1:23:52
  your Last Post, right as your last viral post.
• 1:23:56
  And so there's some of that. And I thought, boy, that would
• 1:23:59
  be great to take a break from that sensation.
• 1:24:01
  But also, how good could that be for me to just have to exercise
• 1:24:05
  that discipline and not click in and just pour all that time into
• 1:24:08
  the rosary, into Eucharistic adoration and, and, and
• 1:24:11
  spiritual reading. And so I got off for that.
• 1:24:15
  But at the same time, we're also having these conversations, Josh
• 1:24:19
  and I from the minimalist about what it might look like if we
• 1:24:23
  did that for the minimalist as a whole.
• 1:24:25
  And then we had Cal Newport on our show who wrote a book called
• 1:24:28
  Digital Minimalism. Oh, we got to have him on.
• 1:24:32
  You got to have him. On I've heard about that book,
• 1:24:35
  it's it sounds very important to talk about.
• 1:24:38
  You got to have him on and he's one of the greatest
• 1:24:39
  storytellers. He's got a deep, deep bag of
• 1:24:43
  real stories from history for just about anything that you all
• 1:24:48
  talk about. So I highly recommend him.
• 1:24:51
  But we're talking about that and, and he, he talked a little
• 1:24:54
  bit about his social media life and he's, he's on social media,
• 1:24:58
  but just the benefits that have come from his increased capacity
• 1:25:02
  to do deep work. And that's something that's been
• 1:25:05
  attractive to me for a long time.
• 1:25:07
  I feel that longing to do deep work.
• 1:25:10
  I feel that longing even to do deep study.
• 1:25:12
  So one of the things on social media is every week there are
• 1:25:18
  1000 new videos that you got to watch to know what's going on,
• 1:25:21
  right? You got to create to keep up
• 1:25:23
  with this Keeping Up with the Kardashians digitally.
• 1:25:25
  Like, not exactly, but you know, keep on posting once, twice a
• 1:25:30
  day. Keep it going.
• 1:25:31
  It's a lot. Yeah, and, and I think about, I
• 1:25:33
  think about where I want to be in my life and I, and I think
• 1:25:36
  about how I want to look back on my time.
• 1:25:38
  So I, I know you had the conversation with Jimmy Aiken,
• 1:25:41
  right, just the other day about Pope Francis.
• 1:25:43
  Let's let's take almost anything that Pope Francis says they're
• 1:25:47
  going to be. I would say just even from the
• 1:25:49
  most recent thing, there are probably over 300 videos about
• 1:25:53
  that aspect of what Pope Francis said in the past week.
• 1:25:58
  We're not talking about all the other times, right?
• 1:26:00
  They're probably like hundreds of new videos.
• 1:26:02
  So it's possible to spend, let's say, 50 hours consuming content
• 1:26:08
  on Pope Francis and and what you have.
• 1:26:10
  One thing, he said. Yeah.
• 1:26:12
  Different. People interpretation of it and
• 1:26:15
  I'm not saying it's wrong to participate in any of those
• 1:26:17
  conversations, but but when I try to compare that with like
• 1:26:21
  Saint Robert Bellarmine's book that's this thick on the papacy
• 1:26:25
  and I think 50 hours on that, 50 hours on this.
• 1:26:30
  Read the book on the papacy by Bellarmine or read the other
• 1:26:33
  stuff that Francis Holy Father saying that is beautiful, good
• 1:26:37
  and true even in, in or outside of context, meaning you're not
• 1:26:41
  going to get these lines that are.
• 1:26:43
  Is that true? Is this a violate?
• 1:26:44
  Is this heresy? Because he's saying a lot of
• 1:26:46
  beautiful, good stuff that would shore up the faith in addition
• 1:26:48
  to these things that are confusing people.
• 1:26:50
  Yeah. And, and, and you know, like you
• 1:26:54
  could read, you could listen to 1000 debates and discussions
• 1:26:58
  about Mary. You can read 1000 tweets where
• 1:27:00
  Protestants and Catholics are going back and forth.
• 1:27:03
  But then it's like, God forbid that my whole life should pass
• 1:27:06
  me by and I've never read St. Alphonsus Liguori's The Glories
• 1:27:10
  of Mary, but that's over 600 pages, right?
• 1:27:13
  And maybe I should just stick with the tweets.
• 1:27:15
  But it's like, man, I, I want to look back on my life and say I
• 1:27:19
  read that. More importantly, I internalize
• 1:27:22
  that, right? And so doing a lot of deep
• 1:27:24
  reading and deep work has been a big driving factor for me.
• 1:27:26
  And, and it's been a driving factor for both of us in, in
• 1:27:29
  some different ways. And so we said let's take a
• 1:27:32
  break for a year and let's see what we learn the.
• 1:27:34
  Whole show. Well, not the whole show, but
• 1:27:38
  but specifically, no Twitter, no Facebook, no Instagram.
• 1:27:46
  For you, for just you or for the rest of the talent on the show,
• 1:27:49
  Both of us now. For the minimalist and and.
• 1:27:52
  Does the minimalist podcast have pages that they're still putting
• 1:27:55
  stuff up on or not? So we still upload the audio
• 1:27:59
  version of the podcast. We're taking a break from the
• 1:28:01
  video and the reels. Not even video and no reels.
• 1:28:04
  So we're just doing an audio version of the podcast and that
• 1:28:08
  goes up on Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts.
• 1:28:12
  And we still use YouTube Archivale where we take the
• 1:28:16
  audio version of the podcast and we put it up.
• 1:28:18
  On So, you've even cut the video from the show.
• 1:28:21
  Yeah, we're not doing video, OK? No new reels, no new Tik Toks
• 1:28:25
  any of that. And no, no, nothing on Twitter
• 1:28:28
  or X or Facebook. OK, how do you market the show
• 1:28:31
  without all that stuff? How how was that?
• 1:28:33
  I mean, because it's a business too, right?
• 1:28:34
  This is your guys's business. So how is it going?
• 1:28:39
  Should we do this, Harris? I mean, but seriously, like,
• 1:28:42
  how, how is it going? I mean, that's a big deal to to
• 1:28:46
  to stop doing your social media as a show and for you to stop
• 1:28:50
  your personal social media. And the minimalist podcast is a
• 1:28:52
  big podcast is just cut in social media except putting it
• 1:28:55
  on YouTube, just audio. I mean, are your downloads down?
• 1:28:59
  I don't know if you can share that.
• 1:29:00
  Yeah. Well, so last year before we
• 1:29:02
  went off social media, we had our biggest year yet.
• 1:29:06
  And now definitely numbers are down because we're, we don't
• 1:29:13
  have Instagram numbers, right? Well, I mean, we may, but we're
• 1:29:17
  not checking it and reporting it.
• 1:29:19
  But you know how these social media sites work, you, you
• 1:29:22
  become irrelevant to the algorithm because you're not
• 1:29:25
  feeding the machine. Like they can't make any money
• 1:29:27
  off us, right? They're like, we're not
• 1:29:29
  contributing any value. We're just our own stuff is up
• 1:29:32
  there. So we're not showing up on
• 1:29:33
  people's news feeds or anything. Only people that see us are
• 1:29:36
  people that look for us. And when they come find us, they
• 1:29:38
  just see there hasn't been anything that's updated.
• 1:29:40
  So numbers are definitely down. And I would say economically,
• 1:29:44
  yeah, the argument is, is against it.
• 1:29:46
  The argument is against it. I I would say spiritually,
• 1:29:49
  philosophically, it's been refreshing as all get out.
• 1:29:51
  But so are is the, is the gamble like, OK, we're going to, it
• 1:29:54
  might hurt the business this year, but we're going to do this
• 1:29:57
  no social media thing for the sake of the quality of our own
• 1:30:01
  minds and souls and our podcast. And then maybe in the future
• 1:30:05
  we'll go back on. I mean, what's the kind of, is
• 1:30:07
  there a discussion about the tactic here?
• 1:30:10
  You know the strategy, man. What the heck are you?
• 1:30:12
  Doing I mean, I'm, I'm all in. I mean, I don't like being on
• 1:30:15
  social media myself. So I'm curious, what's the
• 1:30:17
  belong game here? Yeah.
• 1:30:19
  So maybe it's a big experiment. I don't know.
• 1:30:22
  Well, it's partially that and, and, and part of the thing about
• 1:30:26
  discovery is that if you know what you're going to find, it's
• 1:30:30
  not a discovery, right? And so.
• 1:30:32
  Fair that part of it is a discovery.
• 1:30:34
  Another aspect of it is this, I don't want to reach more people.
• 1:30:38
  I want to reach fewer people more deeply.
• 1:30:42
  And I don't, I don't feel like there's anything in the Catholic
• 1:30:46
  faith that's requiring me to think this way in spite of
• 1:30:49
  myself. But I, I am feeling more and
• 1:30:52
  more drawn to things that are smaller but but richer in
• 1:30:58
  quality of interaction. And that's both in the context
• 1:31:01
  of what we do as, as the minimalist and also just in my
• 1:31:03
  own personal life. And so now things like, hey, we
• 1:31:07
  got a great RCIA teacher and just assisting him in the class
• 1:31:12
  feels way more exciting than like just about anything else
• 1:31:15
  I've done. But in addition to that, we we
• 1:31:20
  are beginning to discover some cool things that have come up as
• 1:31:24
  a result of this time. So for instance, we were doing
• 1:31:27
  more live shows and our live shows aren't like huge.
• 1:31:30
  We're not packing Carnegie Hall. We just have a small little
• 1:31:34
  theater in LA and anywhere from like 75 to 100 people show up
• 1:31:38
  once a month. That's like a fraction of our
• 1:31:40
  total following. But man, what an awesome time it
• 1:31:44
  is to see people face to face, to interact with them, to have
• 1:31:47
  time to hang out for coffee beforehand and afterhand, you
• 1:31:51
  know, afterwards. It's that's really awesome.
• 1:31:55
  Josh came to me and was like, hey, what do you think about
• 1:31:58
  doing doing some coaching? Like we got a lot of people who
• 1:32:02
  at the events or through e-mail say, hey, do you ever do any
• 1:32:05
  one-on-one coaching? And I was like, that'd be total
• 1:32:08
  fun. I love that.
• 1:32:09
  And so I started doing something called clutter counseling where
• 1:32:12
  people sign up for one-on-one sessions with me and it's no
• 1:32:15
  longer like, hey, you asking a question and I'm kind of
• 1:32:17
  guessing at what's going on in your life and answering it the
• 1:32:20
  best that I can. It's me working with that person
• 1:32:22
  for an hour and being able to do that writing.
• 1:32:25
  We're starting to write more and, and, and create more in
• 1:32:30
  terms of courses and so on. So I guess you could say on the,
• 1:32:33
  on the business side, on the creative side, there are ideas
• 1:32:37
  that have come up for us in this space that's come about from,
• 1:32:43
  from being off social media and, and I think there's some good
• 1:32:46
  stuff there and, and we're still letting that unfold.
• 1:32:50
  But yeah, that'll, that'll be my, my answer for now.
• 1:32:52
  But it's there are definitely moments where you're getting
• 1:32:55
  ready to do something and you say, hey, it would be really
• 1:32:58
  nice if, you know, we just went on Twitter and announced that
• 1:33:03
  and we went on Instagram and announced that.
• 1:33:05
  But we said we're gonna do it for the rest of the year.
• 1:33:08
  We're just gonna do it for the rest of.
• 1:33:09
  The year you do do an e-mail list.
• 1:33:11
  We have an e-mail list. OK, Yeah.
• 1:33:13
  Is this and the year started in January?
• 1:33:15
  When did your? No, it started in in March for
• 1:33:18
  the rest of the year. You got to come back on in six
• 1:33:20
  months other than one year anniversary.
• 1:33:22
  I want to hear how, what the like the plan is.
• 1:33:24
  It's it's great. I mean, I I think that if
• 1:33:27
  everyone did what you were doing, like everyone, we all
• 1:33:30
  made a mutual agreement worldwide to get off Instagram
• 1:33:34
  and X and all this stuff, I think the world would be better.
• 1:33:38
  Yeah, but you know, it, there's a cost to doing it and being one
• 1:33:42
  of the people like I haven't done it.
• 1:33:43
  I'm still on, you know, so I have one of my best friends.
• 1:33:45
  She's totally off of it. Stephanie Gray Connor, she's a
• 1:33:48
  pro-life apologist. She just has an e-mail list and
• 1:33:51
  she's making an impact in a, in a very important way.
• 1:33:54
  So it it, it's an interesting one.
• 1:33:56
  That's a that's something we got to check back in on in six
• 1:33:58
  months, where the thought process is.
• 1:34:00
  I'd be happy to and you know it. It may very well be the case
• 1:34:04
  that we come back on social media with a, a fresh
• 1:34:06
  perspective and, and with an increased sense of confidence
• 1:34:10
  because I tell you like the, the big question was, can can we
• 1:34:13
  survive and do this? Can we actually get away with
• 1:34:16
  this? And it looks like we're getting
• 1:34:19
  away with this. And I think that's the biggest
• 1:34:21
  revelation for me because that's a question I've been asking
• 1:34:23
  about for a long time. Can I get away?
• 1:34:25
  Meaning it's still a solvent business is what you're saying.
• 1:34:28
  Your business, you're like saying the numbers are down, but
• 1:34:30
  you're still operating. It's still I'm guessing
• 1:34:33
  profitable for you guys. You're finding other revenue
• 1:34:36
  streams maybe? And the opportunity to do
• 1:34:39
  meaningful work and to meaningfully engage other people
• 1:34:41
  and meaningful ways, they still keep coming some kind of way.
• 1:34:45
  Well, here you are. Yeah, this might be a real on my
• 1:34:48
  Instagram. All right, so you will be on
• 1:34:51
  Instagram if that's OK. But TK, this has been an awesome
• 1:34:55
  conversation. Thank you.
• 1:34:56
  Likewise appreciate. We got to have you back on your
• 1:34:58
  local, so we'll do we got to do this again.
• 1:35:00
  And let me give you your flowers here.
• 1:35:02
  Because we got flowers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:04
  Verbal flowers. So one of the unfortunate things
• 1:35:10
  about our time is that we live in.
• 1:35:14
  How do I put this? People love to criticize from
• 1:35:17
  afar. They they love to say, let me
• 1:35:21
  make a video on why this person is an idiot and why all their
• 1:35:24
  arguments are wrong. People love to stitch.
• 1:35:27
  They love to clip something that someone says and then refute
• 1:35:30
  them from afar. But no one gets into the room to
• 1:35:34
  debate. It's very hard to get two people
• 1:35:37
  of opposing ideologies to come in the room together and
• 1:35:40
  actually debate. There's by the way, there's two
• 1:35:42
  universities started to interrupt at Dartmouth and
• 1:35:44
  University of Texas, Austin, TX. They've both asked me to debate.
• 1:35:48
  They're asking a bunch of other pro abortion people to do a
• 1:35:50
  debate with me. They can't.
• 1:35:53
  There's no luck so far. It's tough.
• 1:35:55
  Do you know, like during when COVID first started, I saw these
• 1:35:58
  two guys on Twitter arguing over lockdowns.
• 1:36:01
  One guy was like, we shouldn't do this, this is bad.
• 1:36:03
  The other guy was like, you're a total idiot.
• 1:36:05
  We should. And, and this is very early on.
• 1:36:08
  And I'm like, oh man, like both of these guys sound like they're
• 1:36:12
  like really well informed. And so I, I reach out to the guy
• 1:36:15
  who says we shouldn't do lockdowns.
• 1:36:17
  I sent him a message and I say, hey, if I bring you guys my show
• 1:36:21
  and I moderate the debate, would you be willing to debate this
• 1:36:24
  guy? And he goes totally anytime,
• 1:36:25
  just let me know and I go great. And I go to the other guy and I
• 1:36:28
  say the same thing to him. He's like, no, I'm busy.
• 1:36:31
  And I I've got this and that going on and he just had a whole
• 1:36:33
  laundry list of stuff. And I go, well, what about like
• 1:36:35
  in a month or something like that?
• 1:36:36
  He's like, no, I'm just really busy time of my life.
• 1:36:38
  But he was on Twitter all day. He had he had all the time in
• 1:36:41
  the world on Twitter, right? He just was busy for too busy
• 1:36:43
  for a A1 hour debate, I guess. But you see that so much and
• 1:36:49
  we're we're, we're, we're kind of like in this space of
• 1:36:52
  refutation by disgust, refutation by meme, you know,
• 1:36:57
  reputation by mockery. Oh, hey, you disagree with me.
• 1:37:00
  I think you're wrong. I'm going to make fun of you.
• 1:37:02
  I'm going to mock you. I'm going to express how
• 1:37:04
  disgusted I am with you. But the way ideas evolve, the
• 1:37:08
  way critical thinking grows, and the way that we grow as people
• 1:37:12
  is we get in the same room with people who disagree.
• 1:37:15
  And without fear, we say, hey, look, let's talk it out.
• 1:37:19
  And I'm going to tell you why I think your position is
• 1:37:21
  incorrect. And I'm going to give you my
• 1:37:22
  reasons why. And I'm not going to run.
• 1:37:24
  And I'm not going to substitute mockery for debate.
• 1:37:26
  And you are one of the few people that have demonstrated
• 1:37:29
  your willingness to do that. So I wanted to praise your
• 1:37:31
  courage. I wanted to praise your
• 1:37:33
  conviction because there are a lot of people that will eat you
• 1:37:36
  alive in the YouTube comments, but they won't step in the room
• 1:37:39
  with you to have a conversation. And you're that person who steps
• 1:37:42
  into the room so. Thank you TK, Thank you.
• 1:37:45
  I hope I can keep doing it and have the opportunity.
• 1:37:47
  You are awesome. Thanks for making the time for
• 1:37:49
  the conversation. Absolutely an inspiration, it's
• 1:37:51
  awesome. A huge thank you to our partner,
• 1:37:54
  EWTN. EWTN is the world's leading
• 1:37:57
  Catholic network, reaching millions with the truth about
• 1:38:00
  the faith, entertainment and news.
• 1:38:02
  Check them out at ewtn.com.