Hello, this is Craig Ferguson letting you know that I am hitting the road again with my Fancy Rascal Tour this summer and beyond, starting next week on August seventeenth and August eighteenth in Boulder, Colorado. For the full list of dates, please go to my website, the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash Tour, where you can also buy tickets or not. See you out there or not. My name is Craig Ferguson. This podcast is called Joy, It's not Rocket science. I talk to people I like about
their pursuit of happiness. Here's Kathy Lee Gifford, an American legend. She loves Jesus' TV country music Enjoy. I'm so happy.
I went to bed last with the biggest smile my firs, I said, I said, I get to see my my Howard.
Yeah, Craig tomorrow. Yeah we ready to go. Yeah, Yeah, we will just go. Can I be a little more, a little louder in here, because I'm going it was a little more of himself. I want a little more of you too. Yeah.
I like to you know, only you did it just because of that slot. So this is called joy.
It's called joy.
Lord, please bless this time together with Craig can help us not to be too naughty and Jesus name man.
Okay, I don't look, I have not one to scoff about prayer. No, no, I am not I am not a I wouldn't describe myself as a person of faith, but I am a person of doubt, which is on the way to faith. Right.
Yes, and some people's journeys are quite long.
Yeah, I think I take it a while. But I feel like that prayer you sent up there about Lord help us not be naughty, I think.
That in a hurtful way.
Yeah.
I just think I'd love to be naughty with you anytime you're ready and you get rid of that you know woman that why is she still there?
Wait? Wait, you know sometimes I think she asked us of the same question. So listen. I'm's a type of woman you want.
To hate because she's so beautiful, she's so smart, she's so everything, and then you meet her and she's you. You love her.
You're talking about my wife, no, the other one you have. But listen, I know, I know that you're very private, and I respect and listen, you know what let let me just say at the start of this, because because this this is an unusual set of conversations for me, Yes, that we are going to talk about joy and we are going to talk about that, and I wanted to talk to you about it because you and I have a friendship, yes, which I love you, I adore you, and I don't agree with you in a lot of things,
and I think that the most important things. Yeah, I think that's true. But but I think that I see so much of like, people can't be friends unless they all think along.
Yeah, the cancel the cancel things.
Yeah, that seems a little that's stupid. Yeah, we can learn from.
Everybody we sit down and have a conversation with. Why would we want to block off? First of all, it's the antithesis of my faith, which is I don't say that my Christian faith because I'm I was born to a Jewish father and a shicks some mother, you know, which is a gentile mother, and we didn't grow up with any organized religion in my life at all until all of us came to an understanding of faith in the person of Jesus, who in the in the Hebrew
is called Yeshua and all of my family did. And so when they say, what do you believe, I said, I'm I'm a follower of Jesus and even you and I have conversations quite a bit when we were on set for our movie Than He Knew, which is available on Netflix now if you want to know. But but you talked. I said, you said that to me, And I've told this story on a couple of occasions because we had a break in shooting, as you always doing the movie. Sure, and you said, and I can't do
you without doing you. But because I see how your head I used to be in my head, I had you down perfectly. So I won't do it today. I will avoid it.
I can. I give you. It's really all right now.
Tell you because I just you know, I'm sitting across from you, and it's been.
A couple of years and I've just been too long.
It's and they put you too far away from me. I can't even reach you under the table.
I think, well, then somebody's reached me. I don't know you. You got your channel change and stick down there. Something's happening.
Anyway. Yeah, you said basically to me, Kathy, why do you love me? And Ricky meaning your vase. Right, we were not great guys, is the way you said it. And I thought, that's so not true.
Well, Ricky's a great guy.
You think that.
I think.
No, you continue to say, we don't believe like you, We don't believe in your faith, we don't probably don't vote the way you do. But why do you love us so much? Because you knew I did, And I said, well, first of all, you're unbelievably lovable, and you're aging like a fine wine that you no longer drink. But anyway, you are created in the image of God, both you and Ricky. Plus you're the funniest, smartest, dearest people. There's so many good things to love about you. Why wouldn't
I love you to which here's the thing. Yeah, you said, no person of faith has ever told us before that they love us, And I said to you, well, then you've never met one before.
Yeah, And I don't, to be fair, I don't know about Ricky. I mean, he probably gets told people love them all the time. But when I was, I mean, we're going to do people of faith. That was what that was about. He gets told he's what's not to love about him?
Except maybe I can't think of something.
Right, but you know you love what your love. But let but let me just say, let me let me talk to you a little bit about joy. We will talk to you about your about your faith and about Jesus. That was it? All right? Good? So we're done with that. Now.
I want to talk to you a little bit about joy because the reason why I wanted to do to have discussions with people about it is because you, to me, are an example of someone who has gone through particularly recently with Frank and all that that You've gone through a lot of stuff. And I saw you. I remember
seeing you. I think the Today Show wasn't long after Frank had passed, and you had that kind of quite speedy vibe of someone who was in grief and in shock, which is but you also had something else, which is I suppose is your faith. And you'll tell me. But you are someone to me who seems to be an adversity able to turn to a joy of some kind or maybe it's wrong to say, but manufacture it in yourself or procure or find it from somewhere. Would that be accurate?
No, I'm sure it seems like that to some people. It was actually a week after Frank had passed. Now I had found just for people who don't know the story, and it's been almost eight years now since he passed. Wow, he had been sick. He had a lot of CTE, chronic traumatic and cephalop I can't say the last word, and cephalopathy, which is brain damage concussion after concussion, after.
Going from the football.
It was a Sunday morning, a beautiful Sunday morning. It was hod his birthday, August ninth, and I remember, it's the things you remember are crazy. But this is why, this is in answer to why I was the way I was during this quite would have been traumatic experience for somebody that didn't already cling to God the way I have. For so many years, I've always said, you know, uh, there's no bad time to find God, but the worst times you're grateful you already cling to him. It just
being tighter at a time like that. And so I heard him get on his scale. The man was one week shy of eighty five, and he naked. He looked from the back. The man was thirty. You know, he worked out still, he exercised his brain. What was left of it, We didn't know, because you don't know about CTE until you do an autopsy, and we weren't going to do that on him. Before he was gone. I thought that would have been.
It's just not people froving on it. It might even be legal in some states. I don't know, not anymore.
Eugenics. Baby, bye bye, you're breathing air and leaving a carbon footprint. Bye bye. No more so anyway, No, he was. He was an extraordinary man to the day that he did pass. But I heard him get on his scale, which he did every day, and he and it said your weight is one hundred and seventy eight pounds, and I remember thinking, oh, it's going to be a good day. Was his playing weight for all those years, and that
was his favorite weight. So he was extremely disciplined in lots of week now he enjoyed life like crazy, and God knows he made mistakes. Nobody knows that like I do. But he was a good, good, solid man of a different era, crab, a different generation. He grew up during the Depression, ate dog food as a child and was grateful to have it. His father was an itinerant oil worker. I mean they lived I think I don't even remember thirty different places while he was growing up, so he
never was able to put down roots anywhere. But the one thing that could he could stand out at every time he moved to a different place was his athleticism, and so that came to be the thing. He was a terrible student. Later when he got a scholarship to USC to play football, he became their finest scholar athlete. He was so grateful to have an education.
I was going to ask you about that one. Was Frank a grateful man? Was he a joyful man?
You know, that's such a great question because you would think he was grateful. And that's why we didn't bring a class action suit once we got the results of his brain scans. You know a lot of people who had whose loved ones had worked in the NFL joined this class action suit because the NFL knew about this. They did and and and Frank was was He said, no matter what you find out, Kathy, you know, when I'm gone, I don't want to be a part of that.
I don't want our family to be He said, I am so grateful for the life that I have had that the NFL afforded me. He would have he was when he wasn't playing for the Giants. He went back to California and sold for fertilizer in Bakersfield. That's what the NFL was at that time. Nobody was a full time football player. They only played it till the you know, for the season. Everybody else had jobs otherwere you know a lot of them came back from World War Two
with half of their life shot up. You know, Connory Connorley who was his best friend there and was the quarterback, and they became dear, dear friends, and he had just just come back from World War Two, so you know, it's a different world. I'm twenty three years younger than Frank was to the day, so I would hear the stories he would tell, and I would have such respect and admiration for the for the the kind of human
beings that existed. Then we hear so much today about the entitlement, about the cancel culture, all of that stuff which just demeans and diminishes the human spirit. Everything Frank talked to me about celebrated it.
Yeah, I want to talk to you a little bit about the councel cultures thing, because I do have a knee jerk reaction a little about it myself. But at the same time, I think, you know, I look at my you know, my oldest boy is twenty two, so he's kind of in that in that that world, that world, and and you you know, and I want to I want to have an open mind about the youth, you know, like you have an open mind about people who are not Messianic, Jewish, Christian, which.
Is most of the world, right, which is I don't want to cut off most of the world because they don't agree with.
Me, right, And I don't want to. I don't want to cut off the I'm not sure with cancel culture if it's if it's really like that for most of them, you know, I think for the kids, I mean when I say them, I mean I'm talking about young people. I think you call it.
Gen X or Z g Z. Now what do you do now we've run out of that, We're going to pick up the Greek alphabet.
I don't know. I think that My youngest boy, Liam is twelve, so he's he's just coming into a generation. I don't know what the generation is called, but I think they're going to be different.
He's twelve, you know, what, can we just say he's twelve.
He's twelve and he's a boy.
Yeah.
He reminds me of Stewie and family guy.
Yeah. I don't think he would be he would be insulted by that. I think he'd be proud.
He'd word is a badge of honor. I want to be called dad, call me Snewie.
Yeah.
Although I think I'm a little like Peter Griffin as well, which is a little I'm like that.
I'm Brian the Dog.
You're well, yeah, a little bit with the wine.
Hey, this is a this is a latte. I'm about to graduate though, are you listen?
There's another thing that I admire about you. You can drink. I can't drink. I know you can't. But have you ever had a problem. Do you ever feel like.
Oh boy, yeah, times definitely of course.
Yeah. That makes me feel oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Here's the thing. If Jesus is my model and we go back to Yeshua Jesus, people have no idea because they don't study rabbinically. The Western Christian world has no idea of our roots. They don't I've had people even say to me through the years, now, Jesus was Jesus is Catholic, right, I'll go. Do you know what year the Catholic Church came to be? I forget now, but it's like five ninety a d or something like that. Yeah, I said, Jesus had long since died, resurrected, ascended to heaven.
And no, he was not Catholic. He was a Jew, a rabbinic. It was a rabbi, and he was a Jew and a perfect Jew.
Was there a moment that kicked this off for you?
I remember it as I'm going to be seventy years old this year. I can't even.
That's not true. Good do I need to know which moisturizer you use, because you if only it was more just moisturized.
You know what it's it's that's that's for our lunch afterwards where you usually talk. Yeaheah, No I do. I'm actually developing a skin line. And all of the botanicals that are in the skin line come from the Bible.
What.
Yes, Who was the greatest seductress of all time? No? Even before that.
Cleopatra, Cleopatra, Cleopatra was used all these things that there was no CVS or of you know, Lord Lord and Taylors, you could go to.
Everything came from the earth, and so what never changes truths. The scriptures are built on truth. So we started looking at the Bible and the and the and the botanicals that existed at the time. Some have have gone on.
You really genuinely are telling me you have a skincare line based on the reading of the Bible. Yes, I am both appalled and delighted.
Well, if it were two thousand years ago for the greatest aducters of all time, Cleopatra, why would it not work for for me and for you? It's then the beauty of it is. It's called Nila. It's not out yet. I mean, we've been in trust uh tests, you know, tiles for and my skin has never been better than it's been in my entire life. You know, you do.
Well, I have to say, but listen what you say. Tracked me talking about the skin, Caroline. I want to talk to you about Yeah, that's not even that yet. I want to talk about it.
No interest in talking about that.
Your epiphany, your moment, your your literal come to Jesus moment.
Okay, the beginning. This is not the moment I'm thinking of. But I fell asleep. I was a little girl living in Annapolis, Maryland. I looked up and it was fall, and my daddy and I were raking leaves. And I looked up and there was Jesus sitting on a cloud.
And you actually saw yes in my dream and your dream in my dream.
And he looked down at me.
Jesus are growing up, growing up Jesus.
And he looked down at me and he smiled, and I knew it was Jesus.
That was it, That was the dream.
Years later, now I'm twelve years old, I believe, and I go to a movie, not unlike the new movie Jesus Revolution, which is out right now. That's the time period that I was growing up in the early in the seventies. I graduated in my teen seventy one. That was when the Jesus Revolution was really starting and I
was already a part of it. But when I was twelve before that, there was a movie called The Restless Ones, first movie that the Billy Graham Organization ever put out, and if you watch it today, it's one of the most dreadful wrek you know, you just even my kids looked at it, and they looked at it and they looked at my mom. This is awful, I said at the time, it wasn't. Billy Graham was so so criticized
for it. You can't make a movie the devil lives in the movie theaters, the devil lives in the bass drum, the devil lives in the nightclubs.
I can't argue that what always attracted me to all of that stuff.
I know it, and left to your own devices, it still would. But here's the thing. Billy Graham knew something that something deeper because he didn't have a religion, he had relationship with the living God. You know how anti religion I am.
Yeah, That's why I'm kind of fascinated by because you're your faith is unshakable, but you're it's almost like a contempt for religion.
Not the contempt I have for religion is not that people love their churches and love to go and hear the word of God. All of that is wonderful. I have contempt, just like Jesus did, for the leaders of the church that do not feed the flock, that abuse the privilege of power, that misuse it. So I'm talking about organized religion that has gotten so big and so powerful, not unlike our government that it thinks that it is God instead of teaching the people, you know, to follow
their their their their good shepherd. They said, no, no, you're our flock.
To me, it sounds like you're a little bit Did you ever encounter the writings of the Desert Fathers? Have you ever come across that? No Evagras of Pontis.
Or origin heard of all of this, but no.
Origin of Alexandria was as an early Christian theologian from Alexandria in Egypt. I think it was like his father was a Christian martyr. He was origin was I think around two hundred AD, so pre church.
Well not really pre Catholic Church, yes, way pre Catholic, but the original church with Jesus.
Yes, so he's pre Catholic Church. And and he he got excommunicated five hundred years after he died. They got very angry at him because he said God can exist only in the mind. There can be no physical.
Manifestation.
Manifestation in the sense of which is not what you want to hear if you're selling church. Cus, I guess it's my accent basically means crap. Yeah, but I think that I think that to me is it sounds to me like you, you're Christianity for want of a batter word, that you're following of Jesus has a very airly early Christian feel about it, like first one hundred years after after the.
Yes, that's exactly when when people who don't just just it's not that they're ignorant people, they just don't know. There's different kinds of ignorance in the world. There's I just didn't know that, and then there's willful ignorance. And I find so much so many Western Christians are are ignorant about their early history, ignorant about what the Word of God actually says, only because they've never been taught.
And that's what I get angry about, right, Craig, that that we we have people graduating from from seminaries all over the world right now who don't even know that Jesus wasn't a carpenter. That's a bad translation. No, see,
there you go. This is the kind of stuff. From studying rabbinically like I have now for a long time, you find out what the word tecton in the New Testament is the original word for builder slash architect, for what Joseph and his and Jesus did to make a living before Jesus became a rabbi, and so when and it all goes back, always to bad translations of the Word of God. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew,
ancient Hebrew, which is still the same Hebrew. Yeah, I don't, but I studied the reading, you know, I study it, But I don't. I can't sit down and read backwards and all that stuff.
No.
I study with the world's greatest biblical scholars. Many of them are Messianic, and otherwise they are the rabbis, and rabbis are the most learned people in the world according to scriptures. I mean, they just are. They go ten layers.
But they don't always agree. Rabbi.
No, that's the whole point of being a rabbi. They fight all the time. Because it's not fight. They argue, and they argue, and by arguing, this is what's wrong with culture. They learn and they start to ponder another person's opinion and their take on something. And that's what good honest discussion should be like, respectful disagreement.
I Craig Ferguson will be hitting the road again this summer and fall, bringing the Fancy Rascal Tour to your region. For tickets and full list of tour dates, go to my website, The Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour. Come see me live or don't. I think we could talk about religion for a long time, and in our friendship we have talked about religion for a long time. Yes, But there's another part of you. There's another area of
you which I think most people are aware of. But even if they don't know, you are a You're a very earthy person. You're funny, you have a you have a little body, You're a deliciously body sense of humor. You're thank you and you and you are your your funny and your naughty, and you're aarthy And I think, and I mean all of these things is compliments because you know, I love you, I know, and I find that fascinating. With the what I understand of trinal holiness.
Yeah, you know what holy actually means set apart for sacred use. Okay, it doesn't mean perfect, it doesn't mean you got a halo over your head. It means set apart for sacred use in the in Hebrew. And that's what I am, and I think every human being is is wired to be set apart for sacred use. I'm not going to stop having the sense of humor I have. I was woven in my mother's womb before the dawn of time. So was my mother, So is your mother, so is Liam and Milo. They just it's that's that's God,
that's Jehovah, God Elohim, the creator of all things. And so that's not going to change. And the world in quote does that. It tries to change us and make us cookie cutter Christians or cookie cutter Jews or Mormons or you know, it's all the same.
Have you run a conflict?
Oh?
All my life, I was kicked out of the Brownies. I was kicked when I was I was kicked out a few years later. I was kicked out of Sunday School. A few years later. I was kicked out at the age of seventeen the America's Junior Miss pageant. Why because I questioned things that were stupid and I knew innately that that's not true. I'll tell you a perfect example
of religion and relationship. In Jesus's day, when he walked on the earth, which he did for thirty three years, the people who follow Jesus would understand because they'd grown up this way that the trees and there were no big trees them, there were just sort of glorified bushes. Back then, Israel was a desert. Those trees, the trees that you go to Israel and you see now have been planted since it became a nation in nineteen forty eight.
Oh my gosh, you and I are going to go one day and it's going to it'll continue to blow mind and it's going to your yours a go flying off your neck, okay, And so it's so so interesting. So back then in Jesus's day, certain trees represented certain groups of people within the Jewish culture, the Jewish people. Just one that everybody would know is the olive tree represented God's people, the Jews. To them, what what the sycamore fig tree represented? Back then were the religious leaders
of the day, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. You know, Jesus was cursing them for not caring, not feeding the people, lying to them, cheating from them, misrepresenting themselves, abusing their power.
That sounds familiar.
Nothing's changed because human nature doesn't. That's why we need the Holy Spirit to to live within us. That's the only thing that changes are innate nature.
All right, So you you live with the Holy Spirit within you. Now I'm gonna so that. I'm gonna say that.
I think you do too. But that's another discussion.
We're not talking about me. Yeah, So the the idea of joy within you, yes, is from that, I think. I think it's fair to say it comes from.
Knowing where I came from and who I came from.
Now, give me an example in your life in the secular world. Give me a piece of adversity in your life where you turned immediately to that to if you like, seal the wood, stop the floor. You know what I mean? Is that something?
Oh, there's so many. I have a lifetime of it, a lifetime of history of That's what keeps me going. I still have tough things that happened to me on a daily basis. But as I said earlier, I cling tighter to the to the one I know has never betrayed me, never let me down, never lied to me. My rock, the rock of my salvation. And so I'll finish the little story about finding Frank an hour later, and he's gone. He's gone. At first, I try to resuscitate him and I can't. Cody, my son is home.
He hears me calling for him, He comes down, he gives the compressions and I am sobbing by that time because I know that code and Cody's still trying, and I'm crying. But they were not tears of anything, not fear. No, there was total peace in me. There was no anxiety in me.
Were you aware of this at the time, Yes.
Of course. And the Bible says it's called the peace that passes all understanding. You don't understand what that means until you're in a position where you know. I shouldn't be feeling joyful right now. I was sobbing, tears of joy because the look on his face was this And you can't see me over the airwaves, but I'm showing you, Craig.
It was like wonder, wonder, And even Cody stopped doing the compressions and he says, Mom, look he's smiling, and I said, I know, honey, he's with Jesus, and Jesus took his breath away. And that's exactly what happened. And so we instead of people talking about this tragedy of Frank dying no, Frank had been to Israel with me. By that time. He'd found out that he did that having a religion, all of his life was worthless. He found out by studying the Word of God that he
had a relationship with the living God. And that is the difference between night and day.
Are you a believer in the continuation of a form of consciousness of life after death? Oh of course, yeah.
Yeah, Well, nobody exemplified that more than Jesus. They thought he was dead a big surprise three days later, a resurrected. And you know what I love about that resurrection. It's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. If you don't know it that basically, Jesus it's morning time, it's Sunday morning, and nobody could come. The women in Jesus's life were the most unafraid. They were the most loved because they were basically considered useless in that society back then.
You were you were there for sex, you were there to have to prove to be you know, to give babies to the powerful full. But for the most part, women were considered less than chattel, you know, they were. They weren't even even Mosaic law considered a full human beings. We have so much of that still in our world today. Jesus came along and said, no, you are equal. You are equal in God's kingdom. You are daughters of Abraham, you are daughters of the king. You are going to
be a co heir with me to God's kingdom. This is why the women were there at the cross, only one man, the apostle John, the only one man. And at the at the grave on Sunday morning when the sun came up, Uh, the women were there. And the first person that that that Jesus appeared to was Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus had cast seven demons out of. We would call that today mental illness.
Yeah, the demons. Thing is that shop's going to talk to you saying about yes, the demons are the again when I've talked to you about the Desert Fathers, origin of Alexander, Evagrius of Pontus. These are early Christian theologists and mystics, and they talked about demons in the way that we today talk about character defects. Right, And it seems to me sometimes in early Church thing and perhaps
later church. I don't know much about church, but it seems to me that a law of early almost psychotherapy comes from from that kind of thing, is like trying to get rid of the negative aspects of your own consciousness, your own.
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately do that.
Who put them there in the first place?
Well, that's why I'm so glad you asked, because I've just got an answer to that. I've been studying all my life, basically with the world's greatest biblical scholars in Israel, and it's always in Genesis. It talks about at the dawn of creation, how God there was an essem, there was a council of the heavenly realms. That means it wasn't just Jesus and the Holy Spirit and God there and the Father there were there were other entities.
Are you and you believe like like like a big kind of like Game of Thrones Lord of the Rings thing? Do you think?
Or you know, maybe this is why I haven't read so many of these other things that people say, have you read? Have you read of your head? Right, I've been studying this my entire life, and I don't. I've barely scratched the surface.
You know.
If somebody says, go read this, somebody, I would respect. And now I would, because you have said it. I would read the Book of Enoch. I would read some of the town some of the the deeper Kabbalah stuff, which comes from a good place of early Judeo Judea mysticism. And but but I for now it takes everything that with the brain cells, I still have left to study
what it really. I've learned it the wrong way for so many years, Craig that I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to unlearn what wasn't true. Like Jesus was not a carpenter, that's a bad translation.
Of the word, didn't curse out a tree.
And he cursed what the tree represented. But the Bible talks about Jehovah Elohim, creator, talks about the lesser elohem gods. In the scripture, it says, and the lesser gods, Well, well what's that? How's that work? He said, you shall have no other god before me. He meant, the ultimate epitome of the God has So there you think that it all started back then.
So it's there's a god, yes, but there's also like a bunch of other slightly lesser naughty gods.
Well they all started out as God's creation, and some of them rebelled as a story and Satan, who is the you know, he's the god of chaos. If God, my God, Jehovah Eloheim is the god of shalom. People think shalom just means peace. It does not. Peace is one of the parts of shalom. And it's almost like mahallo. It's just becomes sort of, hey, shalem shalom. You know, no, God,
God is shalom. That's every attribute of God that makes him God, faithfulness, justice, peace, joy, your joy, miracles, glory, righteousness, all those things, that's shalom.
Okay, So let me ask you this then, because I'm going to steer you back around to what we talked a little bit about earlier, which was the idea of a life after death, because I think a lot of people, particularly in the more naive agnostic, atheistic community communities is the wrong word, but realm, realm the idea that religion is all about life after death. It's all about and so because it's an unprovable situation while you're alive, I would ask you, do you have a conception of it?
Do you have an are you certain of if it exists an and if it does exist, what it looks like.
You know, you're so smart to say that it's in the suite bye and bye. That's what so many people live there. Like, if I can just get this through this life, it's going to be perfect one day, you know that. What what Jesus came to show us is, yes, there will be a new a new heaven and a new earth, and it will be perfect, and every tear will be dried. And know there will be no pain, and there will be the perfection. That God had originally
placed us, and he put us in a garden. Whether you believe in that as a as a as a real place or as a metaphor, it was perfect. That's what He always always meant for us, is the garden where he Why did he need us to be born? Did he need to create us? Why did he create us with free will? You know he could have created a bunch of robots and we would have done everything he wants. No, I know, because they they want, they'd want to they want they want to be they want
to be God. Sorry, Ultimately, these robots are good. They're gonna He's so much smarter than us and that's what happened in the original story. Suffice to say, nothing is new under the sun, and the things that we battle with today, like Mary Magdalene at the cross. I was going to finish that story. Jesus. She doesn't recognize him in the morning because it's early morning, it's dawn. She's come.
She believes he's died. She saw him die. She was at the cross, watched him, watch them throw the spear in his and the blood in the water gush out. She saw his suffering that They never left the cross, and he was there from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon when they pronounced him dead, which, interestingly enough, greg at three o'clock. They call it the ninth hour. That is when all of the animal sacrifices at the temple take place at three o'clock in the afternoon.
So Jesus was the ultimate sacrificial lamb while they were actually sacrificing a lamb in the inner court, this Holy of Holies on the temple. Jesus naked, he was not. You've always seen him on the cross with the loincloth and all of that.
That's a society.
No, that was the ultimate for them. They wanted to crucify you naked and as as vulnerable as anybody could be, and that was anybody that Christians naked.
I think that also the idea, I mean the historical aspects of crucifixion, you know, the idea Spartacus and like I think, like ten. I don't know what the number was, it was thousands of slaves were crucified on the Appian Way.
That was their warning. You you mess with Rome, this is going.
To be your end. I mean that was I think Pompy that did that, which was run about the same time as or Crisis maybe who did it? Run about the same time as Jesus of Nazareth.
It was, it was it's one of it's the worst, they say, the worst death that's ever been contrived by a human being.
What crucifixion.
Well, there's been some bad ones since.
So listen. We talked a lot about religion, and clearly that is at the core of of who you are. Not religion, sorry, relationship.
I do your hard habit, You're a hard habit to break.
This is another habit you've got. You will sing directly at people which record No, I don't think that's true. I also find that I quind I find it quite alarming and very endearing at the same time, a little bit like you. You are very much who you are and I and I love that and I appreciate that about you. And I wonder do you ever when you when you get because you say things about Jesus Christ and a lot of people are very touchy about that.
Oh yeah, yes, do you ever It's not popular in all circles.
Right, and not even that, I mean people who who are you know, followers of Jesus Christ or people who are Christians. You will have doctrinal differences, differences with them, and people get very you know, heated about that. Do you ever do you ever feel like maybe you don't want to bring it up?
You know?
It goes back to that boldness that that I've had.
From the Brownies.
I was going to tell you that when I went to the movie. I went to the Billy Graham movie and it was over and I remember literally hearing the voice of Jesus again in my heart and he said, Kathy, I love you, and if you trust me, I will make something beautiful out of your life.
That was it.
You was the defining moment. I walked forward literally gave my heart, even though my heart was already his. I just made sort of the public statement, Yes, I am going to follow you. And that was the single greatest decision of my entire life.
And you feel that, you feel that all adversity is coped because I'm fascinated by people of faith. I am fascinated you always happened, yeah, and of all doctrines, all faiths. So I'm fascinated by it. I think it's an interesting thing. And I'm fascinated by yours because it is unshakable, which I suppose that's what faith. Have you ever thought because faith is a gift.
It's not because I have it innately, right, But the Scripture is very clear that faith, even even faith, I have to get from Him. So when I'm running out of it, I just cry out. The scripture is full of cry out to the Lord. He knows you, he created you, He knows you needed cry out and ask and we will receive.
Let me ask you that, because we're talking about joy at some point, the idea of running out of faith. Yes, describe for me a moment in your life where you had to You had to do that because you talked about Frank passing, and that was clearly I thought, huge, yes moment.
Yes, almost thirty years of marriage, right.
But is there is there a time like I'm trying to think of something more, No, something more mundane, sure something.
The times that my faith was most tried is the way I can answer it and took me to my knee, My knees more often than a normal day would. When I was accused of sweatshot violations, when I was accused of abusing children.
In sweatshops was one of the most.
Yes, it was one of the most. I couldn't really Lord really, Frank and I had just opened up a fourteen million dollar home for aids and crack babies in New York during the pandemic. Every bit of the money from my Walmart clothing line went towards building that home. When nobody would even hold an aid's baby, only Princess Diana was doing that. And then and so I'm now We've built a home from scratch. It was used to be the old Ronald McDonald house. It used before that,
it was a woman's convent. And we just bought it, tried for two with two million dollars to renovate it for these babies couldn't because of the laws anytime yout dealing with diseases and babies, and you know, tried to. We had to tear it down and start from scratch, and it cost fourteen million dollars and that's where my Walmart money went. You know, I was taking you know that I earned honestly and put it giving it away. They never the people who came against me, never visited
Cassidy's place or Cody House once. They just stood up like they're doing in culture, the culture now cancel culture and accused me of something so that they would. The guy that did it said he was a human rights activist. No, he was an attorney who worked for Unite the Apparel. Yes, and you know what he said to me later. Now I'm not gonna say that privately, I'll tell you. Okay, nobody knows this, but it's it's interesting. But anyway, we got laws passed. We got uh, we got I got
legislation passed. I was suing the State of New York to a blind HIV testing because babies were being born who shouldn't be born with the AIDS virus or just UH with the full blown AIDS. We found out with all of our studying that if if a baby got a certain no, if a mother got cocktail of certain drugs while she would pregnant, Uh, it would go from lessen forty percent down to less than eight percent chance the child would be born with the disease.
Wow.
And I said then, and they had CDC, the wonderful CDC had blinded all HIV testing in the clinics so they could track it, not do anything about it, just track it. And we knew that that there was there was hope, There was.
Hope, there was a treatment for women who were had HIV and were pregnant. Yes, And I say it was held being withheld.
And there are all kinds of different privacy issues that were involved, especially with gay men who were legitimately were worried about if it's if their status was known, they might you know, And and I respected that, but at that time, you know, this was about dying babies. To me, I said, you guys can do with your you can march, you can do and you can fight your battles in court. But this is a great urgency. There's a way we can save lives, you guys, not just the men. I
don't mean that I'm at the world. And so I sat night one night with the Governor, George Pataki at a swanky party in the Hampton's at the home of the Revlon Ronald. Ronald Proman's not widdow but divorced. She was a friend of mine, Claudia Coleen, beautiful woman. She said, Kathy, I know what you're doing. I'm sitting here next to the Governor. I said, Oh, the poor governor. He's gonna stuck with me for two I'm now I'm suing the governor.
Understand, I'm suer soon sitting next to him apartment Yes, yes, okay, that's good. Yes, yes, yes, he must have loved that, you know what.
He's such a good decent man. I'd met him before. And when I say I was suing him, the organization that I worked with, the Association to Benefit Children, had sued the State of New York two other times and won both times too, So we're an adversary to be dealt with. But I told him everything, And back then I knew everything about this. I knew every statistic. I don't anymore. This was a long time ago, but I
remember it. Boys. I remember sitting in that and he sat and listened to me with such respect and so quietly asked a couple of different questions. I had the answers, and he said to me at the end of the evening, three things. He said, I never knew this.
Really, A politician said.
He said, yes, that's what I thought. I never knew this. Number two, sometime we're on the wrong side of this issue.
A politicians said that. Yeah.
No.
Third one, I'm going to do something about that.
No, no, you're crazy.
Now Frank was sitting at a different table, and I remember driving home with him and I said, I think he heard me. He was, I think so, honey. I don't know if that if he's going to have the guts, the balls, whatever it takes to do the right thing, but I know he heard me. And within one month, Governor Pataki stood in the garden of the Kody House on ninety first Street in New York City and announced the unblinding of HIV testing for the state of New York.
Long story short, For the first time in history since since the HIV AIDS started, it was the first time the death rate went down because the birth rate. It was you know, because the babies were living right, they were surviving, and within one year after that, every state unblinded HIV testing, not because I did the brave thing, but because Governor Pattaki did. There there are still people in this world who are there for the right reasons.
And when we fight a good fight and we back it up with science, and we back it up with good will and prayer, miracles still happen every day.
There's an interest in word you used. You use the word science, and a lot of people on maybe I'm I'm not going to say my say to the fence because that's not true. I don't have a say to the fancy on the fenceless. I'm kind of wondering, right, so your defense, yeah, defenseless, it's best. But a lot of people think that science and faith are in conflict. They are things that are in conflict. Do you don't see it that way?
Well, science lives exactly alongside faith when you know what the faith is based on what it really says there is it's perfect. The world as what was created was mathematically perfect. I'm sorry, but that's not random. That's a that's a mind and a being that we can never ever comprehend. But we can we can bow to it, and we can, in our own ways be humble before it and say, Lord, I know I'm I'm not perfect. I know you created me for good things. You created
me for something better than what I'm settling for. I need your help. All God wants, you know, he says in scripture, somebody says, I don't want your sacrifice. I want you to know me.
And you think science is the knowledge of God.
Well, God says in the Old Testimony, said look at the heavens they have they have all knowledge and all wisdom is there. But but, but, but religion came along and said, can't can't worship the stars. Can't worship the stars? You know I'm not. He didn't say worship them, said study them, study them, seek, seek, And it's just so exciting. That's what makes my faith more real every day. A couple of years ago, the Lord gave me something that I've tried to live as my my my mantra mantra
ever since. And it said, Kathy, there's a scripture that says the joy of the Lord is your strength. Well, okay, that's in uh what is it Angie's uh Neamiah eight ten.
I was going to say that, but I didn't want to get it wrong.
I ate ten the joy of the or did your strength? Okay, I believe that. But later in life, maybe maybe when I was going through the really really rough times of Frank's infidelity came a year later, after the the all the terrible stuff with these sweatshops.
It was it was a very embarrassing time, I would imagine.
Mostly for him.
Yeah, listen, I look, I know this.
I know that.
I remember seeing that at the time. I was working on the Drew Carrey. I remember talking to Drew and we saw it in the newspaper and he said to me, would you like to be Frank Gifford this morning? Yeah, that's it.
No, non men came up to him all the time. It's better you than me, Frank. I mean, it was disgusting. Yeah, and he was a good man who did a stupid thing. It happens, It happens, It happens, and women or after my husband, he was Kevin Costner of his day, you know, he was the Brad Pitt of his day, and they all and it was blatant right in front of me, And you know, I lived with that, But I really believed that he was. He was stronger than that. And it was also sixty six years old when that happened.
It wasn't like he was, you know, twenty two, and he knew better. He knew better, but it was you know what. We can go into that another time as well. But I remember the Lord saying to me, Kathy, this is what I want you to think all the time. My joy is non negotiable. Oh boy, okay, I'll know. You know when you and I were doing our movie together, then came you available on Netflix.
Left.
We had to go through a negotiation with you for the price that would be fair. You gave a little. It's a negotiation, that's our business. Yeah, and time off you wanted, you know, time to go back to your the most beautiful home in Scotland and visit your family. Don't like the wife, but that's another story and it's the process. So you understand negotiation. But he said, your joy.
Don't let anybody mess with your joy, Kathy. And my joy comes from knowing every morning when I wake up that I am a child of the living God.
Were you so you were you able to forget? Is that how you were able to forget?
Frank the way I was able to forgive Frank Howard Stern, you everybody else has broken my heart.
Oh come on, you're in good company. It's gonna say. These guys make a lot more money than me.
Hey, wait till this podcast takes off anyway, Yeah, what was your question?
That was? Was that? How you were able to forgive Frank.
The way I was able to forgive Frank was at the minute I knew it was true because I believed him and he said it didn't happen. I had no reason not to because my husband stood by me through the sweatshop stuff. He stood by me through the uh people.
Like when they're panicked.
Yes, that's exactly right. And he realized he was caught. He had no idea that they had tape, you know, audio tape. He just knew that that until he found and he said, no, people were always trying to set us up, always trying to destroy us. First of all, that goes back to the ones who were fallen from grace. You know, God's grace is forever, but they choose, they chose to walk away from God Almighty and try to be God. That's never going to work out in anybody's life.
You know, you've seen and I have seen a parade of people who who started to believe that they were God Almighty boy. And then where are they there business? From time to you know, Jesus said, you know, what does it profit a person if they gain the whole world and lose their very soul? Jesus didn't want them to lose their souls. That's why he came.
And so, and I'm going to push you on this because the forgiving of infidelity for a person like you, who I know what you stand for, and I know what you're like, and I know how much you value loyalty and truth and friendship. Yes, that that that kind of betrayal would be horrendous and so for you that must have been a mountain to climb to get.
No, it was instantaneous, really, yep. The minute I knew it was true, God showed me almost like a scrawl. I don't do a computer, but now that I've seen it, it was like a scrowl of everything that God had already forgiven me for. He said, Kathy, every time you asked for forgiveness, I forgave you. You cannot ask for forgiveness if you're not willing to give it. It was instantaneous.
That's amazing. It's amazing, And that.
The exact opposite with Howard Stern the story. He started saying the most horrendous things about me. I'd never met the man, never listened to his show, who never watched it, never met him, nothing, And he started just just I would. People would tell me, Gosh, I can't believe what Howard Stern, I said, don't tell me. I don't want to know. But the minute I heard that he was doing that
kind of thing, I started praying for him. I said, Lord, he must be so hurt inside to hurt people he doesn't even know, to be so cruel to people that are you know, don't live cruel lives. You know, I'm not perfect, but I wasn't out there hurting people. You know, I don't understand it, Lord, but you know why he does it. Hurt people, hurt people. So I said, Lord, I'm just going to pray for him. I'm afraid that one day he'll come to know, you come to know how precious he is.
To you, and you two became friends, right, Well.
You're my friend, right he became Thirty years later, he asked me to forgive him. And he said yes, and he said, will you forgive me? And I said, I said, Howard. Of course, he's a remarkable I don't know him still to this day, but.
He's a I think he's a fascinating man.
Oh he is, and is brilliant, and he's used his communications skills, I think for in a dark way, when God always intended for that brilliant mind and that brilliant sense of humor and all those things to be used for his glory, not his own, not his God's glory, Okay. And so anyway, what I just would, I would pray for him every day. I just did. And so I sent him a note when he got divorced front from his wife, and I hand delivered it because he lived
across the street, so he lived in Regis's building. And I said, I'll just take it over. I didn't trust it getting to him otherwise, you know, And I left it. And the next day he's talking on the air about you know what, I got a note from you know. And I didn't hear this either, but I was told. And he goes the nicest note, just the nicest note from of all people, and he says and then they all, oh, she's just doing it so you'll like her. Just no,
that's bullshit. She's the phone of you. I'm so whatever. And so he said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. So that was years and years years later. Now I won't go through the whole story unless you want to hear. But I look up one day at the studio. I'm at the Today Show now, and I look up and downstairs there's a monitor. But downstairs, one floor beneath me is where you've been there, Craig, where you walk in
and you go to the studio. I'd never seen anyone with an entourage as big as this, because he was there to announce that he was going to be a judge on America's So he's making that announcement and it was going to be on NBC and all that. So I, oh, there's Howard.
Okay.
I didn't think anything of it, just said another prayer for him. Probably, I don't know. I'm getting hair. I just come in from from Greenwich, so my makeup's not done, my hair is wet. I'm in my little schlap shows. But like when we're on sete you've seen me like that, and I'm hot, aren't.
I absolutely, It's an amazing thing to see.
Anyway, so the Lord says, Kathy, I want you to go downstairs right now and say hello to Howard and welcome them, and tell and wish him well with the show. And I went, okay. Lord, Now that they had made huge effort at NBC to make sure that I didn't run to him and he didn't run into me, because there was a lot at stake, and they and my hair and makeup people have been don't don't let Kathy
out of your sight. All of a sudden, I get up and I say to my hair and makeup people, I'm gonna I'll be right back.
We're n she's walking, she's walking, she's walking.
It was just like that, and so Sarah I started singing again, and anyway, I would just go downstairs. Nobody tries to stop me. I walk in and and I walk right up to Howard, who's six six. I was five six at the time. I've shrunk a little and I and I'm flat footed, and I look up and I'm going Howard, Howard, and he's looking around because he's got good foot toler than I am. And all of a sudden he looks down and sees his little elf
in front of him and he goes, whoa. He just I remember him just sort of physically backing up and going rarely is the man speechless. He was speechless. And I put my hand out to him, said, Hi, Kathy Lee. I think it's about time we meet, don't you think. And he put his hand out and I said, I just want to wish you well and uh with the show and with your life, and you just take care of yourself. That was it. I turned and walked away. He was one thing. He just sid said, yeah, crazy, right,
the show. That was crazy. I said, it's crazy, and I just left and went upstairs. They go, what did you do? I said? I said, I wished him well with the show. Let's get my hair and makeup on him a little behind. And I left that day for La because the Cody was graduating from usc Film School that the next day. So it's flying into to be a family for a while. I land and turned my
phone on and there's a message. My friend Jill Martin had given him my number because she knew it was important, and it was him saying, can I say bad words on your podcast?
Thank you?
Yeah? I mean, obviously I raised it, but it was it was a million fuck words. It was like, I'm so fucked. This is Howard Stern. I'm sorry, I'm just I'm such a fucking He's just I can't tell you exactly what he said, but there I could tell the man was in great pain. And he said, I'm so, I'm so sorry. I need you to forgive me. I need to talk to you. He was so nice to me today and I've just been wrong and I'm just. He was so contrite, he was so he broke my heart.
But there was no number I couldn't call. It was just a caller idea unknown. So I said, well, Lord, it's in your hands. I thanked God. I said, wow, incredible. Thirty years later, Lord, you're answering this. This man is seeking people. He has hurt to say I'm sorry, forgive me. Every person needs to do that in their life, all of us do to have peace. Shalom, God shaloon. So anyway, that night, we're at dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel and I see no caller idea and I'm going, oh,
it's him, he's trying again. I got up. My husband was not happy, and either was Cody. You're not going to talk to him, mom, I said, oh, yes I am. I'll be back you guys continue at dinner. I went into a private room there and I guess for about a half an hour, maybe not that much, maybe twenty minutes. I don't know. Those things are surreal anyway, you don't really know. I don't check my phone if I knew how to. And he was so incredibly contrite. He said,
I cannot believe how kind you were to me. And I said, well, of course I was. You were, and I said, and so do you forgive me? He said, Kathy, I've just I've been I've fucked up my entire life, my whole life, and I'm getting cat counseling. You know, I'm trying to be a better person, trying to go to everybody that I've hurt. And I know what I've been horrible to you, and I keep hearing wonderful things about you, and I just kept doing it. And I said, why, Howard,
why did you It was because I hated you? And I said, but why we had never even met. He said, you were everything I wasn't. You're Jewish, but you believe in Jesus, how's that you're a musician, but you just sing old songs like that? Your father likes you just I just found a million things to make fun of you. For I didn't. I thought you were a complete fun The only way I could deal with somebody leader like he was to write you off as a phony. And he had a group of minions, of course, and yes,
people who just fed into that. That's okay anyway, I said, do you forgive me? I said, Howard, of course I do. But I just need you to know that I forgave you thirty years ago, and I've been praying for you every day since. And and he goes, what I said, yeap, I knew this day would come. I didn't know when you've certainly taken your time. We'd said a little lad, And I said, would you like to come to dinner at my house? He goes, you'd have me for dinner?
I said, of course, I'm not sure Frank will, but I will. You know that kind of thing. And we never did do that. But I've run into him several times since, and it's very warm between us, and there's no tension, there's no none of that. It's forgiven. It's not forgotten. It was a huge thing. But the how you forgive is immediately because you realize that that's what
Jesus did. He said, you're not supposed to forgive once you forgive seven times seventy times, which is in the Bible, the perfection everything.
It's all all the Mathema.
Every if Jesus turned six pots of water into wine, there's a reason that's six pots. I've written a book called The Rock, The Road, and the Rabbi with one of the great biblicals Ribbon scholars, and every single number he knows the meaning of because the rabbis do, and when you find out what it means, it is so mind boggling, and it just confirms and affirms your faith. This is not a random thing. This is sovereign God being sovereign God in spite of whatever else happens in
whatever realm. And I believe there's many realms, you know, Who the hell do we think we are to think that there's just us in this world? You know, I don't believe that. I don't know what else is there. But I'm not going to put God in a box and say he only created us. You know, no, no, I don't believe that, and I think that's what eternity is all about. Once the next step comes, and you asked about that earlier, it's we're going to be learning, we're going to be growing. We're not going to be
sitting around on clouds playing the harp. I don't want to go there. You know. I get tired of the harp in about five minutes.
Yeah, there's a hotel lobe vibe about it, harp. I'm gonna be honest. I love that you're talking about time because we are out of it.
Well, why are you dying?
I really hope not. But what I mean is, but what I mean giving me the hook, I'm giving you the hook for no, nan, I'm going to take care and we're going to get something to you.
Okay, my darling.
That sounds great, but nobody else can come to that. Well, you can tell me the stories that you weren't going to sell.
I've told you lots of stuff that will never, you know, never be said publicly because I trust you.
That's right, that's right.
I trust you, and I love you, and you've let You've always let me be me, and I do adore your wife and she's the one who said, I sent her to you the script you gave it to her. And she does have a beautiful name. Name is me. Yeah, and she's a beautiful woman from New Hampshire originally. But anyway, I know all of this. I know. I'm telling you. You're your listeners who may not know. And she she did not didn't she turn to you and say you've got to do this.
She said that. She said, you got to do this movie. She also said, and I'm going to cuss a little here, but you're going to like this. She said, that is Kathy Lee Gifford. She's a goddamn American treasure, and you're gonna do this movie. She did, She did.
She never told me that. You told me. I'm serious, I'm not doubting it. But that's so nice. But you told me, she said she And boy does she have you down.
That too. We gotta go.
I love you what you've heard about this man. He's awesome, My baby
Episode Part two coming soon.