Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E223: The Untold Truth Behind Read Choi’s Viral Faith Content w/Read Choi | Lila Rose Show

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E223: The Untold Truth Behind Read Choi’s Viral Faith Content w/Read Choi | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  10 days in I got 10,000 followers. 10 days into Tick
• 0:03
  tock. Five months later got my first
• 0:04
  million. Now you're five years in, you
• 0:06
  got over 10 million followers. I was also kicked out of my home
• 0:09
  a lot and so I went through homelessness a lot.
• 0:11
  Have you talked publicly about your parents of No I'm curious
• 0:15
  with the attacks on you and a TikTok accusing you of all of
• 0:18
  this stuff. I was getting cancelled and
• 0:20
  crucified online because of how traumatic that was.
• 0:22
  I still carry receipts that I got from the motels and at this
• 0:26
  point I was running below empty. I had nothing to tank.
• 0:29
  And then in that moment, almost everything became clear to me.
• 0:35
  Last year, a Tik Toker went viral for raising money for a
• 0:37
  homeless woman and then was embroiled in controversy for
• 0:40
  being accused of taking the money instead of giving it to
• 0:43
  her. Reid Choi is the man behind the
• 0:45
  story, and he's actually an incredible soul.
• 0:48
  He shares Stay on the podcast about his approach to comedy and
• 0:51
  humor, how he deals with tough theological issues in his
• 0:54
  content reaching hundreds of millions of people.
• 0:57
  And he dresses and debunks finally, some of the accusations
• 1:00
  about his care for a homeless woman that he felt God was
• 1:04
  calling him to help. This conversation gets into
• 1:06
  Reed's childhood and some of the difficult life experiences that
• 1:09
  he faced that shape his approach to comedy and content.
• 1:12
  And we also discussed the role of the spiritual in creating
• 1:15
  content that can move the hearts of 1,000,000.
• 1:17
  Reed also opens up about his personal life and shares some
• 1:20
  stories that he's never shared before publicly.
• 1:22
  And you guys, don't forget to be subscribed to the show.
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  that like button. And if you're listening on
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  podcasts, leave us five stars in a review that helps the show
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  Rosereport dot Supercast dot com.
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  We're building up a great community over there with a lot
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  Go check it out at rosereport.supercast.com.
• 1:44
  Reid Choi, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:45
  Thanks for having. Me.
• 1:47
  The comedian. The content creator.
• 1:48
  The entrepreneur. I'm just the.
• 1:51
  Very cool stuff. And normal guy.
• 1:54
  Very funny guy. I think I was telling you
• 1:56
  earlier, I first saw your content.
• 1:58
  I didn't know you or know that you were pro-life or any of your
• 2:01
  background, but it was some video on TikTok.
• 2:04
  And I was like laughing hysterically.
• 2:07
  Showed it to my husband. He thought it was funny.
• 2:09
  And then I got to meet you recently at the Young Leaders
• 2:12
  Summit. And then here you are.
• 2:14
  Thank you for coming in. I'm so excited to talk to you.
• 2:17
  You've got over 10 million followers on your accounts.
• 2:21
  Most of your content is funny. I mean, it's hard to do humor,
• 2:23
  but you do it really well. So congratulations on that.
• 2:27
  Tell me about first of all read Choi as a kid.
• 2:30
  I heard earlier you're an only child, but what was it like?
• 2:33
  How young do you want me to call?
• 2:35
  As early as you can remember. Man, OK.
• 2:38
  What's your first memory? I think because I was an only
• 2:41
  child, I had to learn to be good with my imagination because
• 2:46
  there was rarely anybody to play with.
• 2:48
  Because my parents would, I don't know, they just kind of
• 2:51
  leave me alone, just let me do my thing.
• 2:53
  And we didn't grow up very rich, so I didn't have a lot of toys
• 2:58
  or video games and stuff like that.
• 3:00
  And so a stick had to be a gun, you know, And I had to make up
• 3:05
  all these scenarios to keep me, keep myself interested and I, I
• 3:08
  would draw a lot. So I think I've always been
• 3:12
  creatively inclined and that imagination has greatly helped
• 3:17
  me today because I can make up these scenarios and then go in
• 3:20
  and out of character. When you sing this stick, you
• 3:23
  have a stick as a gun as a kid. Imagine that little cloth you
• 3:25
  put in your head to be a girl to be a girl still making do.
• 3:30
  Like, yeah, we're gonna do a GoFundMe for wigs that you can.
• 3:35
  I like it. I understand.
• 3:37
  Whenever I play Trump, I instead of like an orange wig, I put, I
• 3:41
  have an orange foam roller and I just kind of put that right
• 3:44
  there. Perfect.
• 3:46
  We know what you're doing. It's great.
• 3:48
  So, and you're from California? Yes ma'am, Very cool.
• 3:52
  And your parents, where are they from here or what?
• 3:55
  What's their background? Born and raised in Korea and
• 3:57
  then came over here in 1985. So I was the first born, first
• 4:03
  generation born in America. Amazing you were talking earlier
• 4:07
  and I. You speak Italian.
• 4:08
  No, unfortunately. Not.
• 4:10
  Not even a little, Not even a Well, do you speak any other
• 4:12
  languages? Tiny bit of Spanish, but not not
• 4:15
  nothing that I wouldn't say I speak Spanish.
• 4:17
  OK yeah. What about you?
• 4:18
  Feel more. Italian then American or do you
• 4:21
  just feel more? I've definitely feel Italian,
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  but I'm definitely American first.
• 4:26
  OK. I mean, I would say, I would
• 4:27
  dare to say Italian American, but I'm American first.
• 4:30
  Yeah, that's SAS. My a little bit my brother
• 4:33
  recently got his citizenship and my mom, because she's first
• 4:37
  generation, she's second generation and you can the
• 4:40
  Italian consulate actually opened it up.
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  So if you have grandparents who are Italian, you can become
• 4:44
  Italian. So they did all the paperwork
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  and they became Italian and then I was going to be able to ride
• 4:48
  on their coattails in, but then they shut down the program.
• 4:51
  Can you cook like an Italian? Yeah.
• 4:54
  Yeah, husband's a lucky man. Yeah.
• 4:56
  Yeah, and we're both lucky. Yeah, that's the, that's the,
• 5:00
  that's the old school pass on the generational recipes.
• 5:05
  My mom calls it peasant food but.
• 5:07
  Korean's all Korean food is all peasant food.
• 5:09
  We've been the third. World, really.
• 5:12
  So what do you do? You So did you grow up cooking
• 5:14
  or what did? What about you?
• 5:15
  Guys, yeah, I love to cook. Yeah, I, I was actually, and I
• 5:19
  worked in a lot of restaurants. Yeah, when I was a kid.
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  So really, I love cooking. So you.
• 5:24
  I've also done my fair share of thirsting cook traps.
• 5:27
  No, no cooking thirst traps. So what do your parents do and
• 5:31
  what do they think about what you do?
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  My father is a pastor. And like I said earlier when I
• 5:39
  first started doing it, they're like, what are you doing?
• 5:42
  You're just going to film videos.
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  And they're very worried. They're like, hurry up and
• 5:46
  become a doctor. But as soon as I started doing
• 5:49
  well and I was able to pay a couple bills here and there,
• 5:52
  take them out for dinner, and they were much more comfortable.
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  And now I think they'd be. They are quite proud.
• 5:58
  You went to Berkeley, right? Berkeley.
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  And you studied? English.
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  I was in English. Major, did you have any idea
• 6:04
  when you were going to UC Berkeley that you were going to
• 6:06
  do end up doing TikTok full time?
• 6:09
  No, not at all. I was so anti.
• 6:12
  I was when I was at Berkeley. I was just solely focused on
• 6:21
  trying to make sure that I can be the best writer as possible,
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  and by being the best writer, it would make me the best thinker
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  that I can possibly be. Do you think that sets you up
• 6:35
  for what you're doing now? Oh yeah, absolutely.
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  I think because of the amount of essays that I had to write, I
• 6:44
  learned to be able to think for myself and deconstruct ideas in
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  a way that's, I guess more unique because I was able to
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  when I was at Berkeley. The type of writing that's
• 7:00
  promoted at Berkeley is very verbose, and I was very much
• 7:07
  against that curve. Meaning it was just like words
• 7:10
  for the sake of the customer I am.
• 7:11
  Or what do you mean by verbose? Like the Ernest Hemingway school
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  of thought is that the most simplest sentence, the sentence
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  without any fad, the sentence that pervades the idea that
• 7:23
  you're trying to convey without adding any flowery language, is
• 7:28
  the perfect sentence. And that you should never use a
• 7:31
  big word unless it has to be there.
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  Like the you deserve to use it. Whereas in Berkeley a lot of it
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  was like, let's just sound as smart as we can and hide behind
• 7:44
  big SETSAT words. So then we don't actually have
• 7:47
  to come up with something original.
• 7:49
  Of course, that's my critique. There were there are, there are
• 7:51
  brilliant minds at Berkeley, but because I was more so driven
• 7:56
  towards more simpler language and Berkeley was kind of anti
• 8:01
  that, I had to be a much better writer for it.
• 8:05
  Because if you're going to go against the way our way, way we
• 8:08
  think you're writing better be damn good.
• 8:10
  And so in a way, I was kind of blessed that it challenged me to
• 8:14
  become a better writer. And with the professors there, I
• 8:18
  won't speak on the students, but the professors there were all
• 8:20
  very world class. And my favorite professor,
• 8:25
  Professor Stephen Best, he was the most liberal professor
• 8:28
  there, but we and we disagreed vehemently.
• 8:32
  But just because we disagreed didn't mean that he didn't like
• 8:36
  me as a person or that I didn't like him as a person.
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  He treated me with respect. And even though he didn't agree
• 8:42
  with my ideas, because I was able to back them and write down
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  my ideas in a way that conveyed that I thought them through and
• 8:53
  that I had evidence to support those claims.
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  I was like, I got the highest grade in this class.
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  And so that type of you can disagree, but you can still be
• 9:07
  respectful and treat each other humanely.
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  That was that was a beautiful part of my education.
• 9:13
  So it's interesting because you're this big Tik Toker,
• 9:16
  you're hilarious. We're going to look at some of
• 9:18
  your content soon. I love it because it, it weaves
• 9:20
  in faith and like some cultural political themes occasionally,
• 9:23
  but it's pretty, I, I feel like your takes are pretty fresh.
• 9:28
  They're not like hard right, hard left that they're kind of
• 9:30
  our independent, which I really appreciate.
• 9:33
  But I'm curious about your faith upbringing because you just
• 9:36
  mentioned at Berkeley, you had this professor you didn't really
• 9:38
  agree with. You talked about your dad and
• 9:40
  your mom a little bit. Did you have a faith growing up?
• 9:44
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  Did you have a faith growing up? How did that evolve or change?
• 10:31
  Yeah, I was. Well, my father's a pastor, so I
• 10:34
  I grew up Christian. I would probably be a really
• 10:39
  strong Christian. And then I was saved at 15, but
• 10:45
  then I lost my faith also around that age as well.
• 10:52
  A big part of it was because I grew up in a abusive household
• 10:57
  and my father, who's a pastor, kind of embodied what it meant,
• 11:03
  what church meant to me, what God meant to me.
• 11:06
  You know, we call it Father God. And so to this day, the idea of
• 11:11
  a loving father is so foreign to me.
• 11:13
  Like what most people most believe is in our generation
• 11:18
  have down is the love of God, but they lack the fear and the
• 11:23
  reverence. For me, it's flipped me.
• 11:26
  I get the reverence on any day. I get the fear any day I get
• 11:29
  that. But the love of God I always
• 11:32
  struggle with. And so I was also kicked out of
• 11:37
  my home a lot. And so I I went through
• 11:39
  homelessness a lot. How old were you?
• 11:42
  The first time I got kicked out, probably less than 5.
• 11:47
  Like I was like, I was like, yeah, I wasn't going to school
• 11:53
  at that point. So that's like the.
• 11:54
  First time how do you get kicked out of your home at 5:00?
• 11:57
  What did that look like? Well, it happened twice when I
• 11:59
  was at that age. So dropping off, dropping me off
• 12:02
  at a park or dropping me off at a laundromat.
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  By yourself? Yeah.
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  For how long? The first time was like maybe,
• 12:10
  maybe a half a night or one night, and then the second time
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  was about a full day. I mean, I think anyone listening
• 12:23
  to that is probably thinking, well, that's not legal.
• 12:26
  You can't just leave your five year old alone in a park or, you
• 12:31
  know, at a laundromat. It's not safe.
• 12:33
  No, it wasn't safe. It was so bad.
• 12:36
  Yeah. Were your parents like having a
• 12:38
  mental health issue or they were they angry?
• 12:40
  What was going on that that happened?
• 12:43
  I wouldn't call it a mental health issue, I just think this
• 12:45
  is like a difference between eastern and western ideology.
• 12:51
  Like the word abuse tends to have a much more strict
• 13:01
  definition that in Eastern ideology that whereas the West
• 13:05
  tends to have a little more loose definition.
• 13:10
  I don't think that was like, that's the way to raise a kid,
• 13:13
  but it's not that unheard of in a Korean household.
• 13:19
  To take a 5 year old and drop them off somewhere for a day and
• 13:22
  think that that's not abuse. You're saying your parents, when
• 13:24
  they were doing that, it wasn't, they did not think this is
• 13:27
  abuse. They thought this was.
• 13:29
  We're teaching Reed a lesson of some kind.
• 13:31
  Yeah, like I'm, I'm teaching him that he needs to be more
• 13:36
  grateful for what he has. Yeah.
• 13:40
  I'm sorry that you went through that, Reed.
• 13:42
  That must have been terrifying. That's pretty scary, yeah.
• 13:46
  Do you talk to your parents about that now that you're
• 13:48
  older? You know, they're older, maybe
• 13:50
  they have different views on it now.
• 13:52
  Have you guys discussed that? That was like a bad thing, but I
• 14:01
  don't know, I guess it's weird. I it was scary and it sucked,
• 14:05
  but when I think about it doesn't really hurt.
• 14:09
  So it's not like I need to talk about this with you and I need
• 14:12
  an apology from you. I never thought about it that
• 14:15
  way. And now you don't feel like it's
• 14:17
  in the way of your relationship now with your parents.
• 14:20
  No, no. There were some things that
• 14:25
  maybe the last time I got kicked out, that's when I was like
• 14:29
  homeless for about two months. That one was the toughest 1.
• 14:34
  And how, how I even LED up to that, you know, I, I developed a
• 14:40
  lot of resentment because for the longest time I was told that
• 14:44
  all these punishments that were happening to me was my fault.
• 14:47
  And I believed it until finally around when I was a teenager, I
• 14:52
  started thinking for myself. And then and I started comparing
• 14:55
  myself to my peers. And I was like, OK, maybe maybe
• 14:59
  you're getting hit all the time, not because of something that
• 15:03
  you did, but they got something that they're not dealing with.
• 15:07
  And once I made that switch in my head, that really pissed me
• 15:11
  off because like, I was like, how dare you let me think that
• 15:14
  for my entire life that everything was my fault.
• 15:18
  And I wouldn't really let that resentment go until I was around
• 15:24
  2120 years old. And it was only because, and I
• 15:30
  think a big part of the reason why I didn't crumble as a child
• 15:33
  with all that pressure is because I had my aunt and my
• 15:37
  grandparents. I didn't get that unconditional
• 15:40
  love from my parents, but I got them from my grandparents.
• 15:44
  One thing that I've always said was like when I was a kid was
• 15:46
  that like my grandparents are like my heart.
• 15:50
  My aunt is like my soul. And I wasn't getting what I
• 15:54
  needed from my direct family, but I got it from my
• 15:58
  grandparents. And my grandmother's sort of
• 16:02
  last wish was that like, I want you to make up with your dad,
• 16:07
  Like I want you to forgive him. And I wasn't ready to forgive
• 16:10
  him, But because I love my grandma so much, I was like, OK,
• 16:13
  I'll do it. And I did it that the next week.
• 16:16
  And I remember we met up at in front of not a Dunkin Donut, a
• 16:23
  Krispy Kreme. And I, I thought I was going to
• 16:27
  fight the guy. I thought I was going to like
• 16:29
  all like, I had all this tension.
• 16:31
  I was like, OK, it's going to go down.
• 16:33
  But I saw him. And all I had was pity because
• 16:39
  the three years that I didn't see this guy, it looked like he
• 16:44
  aged like 15. And the image in my head that I
• 16:49
  had of like this tyrant, this strong dictator patriarch, it
• 16:57
  was completely destroyed because all I saw was like a weaker old
• 17:01
  man in front of me. And the rage was just kind of
• 17:05
  gone. And not that like I forgave him
• 17:10
  right away. That took like about six months,
• 17:12
  but it did. What about your mom?
• 17:17
  Did you have any kind of experience with her?
• 17:21
  I mean, she sounds like she was in on the abuse.
• 17:24
  I don't know if that's fair to say.
• 17:25
  Should she drop you off at the park too and leave you alone
• 17:28
  like that? Or was that more she just
• 17:30
  couldn't stop your dad from doing it?
• 17:32
  She's done it a couple of times. Not nearly as much as my father.
• 17:38
  Yeah, she reminds. She reminds me more of the like
• 17:43
  the edible mother that loves their child too much.
• 17:48
  But I have to say they are also good people.
• 17:51
  OK, I. Was going to say, I was actually
• 17:53
  going to pause the podcast for a minute because we went down a
• 17:55
  line that I wasn't, I think neither of us were maybe like
• 17:59
  anticipating. So have you have you talked to
• 18:01
  your parents about that? Because like leaving you alone
• 18:03
  as a kid was a 5 year old. That's a, that's a, that's a
• 18:07
  crazy thing. Obviously very dangerous for the
• 18:10
  five year old and traumatic. That specific event hasn't been
• 18:14
  addressed, but me getting kicked out and, like, the abuse that I
• 18:18
  went through has been like, they apologized for it and all that,
• 18:24
  but not like I'm sorry for XY and Z.
• 18:27
  It was more like, I'm sorry I did that, you know, A blanket
• 18:31
  statement, if you will. Yeah.
• 18:35
  Have you talked about this before?
• 18:36
  Like what you what you went through as a kid?
• 18:38
  No, but I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't be laughing.
• 18:41
  It's super traumatic. It's a comedian.
• 18:43
  But like the way she's looking at me, like like I'm like this
• 18:48
  broken down. I just, I, I didn't know it was
• 18:52
  this bad. Like I, I've said it before,
• 18:56
  like I told my other Korean friends and it's just like
• 18:59
  normally like, Oh yeah, of course that's what you went
• 19:01
  through, but like. Your other Korean friends were
• 19:03
  like this is normal behavior. Yeah, I mean, they know it was
• 19:06
  like, oh, that's bad. But it's also like, I've they've
• 19:09
  heard similar stories. So.
• 19:12
  But then I I I tell her and she's like.
• 19:15
  I'm crying. I mean, it's like, well, I'm
• 19:18
  just imagining you as Reed as a kid and no child should you
• 19:22
  know, there are things that are overtly and you can use the word
• 19:24
  abuse that are overtly abusive. And I don't mean to dwell on
• 19:27
  that here on the show. Like the point of the show is
• 19:29
  not to like dwell on bad things that happened to us, obviously,
• 19:31
  because we want to get to like the very cool things you've done
• 19:34
  with your life and you're doing with your life.
• 19:35
  But. I think it's also one of, for
• 19:39
  me, a proof of God that even though I was going through all
• 19:43
  those things, I was relatively a happy child.
• 19:46
  And today I, I'm, I think, I think I'm pretty normal.
• 19:52
  And also you can ask any of my friends.
• 19:57
  I am a die hard optimist and I love people and I want genuinely
• 20:02
  want the best for people. I am an introvert so I do get
• 20:07
  like tired out if I'm around too many people for too long.
• 20:10
  But still, I genuinely have. I love people and I am, I will
• 20:17
  die, an optimist. You're that's resilience.
• 20:21
  I think so. I'm less so because I'm
• 20:24
  resilient, but more so because I think I have someone up above
• 20:29
  watching out for me. You absolutely do.
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• 21:48
  So you're talking about your faith.
• 21:49
  You fell away from your faith at 15 the same year.
• 21:52
  It sounds like you found faith. Can you share what?
• 21:54
  Was around that time. I don't have like a direct.
• 21:56
  I can't remember exactly when I got saved, I just know it
• 21:59
  happened around that time. But.
• 22:02
  What happened? How I got saved?
• 22:04
  Well, yeah, how you decided, OK, I'm I want to accept Jesus, I
• 22:07
  want to be a Christian. And then the same similar time
• 22:10
  frame you decide I'm. I'm leaving this entirely.
• 22:13
  Oh, I see. The way I got really close to
• 22:16
  God was I found a home church that was a group of my peers.
• 22:23
  Usually when I was at my father's church, it was people
• 22:25
  that are much older, but all of a sudden I had other like high
• 22:29
  schoolers, middle schoolers. There were also Christians that
• 22:31
  I could talk to and small group leaders that are used to counsel
• 22:38
  kids that are going through things that a normal middle
• 22:40
  school or high school will be going through.
• 22:42
  And that community really helped flourish my faith.
• 22:46
  And then at around 15 years old, that's when I made that
• 22:50
  realization that all this abuse that was happening to me, it's
• 22:54
  not your fault. And that really pissed me off.
• 22:58
  And a lot of things started to make sense.
• 23:03
  Like I, I would be like, I because I would just try to be
• 23:07
  so perfect all the time because it did not make sense to me why
• 23:15
  my father or my mother would flip.
• 23:18
  But I would look for things that weren't there because obviously
• 23:21
  it's your fault because they're telling you that it's your
• 23:22
  fault. But all of a sudden when I'm
• 23:25
  able to say, hey, maybe the reason why you can't find a
• 23:29
  reason why they should have gotten that mad, it's because it
• 23:34
  was never there to begin with. And then that really that that
• 23:39
  pissed me off. And then of course, you go to,
• 23:44
  if God is a loving God and I'm an innocent child, how do you do
• 23:55
  that? How?
• 23:58
  And he's a pastor. And how do you add that level of
• 24:02
  complexity for me to find it so impossible to find you and
• 24:06
  expect me to praise you for it? And so I've, I started asking
• 24:10
  myself these questions and I couldn't find answers.
• 24:14
  And because I couldn't find answers, I assumed there weren't
• 24:16
  any. And I assume it's because there
• 24:19
  is no God. And then that was around like a
• 24:25
  about a two to three-year process.
• 24:27
  And then I went from like Christian agnostic to atheist to
• 24:33
  back to Christian again. What was there someone at that
• 24:36
  time you were talking to? Like, did you talk about this
• 24:39
  with your dad and say, dad, you've abused me, I'm mad.
• 24:44
  You say you represent God. If this is who God is, I don't
• 24:46
  want anything to do with it. Did you have a conversation like
• 24:48
  that? Like a showdown?
• 24:54
  So I got kicked out when I was for the last time I had when I
• 24:57
  was 17. And up until that .1 of the key
• 25:01
  themes in my life, it's kind of dark was that I thought that I
• 25:05
  was going to have one day where I would be able to unleash all
• 25:09
  of the hate or the anger or the resentment that I was building
• 25:12
  up one day on my father and just let it all out.
• 25:16
  And I, and I knew how I wanted it to happen.
• 25:21
  I would, I was because I just knew it was a waiting game.
• 25:24
  He's going to flip and then he's going to hit me.
• 25:26
  And so I was like, I'll let him have the first hit and I'm going
• 25:29
  to take the rest. And I remember I was, it was in
• 25:32
  summer vacation before senior year.
• 25:35
  And this kind of gives insight as to what the anger problems
• 25:39
  look like. I was in my room and it was a
• 25:45
  Saturday morning and all of a sudden I hear in Korean come
• 25:51
  here. And I was like, oh, OK, is today
• 25:56
  the day? And so I, I go to the restroom
• 25:59
  that he was standing in. And the reason why he got mad is
• 26:03
  because my toothbrush was instead of being it being
• 26:07
  upright, it was like that it was laying on the table and the
• 26:12
  water on the toothbrush was on the table.
• 26:15
  And I really take them up and he grabbed me by my collar and I
• 26:23
  raised my hand up getting ready to hit him back.
• 26:26
  And this is the first time I've ever done anything like that.
• 26:28
  So he got really surprised and really mad by that.
• 26:32
  And so he he started cussing me out in Korean and then he
• 26:36
  grabbed me by the collar, like head butted me, pulled me and
• 26:41
  head butted me and then screamed at me telling me to get out.
• 26:48
  And I remember I was like in my room getting my things.
• 26:52
  I don't know why I didn't fight back right there, but I didn't.
• 26:55
  And I went in my room getting my things because I was used to
• 26:58
  doing this. And all of a sudden he runs into
• 27:01
  my room throwing haymakers, just throwing punches in every
• 27:05
  direction. And then I was like, oh, OK,
• 27:09
  it's, it's happening now. And so I started throwing
• 27:12
  punches back and but my mother got in between us of within like
• 27:18
  10 seconds, like something I like.
• 27:20
  I barely, I didn't get anything out.
• 27:22
  I, I felt so cut off from what could have been a really
• 27:27
  emotionally cathartic, toxic, cathartic moment, But it didn't
• 27:31
  happen. And then that's when I, I got
• 27:38
  kicked out for the last time. And then he cut, he cut me off,
• 27:41
  you know, everything he didn't, I had my own bank account.
• 27:44
  He restricted access to that. And so I wasn't able to access
• 27:47
  the money that I saved myself. Obviously no phone.
• 27:51
  He cut off the phone and I was sleeping at a park for about one
• 28:00
  month and then I was able to get access to my bank accounts.
• 28:06
  There was a little bit of hiccup there so I it took another month
• 28:09
  before I was able to Get full access.
• 28:11
  I was staying. I exhausted my list of friends
• 28:14
  or like staying at places, but I was able to last another month
• 28:18
  to the point where I was able to Get full access to my bank
• 28:20
  account where I saved just about $3000 which lasted my senior
• 28:26
  year. I'm curious when you so and
• 28:29
  thank you for sharing all of this.
• 28:30
  And when you were so when you're in senior year and you have this
• 28:32
  money, did you live at a hotel? Like what were you doing?
• 28:34
  Where did you live at that time? So Korean, so Koreans.
• 28:39
  We have our own Korean newspaper and then there will be less than
• 28:43
  legal listings on these newspapers.
• 28:47
  And so for I think it was exactly 550 bucks a month, I was
• 28:52
  able to stay in a room that was about half the size of the
• 28:57
  studio and. First senior year of high
• 29:00
  school. Yeah, and it sounds bad, but it
• 29:06
  was the first time in my life where I, I, I could breathe.
• 29:10
  And so like you, I've, if people saw this living situation I was
• 29:16
  in, they might think that like, oh, it must have been really
• 29:18
  tough for you. But it was the first time in my
• 29:21
  life where I didn't feel this oppressive pressure 24/7.
• 29:27
  And I can just kind of think on my own.
• 29:32
  And it was liberating. It was awesome.
• 29:35
  And it was around that time because I have this time to
• 29:38
  think freely. I also, it was kind of a turning
• 29:43
  point in my life because I felt like I was so behind my peers.
• 29:46
  I started reading voraciously and getting my getting every
• 29:51
  book that I can have my hand get my hands on.
• 29:54
  And as I as I developed myself as a as a critical thinker, I
• 29:58
  started attacking my faith and approaching the Bible, Bible
• 30:03
  secularly. And I was like looking for
• 30:05
  contradictions. It reminds me of Matthew 5.
• 30:08
  Seek and you shall find, ask and shall be given to you.
• 30:10
  Knock and shall be open to you. As humans, we are creatures of
• 30:16
  focus. And so if you look for things
• 30:20
  that are wrong, that's what you'll find.
• 30:21
  And if you look for things that are right, that's what you'll
• 30:23
  find. And I think the Bible is the
• 30:26
  same way. Whether there was contradictory
• 30:28
  evidence or not, I wanted to not believe.
• 30:32
  And so I found the things that convinced me, and I didn't look
• 30:35
  for the things that would convince me otherwise.
• 30:39
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• 31:35
  I think about your life trajectory and now what you're
• 31:37
  doing now being you're, I mean, you're a comedian and you're a
• 31:41
  very good one in my view. And I do think comedians really
• 31:45
  understand the dark side of human nature.
• 31:48
  They understand the darkness that exists out there.
• 31:52
  There's gallows humor, obviously, you know, as part of
• 31:55
  the comedic exercises. But do you?
• 31:57
  So I guess this is where I'm going with this is your
• 31:59
  childhood and some of the tough things that you've experienced,
• 32:02
  some of them that you've never even shared before that you're
• 32:03
  sharing right now with our our audience.
• 32:06
  Do you think that those maybe prepared you in a way that with
• 32:12
  an understanding even of human nature for the kind of comedy
• 32:15
  that you do or how do you think it impacted the comedy that you
• 32:18
  do may be a better question. I think it forced me to become
• 32:21
  an optimist so that when I go through trials now, I've learned
• 32:34
  to not worry about the things that I can't change and focus on
• 32:41
  the things that I can. And when I find myself going
• 32:45
  through maybe a depressive episode or something like that,
• 32:53
  through trial and error, there's this is saying this like the
• 32:55
  worst time to look for a coping mechanism is when you need one.
• 33:00
  I have I'm really lucky to have really good people in my life
• 33:04
  that I that I can rely on and lean on.
• 33:08
  But sorry, I'm going off topic with my childhood in the trauma.
• 33:13
  I think if I didn't make myself laugh, I probably wouldn't be
• 33:17
  here. It was it was trial by fire.
• 33:22
  I was forced to be able to find other things that could be funny
• 33:26
  because of how dark the world was.
• 33:29
  And it I guess it was proof that if everything is dark around
• 33:39
  you, maybe you yourself just has to, has to be the light that you
• 33:41
  need, you know? At what point did you feel like
• 33:46
  you came back into faith and you had a different view of God?
• 33:50
  Not as someone who was angry, who permitted your father to
• 33:54
  abuse you, but this was a God who loved you.
• 33:57
  And any hurt that your parents did to you wasn't God's hurting
• 34:02
  of you, but it was him allowing them to have free will.
• 34:05
  When did all of those pieces come into play for you?
• 34:08
  In 2021, I lost my grandparents. So sorry.
• 34:16
  It was OK. It was the first time in my
• 34:19
  life, funny enough, where I felt actually suicidal, like I
• 34:24
  actually just wanted to die. And it happened in succession.
• 34:28
  My at first it happened with my grandmother getting a heart
• 34:31
  attack. And when that happened, I
• 34:38
  realized I was being selfish and there's other people that I need
• 34:40
  to take care of. So you can't kill yourself right
• 34:42
  now. And then my grandfather passed
• 34:47
  about 40 days later. And so I had to take care of my
• 34:53
  family like that and take care of my aunt and make sure that
• 34:58
  she was OK. And then my grandmother passed.
• 35:03
  And at this point, I was running below empty.
• 35:06
  I had nothing to tank. I, I, I, I, I, I was just like
• 35:11
  lamenting everyday. And then funny enough, about a
• 35:18
  month later, I was sitting at this restaurant with my buddy
• 35:22
  get just getting dinner. And he was just trying to be
• 35:25
  there for me because he knew I was going to really do a really
• 35:27
  tough time. And I, I look at here about 50
• 35:31
  feet away, a crash. And I look over and there's a
• 35:36
  homeless lady with a cart that's sitting on the ground that she's
• 35:41
  clearly fallen. And I look and I'm like, OK,
• 35:44
  someone's going to help her, right?
• 35:46
  Couple seconds ago, seconds ago by no, nothing, no one does.
• 35:50
  And so I was like, all right, I go, I'll go help her.
• 35:53
  I get up, I help her out. All right, you have a nice day,
• 35:56
  lady. And then there's a voice in my
• 35:58
  head that tells me you can do more.
• 36:02
  And I'm like, God, I'm running on empty here, but OK, I go to
• 36:07
  the restaurant, buy her some food, bring it out.
• 36:09
  Here you go, lady. Have a good day.
• 36:12
  As soon as I walk away, you can do more.
• 36:14
  I'm like, Oh my gosh, what more do I, I don't even, OK, I go to
• 36:17
  the, I drive to the closest Ross, buy a couple of outfits
• 36:21
  and I was like, OK, now I went the extra mile and God was like,
• 36:25
  you can do more. And he gave I, I.
• 36:29
  So basically I made a video and I was able to raise around
• 36:33
  $20,000 for this woman and he was Marsha White.
• 36:37
  And for six months everyday, three times a day, I would go
• 36:42
  visit her, call her twice, any DMV visit, any social worker
• 36:47
  visit anything I drove her. I, my life revolved around this
• 36:52
  woman for six months and and I was again running on zero.
• 36:59
  I had nothing to give and it was only the Holy Spirit that gave
• 37:03
  me just enough to do the next thing he wanted me to do for
• 37:07
  this lady. And this whole time I would be
• 37:14
  getting crucified online because people thought I stole money
• 37:17
  from this woman. And so not only was I doing what
• 37:21
  I thought was the right thing, people were running my name
• 37:25
  through the mud telling me that I was abusing this woman
• 37:28
  financially, sexually, emotionally, physically,
• 37:30
  everything. And also the woman that I was
• 37:34
  helping, Marshall White, was also a alcoholic, schizophrenic.
• 37:40
  And so it seems like I was getting attacked on all sides.
• 37:48
  And I remember just praying to God, I was like, this is too
• 37:54
  much. I, I, I can't, why are you
• 37:57
  letting me go through all of this pain all at once?
• 38:02
  One of them I could, I could take.
• 38:05
  But you take away my heart. My grandparents are my heart.
• 38:12
  And then you take away my career because I was getting cancelled
• 38:18
  and crucified online and I have no respite at home because my
• 38:23
  whole life revolves around this lady.
• 38:25
  I have absolutely nothing. What do you?
• 38:28
  What more do you want from me? And then I remember God
• 38:33
  illustrating or clearly telling me, how much more do I have to
• 38:37
  take away from you before you realize I was the only thing
• 38:40
  that you had to begin with. And then in that moment, almost
• 38:46
  everything became clear to me that through this suffering, I
• 38:54
  was able to empathize with our Savior in a way that most people
• 38:58
  never will. I was doing the right thing and
• 39:02
  I was being crucified for it. And helping someone that to this
• 39:09
  day I can't say truly knew what was going on and so can never be
• 39:16
  truly grateful for it. And so the same way that Christ
• 39:22
  gave his life, never, never sinned and was helping people,
• 39:31
  that I think we can both agree that a lot of them are
• 39:34
  ungrateful for for what he's done.
• 39:36
  And yet he does it not because it's easy, but because it's the
• 39:40
  right thing. And you do it because it's the
• 39:42
  right thing, period. It doesn't matter if you get
• 39:44
  recognition and it doesn't matter if you get pilloried for
• 39:48
  it. You just do it.
• 39:50
  Blessed are those who suffer from my name's sake that that
• 39:55
  lied, that are lied about, and for theirs is the Kingdom of
• 39:58
  heaven. I live that.
• 40:01
  And from that moment on, because of the pain that I went through
• 40:07
  and that recognization, he also taught me to love myself because
• 40:12
  I was running on empty and I felt so helpless.
• 40:20
  How familiar are you with like angelic encounters?
• 40:23
  I mean IA little bit OK, I have to definitely talk about that on
• 40:27
  the show. All right, so this one do.
• 40:29
  You feel like you had an angelic encounter.
• 40:31
  It's kind of crazy, all right? So after this whole ordeal, it
• 40:34
  takes six months. I have so many questions by the
• 40:37
  way, but I want to hear about the Angelica.
• 40:38
  OK, this will be the last one. Tell me.
• 40:39
  No. It's beautiful.
• 40:40
  Tell me. So it took six months for me to
• 40:44
  get her out of a motel into something called transitional
• 40:47
  housing and then get her into a permanent home.
• 40:51
  So all together, that was about a nine month ordeal.
• 40:55
  After I, after all of that, I, I finally was able to get her
• 40:58
  apartment. That was the first time in about
• 41:01
  nine months where I didn't have to see her everyday.
• 41:04
  And I felt like, OK, I can take some time for myself.
• 41:08
  And I was, I remember I was at Ellie Fitness in a jacuzzi just
• 41:12
  relaxing or trying to relax. And then this, this black man
• 41:18
  comes to me in the Jacuzzi and he, he says, you know, I didn't
• 41:23
  ask him anything. I didn't try to talk to me.
• 41:24
  He just comes out to me. He says, you know, I have a
• 41:27
  voice of an Angel. And I was like, OK.
• 41:33
  And he's like, you know what I think you should do?
• 41:36
  I'm like, what? He says every day in the morning
• 41:40
  when you wake up, I want you to go to a mirror and I want you to
• 41:44
  look at yourself. And I want you to say I love you
• 41:48
  and I'm going to work on loving you better.
• 41:51
  And I was like, OK, didn't really think much of it, but I
• 41:59
  actually started doing that and it actually helped immensely.
• 42:05
  And it was sort of like the catalyst that I needed to learn
• 42:08
  to love myself. And then a couple years later,
• 42:12
  not completely forgetting about that, just just wondering
• 42:15
  because I'm a, because I'm a nerd.
• 42:17
  I was like, I wonder if there are a theme between angelic
• 42:25
  encounters. And so I was like, all right,
• 42:26
  angelic encounters. And then the first that came up
• 42:29
  was Gabriel. And it turns out that the most
• 42:31
  common description for Gabriel is a beautiful black man.
• 42:36
  And I, I don't know if that was an Angel, but for me, I just,
• 42:39
  I'm just interpreting it that way.
• 42:41
  That was like God just being like, here you go.
• 42:44
  And that's the beautiful thing about all of these things, is
• 42:46
  that God can use anything. Yeah.
• 42:47
  And maybe it was an Angel, maybe it wasn't, we don't know.
• 42:50
  But he used it and it, it worked.
• 42:53
  And it's in line with God's teaching because God does want
• 42:57
  us to, you know, love our neighbor as ourself.
• 42:59
  But to see that we are made in his image and that we are, we
• 43:03
  are loved by him. And we can't love other people
• 43:07
  if we don't treat ourselves with the love that God gives us.
• 43:11
  I mean, if, if we don't treat ourselves with love, how are we
• 43:14
  going to be a vessel of love for other people?
• 43:16
  Yeah, I know you want to ask that question, but one of the
• 43:20
  other proofs of God for me is that naturally, when people are
• 43:26
  filled with love, overflowing with love, the first thing that
• 43:30
  they want to do is not hoard that love.
• 43:32
  The first thing that they want to do is share it.
• 43:34
  Like, yo, I'm so happy right now.
• 43:36
  I want you to be happy too. People just naturally become
• 43:39
  more extroverted and want to share the joy.
• 43:42
  And to me, I think that's like, for me, that's like proof of
• 43:44
  God. It's beautiful you are
• 43:47
  describing all of this, this crazy encounter really with
• 43:52
  Martha meeting her, excuse me, with Marcia meeting her.
• 43:55
  I was actually reading a news article where they said Martha
• 43:58
  which looks like they got. The name of that first?
• 44:00
  OK, protect her identity. OK, interesting.
• 44:02
  But she passed away last year and so now I feel comfortable
• 44:06
  saying her name. She was an older woman.
• 44:08
  What was her story? So she, OK, I want to be
• 44:16
  respectful to some of the family members, but basically she she
• 44:20
  actually grew up in the South Bay.
• 44:26
  She had a difficult marriage, got divorced and was an
• 44:35
  alcoholic from an early age. And at some point that addiction
• 44:41
  took over and she lost all of her money.
• 44:45
  And then she became a homeless. And while homeless, she
• 44:48
  developed certain psychosis, one of them being schizophrenia.
• 44:54
  I'm curious with the attacks on you because the base, you know,
• 44:58
  basically the, the, the valiant effort to help somebody, right?
• 45:02
  And then TikTok accusing you of all of this stuff.
• 45:05
  There's all kinds of people accusing other people of things
• 45:07
  on the Internet. That happens everyday.
• 45:09
  If you're a public figure, no matter what you're doing, you're
• 45:11
  going to get somebody hating on you for something.
• 45:13
  They're going to come up with something.
• 45:14
  I know from personal experience and I've seen it happen to
• 45:16
  virtually everyone. So I'm not surprised that that
• 45:19
  happened to you. I am surprised how it seems like
• 45:21
  TikTok made it like a group of TikTok sleuths made it their
• 45:24
  personal project to go after you.
• 45:26
  And do you think that's because in part it was such a unique
• 45:29
  thing that you were doing? Like very few people are like
• 45:31
  personally taking it on as their problem to help somebody like a
• 45:35
  Martha. Yeah.
• 45:39
  And no matter how much evidence, counter evidence, sorry, no
• 45:45
  matter, no matter how much counter evidence that I gave.
• 45:47
  So I let, so I raced through GoFundMe and then I let GoFundMe
• 45:53
  hire a third party investigation team to prove everything.
• 45:59
  I gave them all the receipts, all of it.
• 46:02
  And then once they sent back a report that I could then
• 46:06
  publicly state, it still wasn't enough.
• 46:10
  And no matter how much evidence I gave, actually at some point,
• 46:14
  once I gave enough evidence, they just kind of stopped.
• 46:17
  They never apologized. The damage was done and to the
• 46:21
  state people think I did that. Meaning that you did a GoFundMe
• 46:25
  for this woman and then you just took the money and.
• 46:28
  Yeah, I just took the 20,000 bucks and I don't know, not help
• 46:33
  her, but I don't know how much more proof I can give like the
• 46:36
  the apartment, the food, the stocked fridge, the the social
• 46:40
  workers. I don't know, you know, and to
• 46:43
  this day, because of how traumatic that was in my wallet,
• 46:46
  I still carry her around receipts that I got from the
• 46:49
  motels just in case someone comes up to me.
• 46:54
  And I I just, I always have at least some proof that I did what
• 46:57
  I said I did. So what is your right now?
• 47:02
  Well, we didn't get to the part yet where you did, you started
• 47:05
  your TikTok account. I mean, you're in, you're at
• 47:07
  Berkeley, you're having this journey and, and the stuff with
• 47:10
  Martha happened after you started your content creation a
• 47:12
  few years in, but now you're five years and you've got over
• 47:15
  10 million followers. You were at Berkeley, you were
• 47:17
  an English major, you had all this, you know, this, this
• 47:21
  dynamic with your parents and figuring out God's love for you.
• 47:24
  At what point did you decide on the start of TikTok account?
• 47:28
  20/20 it was quarantine and I just the way my mind works, I
• 47:34
  just need something to do And I was so bored.
• 47:36
  And before that I would use Vine compilation videos as sleep
• 47:41
  aids. So right before I went to sleep,
• 47:43
  I would just watch Vine videos because they're mindless and it
• 47:46
  just distracts me. And so I found myself not being
• 47:50
  able to go outside and so I need something to do And I was like
• 47:54
  TikTok is like Vine and I I've seen every Vine video.
• 47:57
  I can make a TikTok and so I just downloaded the app not
• 48:01
  because I was like, oh, I'm going to make this a career.
• 48:04
  I'm going to become a content creator.
• 48:05
  But I was like, I'm I just need something to do.
• 48:07
  But ten days in I got 10,000 followers and I was like. 10
• 48:12
  days into TikTok you just done it to 10 days and you already
• 48:14
  made 10K? How did that happen?
• 48:17
  I tried it. Well, I posted like crazy and I
• 48:21
  tried any and everything because I just had.
• 48:23
  All I had was time and I remember I was going on a run
• 48:27
  and I was just picturing myself like in the middle of a stadium
• 48:30
  with 10,000 eyeballs just staring at me.
• 48:31
  I was like, I think you're on to something here and I think you
• 48:35
  should go all in. And so I did.
• 48:37
  And then five months later, God, a million, my first million.
• 48:42
  Wow. And now it's over 10 and you've
• 48:45
  been doing this whole time a lot of comedy videos.
• 48:48
  That's the that's, I would say probably the primary content.
• 48:52
  Comedy so OK I first started out funny enough with educational
• 48:59
  Korean and Japanese videos and. Then seriously, I didn't realize
• 49:03
  that was the start. And then?
• 49:04
  How to speak? How to speak Korean and
• 49:06
  Japanese? Yeah, yeah.
• 49:08
  But in like both. Korean and Japanese, Yeah, OK.
• 49:10
  But like, in unique ways. Like how do you speak like a
• 49:12
  Japanese gangster or or also like a Korean dialects,
• 49:20
  different Korean dialects. And for some reason that did
• 49:22
  really well. Also did a lot of POV videos.
• 49:28
  I love storytelling. And then obviously the comedy
• 49:33
  videos and then the music. Yeah.
• 49:38
  So for me, I never wanted to be pigeon holed as, oh, you're that
• 49:41
  you're that guy, you know, I just want to be known as Reed
• 49:44
  Troy. And I think largely by the grace
• 49:47
  of God, I've accomplished that. So your original plan was, I'm
• 49:53
  going to have fun with this and I'm going to also make this my
• 49:55
  living because I can. And you had a, you had obviously
• 49:59
  a knack for it. What's the approach you take to
• 50:01
  content creation? How do you decide what to
• 50:03
  create? OK, it's changed over the years.
• 50:09
  The first three years I would post five times a day everyday,
• 50:13
  and that was largely dictated by trends in the algorithm.
• 50:17
  And also me like being a nerd and dissecting every video like
• 50:21
  I have. I had like notebooks filled with
• 50:23
  like OK frame by frame. Why do I think this video went,
• 50:27
  did well, went viral. And you do that everyday for
• 50:30
  three years and it's sort of becomes automatic.
• 50:33
  Like subconsciously it's like tattooed into who you are when
• 50:37
  you think of content. And once I felt like hosting 5
• 50:43
  videos a day wasn't serving me and that I would be, my time
• 50:47
  would be better spent trying to make one really good video
• 50:50
  everyday. I also felt creatively much more
• 50:57
  fulfilled. And so now when I post a video,
• 51:03
  it's mostly just dialogue and I'm trying to convey the ideas
• 51:10
  that I think are thought provoking.
• 51:14
  And a lot of it is I, I'm just like asking God like, Hey, what
• 51:18
  do you want me to post today? Or if it's a video that's not
• 51:22
  Christian, I'm just like, OK, God, even though this isn't
• 51:27
  directly about you, make sure that this is a video that you
• 51:30
  want me to make, you know? And I don't, I don't, I know
• 51:33
  about 100 every time, but I stumble, I try to stumble
• 51:36
  forward. What's the sense that you got
• 51:39
  when you think God is in the video?
• 51:42
  Like God's will is in support of the video versus not?
• 51:45
  How do you make that calculation?
• 51:48
  And I'll say one quick thing before you answer about that
• 51:50
  because we were discussing this on the show recently, actually
• 51:52
  with Jonna Shuster, who wrote this beautiful book called
• 51:55
  Hearing God's Voice. And she was sharing how there's
• 51:58
  like these four different parameters you can use for for
• 52:01
  understanding if this is God's voice or not.
• 52:04
  The first one is God's teaching. Obviously, you know, the Bible,
• 52:09
  we're Catholics, so the Magisterium of the Church of
• 52:11
  2000 years of church teaching, which is incredibly helpful.
• 52:14
  The second one is the character of God, like would, is this
• 52:17
  within God's character? You know, is this goodness?
• 52:19
  Is this truth? Is this beauty?
• 52:22
  Then there is also the question of is this going to bring, does
• 52:26
  this bring about fruitfulness in you as a person, right?
• 52:28
  Because if you're doing something, it's not fruitful,
• 52:30
  it's not bringing the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
• 52:32
  You're like, is this God or is there something else going on?
• 52:35
  What's your framework that you use?
• 52:37
  Yeah, so for me #1 and it's the reason why I just like
• 52:45
  memorizing the Bible. So like the book of James, I can
• 52:48
  recount from beginning to end. And we're called to write His
• 52:52
  word on our heart, right? And when a video, when I make a
• 53:01
  video, I know that was directly God's will is one, because in
• 53:07
  the video I try to quote Scripture as much as I can.
• 53:11
  That's seamless so that you don't know that I'm saying it.
• 53:16
  So I know that biblically at least it's sound, you know.
• 53:19
  And then the fruit, I, the, the, the fruit has to be divided.
• 53:25
  It can't be purely positive, because if it's purely positive,
• 53:28
  then I know there wasn't substantive enough.
• 53:30
  There has to be what do you want?
• 53:33
  What do you want to call it? Like theological disagreement,
• 53:35
  but there has to be a conversation of God taking
• 53:39
  place. Meaning the impact, like on your
• 53:41
  followers of how people take the content.
• 53:42
  If it's all this, like, nice job Reed, but you're looking for
• 53:45
  people to really engage. Yeah, and then how it how it
• 53:49
  spreads, like how, how God blesses that video, how well it
• 53:55
  does. That's a big feedback for me.
• 53:57
  Let's take a look at some of the videos.
• 53:59
  Actually, we're going to watch. Yeah, we're going to watch.
• 54:01
  OK, we'll watch a funny one. We'll watch one of my favorites.
• 54:05
  Oh, no. Are you ready?
• 54:06
  Yeah. Who's this guy?
• 54:07
  Oh, boy. Hi.
• 54:09
  Do you have the stuff? I'll make sure you're cool
• 54:10
  first. God is good.
• 54:13
  Oh, all the time. All right.
• 54:14
  What do you want? What do you got?
• 54:17
  I got crosses. Do you have some word?
• 54:20
  Word. Yeah.
• 54:21
  What are you looking for? Got verses, chapters, books.
• 54:25
  Do you have the whole Bible? I do.
• 54:27
  OK, I'll take one. Well, version.
• 54:30
  It was standard NIV. King James.
• 54:32
  I got it in English, Korean, Japanese.
• 54:34
  Say she'll cost you something. You're messing.
• 54:35
  What do you want, dude? I'll take one.
• 54:36
  King James. OK.
• 54:42
  Right here. Fresh off the printer.
• 54:44
  How much do I owe you? Right.
• 54:45
  There you go. You're giving me money.
• 54:53
  Yeah. Just make sure you give back.
• 54:55
  I don't owe you anything. Don't worry about it.
• 54:57
  He paid for it all. What does that mean?
• 54:59
  You mean what does that mean? Have you not read the freeze?
• 55:02
  Put your hands up in the air. Oh.
• 55:05
  Wait, what? All right, all right.
• 55:06
  That was my last Bible. I gave them all away and I ain't
• 55:09
  never going to tell you nothing. Christian size sees up, bees
• 55:13
  down, bees in and bees above and sees in Christians, of course.
• 55:16
  This is not the one I was thinking about this one.
• 55:18
  Jesus loved it. Fair.
• 55:21
  That's fair. Why did I say it like that?
• 55:24
  OK, let's pull up another one. All right, This is a funny one.
• 55:28
  Very funny. This one's called Introverts at
• 55:32
  a party be like. No, take that away from me.
• 55:37
  OK, OK, The party's back.
• 55:55
  People love that one. That's good that's good all
• 55:58
  right. My favorite is the serious one,
• 56:01
  which is also funny it's just very I don't know.
• 56:03
  I don't know how to describe it but we found it.
• 56:05
  Sorry guys, looks. Like.
• 56:07
  This video. I'm not joking.
• 56:09
  That's because the theology is pretty good.
• 56:10
  You've got the theology going on, Reed.
• 56:12
  OK. If you are such a loving,
• 56:16
  powerful, good God, why do you do nothing about the suffering,
• 56:20
  poverty, evil in this world? Do you think you are a good
• 56:25
  person? Yes, of course.
• 56:28
  Then why, when I have given you enough power, food, money to
• 56:32
  help others, have you done nothing?
• 56:34
  Is that a good person? What can I do?
• 56:36
  I can barely survive as it is. And whose fault is that?
• 56:40
  Have others with less not done more?
• 56:42
  Have you been such a wise steward of your time, so
• 56:45
  selflessly generous, so fiscally responsible?
• 56:48
  Or have you squandered it away? I have made you in my image and
• 56:54
  yet you convinced yourself that you are powerless.
• 56:58
  You know deep down inside that thousands of people are waiting
• 57:02
  for you to live up to your potential and yet you throw it
• 57:05
  all away. I gave you a back to carry
• 57:08
  weight, not turn it on them. You think you're angry.
• 57:14
  I am enraged when I see you squander away your potential,
• 57:18
  where thousands of people are waiting for you to cultivate.
• 57:23
  If I answered your prayer and got rid of all this evil, have
• 57:27
  you ever stopped to think that I might just start with you?
• 57:32
  I let evil persist because I love you, because I believe in
• 57:37
  you. I trust that one day you'll stop
• 57:40
  sinning and then you'll do what is right.
• 57:44
  Not because it's easy, but because it's the right thing to
• 57:47
  do. Carry your cross.
• 57:53
  What inspired that? I was making Christian videos
• 57:57
  and a lot of the comments that did not like the video was like,
• 58:05
  you know, if God is so good, then why do kids get cancer?
• 58:08
  You know, if God is so good, why does XY and Z happen?
• 58:10
  Why is there so much evil if he's such a good and loving God?
• 58:13
  And I, I remember I was really sitting with myself in that
• 58:18
  question and for some reason I felt God's anger.
• 58:24
  Well, I think I felt God's anger and especially with the, the,
• 58:32
  the Protestant church, one thing, if I can make a critique
• 58:36
  about the Protestant church is that we lost our reverence
• 58:38
  towards, towards God. And it's great, You know, he's a
• 58:42
  loving God. It's good that we have such a
• 58:44
  profound focus on his love. But there's such a thing as holy
• 58:48
  anger. And I think I was trying to show
• 58:55
  that in that video that you think you see the pain that
• 59:00
  other people are going through and you're the only one that's
• 59:04
  pissed off. God feels it way more than you
• 59:09
  do. And there are people that he is
• 59:15
  trusting to step up to help with that pain and they aren't doing
• 59:20
  so. And because He loves you and
• 59:23
  wants you to have that free will, He's holding himself back,
• 59:28
  holding that anger back because he trusts you and believes that
• 59:34
  you, believes in your potential to do what is right.
• 59:38
  And I that like, I get teary eyed just thinking about it
• 59:41
  right now. And I think that's maybe I God
• 59:45
  used me and I probably failed in portraying it, but that was my
• 59:49
  best attempt in doing so. I can definitely see from what I
• 59:53
  know of you, the little I know of you so far, but the
• 59:55
  personality of yourself coming through.
• 59:57
  But that's what we do right in in trying to share what we
• 1:00:00
  believe God is teaching us is it's through our lens.
• 1:00:03
  But I think that principle is so beautifully done, that God has
• 1:00:06
  created us for so much and to love, to bring so much love into
• 1:00:09
  the world. But it makes me think about the
• 1:00:11
  Parable of the Talents. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:00:14
  And the one who was afraid of God?
• 1:00:16
  You're a hard master and I'm going to bury the talent and so
• 1:00:21
  I'm not going to do all the good things because you're bad and
• 1:00:24
  God saying no because I'm good. I gave you this talent so that
• 1:00:26
  you can then do good abundantly 10X100X.
• 1:00:30
  But you bury, if you bury the talent and you say I'm bad and
• 1:00:32
  walk away, you're part of you know, you are part of the
• 1:00:35
  problem. You aren't you.
• 1:00:36
  You are the very thing that you're accusing me of.
• 1:00:38
  And. And you can't let that fear
• 1:00:41
  freeze you. You know the reverence that you
• 1:00:44
  have for God should only be a reaction so that it makes you
• 1:00:51
  want to do more for His Kingdom. Amen.
• 1:00:55
  And to trust him more cuz he is our Father who loves us.
• 1:00:59
  Do you think that the current Christian content community
• 1:01:03
  that's growing because there's so many digital creators now
• 1:01:06
  increasingly this is how people get their news, their
• 1:01:10
  entertainment, their connection, even like even like brands.
• 1:01:13
  This is how brands sell their product.
• 1:01:15
  It's not typically the way they used to them in the past out.
• 1:01:18
  It's like through creators. It's all around creators now.
• 1:01:21
  Have you found you're in LA? Have you found there is enough
• 1:01:25
  of a community for faith-based And I don't like even that word
• 1:01:29
  that say Christian for Christian content creators.
• 1:01:40
  To be honest, I have not been impressed by quote UN quote
• 1:01:44
  Christian content creators and it's one of the reasons why I
• 1:01:49
  never really labeled myself as a Christian content creator.
• 1:01:52
  I'm just more of a content creator that is Christian and
• 1:01:55
  that because I never try to portray myself as here, read the
• 1:02:04
  Bible with me every day, watch me be like, go to church, go to
• 1:02:11
  church and like I, I, I, I don't for me, like I've often told
• 1:02:19
  people that I'm a hypocrite and that I am a case study of God's
• 1:02:25
  grace, not because I'm a perfect person, but because he used such
• 1:02:29
  a sinful, imperfect person. And you know, like one of the
• 1:02:34
  critiques of Martin Luther King Junior is that he cheated on his
• 1:02:39
  wife a lot. And then you, God used him.
• 1:02:45
  And I'm like, that's what the gospel is.
• 1:02:48
  If he used the perfect person, that person wouldn't need God in
• 1:02:53
  the 1st place. The gospel is that he doesn't
• 1:02:56
  call the qualified. He qualifies the called and it's
• 1:03:00
  through the edification of having a relationship with
• 1:03:02
  Christ himself that we're allowed to do things and his
• 1:03:06
  wonders through us. But for me, the being a
• 1:03:13
  Christian conjugator or, or what I see is too much of legalism
• 1:03:20
  and being a Pharisee as opposed to what I like to be is like I,
• 1:03:28
  I try to make the most honest representation of who I, of what
• 1:03:32
  faith is to me. There was a video where I I
• 1:03:35
  cursed or I said the F word while I was praying because I
• 1:03:41
  actually did that and was it wrong?
• 1:03:45
  Absolutely. Probably.
• 1:03:47
  I probably shouldn't be cursing when I was talking to the most
• 1:03:50
  holy being in the universe. But that's actually what I did
• 1:03:54
  and I wanted to show that it's OK to stumble forward and I'm
• 1:03:58
  not condoning that you pray to God that way.
• 1:04:01
  But I was being honest about how imperfect my faith is and
• 1:04:07
  something I struggle with to this day.
• 1:04:10
  We were talking before we sat down for this interview about
• 1:04:12
  certain things that you don't talk about in your content, and
• 1:04:16
  I'm all can obviously give it away.
• 1:04:17
  We did talk about some of that stuff, but I'm curious how you
• 1:04:21
  approach you when you're making this content.
• 1:04:24
  I believe you are doing it for the glory of God.
• 1:04:26
  I think that's what your goal, your ultimate goal is here.
• 1:04:28
  Obviously imperfectly as I do it very imperfectly.
• 1:04:31
  But you also are making decisions day in and day out
• 1:04:36
  about what to post, what not to post, what to say and what not
• 1:04:39
  to say. And your framework, of course,
• 1:04:43
  end game God. But there's a lot of human
• 1:04:46
  prudence that has to come into play here in figuring out what
• 1:04:48
  to say. What are the parameters you you
• 1:04:51
  use? I, I've learned that because,
• 1:04:55
  and I'm sure you know this as well, when you have a public
• 1:04:58
  lifestyle, the things that are private, you learn to keep
• 1:05:01
  sacred because at at some point you want something that's just
• 1:05:06
  for you, or at least that's how I combat it.
• 1:05:08
  So there's a couple of things that I keep sacred in my life.
• 1:05:11
  I'll never, you'll never see a photo of my friends.
• 1:05:14
  My friends are for me. I'm not going to post them
• 1:05:16
  anywhere. These people are what keep me
• 1:05:20
  grounded, and I'll never share a video or a photo of me working
• 1:05:25
  out just for me. The gym is like a second church.
• 1:05:29
  It's a place where I can relax. It's a place where I can
• 1:05:32
  recharge. And then finally, my church.
• 1:05:36
  You'll never know what church I go to.
• 1:05:38
  I will never share that publicly, and I try to keep that
• 1:05:42
  as low profile as possible because I'm keeping that sacred.
• 1:05:48
  I'll talk about my faith, but the place I go to recharge as a
• 1:05:51
  Christian, that's just for me. And I find that, like with
• 1:05:56
  public life, it's one of the things that's kind of kept me
• 1:05:59
  sane. Is there anything like that for
• 1:06:01
  you? What's only Lila?
• 1:06:04
  Definitely my kids. Oh, you never post your kids?
• 1:06:07
  I've only posted like back of the heads a few times or you
• 1:06:10
  know, a rare occasion I'll I'll do a child but I'll blink out
• 1:06:14
  the face so you can see you can't recognize the chat.
• 1:06:16
  A lot of creeps out there. There's a lot of creeps out
• 1:06:18
  there and it's for their privacy and their safety.
• 1:06:21
  Obviously, like where we live, like our personal community.
• 1:06:24
  I won't post that. Same.
• 1:06:25
  I have to ask. This might be inappropriate.
• 1:06:28
  So you don't have to answer. Yeah.
• 1:06:29
  Do you get like weird DMS? Yeah, OK.
• 1:06:32
  I'm sure you do too. Yeah, I know.
• 1:06:34
  But like for you, I'm just wondering what.
• 1:06:37
  Yeah, I mean, who doesn't like, you know?
• 1:06:41
  I I just figured maybe there was like a veil of protection or
• 1:06:43
  something. Yeah, I mean, not as weird as I
• 1:06:46
  think other women get. OK, I think I actually do have a
• 1:06:49
  bit of a protection. Do you think that's just
• 1:06:51
  spiritual or is something the way that you carry yourself?
• 1:06:54
  That's does it? How do you?
• 1:06:55
  I do think that's an interesting question and I and I actually
• 1:06:58
  was thinking about this the other day because it connects
• 1:07:01
  back to like modesty. And I do think that, and I'm not
• 1:07:06
  because you could say, well, you're blaming the woman for
• 1:07:08
  getting the unwanted advances and that's not fair.
• 1:07:11
  And I agree you shouldn't, you shouldn't blame people
• 1:07:14
  necessarily for unwanted advances, right?
• 1:07:16
  But I will say what you put out into the world does impact the
• 1:07:22
  kind of feedback you'll get. Obviously, there can be a
• 1:07:25
  temptation like even with gym, gym pictures, quite frankly,
• 1:07:28
  like posting yourself in the gym.
• 1:07:29
  I mean, I know you don't do that, right?
• 1:07:31
  But like for men or for women? A lot of money on the table,
• 1:07:34
  I'll tell you I. Mean, I mean, there's a, there
• 1:07:36
  is definitely, I mean that's a real thing that posting certain
• 1:07:40
  kinds of pictures get certain kind of engagement and send
• 1:07:43
  certain messages. And I do think that the women,
• 1:07:47
  I, I do think as women, we will get less bad attention if we're
• 1:07:52
  very careful in how we present ourselves and protect our own
• 1:07:55
  dignity. And that's not to blame women
• 1:07:58
  who get bad advances or, you know, there's no, this is not a
• 1:08:01
  blame thing. It's a common sense thing.
• 1:08:03
  And so, yeah, I do think that I, I've been able to like, for
• 1:08:05
  example, someone who told me like, oh, I've been so many men
• 1:08:08
  have made, I've been, you know, over the years, I've gotten to
• 1:08:11
  know a lot of girls, especially in public life.
• 1:08:12
  And they say, well, so many I've, you know, I've gotten so
• 1:08:14
  many unwanted advances or, you know, men being inappropriate
• 1:08:17
  with me. And I've definitely had a few
• 1:08:20
  situations in my life where there have been some
• 1:08:21
  inappropriate things. But I've been very good at
• 1:08:24
  boundaries. Like I, I'm not going to send a
• 1:08:27
  signal that this is OK. And I'm also going to the way I
• 1:08:30
  present myself, you know, not being naive about stuff.
• 1:08:33
  And so I think that has really protected me.
• 1:08:36
  And I don't think that's something that is unique to me.
• 1:08:38
  I think any woman can take advantage of these protections.
• 1:08:42
  Not to say that's going to fully protect them because there still
• 1:08:44
  will be bad things and bad people out there.
• 1:08:47
  Right, I have. A question though, so yeah.
• 1:08:48
  Let's say you're talking to like an 18 year old girl, right?
• 1:08:54
  And because you uniquely have a maybe a a safer online
• 1:09:02
  experience when it comes to PMS or creepiness.
• 1:09:05
  If you had to give them just like your top three rules that
• 1:09:09
  or boundaries that they should keep when it when having an
• 1:09:12
  online process protect themselves social media.
• 1:09:14
  What would that be for an 18 year old say?
• 1:09:16
  I would say don't post provocative pictures.
• 1:09:19
  I would say that would be a number one thing.
• 1:09:21
  But what's provocative to you? Yeah, I would say if it's, it
• 1:09:24
  doesn't really matter what's provocative to us, it's matters
• 1:09:27
  what's provocative to like potentially most people out
• 1:09:30
  there, especially creeps. OK.
• 1:09:32
  So I would kind of, well, there's like.
• 1:09:33
  Obvious stuff like maybe no bikini photos, but like what
• 1:09:36
  about like what would be what would be the start of that line
• 1:09:41
  for you where it's crossing? Provocative it is.
• 1:09:43
  There is a Gray area. And I remember my dad saying
• 1:09:45
  this when I was growing up, Like modesty is a spectrum, right?
• 1:09:49
  Like what's immodest, basically my we joke.
• 1:09:52
  My dad's, I think he might be on the spectrum.
• 1:09:54
  He would say that himself. But but yeah, it is, it is a
• 1:09:57
  spectrum. So like in one culture, modesty
• 1:09:59
  will look different than in another culture, but they're
• 1:10:01
  both modesty, right? So I don't know that there's
• 1:10:04
  like a hard line, but I would say I think a lot of women have
• 1:10:08
  a have a sense for it. If they really like take a
• 1:10:10
  moment and do reflection about it, they would have a sense for
• 1:10:14
  it. And I'm not saying to like walk
• 1:10:15
  on pins and needles all the time, but to be smart, to be
• 1:10:18
  smart. So I would just, and I would say
• 1:10:21
  if you feel like you're not confident about what be smart
• 1:10:23
  means, talk to other women, maybe even more mature women
• 1:10:27
  who've like been through things in their life and discuss it
• 1:10:30
  with them. So that would be probably the
• 1:10:32
  first thing. And then the second thing would
• 1:10:33
  be like, what you do read is just evaluate what am I going to
• 1:10:37
  share and what am I not going to share?
• 1:10:39
  Because I think if you tend to share everything, everything,
• 1:10:41
  everything, that also is a potential openness that you're
• 1:10:44
  expressing. And then the last thing is you
• 1:10:47
  don't have to respond to every DM and use the block button.
• 1:10:49
  Like you know, if you got weird stuff, just block.
• 1:10:52
  Probably your first step is just private page, huh?
• 1:10:55
  Yeah, probably, yeah. Sucks for you though.
• 1:10:58
  Yeah, I'm not sure how helpful that was, but and it is
• 1:11:01
  different, like what I grew up. So I had social media in my teen
• 1:11:04
  years, early, early stage, like Facebook, things like that,
• 1:11:07
  right. I didn't have TikTok like as a
• 1:11:10
  teenager. So I can't imagine.
• 1:11:12
  Yeah, it's crazy. It is.
• 1:11:16
  It's hard for a non believer to find older mentors, but if
• 1:11:20
  you're a believer you're just surrounded by older mentors
• 1:11:22
  everywhere. Yeah, yeah, it's very true.
• 1:11:25
  So being proactive to find people to help you.
• 1:11:28
  Yeah, because I think a lot of young people too, I've heard
• 1:11:31
  them say things like, well, I like other young people.
• 1:11:34
  I just want to do like, I only like to follow other young
• 1:11:37
  creators. I only want to be with other
• 1:11:38
  young people. And I was home schooled, so I
• 1:11:41
  always had, you can tell, you can tell.
• 1:11:43
  I mean, I mean, it's fine. I'll take it as a compliment.
• 1:11:45
  I always had older people with me and that helped.
• 1:11:49
  I loved that, you know, and I, I hung out with older people and
• 1:11:52
  very younger people. And I think that's actually more
• 1:11:54
  natural because we're not meant to be with just a cohort of
• 1:11:57
  people exactly our age. We're meant to be with people of
• 1:12:00
  all different ages. What's what's that girl that
• 1:12:02
  also was homeschooled? UCLA was an actress.
• 1:12:05
  She has like her, I don't know if it's a podcast, but she's a
• 1:12:07
  YouTube. She talks to the camera.
• 1:12:08
  Brett Cooper. Brett Cooper, Yeah.
• 1:12:10
  Are you guys close? Yeah, she was just on the show a
• 1:12:12
  few months ago, OK. Yeah, yeah, she was home
• 1:12:14
  schooled too, right? Too, Yeah.
• 1:12:16
  So it's true I actually didn't put those pieces together, but
• 1:12:18
  yeah, yeah. OK, that's cool.
• 1:12:20
  Yeah. Yeah, she's doing amazing
• 1:12:22
  things. OK, yeah, I just put those two
• 1:12:25
  in together. Yeah, I just did too.
• 1:12:27
  And Ben Shapiro also went to UCLA, which is also yes, yes,
• 1:12:30
  yes. I actually first met Ben Shapiro
• 1:12:32
  in the in Andrew Breitbart space.
• 1:12:34
  Well. Actually.
• 1:12:35
  I know it's just, it's like it is a crazy thing.
• 1:12:38
  Well, that was the last thing I was going to ask you about.
• 1:12:39
  What is the media landscape and just how you think it's going to
• 1:12:43
  look in 10 years and what do you think that means for all of the
• 1:12:48
  the mission you're on and just for content creation in general?
• 1:12:52
  There's no doubt to me that social media will just become a
• 1:12:56
  stronger presence in people's lives, but it'll look different
• 1:13:00
  than what we recognize social media to be.
• 1:13:03
  Often I think there's going to be microcosms of instead of 1
• 1:13:07
  influencer like us having millions of followers, it's
• 1:13:10
  going to be like 1000 influencers with 10,000
• 1:13:13
  followers. And more and more having an
• 1:13:17
  having a following is become, is going to become more and more
• 1:13:20
  important because the old media or tradition in traditional
• 1:13:24
  social media of things where a couple of companies have a
• 1:13:29
  monopoly on the eyeballs, the eyeballs are now going to be
• 1:13:34
  divided amongst like 100,000 people.
• 1:13:37
  And as long as you have a bigger piece of the pie, you're going
• 1:13:41
  to have a unique advantage against everybody else.
• 1:13:44
  So like for me, the way I got into acting, I was able to skip
• 1:13:50
  a lot of lines because I had millions of followers to begin
• 1:13:52
  with. Which role was that?
• 1:13:55
  Let me see there was. So the first movie I ever did
• 1:14:00
  was called Finding You. It's actually coming out this
• 1:14:04
  year. And then I just got offered for
• 1:14:06
  another role. Actually going to get that offer
• 1:14:10
  this week, but I don't think I'm allowed to speak on that
• 1:14:13
  project. I haven't seen you finding you
• 1:14:15
  yet, so I didn't even. Yeah, I didn't even know.
• 1:14:17
  Have you announced that you're going to?
• 1:14:19
  No, not at all. OK, I was going to say your
• 1:14:21
  first. First.
• 1:14:23
  Also does stuff like with Dharman as well.
• 1:14:25
  OK. But when you slip that in, just
• 1:14:26
  like, and that's like my acting. I was like, what?
• 1:14:28
  Tell me more. Yeah.
• 1:14:29
  Because you're obviously. Acting on TikTok.
• 1:14:30
  But you know, this is this is a little different.
• 1:14:33
  Yeah. And I think God prepped me for
• 1:14:36
  that because I wasn't thinking like, this is going to be a
• 1:14:38
  pivot into acting. I was just playing the stories
• 1:14:42
  that I wanted to tell. I never if weird enough, I never
• 1:14:45
  thought about it until like, producers, directors started
• 1:14:47
  reaching out to me. I was like, oh I can use this
• 1:14:51
  for that. That's so cool.
• 1:14:53
  Yeah, but anyways, people, everybody's going to be more
• 1:14:57
  entrenched into social media and it's going to become even harder
• 1:15:04
  to fight the enemy online because the algorithm and the
• 1:15:10
  way that pop culture will be more and more entrenched and
• 1:15:16
  parasocial relationships will be valued more than actual
• 1:15:19
  relationships. It's going to be hard to reach
• 1:15:21
  people in a meaningful way. It's more like instead of having
• 1:15:28
  a one-on-one conversation on a regular basis, you're probably
• 1:15:31
  going to interact with 10,000 people like for a second.
• 1:15:36
  And it's. Going to be hard.
• 1:15:38
  So many people are going to be watching the creators with the
• 1:15:41
  10,000 people, like we're all going to have our hundred
• 1:15:44
  creators that we watch instead of our hundred friends or our
• 1:15:47
  ten friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:15:49
  And that's already a problem with people today.
• 1:15:50
  They don't have enough friends, real friends.
• 1:15:52
  They're like online. But you're saying that's going
• 1:15:54
  to be exacerbated? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:57
  And with like the younger generation today, they're Gen.
• 1:16:03
  alpha, Gen. alpha. They want to make a good impact.
• 1:16:06
  They want they, they, their hearts are in the right place,
• 1:16:11
  but their, their, their operating system, the manual
• 1:16:19
  that they're going on isn't well thought out.
• 1:16:21
  And so, you know, like the, the road to hell is paved with good
• 1:16:25
  intentions. You've heard that right.
• 1:16:27
  It, it, I, I see that a lot with the younger generation.
• 1:16:31
  They seem lost and they want to do good, but they just don't
• 1:16:36
  have the right mentor or God to be able to direct that energy
• 1:16:42
  and often times it bites. Them do you think they're
• 1:16:44
  looking for the the mentors and the support or do you think
• 1:16:49
  they're also part of the problem is they're jaded and they feel
• 1:16:51
  like they know they know everything.
• 1:16:54
  More so the younger generation has lost the ability to ask
• 1:16:59
  effective questions. And so because you know, the
• 1:17:03
  quality of your life comes from the quality of the questions
• 1:17:05
  that you ask. If someone that was morbidly
• 1:17:08
  obese, if they just ask themselves, you know why I'm
• 1:17:12
  overweight as opposed to what are the habits and routines that
• 1:17:15
  have allowed me to come become this way, you know, 2 separate
• 1:17:19
  questions, 2 totally different directions.
• 1:17:24
  And that has been lost because they're so used to everything
• 1:17:29
  being curated for them instantly.
• 1:17:31
  And so being able to sit in one spot and just sort of, I guess,
• 1:17:38
  meditate on a single idea that that that must contemplate.
• 1:17:42
  Yeah, contemplate. It's lost.
• 1:17:44
  I was talking to someone recently and they were saying
• 1:17:46
  that it's like there's a zombie ification that's happened in
• 1:17:49
  alpha's Gen. alpha's head. Like it's just like the system
• 1:17:52
  is just not fully human because they've been so junkified on
• 1:17:58
  Cocomelon and then TikTok and everything else that they've
• 1:18:01
  lost the ability in some ways. Brain rot, Brain rot.
• 1:18:04
  Oh, for sure, yeah. It's sad.
• 1:18:08
  Well, it's funny because I have some brain rot and I'm a
• 1:18:09
  Millennium. You have.
• 1:18:10
  Brain rot. You're Gen.
• 1:18:11
  Z. But they, like, they grew up
• 1:18:13
  with this. They've never known a world
• 1:18:15
  without it, and they many of them spent their childhoods
• 1:18:18
  online. They a lot of them they they
• 1:18:22
  literally can't right like handwriting.
• 1:18:24
  That's that's lost art, forget cursive and they rely so much on
• 1:18:31
  ChatGPT and so I they can write essays right now, but a couple
• 1:18:39
  generations down the line I'm really worried if they would be
• 1:18:43
  able to write an essay just by themselves.
• 1:18:47
  That's so crazy to contemplate. Sad.
• 1:18:50
  Yeah, What does that mean? What are we going to do about
• 1:18:53
  that? Read.
• 1:18:57
  I think, I think we should worry less about what we can do with
• 1:19:02
  our platforms to fix it and more so, and I think you're doing it
• 1:19:06
  right. What can you do with your kids
• 1:19:08
  and make sure that a lot of parents worry that their kids
• 1:19:16
  aren't being exposed to the right things at school.
• 1:19:20
  But if you raise them right to the point where they have their
• 1:19:24
  own moral compass that them they're not willing to budget
• 1:19:27
  on, it doesn't matter where they go because they're confident in
• 1:19:31
  who them they are and what they believe in.
• 1:19:35
  And so by raising your children right, that impact I think will
• 1:19:40
  be a lot more direct than what we can do with our platforms.
• 1:19:45
  I love that it is the most important job.
• 1:19:48
  Do you want to have a family one day?
• 1:19:49
  Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:50
  I love kids. You should see me around kids.
• 1:19:52
  I light up. Yeah.
• 1:19:54
  What are you? Are you seeing anybody right
• 1:19:56
  now? No.
• 1:19:57
  No, I'm single. I'm.
• 1:19:59
  Single, what are you? What are you looking for in that
• 1:20:03
  future? Future spouse.
• 1:20:06
  Like when I want to meet him. Yeah.
• 1:20:08
  And what are you looking for in them?
• 1:20:09
  What do you want them? What do I want from They have to
• 1:20:12
  be Christian. They have to be health conscious
• 1:20:18
  because but not too crazy with dieting because like I don't
• 1:20:23
  want them to be like vegan or vegetarian like I want to eat
• 1:20:26
  everything Christian, health conscious, beautiful I.
• 1:20:38
  Want to be a mother? Oh yeah, yeah, I want to be a
• 1:20:40
  mother. Yeah, yeah, that's the biggest
• 1:20:42
  1. Like I'll provide the house, you
• 1:20:45
  turn it into a home type of thing, you know, And oh, this is
• 1:20:50
  kind of weird for me, but like, I really trust a woman's
• 1:20:53
  intuition. If they're completely and
• 1:20:55
  they're feminine, there's like a sixth sense where they can like
• 1:20:59
  almost predict stuff. Like the example that I always
• 1:21:02
  give, my aunt called me in the morning of before I went to a
• 1:21:07
  trip to Europe and she was like, I don't think you should go.
• 1:21:10
  And because of how much I trust your intuition, I was like, OK,
• 1:21:13
  I cancelled everything, no refund.
• 1:21:15
  And I just, I was like, Nope. Like, I believe in a woman's
• 1:21:19
  intuition that much if it's once it's in tune, you know?
• 1:21:22
  What happened but the trip? Nothing did the plane.
• 1:21:25
  Crash. I didn't go.
• 1:21:26
  You don't know. I don't know.
• 1:21:27
  If you got shot, you wouldn't have known you would have done
• 1:21:29
  so. You're here to tell the tale.
• 1:21:32
  Sounds like a special lady. Yeah.
• 1:21:34
  Yeah. Reed, you're awesome.
• 1:21:36
  You're awesome. Thanks for doing what you do and
• 1:21:38
  for sharing your talents. Can we talk about him or is he
• 1:21:41
  just like? Harris, yeah, sometimes Harris
• 1:21:44
  makes it on the show. Killed it.
• 1:21:45
  Harris always kills it. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:21:48
  this episode of The Lila Rose Show with RE Choi.
• 1:21:50
  I love content creators, and I hope to have more of them on the
• 1:21:52
  show. Let me know what you thought
• 1:21:54
  about this episode in the comments.
• 1:21:55
  And don't forget to subscribe if you aren't already subscribed.
• 1:21:58
  We'll see you guys next time. And a huge thank you to EWTN
• 1:22:01
  Eternal Word Television Network, which is the largest religious
• 1:22:04
  broadcaster in the world. You can get access to Lila Rose
• 1:22:08
  Show episodes 24 hours advance@ewtn.com slash on demand
• 1:22:13
  and a big thank you to EWTN and their incredible mission to
• 1:22:16
  bring souls to Jesus.