Guys. I always think, how much of my mind is located in this space of like, but what about this and this and this? Today that mind is in some ways on display because I invited Jay Dyer to come on, who's not only really good at debate, but he's also a kind of mind that captures ideas and then sort of fortifies them and then gives them back to us in ways that you have to think about. He's not always beloved for this, He's not always beloved for his debates.
He's not always beloved by all aspects of culture. But I think today we have a good talk about why that is, why that might be true, or why that might be false, and we get into the litometer and we talk about the role of humor in life and how one should go about addressing those with whom they speak on heavy things. Not mean Jay Dyer. My phone's not going to start ringing if I talked to Andrew Jay, if he's our editor guy, he's out there doing the
thing with us. I got jaydyar here. It's been a while. I've always thought about having you come on here. Man. How you doing. I'm doing great.
You were at my wedding, so I'm glad to reconnect and should have this conversation with it.
We said it. I don't know if you remember, we sat at the table. Everything he just happened in your life. You had this, you know, this event of wonder and then we sat at the table and like a bunch of like twenty two year old author bros. Started talking about like some theological moment. It was hilarious. I was like, Oh, this is what Jay, this is Jay's life, even.
At his wedding, Even as wedding you get a bunch of questions about essence centergization. And I think there was even like atheist relatives later that night trying to you know, argue.
Trying to rape it out with it, trying to be atheist so bright the way that was kind of COVID associate. I think it was. It was COVID, wasn't it. Oh yeah, it was.
It was right in the middle of it right, maybe even write at beginning.
But we don't we don't know each other like besties. But it was nice. My wife basically was closer I think closer with your with your wife, and so they I got pulled in and it was wonderful. I'm I'm blessed to have been there.
Bro, that's right, because they were. Yeah, they were at the same parish for a good while.
Yeah. Yeah, So talk to me about this. So what we do on this part is try to figure out, like, aren't there some lessons from before the Enlightenment that we should actually be paying attention to? Uh? And how does that work? So what's the Enlightenment to you? Because you wrote like an enlightened guy, I mean, you're using rational arguments to try to help people understand things. So what is the Enlightenment to How do you see it? Well?
I think the best way to describe it would be the excesses that you see with the French revolutionaries, who, for example, make and make reason into a goddess. And I don't think they actually thought it was an actual entity, but reason became the new deity of that time, and that led to a lot of bloodshed, a lot of revolutions. You know, after the Enlightenment you get the Voltaire and
the philosophs. So I think that reason as a tool, it's a faculty that can be used because you know, in Christology, for example, Jesus has a rational soul that means he has as part of his human nature the faculty of reasoning, and that was declared early on, even against the Apollinarians, that if you denied that rational aspect of christ soul and replaced it with the divine person of the logos, that was a heresy because it was
detracting from him assuming a full human nature. So Christ heals and restores the faculty of reasoning, just like all of our other faculties, our will, our body, et cetera, and so our mind.
And so I've always seen it as a tool.
Definitely, the Enlightenment and Protestant Reformation exalted it out of its due place. But you know, even some of the most quote mystical of the Orthodox Saints, like said Gregor Palamos, he wrote apidictic Treatise on the Holy Spirit, and APPDICTI refers to Aristocean logic. So he utilizes the risktrain logic to disprove the Filioquist position. So you know, in his mind there was certainly no natural antipathy between theology and the faculty of reasoning.
It just can't be.
Put in this, you know, goddess position.
Here's an idea that I keep having, you know, as a history guy. On some level, I studied it and as a as a graduate student. Maybe it's that they're anti Christ thing they're substituting it. If the pre supposition is that Christ is God, then't reason kind of makes sense as you go and stretch it out right into an argument. But I feel like there was a substitutionary thing going on with the enlightened philosophers. Would you agree with that where there's substituting reason for Christ and someone.
Absolutely, I think there was genuine reaction, legitimate reaction against the corruptions in the papal church and the Franco papal system that people in the know pros and Reformation or the Enlightenment saw as a problem. But they had bad solutions, so they went to this opposite extreme and reacting against the papacy and some of them, you know, when the direction of Protestanism, someone went the direction of atheism and deism.
So yeah, logos theology, as you noted itself, is situated within the milieu of the wisdom texts of the Old Testament like Proverbs, Book of Wisdom, and so when John talks about Jesus as the logos or the logic of God, I don't saying he's equating him to logic. He's the
second person of the trinity. But there is an element of logos logic or reason that goes along with that, which is an appeal to the best elements of Hellenic and Greek culture to try to convince them of the deed of Christ and him being the son of God.
And again, you're absolutely right to replace logos the divine person, and that truth is therefore ultimately located in a divine person, with the human faculty of reasoning, which is a pale reflection of divine logos, is absolutely a replacement idolatry.
Is that is that the problem with scientism? That's it, right, I think that's what it is, right, That's the root of it.
Scientism also has, i think few people know it, kind of has a hermetic alchemical origin as well. If you go back to the even some of the who we think of as Enlightenment rationalist thinkers, they also were very infected by a lot of esoteric cabalistic and so there can even be a cabalistic element to scientism where that dead matter comes alive and you know, you can go within to find the principles of you know, the spark of divinity within you, and that man is trying to fix nature the you know.
Francis Banking man. So we're going to take a test. It's our little test on here. It's called the letometer. I want you to take it with me before we hang up. So people who are are, We're gonna it's just like five question. It's it's highly sack. It will It'll affect you because for rest of your life now you'll have this moniker hanging around. It'll tell you about your actual being in a way that I'll ruin your life. But just work, just work with it, Just work with it.
I promise it's coming, guys, it's coming, the lightermeter. But uh, before we get there, do this with me. So how do you how do you know yourself on the on the on the media's on the on the interwebs, Like are you an entertainer? Because I think you're attracting the guys who liked that part that that that mystical part of the earliest Enlightenment thing is we are like something's off here, let's fix it. But they didn't know how
to do it. The guys I hear coming onto your shows and listening and making comments on X and all that stuff. I feel like they want something that's deeply mystical and spiritual and alchemic, alchemically inclined, and I feel like give it to them. But I don't think they understand it. Sometimes I think they think you're doing some fun stuff that's not Christick. I don't know, what do you think about this class of guys that sort of love your work? I would are they Christian or how
do you? How do you how do you categorize these characters.
I think we have a wide array now of people who like what we talk about in niches, so there's kind of different sectors. For example, when we do live events, we can kind of see the you know, schematic breakdown of this because we don't have huge live events, but anywhere from one hundred and one hundred twenty people at most of our live events, and you know, everybody always kind of talks about what aspects of what we talk
about they're interested in. So some people are there. I send the you know, I saw you on you know Alex Alex's show. I really like what you talk about with geopolitics, and then we get a faction of the people that are like, oh, I really love all the Hollywood stuff, because really a lot of what I started blogging about was was movie analysis. Film analysis. It's about like breakdowns of films, and I wasn't really even thinking about talking about theology at the time. That actually happened
kind of accidentally. Somebody said, Hey, would you debate this atheist guy. This is back in twenty seventeen, and he was a pretty prominent atheist at that time, and then that led to, oh, here's another atheist guy, when you want to bate this other prominent atheist, and that kind of snowballed into doing debates, which is not something I
really thought I would be doing on the internet. And then that attracted its own kind of you know, crowd of people who really really liked to see debates, and the majority of that in the last six years ended up focusing on debating prominent atheists and Muslims.
And I didn't know.
Much about Islam in twenty seventeen or even twenty eighteen, and then I started to learn, you know, a good bit, so that kind of just happened on its own. It was again, it wasn't something planned, but I never stopped doing the other things that we did, like the movie analyses and writing the books on the hollywod would symbolic
breakdowns and you know, doing the geopolitical content. So kind of what happened was I just sort of would introduce more of my own interests into the public work that we were doing, just to kind of test the waters. And so that led to me kind of doing more comedic stuff. I always wanted to do that, always had that element of what we did, and I wanted to lean more into that, and so that led to a
lot more openings in that realm. And then I think what happens is that people see one aspect of what I do and they kind of think, oh, he's that guy that does this are aren't.
You the Hollywood guy? Or I thought you were the debate guy. I know you as a debate guy for whatever reason. That's how I know you.
Well, you know, I don't like to you know, I mean, I think debate is interesting and it can be fun. But I think probably people will think I like it more than I actually do.
That's my question. Which one you got an hour You're going to do some media and it's going to be the hour you love the most. What are you doing in that hour? I've had the most.
Fun in the last ten years on the big comedian podcast that we've been on, which is two or three of those, and you know, doing the geopolitical breakdowns, those are the most fun.
I y I enjoyed the most.
I have to admit, like you know, when it's if it's if it's a huge Muslim debate, those have been really Like we did we debated the two of the top Muslims on a huge outlet a few months ago as me and Sam schmun and we debated Daniel Hikikachu and e Jaws on freshen Fit podcast and that got three four million views, So that that was enjoyable to be able to speak to that many people. But it wasn't the most fun debate because a lot of times debates that kind of become really repetitive. It's all it's
the same stuff over and over and over. And if you've been doing debates since college like I have, like you're pretty much going to be hearing the same arguments over over and over. So I really enjoy the creativity, you know, comedic side of there's a lot more than just here you know.
Yes, he he can't. He got in front of us Andrew Editor and a guy named Simeon Rich Rich Summers, I think you know, I think you know Rich, But I so I want to do that on some level sometimes with our inter nicene Orthodox stupidness that happens. I want to do what he's doing sometimes with some of what we're doing, because a lot of the times in the Orthodox wrote we bited each other, and I'm not I'm not that guy. I'm not the boomer who's also like,
why can't we all get along? That's not what I'm saying. There's something about the argument that at some point crosses into hilarious you know what I'm talking about, where you're like, ah, not this again? Is this needs to be torn down through something funny or cynical or something. And that's where my brother and I have this crossing of paths on the internet. I think like a Orthodox version of Battle on b or something like that. Yeah, something something where
we go. And also you don't really know it. I don't really know in the end, because it's going to flesh out as all things flesh out, you know, they It's gonna flesh out as real beyond my own intellect, and people I don't know if they can do that sometimes or they feel like they're giving up the fight or something. I don't know, what do you think about that? Is there a place for that kind of humor?
I mean, I've always felt there's a place for levity because not everybody is called to the same thing. Like, you know, people that are in the role of clergy, that's more appropriate for them to be involved in the doctrinal stuff.
Right.
So, actually, you know, kind of what we ended up doing in the last six or seven years was again somewhat accidental, but there wasn't a lot of clergy presence online in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty. Nowadays twenty twenty five, there's way more orthodox clerical presence online. So I feel like that's kind of a little bit of freeing because there's a less of a you know, it's not like I'm the only voice defending orthodoxy against the
papacy or you know whatever. There's other people out here doing it now, which is kind of what it ought to be, and that I think should be maybe a freeing up thing where we who are laity can focus on and speak to culture, which.
Is what we're becoming. That's what we're good at. I mean, we're in it, so not that makes sense to mcgracor that makes sense to me for a while. Did you figure a question? What you I heard you at one time? We're doing some stand up stand up in New York City for infant Okay, but this is this is two thousand or this is No. Nineteen. It was right in the year before I decided I probably should get married. In fact, my wife came to a couple of my shows. Okay,
I was pretty crass. I was just becoming orthodox, and I was making light of well, I don't want to get into it. We could have fun with it, though, but I was making light of myself. That was sort of my routine. Okay, cool guy who's not that cool? Self depreciating. Okay, yeah, I prefer that. What do you prefer if you're gonna go down the rabbit hole of comedy? I don't you know.
I mean, I'm not opposed to stand up, but a lot of what we do is a little more kind of sketch oriented, you know, impressions.
Kind of goofy wassus. Yes, it's stilly.
Stop it's you know, I vibed a lot more with the style of stuff that Samhai does as opposed to, you know, as opposed to like a Bilberg kind of stand up. That's yes, I'm just not that kind of a a person.
Yeah, that's almost that's acting. I mean, the stage is different when you're on there, up there by yourself. Yeah, I know what you mean. How about our friend Scooter Downey who did Hoax and the You know him pretty well, don't. He really loves you, man, he speaks highly of you. Yeah.
We got to be good friends with him through well he eventually moved to the Tennessee area, but yeah, we spent multiple evenings and days with Scooter. He's the one that sort of got me on that last episode of The Tucker Show on Fox where we were covering Eat the Bugs and I was dressed up by kloles And that's the kind of stuff I like to do, Like I dress up as somebody and go, you know, there's something silly rather than just standalone stand up.
But did you see our trailer we're doing Christianities? Yes, yes, uh.
Scooter sent me that when he had when he had made the first rower.
I feel like we're obviously sort of Christian heavy right now, I'm not Christian sorry, orthodox heavy. We've got a lot of insight, We've got a lot of invitations to some really cool guys. I think you would be great on there, man, But I got to how about a little beef. Let's do a little beef. Do you ever feel like there's a moment when you're losing your soul within the confines of a debate, not because of the words you're saying,
just because of the nature of the thing itself. Do you feel like your soul sometimes ebbs away and you wish you could not ever do that again, and that maybe it's not worth it straw, you know, burnt up at the end, sort of like Aquinas talks about. Do you ever feel I think again?
Yeah, absolutely, debate has its limits. Anybody who does a lot of debates will get tired of it. You'll get frustrated. Even especially if you're doing multiple four or five six hour online open forums, you're going to hear all the craziest stuff that you've ever heard. You know, people are going to go at you from all angles. So yeah, I think there have been definitely sometimes where I lost my patients and you know, got angry or something like that.
But I would add that there's a lot more times where there was the demonstration of patients, which is by grace. I'm not trying to say, oh, look at look at my good works, but I think those are way more in the minority versus the rest of the times that are.
Not you know, in.
Extreme examples of nasty exchanges. But you know, sometimes people that don't do debates are not involved in that kind of a exchange if you haven't done it for a long time. Like I can recognize when people are disingenuous most of the time pretty quickly.
And also we have different styles. So when it's an open.
Forum, the assumption is that you're you're not at the level of a formal debate opponent, right, So when we do formal debates, of which we've done many, if it's a very prominent person, there's going to be a moderator, there's time to exchange and responses, whereas open form is just kind of like any Joe Schmo. It would be like any jo walking into a dojo and saying, hey, I'm ready to fight, right, I mean, they're going to have to learn that you're violating you know, the rules
of critical thinking, the laws of logic. That's a bad argument. So that's why there's interruptions and this kind of stuff at that level.
And then the formal debates are a lot more kind of.
Manicured and curated and you know controlled. I guess so, but yeah, and that's a long answer to your question.
No, no, it is a vague question. Here's another way we do these dinners. So there's this thing called the timid and the time of takes people through this Georgian tradition from the Georgian Republic. It's called the effort of those Yeah, and it's becoming something like a refuge for worthodoxy, non and just secular people. They're like, I want to be at that table and I'm seeing something. I could go on and on about it. I'm seeing something quite beautiful.
And what happens at the end of the night, though, is the Tamada has done a lot of talking and also present a lot of ideas that at a restaurant with a whole you don't know who's coming to your sit At these twenty seaters, you know, you get a lesbian couple who consider themselves married and you'll get like two Baptist guys and can't even like look at them, you know, like like do you get wacky people all sitting at the same table and the tamada's job is
to unite them. But inevitably you wake up the next days are like four hour events. Oh and you have a tamada regret. It really has not never failed. And I've done hundreds sort of like you do a lot of debates. I do a lot of tables, but I inevitably have a tamadai regret where I'm like, h do you have that I think you must or not. I mean there have been exchanges.
Where I regret the you know, where it went, or maybe if I said, you know, something insulting or something like that. And I get tired of doing debates because they're somewhat tedious and laborious. But I never have a problem with the art form itself or with the notion of rhetoric. I mean, yeah, we're at this era where
people are uneducated. They don't know that it's a part of classical pedagogy to have this ability to have, you know, formal exchanges, and they don't even realize that if you go watch Oxford Union debates with people like you know, Hitchens or whoever. They'll include jokes and jabs.
As part of the rhetoric.
So, but if your arguments are all rhetoric in that hominems, well, that would show that you know, you don't have any actual arguments. It's all just hot air and insults. But the idea that you can't have any jabs or whatever is is just kind of weak. And we're in this idea of postmodernity is premised on there's no such thing as truth. There's just competing power narratives. So a lot of people already from the outset think that debates bad
because there is no such thing as truth. So date have just just exercising your oppression over me.
That's all that it is.
It's just a power exchange. And so also people think that there's the debate is arguing. Those are different things, and the debate has rules, it has structure to it. So one of the things that we're trying to do is also explain and help people understand that diological, dialectical discourse of what debate is. I don't mean dialectics in the bad way. I just mean in the sense of sure,
answer question, answer what Plato talked about? So so anyway, but yeah, but last last name acts seventeen, right, Paul goes into the synagogue and debates daily with the Jews. God said, come let us reason together at Isaiah. So you know, these things can't be inherent inherently wrong. It's just difficult to always do them perfectly. So you know, I waited in I didn't we met at your wedding whatever.
And then my brother, you know, during COVID and thereafter he started to gain a large audience. And then you guys, I would just go to an Orthodox church to visit or something, and then inevitably, Father Peter J. Dyer somehow they were always the same idea and the same person, and I would just be having a coffee and then I'd be I didn't really get it, so I started, of course, I looked at his website and I waded
in and said, okay, what's Jay doing? Because dude, everywhere I went there was this thing twenty twenty one and twenty two twenty three right in there. And what I started to realize is is people are soft, Like, how else do you said it? Just now I'm like, yeah, They're just this is an actual thing that's taking place. It's not just some guy screaming in somebody because of
a post. That's not what's happening. There's rules and there's a way to be and then we all sort of gain from it or not or just turn it off. And I started to get frustrated with the notion that to be to be a Christian was to somehow just let everyone say whatever they wanted then hang up the phone. I don't really get that. I don't even get that as a concept in general, and so it wasn't what
I thought it was. I just want you to know that, because I tend to be the empathetic version of my brother, like I tend to be on the love true spectrum of the fetal version, I'm the sentimentality guy. When I fall down, it's because I'm too sentimental. I think when my brother falls down, it's because his razor edge is real sharp, and you're like, dude, back off a little. So. But then when I saw what you guys were actually doing, I didn't. I didn't like the characterization of it all.
I think it's changed now for you. Would you agree that it's changing in terms of how people see you in the orthosphere.
Yeah, I honestly, I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, to be honest with it, because I mean, you know, when we, like I said, we do a live event, we kind of get a cross section of the audience. I can look on YouTube and see, you know, my audience is ninety percent guys aged twenty to forty five, So.
That's who I'm speaking to.
And I think even back in you know, twenty eighteen, nineteen twenty, you know, I wasn't really thinking about what's my demographics? Who am I speaking to? But you know, when we go, when we do the live events, obviously a significant portion probably thirty, maybe even fifty percent in some cases are people who are young guys inquiring Orthodoxy or who have converted. Many of them, by the way, are married and have wives, so it's not just y, you know, eighteen year old in cell guys who are
who are extremely risk or whatever. But I didn't even again, I guess I just didn't think about who my cross section audience was when I was talking about stuff back then, and you know, putting up videos, and I don't think you just don't think about where is this going to be and you know, five years, what will the size of the audience be then, how many people are going to be listening. You just kind of talk about stuff and respond to stuff and you just don't think about it.
So you know, I just didn't have any plans of any of those.
Well, you're brilliant at that stuff, at responding, talking and being present in the conversation. Like that's really clear. What's the hardest part about it all? Like what part it's difficult as you're you know, as a person online doing this work.
Well, I mean, obviously I'm sensitive to my own sins and my own failings and flaws and areas of lack So you know, I don't want my I what I talk about to be the face of orthodoxy, you.
Know what I mean.
And I never had any interest in being that, which is why I'm happy to see many clerics making content and uh, you know that's they're really the ones that should be should be that. It's not it's not to say you can't have laity doing that, but so that that's a difficulty. Obviously, there's difficulties that we all deal
with within the church. We deal with difficult people, we deal with challenging people, difficult clergy relationships, you know, all kinds of difficulties are are tough in the world of Orthodoxy as well. I wouldn't be anywhere else, but you know, there's still difficulties in this world.
But well it's from the outside it looks like you were led, meaning you're following something that's being you're invited into. I think it's Look, I always tell everybody you know this, You've said this. The hand can't judge the eye. But it's all part of the same. Everyone needs to calm down. It's very hard to understand each of ver. Now the question is your disposition, right, are you actually caring about
these things? And do you care about Christ? And are you trying to live that like that that that that's all that When someone's trying to do that online, I'm like, right on, bro, Like, what's the problem?
Like, yeah, I think the difficulty also is balancing doing that without uh, you know, making that something that you're that's not a display, you know what I mean. You're not look at me for my you know, my online piety. And I think a lot of people fall into that where a lot of laity, you know, maybe they get interested in Orthodoxy, they convert and immediately they have a
lot of zeal, which is good. But when you try to make that your online persona, and then you put up a PfP image of a saint and you're quoting the saints every day and this and that, which it's not that it's wrong to necessarily quote a saint, but that a lot of people do this performative online stuff and they post their prayers and they post how they're praying and all this.
Kind of stuff.
And I've always just found that to be in bad taste and usually in our experience, and we've dealt with these people like this for many many years, going back to twenty seventeen, sixteen, eight nine years now. I mean a lot of these people don't remain Orthodox very long. That happens really extreme positions, and so I just always felt that it was, you know, when Jesus says, don't go into the market and pray and try to get
everybody seeing you. So you know, that's why a lot of my online content, I might talk about orthodox stuff, or I might be on somebody's podcasts, but you don't see me doing a lot of that posting wise, because it's just you know, it's like I remember talking to your brother some of years back, and he was kind of making the point like, you know, you're probably out a fork in the road.
You're going to have to choose do you want to go in.
A holy, completely Orthodox direction and you know, right orthodox theology books and not deal with culture, or do you want to focus more on culture? And so I think one of my friends put it that, you know, some people are Orthodox concrete content creators who work in media,
and some people are you know, just Orthodox media. And I felt like, you know, I didn't want to give up all the avenues and things that I was interested in, the comedy, the Hollywood stuff, you know, the live events and all that.
I enjoy doing that.
So I'd rather be an Orthodox person who works in media, if that makes sense.
In fact, the Internet it doesn't allow. What's the best way for me to say this?
Religious stuff is very difficult via the Internet because it's abstracted, divorced from you know, the here and the now, that the physical the incarnational, and that that causes problems.
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A lot of Orthodox you know priests have not perhaps spent a lot of time in Protestantism or Calvinism or Orthodox I mean, or or Catholicism. You know, I've been in those worlds, those realms. I live lived those worlds in realms, so you know I can answer those kinds of questions I think pretty proficiently. So in that regard, it's helpful to people. But we always say and we've been you know, we have clergy on our discord that I've been saying for years, this is not catechisis. This
is answering your questions. And so apologetics is not orthodoxy. It's just like a sign that points you in the direction. And that's that's really all the internet can do it, can't you really have to go and actually be in bold.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the things we're trying to do with first things is hey, okay, great job, well done, well said. And also you want to go work with Africans in a really cool setting that will actually teach you a lot about who you are because you live in a mud hut. Let's go. But most people don't want to go down that road. But it's
a real deep embodiment. And we ended up throwing dinners for the same reason, because the Georgians taught us how to be actually present in a way where you can talk about hard at the high things we call them the high things at the table, you know, the universal themes by also but also you can laugh and just toast to humor. You know, there's not a few dirty
words now. And then the whole thing is is, in other words, you're really experienced the entirety of the cosmos, like at a table, because the table was a representation of that. And so yeah, we're all gonna do it anyway, right, Jay, We're gonna embody something like you're only gonna do this thing for so long where you talk to people on the interwebs, you're gonna have a life outside of that. Yeah, it's got to look like something.
Well, it's just like you know, think to stand end up, you know, and I've done stand up before, but like that, you can't replace uh, the you know, interaction that you have in a club with the audience, if you're doing crowd work and you're making fun of people in the audience and joking that, you can't replace that with something you know online.
It's just it's just.
An irreplaceable kind of existential you know, encounter. And the same goes for you know, what you're talking about with what the toasts that you do, and you know, it's the same for the liturgy and going and spending time with.
The guys at your church. Yes, so you know internet stuff. Yeah, and thank god, thank god, I'm gonna I'm going to ask you some questions. But here's the thing, just as I was about to ask you. You gotta bear with me because I'm going to go find it on my on my phone. What's a boomer? Because I can tell when I'm online with my friends who are much younger I do with all these young guys, right, it's bad to be a boo boomer, it seems. How would you define boomer or norm me? Will you just do the
Jay Dyer definition of those things? Well, you're I can.
I can already look at you and see your gen X right so racked.
You can.
Usually determine that via the degree of the gray. So if you've got like this Spaltan pepper, that's like gen X for sure. But I'm in a unique position being elder millennial right on the cusp of gen X and millennial, so I can kind of bridge that world.
But the joke of.
You know, boomers and kind of being lampooned began probably fifteen years ago on the Internet. I like to take credit for it because I wrote an essay back then that was just kind of a satirical thing that went
mini viral back then about it. I can't prove that I literally created the boomer meme, but I wrote some essays making fun of boomers at the time, and just hostilly kind of that generation was from certain perspective, because it doesn't mean that I hate boomers, it was just intended to be a satirical, you know for sure kind of critique, and it's a critique of the attitude of you know, just sort of high rates of divorce, you know, preferring and bragging about monetary gain for a one k
is over you know, the children over inheritance, these kinds of things, blowing the money and not having an inheritance for the children.
You know, boomerisms like automatic deference to.
Worshiping the nation of Israel from like a Christian Zionis perspective.
Boomerisms like.
You know, gambling casinos, you know that kind of just just the things that that generation were really sort of wrapped up in sports, idolization and worshiping of sports in a really naive attitude towards politics that you know, it's GOP versus Democrats. Not understanding uniparty.
We'll get our guy in and it'll be better.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, not understanding you know, anything to do with conspiracy stuff or you know, deeper geopolitical issues. You know, those are all boomerisms, and then it kind of became its own a lot as you know, you know, memes kind of take on a life of their own, and so you kind of get the meme growing and becoming not just an age group, but people having the attitude.
Of a boomer.
So you could be a gen X person who if you're repeating very kind of normy attitudes of politics, you know, you might be called a boomer. Yeah, so it kind of just took on a life of its own, as.
Many memes do.
But that's what it's intended to characterize, and I've never ceased characterizing it and.
Kind of con sing with that joke.
Some people gotten offended by it, but some of my closest, you know, best sorts of people. My my godfather is a boomer. Jim Jotras is a boomer. So not all boomers are bad. It's just it's also part of the attitude of you know this from stand up you know, back in the day, you know, in this in in the comedy world, you could make fun of anything and anybody, and it was just kind of understood that, you know, you know, white people make fun.
Of black people.
Black black comedians make fun of white people all the time, and uh, you know it would just so my attitude towards that was always just kind of the same audience as like a comedy club, just kind of making jokes about generations. And by the way, I've always thought boomer jokes about millennials are funny because our our age group has its flaws and its problems, and they're all pretty funny. You know, being lazy, not wanting to work, Yeah, all funny.
So I think that the generation should laugh each other and not get into this hyper politicized attitude. But as you know, like after I don't know, it seems like after the period of Bruce Jenner being Woman of the Year, all of this stuff got hyper moralized and hyper politicized to where everyone's jokes now became cancelation offenses, to where anything people are looking for a way to say, oh, he made this joke, he needs to be canceled.
Well, I think that's what you've done really well, is describing really that's the I would call it like something like the last eight, nine, ten years. I think your stuff does a really good job of saying I'm going to use this word boomer to demonstrate something like naivete and it's really helpful to me. I use the term light people. So coming up as an older guy, a little bit older, I'm fifty eight, this idea, if I see one more older person tell me about their lawn, I can't do it.
In that's the perfect Boomers and lawns. That was actually part of the original boomer mean, was the lawn?
Oh? Was it so there? It is? But I had this, you know, in the eighties, and I'd be like I had come back from Africa a peace corps. I'm like, there's something wrong with this lawn fixation. And then it turned into like the people I know in Europe and other places in the old World, they don't have lawns. That's not really a concept. And I started to realize this was about this wasn't about lawns. This of course,
is about outward facing wealth. This is yeah, it's a kind of a weird competition within the neighborhood of and all that. All that and all that. Then you start to realize there's actually reality to it. And then of course what I think is really good that's going on, and I saw that you've been reading is something like
the government is also like the lawn. It's the same naivete is going on with the lawn will show people that I'm great and the government's playing this game too, where like, don't look at this, actually just look at the law and I've created for you to understand. And so now you're reading these documents, just tell me because I'm not reading them. But I saw the last couple of days you're digging down into sort of the new files that are being let out. What's going to happen
with these files? Are they going to become quote mainstream? Are people going to be able to finally say that what's a conspiracy theories thought of as a conspiracy theory is just actually a good theory. Because I'm troubled by this, well, you know, to the.
To be fair to the boomers, I think that that generation was subjected to a lot of really intense social engineering and brainwashing from the establishment, and I think that it's just sort of the there's just limitations in certain generations as to how much that generation is able to
decode and understand from younger generations. And so for example, you know, you could you can be an eighteen year old, fifteen year old on the internet and you immediately you have more access within five minutes to what people who
were CIA directors had under Carter. So that's how crazy the information the speed of you know, immediacy doesn't mean it's all right, there's a lot of disinformation, but still, like, I think that a lot of people in that generation just just can't really fathom or function with that level of revolutionary information feed Does that make sense, Yeah, it does.
And so in other words, you know, you can be eighteen and understand false flags seventeen, and you know, you've got people who are baby boomers who don't even and still don't understand what that is and.
Still can't grapple with that.
And so I think with the JFK stuff, even though it's kind of an you know, JFK and UFOs, that was like the only two quote conspiracies that the baby boomer generation was able to entertain, or you know, Cold War communism as a perhaps a conspiracy theory they entertained, But really understanding the way the world works is just a lot easier for people to decipher now because of the prevalence of information, and you know, just this is just yet another trove of you know, admissions, I guess,
but I don't know that it's going to affect that generation anymore than any of the other rights.
That's I think that's brilliant that generation and mind to an extent. It's going to be hard to unpack that stuff unless you've had some really wild experiences. I think, yeah, like you were talking about on your feed, lemurs were being trained to use matches, lights, fire, Well, they were dosing dolphins with LSD.
They were, you know, experimenting with animals. Jahlly and West used to give LSD to elephants as part of the N culture experiments. So they were doing all kinds of crazy stuff. That doesn't mean it res alt successful or profitable, but I mean, yeah, they were doing all kinds of stuff.
But most people can't hear lemurs with matches and then hear the next sentence you say, they bail out of the whole idea at that point. But I don't think. I think leaners with matches is going to become more and more normal, Like I think the crazy stuff's going to become real stuff. I've always said this, Jay, tell me what you think, and then I'll give you this quiz, because I think the guys that I know, really want you to take it. It's fun. It's fun. It's not
don't worry, it's fun. But I think this tell me what you think. There's no such thing as a conspiracy theory. There's just theories that lean toward good and true and theories that lean toward bad and wrong. Like I just think everyone has a theory, and then the question is is tell me, okay, now tell me about it, and pretty soon you'll find out that that's pretty dumb. I don't know what a conspiracy theory is. I don't know what they're talking about.
Well, it's a weaponized term from the JFK era. It's a CIA term that they explicitly mentioned would be a good way to discredit people that question the findings or the assessment of the warrant commissions. So the term itself was loaded and weighted to scandalize or to demonize anybody great questions about the government.
But here we are.
The declassification of the documents pretty much vindicates the so called conspiracy theorists. When I was back in the undergrad or semi grad school, I realize that a lot of what we're talking about is really just espionage theory because espionage is real.
Everybody knows that goes on.
We all have heard since twenty sixteen endless nonsense from the Establishment that Donald Trump was a secret agent of Putin and a Russian operative, all of which has been dealt and discredited. So the establishment itself engages in conspiracy theorism when it's amenable to their perspective. So yeah, I mean,
that's that's really what it is. And a lot of the focus from my side of stuff geopolitically the last early years has been about espionage stuff because I inadvertently gotten interested in that through studying Hollywood and studying the history of people like Ian Fleming and their life story and you know, his role and real operations that he
put into, you know, Bond stories. So if you think about it in that way, And I always say this because you know, every boomer I know loves war documentaries and war stories, and they love World War Two and Normandy and d Day, and they love hearing about the Civil War and read this and I'm like, well, not a much of conspiracy theorizing and espionage by much of the operatives and deception and the war and a mascale.
Well yeah, but don't exist no more. I was doing.
Well, what you mean does governments are still doing this now what he's talking about.
So Sam, like, you don't love America that's your problem. Well, I don't love.
I mean, look at what dose is uncovered, right, I mean massive amounts of corruption, money laundering with just one cut out USA I D. I mean there's many more.
Oh yeah, yeah, they're leaning hard on USA D. Although I did a pod where I talk about I hope people go watch it where I've been on USAID contracts in various places overseas when I was doing this work, and I didn't see super nefarious stuff, but I saw a lot of really politically motivated, dumb stuff just like they're talking about. And it's real. I've said it for twenty five years doing this work. But USAID, you know whatever.
By the way, it was not by luck that they came up with United States Aid and it's got absolutely nothing to do with that, so that itself is a move right.
Well, I mean, look, you know, tens of millions of dollars given to in one case, the most liberal Lutheran organizations, the ones that push skills, women, bishops, this kind of stuff. I mean, I can keep going on this subject. But like you know, you go into the Cold War stuff.
This is one of the.
Ways in which the Cia went and made alliances with the Papacy during the Cold War, under the guise of finding the Soviets, well, we gotta have these alliances or else we can't win. But the problem is that when you come out of the Cold War, you're now tied at the hip to these new masters, right, and they're going to be telling you, you know, we'd like you to go along with Davos, We'd like you to go along with worldlock Economic Forum, we'd like you to go
along with UNESCO, all of which are horrible institutions. And that's kind of where you see from Francis in the Vatican to you know, superstructure going. So that's the downside of it is that I understand the logic of the Cold War, but you know, the state is always going to have a desire to influence and change the Church. They've always tried to do that, back to the Aryan emperors, to Iconoclass emperors, you know, Charlemagne. You know, you've got these people in the state who want to create a
state church, and that's the Soviets. Did the same thing, so you know, it's just church really, it's not really conspiracy theory.
That's church history. Well, I think Paul kings North he recently did that talk essentially to Catholics at first things the magazine, and he kind of was saying Christianity is martyr Martyrham is not civilization building. In the end, you'll build your civilization through the blood of the martyrs. It's not a plan.
That you're going to fulfill. And you know you just need one more big billionaire. It's not going to work right now, is what you do? Is that the same as the magazine? Are those connected?
No? Unfortunately, when Ryan and I the founder eight years ago, came up with our name, we knew about the magazine, but I just thought I would just overcome the magazine. But it didn't work like that. It's not gonna But on some level, no, we're not connected at all. So on some level, there is no level on which we're connected. But although I'll go talk want to maybe maybe this will get them to let me go talk it first sex all right, you ready for this. It's called the
Lito meter. I'll record your number and then at the end you're going to have a number, and the number, like I said, it would be tattooed on your soul. And I can't help you at that point. You just have to work with it. Okay, Well, what does this stand for? The LTO meter is a test that tells you how new world, how enlightened you are, as per the enlightenment itself. And I'm assuming that's a bad thing about Well, it could be good, it could be bad. I don't know. It's it's just as you would like
to know, Jay, I have a number. I'll share it with you after I'm done, and it changed my life or wherever. Here's your you're your answer. It's five questions and then we'll get a number for each and then i'll tell you the categories and then i'll reveal who you are and so you can continue your life. When you die, Jay, you won't really die all the way. It's more like you'll be asleep waiting for a next world of some sort. So that's the question. I'll read
it again. You're going to answer three strongly agree, two I agree with that, one disagree, or zero strongly disagree, zero I strongly disagree, three I strongly agree, and one or two are sort of in the middle, and so you could tell scientific this is. We ran this through. Mit, they're cool with it. We're ready to roll. So I'm going to read the question again and you give me a number. Sound good? Okay, Look, I can tell it's
hurting your brain right now because it's it's complicated. Ready, yep, Okay, don't be nervous when you die, Ja, You won't really die all the way. It's more like you're asleep or something, waiting for a next world of some sort. To one, zero, A one because that's ambiguous. The question is phrased ambiguously because that could suggest soul sleep, which is a hare sit, but it also could suggest continuing on and the soul after death. In terms of toll houses, it could suggest
different things. So I'm gonna say I'm attempted with zero, but I'm gonna say one good one. You generally disagree, and also you have exhibited problems with the question itself with the test makers. I like that. That's a very very new world of view. Here's the second question. Don't question the test makers, Jay, come on, buddy, all right. Two the best way for me for you or I'll read it in the first person. The best way for me to know myself is to ask someone else about me.
So the best way for you, Jaya, to know yourself is to ask someone else about yourself. Three strongly agree, zero strong disagree. One in two in the middle, I would.
Say three because that aligns even with Plato's apology, helenic was done an alignance with the orthodox ethos of having a spiritual father to bounce your assessments off of, so you don't just rely on yourself.
I like that, So not as much of an issue with the question that time. You were happy with that question. Okay, this is a big deal for me to test this against you, a sharp minded gentleman like yourself. Number three, we're almost done well closer when again, I'll read it in a second party, when you carry a picture around someone that you love, Jay, maybe your wife, and it's let's say it's in your wallet or something, and that carrying around of that picture is actually kind of carrying
that person around with you. It's they're there in some way, they're actually close to you when you carry that picture around.
Yeah, I strongly agree with that. That's our principle behind iconography.
See, guys, when I give this to non. When it's the secular people, as we do on the show, they don't do those cool little insights like you do. They mostly go, what is this about? Here's number four. Respect isn't earned. Respect is owed by me to others, me j diar to to others. Yes, correct, strongly agree is three. Two is agree, One is disagree, zero is strongly disagree.
I'm gonna have to say this is an ambiguous one because in some cases it just depends on what we mean by respect. I mean, I'm not For example, if someone breaks into my house, you know they're trying.
To take my wife, they do not.
They facto immediately deserve respect. If I'm talking to them the person in a conversation, they probably de facto deserve respect.
So I'm going to say agree, I don't know.
I strongly agree.
Two. I like what you're doing there. Well, this is a philosopher's thing.
They look for the ambiguities and the questions because the ambiguities might suggest a trap in a debate or something like that.
Yeah, that's nice. I won't give this away except for to give it away for a second. When people are really interested in the what's the right word for it, the mechanics of the question or as you're saying the ambiguities, they tend to score lower. By lower here, I mean their number is smaller because they're doing a type of philosophical investigation, which we'll get to in a second number five.
Last question, you fully hope and expect to take care of your parents and take them in as they get older, and to take care of them when they get older and infirmed. Or if your parents aren't with you now, then you fully expect your kids to take you in when you get older and infirmed, and to live with you, preferably in the same house that vision of life. Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.
Agree, And the reason I wouldn't say strongly agree is that not in every situation does that person want to live with you. For example, my dad has illnesses, he doesn't want to live with me, but we do participate in helping him. So his answer on that would be like a strongly disagree in terms of his own person living with you, No.
He would not.
He's a very independent minded military per He does not want to live with me or my brother. Yeah, but we do help him out and I think that absolutely, you have a biblical duty to help your family members.
There they become old. There it is, here's your We added it all up. It happened, you know with Ai. We did it and added it up while you were talking. Right. Then your score is eleven. So I'm going to just grab this here as we tend to do on this show, and you can see I don't know if you can see it, but there's an actual You can go to the website, Jay, and I can actually see that there is a lighter, major proven science money back guarantee. Now I'm going to read from it. You can find this
on the website. I'm going to read what you're not. First of all, at eleven, you are not the high nooner. I can I share with you what you're not. If you had scored between a two and a four, then you would have been you know well, as it says here, the shining down like a halo from a perfectly engineered drone. Science illuminates your every move, Jay, But you're not this. You're not the high nooner. You probably know exactly how the drone works. You love manuals, You trust your brain
more than your mother. This is not you. You're not this person. You're silly. So I'm not Voltaire. I mean correct, you're not Voltaire. It's been proven. Okay, you're not. Also the shining city dweller on the hill. You're not this person, Jay, You're you. You have lots of hope for the modern world because you trust spreadsheets and Reddit. That's not you. If people would just follow a reason, we could have all we could all have more stuff. That's not you.
That's not you. You think Columbus was heavy handed, but also if you think about it for a minute, he was kind of a badass. That's not you. That's not you, j You are, in fact a villager. You scored an eleven, so you're a We call you a cuspy villager. And here's where you are, Jay, And I want you to take this. I'm you're happy to. I'll send you the actual words if you'd like, you can. I can send you a plaque if you want one. Uh, there's there's
a good chance, Jay, that you hate mals. No one in your family likes your Spotify collection, mostly because it includes discordant chants from places no one can identify. You always eat the one menu item that makes people nervous. You obey pedestrian traffic lights incessantly. Jay. You do that and you're told you look and act just like your aging father. But somehow that's a compliment. That's you, Jay.
Outhouses make you happy. Ladies and gentlemen. We've identified j and now you can go out into the world Jay, and you know who you are? Okay.
Now, the irony of this test is that if you're running it through algorithms and mit, it's completely modern.
Correct. That's a little ironic. I mean we're even taking tests.
You have an AI test that will tell you how trad and vase you are.
Okay, come on, man, how else are we going to get along in this world? I just feel better. I feel like a lot of people were wondering where you You know who you were? Jay, and now we know? Uh, will you come back sometime and keep doing what you're doing?
And there are any time about It was a great, great podcast, a lot of fun.
Thank you man, that's Jay Barred. Guys. Hey, what's what's up? What's going on with you? Anything you want to share before we hang up? What's going on with you out there? Just usual stuff? On YouTube?
You can find me live streaming regularly, everything from geopolitics to film analysis, to open debates to even we've been doing more literary analysis lately. In the last six eight months. We've done a lot of books Joseph Conrad, We've done William Golding. Yeah, we've we've expanded.
Yeah.
So that's there, and you can find me on all the social media outlets under my name.
Are you far from us at the restaurant? Now? I were in Greenville? Can you come to the restaurant sometimes if you ever, if you're ever in the South? Yeah, yeah, I mean we'll invite you.
We're between you know, Florida, Tennessee, so okay, but yeah, I'd love to do that. And then I got my third book, Ester Collegwood three. I just completed that a few weeks ago, so that'll be available in the next couple of months. Beautiful, So looking forward to to getting that out there.
It was a lot.
It was a little a little challenging because I hadn't been in the mode of writing. I've been doing so many videos and podcasts that, you know, going back to writing, if you haven't been heavy on that for five or six years, it's kind of a kind of get back in the mindset of writing, so and then I write for the Sam Hide Show, so you can find me there. I think the episode four will be coming out pretty soon, so that's usually on all the social media outlets as well.
Are you writing for Sam Hid right on? That's nice. Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
But that first episode, which I contributed a decent amount to a viral, So we got about twenty million views on that first one between between Twitter and YouTube, and I loved it.
It was crazy. I loved it all right, I'll share, we'll link and you know, and maybe I'll send you some of our stuff every now and then and hopefully it makes it into your world, but mostly pray for us. Okay.
Likewise, yeah, you should come on my podcast sometimes too. We have a good conversation about you and your past. But yeah, you can message me anytime, and you got my number and you let's stay in touch with left link.
There's a cool connection with the film we can make and we could talk about that forever and ever.
Oh, the Christianity film. I got one question before I go, is that is that separate from where Tucker was talking about the experience of the demonic or.
Thanks you're asking. So that is in the film, and that's a longer We spent all day talking to him. That's a there's a much longer piece to that where we sit and interview him about Christianities. What does a Christian how does it all work? That was a teaser so that we could continue the fundraising, which is going very well. So we're working on that. Okay, yeah, gotcha. Why don't you come on and we'll talk.
Maybe I'll get Scooter come on too with you and we'll talk about we can talk about that film.
Oh, why don't we that's a that's a no brainer. So I'll hit you, I'll hit you up on the phone and then we'll just spoke of time. Scooter would love that. Man. Yeah, okay, thank you God bless men. Take care. Likewise, we'll see you too, guys. That's it. That's it. Jay is a villager. You know, we've gotten away from the ladder Meter and now we're back in it. I think we're going to give it to everybody. By
the way, what was it? Part of Jay's lighter Meter test is that he was critiquing the test itself and then at the end he saw the actual problem with it. See this is what happens when you bring a debater, guy on, we can bring a When you bring a mind, it's ready to clap trap stuff. What happens is the clap trap your test and turning it into a ludicris a ludicrous test because obviously there's a lighter media test is a light person test, the Lightenment test to try
to test and see how and lighten draw. If you go to www dot first things dot org you can find the test. It's in it's under discover somewhere Andrew link it. If you take the test. When you're done, then what will happen is you'll be like, oh, this is who I am, and then you don't have to
do anything else. Maybe confession. It's not a bad idea, but I mean, you can't really just skip out of all the things the church asks you, or if you're not, if you're not a religious person listening to this, you can't just skip out of life because you have the number now. But what you can do is sleep profoundly well. Once you have your number, you sleep like a baby. You just sleep, you just just like I'm sleeping, because it will be so wonderful to know who you are,
you won't have anxiety. Goodbye, doing in next time. Who loves you on heavy things lightly,