About the Lamb, Not the Ham - podcast episode cover

About the Lamb, Not the Ham

Mar 29, 20241 hr 9 minEp. 685
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Episode description

Andrew Klavan returns to the Ricochet Podcast for a special Good Friday/Easter episode! He, Rob and Peter cover everything from antisemitism—the devil's flagpole, as Drew calls it—and what it really means to believe that Christ is King; on to poetics, popular fiction, political persuasiveness and the right's shortcomings as conveyors of truth. 

Plus, Peter and Rob give a tribute to the last centrist Democrat Joe Lieberman; and consider the power of container ships, both as objects and as economic game changers, after one knocked out a bridge in Rob's city of origin.





- Audio this week: Emergency Dispatch recording in Baltimore Harbor

Transcript

All that authenticity starts to get on my nerves after a week, but for a period of time he's great. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mister Garbahaw, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I am Rob Long in New York. I'm joined today by Peter Robinson and Palo Alto. James Lilas is off this week, and our guest today Andrew Clayton. Drew Clayven will be

joining us in a minute. Let's get this podcast started. Once you get here, I'll know the uh workers on the key bridge and then stop the holy take thirteen, this beast, the whole bridge just found out. Start started. Whoever everybody, the whole bridge just collapsed. Well this question is directed. That's correct. Give you no hot traffic stop. I can't get to the other side whether the bridge is down. Welcome to the Rickchet Podcast.

This is number six hundred and eighty five. We have missed spent our lives. We're gonna do a thousand of these, aren't we before? Oh yes we will. I don't know. I am Rob Long, a co founder of Ricochet and joined me as always as my co founder, Peter Robinson and Palo Alto. Peter, how are you? I'm well, Rob, all the better for hearing your cheerful voice. Cheerful. Oh okay, I got to amend that it's a mondy. I know, I know if if, if the news is the missiles will strike in twelve minutes, I'm going

to give you a call. I have never heard you sound less than cheerful, even when you're saying things. Yeah, I'll take out to bad people too, I'll say. And we are usually joined by James Lilas James lys Nott Availble. Today he is off doing something very interesting, I'm sure, and he will be back next week. And uh this today we have a guest, Andrew Claven. Drew claved to us, who's an old friend of mine, a friend of ours, and he's gonna join us a little bit.

But before we get to Drew, can we just say we should say something about the death yesterday at eighty two years old of Joe Lieberman. Joe Lieberman was a cenator from Connecticut and a former vice presidential candidate. He was eighty two years old. And I cannot think of another Democrat or am I being unkind who represented the kind of Joe Lieberman ish. He was the Lasian, the last kind of moderate dem would be considered a kind of a liberal

republican modern Democrat, new Deal, almost Harry Truman Democrat. He believed in a big government and a very healthy welfare state to help the less well off. Our critique of that is now well our. The conservative critique of that is of course very well known at this stage, that you build a big welfare state and actually hurts those. Nevertheless, those are his intentions, and what sets him apart is that he from today's Democrats is that Joe Lieberman was

unwoke. He wanted strong national defenses. He wished that wherever the United States, for it, faced adversaries in the world, that the United States would prevail and the adversaries would lose. And he was pro Israel and also a personally religious man, an observant Jew who refused to work on the Sabbath, refused to attend Senate sessions, which are sometimes called over the weekend, and

simply said, I have my religion that comes first. So he would and I didn't, I say the last time I saw him, as though I saw him every Weekend. I saw him half a dozen times in my life. But he came to the National Review. Oh gosh, Rob, what would it have been? It was ages ago now, but something like the sixtieth anniversary dinner of National Review. Yeah, that's right, the kitos forever ago. Joe Lieberman was not a conservative. He would never have voted the

way National Review wanted him to vote. But he was making a point, and that point was we listen to each other. So he was an admirable man, an altogether admirable man with whom I would have disagreed and he would have sat there and listened to the disagreement. Yeah, he would have contended with you in in a way that was he was. He was a friend I think to debate. He was a friend to civility. But that didn't

mean he was an milk toast. And uh, last time I saw him, this is a long time ago, was at the commentary magazine Roast, and they was to jumping ours this thing. It's really kind of a brilliant money making scheme where you you find somebody famous, you roast. It's like a regular Comedy Central rose to the old D Martin Roast and then people pay a lot of money for tables to sit there and watch this this famous, well known person get roasted, and it's often uh soft, you know.

There's some people come in and there was like, you know that is that is the the equivalent of a when you're being interviewed for a job and somebody says, what are your what are your biggest weaknesses? And you say, oh, I just I care too much. You know, a lot of it is like that bad stuff, but some of it is great and has

teeth and it's hilarious. And the best one I saw was Megan McCain, John McCain's daughter, Megan mcain right, Megan yes, Yes, and John McCain and and Jolie were very very close friends, very very good friends, and so she knew him for Uncle Joe, she knewhim forever, hers, her whole life. And she gave the most vicious, hilarious roast. And

he was kind of doing that thing. The last time I was supposed to be laughed that hard was Reagan at this second inaugural, the TV special banquet, and Don Rickles is just going after him, remember, and you just would cut up to Reagan and Nancy and Reagan was like eyes were like crying. He was crying, laughing so hard. And then of course Nancy was not laughing at all. She was not enjoying it. But he was live very hard. And she had this great joke. She said, the great

thing Joe Liban was he always put his country above his party. Always we just never knew what party it was. We always knew what country it was. Israel killed uh, and he was he was. I mean, he seemed like the he seemed like a real gentleman. And it's a you know, tempting to say things like, well, that's that no more of those guys around, but I suspect that there are probably some people who are there

have to be okay. And meanwhile, events in York Town of Baltimore, Baltimore, so that's a I guess it's uh, I forget it's a Singapore prater, Sringapore Singapore flagship. I think ship the Dolly. The Dolly hit the bridge supports of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and took it down. I mean, first of all, it's kind of amazing because you see these things floating and you think, you just forget, that's an enormous amount of mass traveling at a speed, and it discusses in the water doesn't mean it's not

going to knock something down. And you just forget how big these things are. These things are enormous, these container ships. And then the one thing that struck me over and over again was that there's just an instant need for people who don't know anything about it on social media to uh describe their specific experts. Yeah, iowahawk, David berg I think's burg Bergie Burge said that he said a propos nothing today. I thought I would just kick off this

new Twitter trend by mentioning three things I don't know anything about. One, you know, Finnish epic poetry. Two intricacies of South Asian cuisine. Three container shipping. Who's next? But the only thing I know about container ships that I know a bunch, But I mean that is relative relevant here is that if it was dirty fuel, which some people think it was, that fuel had to probably came from the Baltimore Harbor, right the bunker in the

harbor? Or is that the newest thinking? That basically the power went off, the boatstalled, and that it that it's important people remember that the person guiding the these container ships in and out of the harbor of every harbor around the world. It's a pilot, a local it is always a local pilot. It is never the master of the ship. And this has been true for I mean maybe a century. This has been true for a long long time. And then the other thing that's about it is how amazing it is

that they get these pilots on the ship. Depending on how fancy the the the harbor is. On the way in, they sometimes send out a tug right or a speedboat with a pilot on it. They also in big sports like Shanghai and I think I think sometimes Long Beach, which is I think the biggest part in the world, second bigestport in world, they chopper the guy in that I just kind of dangles down and just jumps on on the deck. Yeah. Really, it's a pretty amazing thing. And then I

saw it. I saw it a bunch of times. And then the master who's in charge of this giant thing, stands back and the pilot just takes over. So that was what was happening there. And then the second thing, the most interesting thing for me, because as you know, I'm kind of junkie about this stuff, is the economic ripple effects huge one ship, one bridge, one bridge, and just the fact that I think we tend to think of ourselves as like, well, it's all about software, it's

all about these sort of bits going through the pipes. And the twentieth century we think was brought to us by computers, and I just don't think that's true. I think the modern world's brought to us by container shipping. It is the most remarkable thing I think the past one hundred years. Maybe AI will exceed it at some point, but right now it's still container shipping.

And started because a guy who ran a trucking company in the southeastern part of United States, I think is his name is mac McLaren was upset that his trucks would go to the Savannah or the Wilmington or any of these ports, and it take them three days to unload a truck and load it on the boat, or to load the truck back up with stuff from the boat. Remember there's a cargo nets of cargo nets, a giant net. Yes, yes, yes, yes, And he thought it's got to be an easier

way. Why don't we just take the back of the truck off the truck and put it in the boat, and then why don't we make it the size of the thing that goes on rolling stock for trains. Why don't we make it all the same thing? And it seems so obvious now, so obvious, But the time and the point you make at how recent this development is in historical terms. You and I know gym Mattis. Jim Mattis is former Secretary Defense, former four star in the Marine Corps, a colleague of

mine at the Hoover Institution. When Jim Mattis was if I recall this correctly, sixteen or seventeen years old, he somehow became interested in Eric Hoffer. Do you remember that name. I know, the name Eric Hoffer was the kind of the common man's philosopher. Eric Coffer was a working man in San Francisco, and his job was something that no longer exists and these days even sounds quaint. He was a Steve Adore. Steve Adore. And if you look at the movie again, it's not that long ago. This was a

post war movie. It's a great movie. There's a good argument that was Marlon Brando's best performance on the Waterfront. All of those men were Steve Adores. They handled. These were human beings who carried objects onto ships locally into those cargo nets exactly. I'm the reason I'm mentioning Jim Mattis is that Jim Mattis is not an ancient person. He's retired, but he's not some sort

of century old relic. And Jim hitchhiked from his home in Oregon down to San Francisco, no appointment, no nothing, showed up on the docks in San Francisco and started asking guys around for Eric Hoffer. And it took about twenty minutes before the Oh, Eric's right out there, and he saw Eric Coffer sitting on a pier eating a sandwich. It was his lunch break. And Eric Coffer had big arms and big hands because he was a workingman. His classic book is the true believer. In any event, I'm just trying

to point this out that this was all recent. It is within living memory that global trade became possible on something like the scale we have today because of the innovation of cargo shipping. Here's what you tell me, what you say, I'm kind of struck. The very first impulse, at least as reflected on Twitter, was somebody must have been drunk. They were doing drugs. The pilot didn't know what he was doing. The captain must have been something.

Actually, as far as I can tell, the human beings behaved promptly and quickly. As soon as the engine failed, there was an emergency message to the poort authority. It took them something like thirty seconds to block traffic on both ends of that bridge. So I believe the men who whom we now presumed dead were maintenance workers of some kind. Can you imagine what would have happened. I mean, we know what it's like to drive down the

I ninety five corridor. So this is one of those instances where it does seem to have been mechanical failure. The human beings performed as they should have. Remarkable, as far as I can tell, Am I mistaken? No? I think you're absolutely right. I think that actually happens up and down

the chain of container shipping. In general. It's the most important thing in the world, and everybody's a professional and they kind of know that it's the most important thing in the world, so they're kind of professional and they're professional in the when you come steaming into Shanghai or Tianshan, which is the Hong Kong or Bossan, South Korea, as I've done, or Long Beach or

Seattle or Oakland. They kind of like they they considering how much gets passed by, passed along the shipping lanes, and that everything we look at, even it's, you know, insanely trivial, is often delivered to us by a container. It kind of works. I mean, I actually feel like that happens more often than not. That the normal people doing important jobs. You think to yourself, why aren't they in charge? Because the people in

charge tend to be horrible. Although I suspect that I expect that they think I do. By the way, another famous stevid or Is was a Senator Patrick Moyne. He was a steved or worked on the docks and said he just you could just up in the hell's kitchen, I guess in the Irish part of the old Irish part of town in New York. You could just walk a few blocks to the Hudson River docks. Yes, and he could to show up and they would just give you a job. But it took

a long time. And so the other story here for if you're a free market conservative is that unions fought I mean, I completely understandably fought container shipping tooth and nail because they knew that once should make it easier. You don't need stevedores. And so now guys they sit on top of cranes and they

move these giant I mean, now it's an amazing ballet. I sat on the top deck of the of the Hand in Miami, in the Bussan Port, and I sat on a folding chair on the deck, smoking a cigar and watching just under, just above me, hundreds of containers being removed from the ship, rearranged and put back and reloaded onto the ship. It by five guys and five cranes, and it was like a crazy ballet. Rob.

I want you to know. I want you to know that everybody who knows you expect that when there is hard physical labor to be done, so you're sitting at a lawn chair smoking a cigar. That is so true. Speaking of true, we have one of the great writers, great writer and also great novels. So I'm separating these two things. Great political, great popular crime and mystery novels. Andrew Claven, our friend Drew, but also

a thoughtful, smart and delightfully humorous and fun political and cultural commentator. He's the host of The Andrew Claven Show. He's been I think that's a daily wire, has been social daily wire for bazillion years. I'm trying to be nice to him, so because I could. I'm going to stop the minute he gets here and just say, you gotta if you if you're looking for a great read, cup, but a bunch of great true crime, Empire of Lies, the House of Love, the House of Love and Death,

along with his memoir The Great Good Thing and the Truth and Beauty. Uh he is. Ah. He is a truly truly renaissance writer and a wonderful guy and a great friend of course that you and I can't stand the son of them. Yeah, you guys told you. And uh, and so he's here, and so we're gonna gon attempt to be nice and respectful. Drew Happy Mandy Thursday. Do you celebrate that? I don't know. I do a weird sect you're in that we know we stuck? Is he really

though? I don't know. No, I'm an actual Christian. That's so you do the whole God thing, you guys. Yeah, yeah, we were past that, the Pascapelian faith. I understand. Yeah, I was there. Okay, so look, let's just I don't want to talk about this, right, but let's just do it so we can do it. You're associated with Daily Wire. You've been there for a long time, uh, Benjapiro, Jermy Boring, good friends of ours, good friends of Ricochet. You had a you had a I don't know, a contributor to somebody.

I don't I can't quite understand the structure that Candace owens. In my opinion, this happened too late. But okay, you got rid of her, and then all hell broke loose because you said something because she some You're gonna have to sorry, you just have to. You've got to back it up and explain Candace and what she did and why she Just give us a paragraph you got from Okay, and let me let me just say, first of all, I've been with the Daily Wire. At the beginning. It

was me and Jeremy and Ben. That's how it started. You know, you know, given the cast of characters, it is just astonishing that that thing has succeeded. That we're not all on the street or in jail. I know, it's amazing. I don't know what I don't know what went wrong. We were trying our best, but you know Candace. I spotted Candas instantaneously when she was on YouTube back in the day and she had a small following and she was kind of doing a Blexit thing, you know,

black should get out of the Democrat Party. And I thought that I have an eye for broad sort of a decade ago. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, And I have an eye for you know, broadcast down because I grew up my father was a big radio guy, and I've always been able to spot it from a mile away. That's why I never talked to you guys. And I saw her, I invited her on my show.

She walked out. I literally walked down the hall to Jeremy's offices before he had the Throne room, you know with the guys with the spears and everything. I walked out to Jeremy's office and I said, if you want to hire a woman, I just met her. She's fantastic. He wouldn't do it, you know, it wasn't time, and so he when he finally went back to her, she had become this massive, massive success and cost him a bundle. And I laughed at him. I've never seen a broadcaster

quite that talented or as charismatic and some of the stuff. And I don't want to make this about her because I wish her well and I always got a lot with her. I didn't know her very well. I'd see her in hair and makeup and stuff, and I, you know, we'd say hello, and we were always very friendly, always had some you know, funny chats, never had a problem, and I now today wish her well. However, the integrity of what the Daily Wire is saying really matters to

me. And we have lots of different different opinions. We have people, you know, like Michael Knowles and should obviously be in prison, and then we have Ben Shapiro who's fantastic, and you know, it's like really really a wide spectrum of people. And she would say things like about, I don't know, you know, nine to eleven's kind of hinting that there was nine to eleven was an inside job, or the moon landing was a fake and all this stuff. And you know, to me whatever, you know

that her audience loved it. She's a talented person. Everybody chooses how they use their own talent. Then it started to get I thought a little dark you know. I mean, she started to say things about the Jews, and she kept coming back to the Jews. And you know, there was a time when Kanye said I'm going to go Defcon three or whatever you said on Jews, and she backed him up. And now she was her friend, and I thought, all right, she's showing some loyalty in all this.

But then it got to be some stuff that you know, she got an argument with Ben Shapiro and online and she said he was all about the money. He can't serve God and money. And then she used this phrase Christ is King, which has become and I believe that, I believe that Christ is King, but it's also become a catch phrase of guys like Nick Fuentes who are open Jew haters and basically feel this is white man's country.

Flentes has said, this is a white man's country and the Jews are an alien race here, the hat us and all this stuff, and so that phrase, you know, and I'm getting this stuff from good people Christians saying how could Christ the King possibly be? You know, an even phrase? And you know, Jesus said, you may call me lord lord, but if you don't, you know, you don't serve my father in heaven, then I don't care whether you folk, Floyd, I won't know you.

And so any phrase, of course can be used in a wicked way, and anybody hail victory, Hail victory sick kile right, exactly exactly. So it became uncomfortable for certainly for me, because I want to defend people and I'm never going to attack my colleagues, and I never attacked her. And finally they parted ways on the basis of the fact that this was hurting the brand. I think, you know, I was getting to the point and Jeremy talked to everybody and told him why he was doing it, and I

said on the air that I was proud of him. I thought he had you know, obviously, these are very complicated things, their contracts and all kinds of laws that you have to fulfill. But I thought he did the right thing, and I thought he restored the integrity of what the Daily Wire stands for, because it's not a question of free speech. She's absolutely free to go and say whatever she wants, but the Daily Wire stands for something

and that's not it. Just like if as I made the comparison on the air where I said, if I suddenly thought, hey, abortion's great, you know, I would have to leave, you know, or keep my mouth shut. I couldn't go in there because we don't believe that. We think it's a bad thing, you know. So Drew, may I quote someone who is a friend of all three of us, the late Christopher Hitchins. Here's the quotation. Anti Semitism. So seldom a good sign. That's

great, it was the best. I repeatedly called it the devil's flagpole. It's like it knows no side, it knows no team, it knows no party. Wherever it shows up, you know that you're dealing with. So could I just ask you're you're I just do not. I live on the edge of the Stanford campus and I work in the middle of it Stanford. These kids are brilliant, and some of by the way, I will stipulate

that it is a small proportion of the kids. It's very it's but it's loud, and it's visible, and it is anti Semitic, and so I do not understand I of my generation. I can tell you two stories. My mother's one of my mother's best friends brought her mother, who was an old lady to our house when I was a little kid, and my mother said, come over here, I want you to meet her. And I met her, and then my mother said, take a look at this. And the old lady showed me numbers on her arm, and my mother said,

I'll explain this later, but I want you to see it. So that was the kind of thing that was the sort of mindset in the in gentile middle class America when I was growing up. There was something horrible that had happened singular in all of human history. And if we understood one thing, we understood that doesn't happen again, and somehow it's gone. I don't. I just really it takes. Maybe I'm a fool, maybe I'm naive,

but I'm shocked. What do you make of it? Well, in some of my earliest writing, I think in my first novel, when I was like in my twenties, I called our general holiday Jews because this shock of evil, this thing that brought down as far as i'm destroyed Europe. These wars were the end of the great European culture. Had caused enough shame in people of goodwill that they started to restrain themselves. You know, they started to say, well, maybe the anti sentimentism thing isn't as much fun

as we thought it was going to be. And I always knew it would pass. And the reason I truly believe this, the reason I believe it is pass is because through Jesus Christ, the central ethos of the Jews has spread through all Christendom, right, I mean, what do they believe to be good to the poor? To you know, act humbly and act justly and walk humbly with your God and love mercy. Those are things. You

know. Jesus didn't just make that stuff up. He wrote it, and they passed on to the Jews, and then he inherited it from the Jews in physical forms, and so as that's I think a lot of times the people who hate the Jews hate that about themselves. You look at Wagner trying to establish, you know, a German pagan mythology, trying to go back before and I think that that's why it keeps coming up, because it keeps making us take stock of the rights of women, the rights of the poor,

the rights of the humbles, the weakest among us. And who needs that, you know? I mean, it gets in the way of all the fun victory and punching people out and conquering places. And I think that that just spreads spread, and it's not a coincidence that Europe destroyed itself in this absolute the explosion of jew hatred. I mean, I think that that was the end of their civilization and at the end of what was then called

Christendom because of that reaction to it. And I do not think, you know, even the idea that the Jews kill Christ, which I still hear people of goodwill using the Jews represent everybody in the New Testament, you know, and we sing that him, you know, I I it was who denied the eye crucify that we sing that to him. That's right, that is that is what that means. And even that I think is rejecting the entire gift that we were given through Christ in the name of the Jews.

So they put it on the Jew so nobody has to say, oh, I don't like Jesus. But really that's I think that's the Jews they're attacking. You know. It reminds me, reminds me of a wonderful story about John Wayne. On his deathbed, one of his Jewish friends dropped in and was teasing him and said, well, we all know you don't like Jews, because Wayne didn't care, and they got his friends that I know you don't like Jews, and Wayne said, the only Jew I don't want to

meet is the one up there. I think. I think that that's who they're really rejecting, and that's why it will never go away until it all goes Overay, you know, that's kind of had. I do agree with you, especially today's Mandy Thursday, Tomorrow is good Friday. So that we

hear the story again. And the more you hear the story, we're times you get the story, the more different parts you play in it, I think in your head, Like for me, you know, the I did once one year on Palm Sunday. We read it and sort of do we did the passion of the church I go to, and so we read it out loud and so people read the parts. And the part I really wanted was Pilot because it's the best part, you know, it's the best part

of it. And I got Pilot, And so for a long time I've just thought of, you know, well, that's what I'm that's what I would be, That's who I would be. I'd be the guy just trying to figure out a way out of this problem who doesn't really care. But it's hard not to get chills down your spine when you realize Palm Sunday, the cloaks on the path and the palms and the we're hey, welcome, welcome, welcome, and then a few days later crucifying the same people,

And it's hard not to think that's us, right, that's everybody. It's everybody, religious, religious people, the political people, the people people, it's everybody, you know, and it's everybody. And there's one or two guys, I mean, even Peter his like do your stuff? Yeah, yeah, they flay, they're gone, they're's just history. I was in Jerusalem last year. You go to this this beautiful church, uh uh, the commemorate it built on the spot where Saint Peter denied Christ three times.

Be kind of weird, if you know, if you somehow Peter comes back and he says, you know, I did a lot of other stuff. This is the one like I did some stuff that church right here, like my worst moment. But in a way that's kind of you know, that's sort of the story of our faith. Okay, But so before we get to faith, because I know I want to talk about you know, it's Holy Week. Do you guys celebrate Holy Week? I don't know what you're weird doing. No, I'm in I am an Anglican Catholic. I've never

sled. My theology is actually Catholic. But I'm not beholden to the Vatican. So oh, there you go, okay, and into behead my wife, which is all. And I'm sure if you are married to you wouldn't want you to church. Will say, uh uh, just to go back to Polish for a minute. Do you think it's the larger I mean the is the is what happened Daily Wire, the Cannas, Daily War. Think is that a fractal of the conservative movement? A little bit like there are

now there are? Do we need? I mean William F. Buckley famously you know, I don't know, the word purage is not correct, but he identified and refocused the conservative movement in the fifties and sixties away from kind of you know, John Bercheriy stuff and towards you know, free market, uh freedom, national security, yeah, anti socialism essentially. Do we need to do we need to do that? I think we're going to have to

deal with a segment of conservatism. It's kind of the Patrick Denin crowd who feels that this liberal business, liberal in the good sense of the word, has been a failure. And right now I totally understand that. It's good Friday. It's this is the moment when everything looks bleakest. And it does look bleak to me. I mean it's we have lost our way. We're you know, boarding like nine hundred and sixty thousand babies a year. The

Democrat Party is giving a standing ovation to abortion. The State of the Union, where you know, I laugh because it's corruption makes me laugh, but like that's a you know, that's a bad sign for America. And when you talk about you know, we're butchering children in the name of the name of changing their sex, which is impossible. And we remember John Adams saying this is a constitution for moral and religious people, and I think, like,

oh, you know, that's that's not a good thing. And so I understand why a lot of these young kids, and it's especially Generation Z, because twenty twenty came along. They looked out their windows, they saw people looting stores and burning buildings, and they turned on the TV, and people were saying, well, it's mostly peace, it's mostly these are mostly peaceful. And they were told that they had to stay in their homes and let their grandmother die alone. But it was okay to go to a riot

because you know, and I've talked to them. I've talked to these twenty four to twenty five year old kids. That's their political moment in the same way for me, like maybe the assassination of Kennedy or you know, the Nixon was my political moment. That is their political moment. And so they think these people hate me. These these people don't like me. They don't like the constitution parenthesis add to that to put in another dimension on exactly the

same point that you're making. I'm conscious of it because I work at a university. The kids are smarter. The kids now know and we all knew very quickly that people in their twenties and younger were at essentially zero risk of COVID, right, and all these universities charged the families full tuition and shut down. And these kids know they were being lied to worse than that, they were being robbed. Their parents were being robbed. That's right, all

right, No, none of those people has been punished. None of them has left lost their reputation, one of them has lost their office. Nothing. So none of them has so much as apologized as apologize exactly. So this is this is the moment that they're in and there's thinking, you know, maybe what we need They call it red Caesar. We need a red Caesar to come and take over this republic business and re establish this sort of chain of command from God to the king to the people, and that'll that's

going to bring it back. And they've forgotten the concerns of the founders, which is that you give people power they think, you know, and you have to divide the power and set it off against each other. They've forgotten that they're not They're not. I'm making them a little simplistic. They actually do have a sort of politics. It's a little more complicated than that. They want to sort of country, this run like a corporation. But they

want to get rid of this liberalism stuff and this republic stuff. And I understand that, but that's it's a despair as a self fulfilling prophecy. And I think if we decide that it's over, it'll be over where I think there's a fight to be had, and I think it's a fight, you know, worth worth having. We may lose, that's the way fights are, right, There's no guarantee that we can get back to our our constitutional rights. But I think it's still worth having that fight. And yeah,

I I buy that, right. But I also I mean, I'm I believe despair is a sin. I don't despair. Good Friday. Still we still know what happens at the end. I mean, last night was the celebration of Tenebray. I don't know, you're a weird cult, but we do tennibray in mine, uh, which is kind of line of ray. Yeah, it's right, that's right, capsule version of the Holy Week call kind of a in wine. It's super dark at the end, but it's

kind of light at the end because one candles still live. All the great movements were maybe not great, but like big movements in American history, you know that only have been a few, right, Abolition, temperance, civil rights. The's all been essentially religious movements. They started in church. They started as religious movements, and they were not political movements until much later,

to some success. If you're trying to ban alcohol in this country, which they did always surprises me, and to some moderate lack of success, depending on how inevitable you think the Civil War was. But they started from the idea of persuasion. You go from town to town, you stand on the back of a pickup truck or a back of something, and you talk to

people and you persuade them. My problem with the contemporary conservative movement that you're describing is that it seems to be seems to think that we live in some kind of parliamentary system where all you need to do is win by one vote and you get everything you want, and it's, I mean nice. You can fantasize about it, cast about it all you want, but that is

not the system we have. And it seems to me that the one smart thing, not one, but many smart things, among the many smart things the left has done and done relentlessly since the sixties is never stopped talking and persuading to the American people. And it's only recently that it's gotten mean and vicious, and you know it's it's it's kind of revealing its clause. But mostly the country has moved left relentless, slower or faster, depending on who

the president was what the cultural tides were. Why can't we do that? Yeah? Why is it always rage and anger? And I mean the buzz is divisive and still it's divisive, but I mean the division is a very bad way to convince people. The best example of this is abortion, which is now more popular than it was when they overturned Roe v. Wade because these guys are like, you know, you these poor politicians have no guts, they have no spine, and the people want them to get out and

say we must ban abortion. Well, you know, Abraham Lincoln said, public sentiment. You know, you cannot do anything until you have public sentiments. So convincing people comes before passing laws. And I think that we don't do it. We want everything on Everything on the right is a crisis. Everything has to be dealt with right away. We cannot possibly wait. The left has this spidery patient where they just wait and wait and wait and just

push it. And remember Barack Obama saying, oh, you know, marriage is between a man and a woman. He didn't believe that he was flying. You know. Then the minute he wins in the Supreme Court, he lights up the White House with with rainbow lights to tell fifty percent of the country screw you. This isn't your house, it's my house. That's and so you know, he played his he played the long game, and we

never do that. And it is profitable for people who go on the air, who just talk, to play into that anger and to play into that urgency's profitable. Yes, it gets the numbers. Yes, yes, that's what I mean. I've noticed sometimes when I'm talking to conservative donors or conservative you know, supporters, you'll mention some projects this or that and the other, and they'll say, hey, that sounds great, you know, be

great. If you get like back in the day when he was on Fox, Tucker, Well, Tucker, do you think Tucker would cover this? Or Laura? I'm always like, that's who cares people watching Tucker and Laura already agree, yeah, that's not who we're going after. And if you ask, you know, like what, I still find it amazing people say

that, well, you look how popular some of those shows are. You're telling me the country is not conservative, But well, the country's got three hundred ffty million people in it, and a whole bunch of them vote now, and you got to win by more than one vote. If you want to do anything. I mean, you don't have to win by more than one vote to actually take office. You could do that, but you're not going to be able to do nothing. Yeah, there's also this illusion that's

you know, I've been getting attacked on social media. Kansas came after me and all our followers, and they're calling me names and all this stuff. They keep saying things like he's over, he's done, And I think, like, you don't understand, you're not in the real world. This little place, seven of you talking to each other, and it sounds like a movement, but it's not, you know, And it's it's that that illusion is magnified by a press that falls into it. But look at look at

what they do. I to apologize you. I was doing the tweeted. I know that I do that every week. Yeah, and I appreciate the postcards as well. I think that's old fashion. But the effect, yeah, like, I know you, I know you're o G. But but I mean I think that this is you know, when you look at the at the left right now, they are afraid. I mean, when you see the NBC has to fire this rhino, it's kind of mild mannered you know, d N for former are Republican Party chairman chairwoman. They got a

fire while having Jen Pasaki on their team. You know, that's like, we can't possibly have a Republican The biggest example is Elon Musk. I mean, Elon Musk is everybody's hero. He's got an electric car, he's going to solve the climate crisis, is going to go to Mars. Then he buys Twitter and lets people like me talk and stop standing. You know, I gain fifty thousand followers, like in a day after Elon Musk took over, maybe two days, you know, and suddenly he's being investigated by every

agency in the government. You know, he's there. The attempts to silence us are insane. And instead of understanding, oh wait, we're actually kind of on the cusp of winning, which I think is what's happening. Let's let's play our cards right, Let's do the right thing. Let's convince people, let us, you know, show people good. We constantly blow it. There's so much anger. You know. One of the things I sincerely believe is I sincerely believe we're at the end of something, namely me and

my generation. We've come to the end this, and two things have failed. One this failed is the Great Society. The Great Society has been an utter, complete, total failure. It has been bad for black people, it's been bad for the country, it's been bad for the Constitution. It's just a complete, utter failure. So now what you have. And they kept it in line by calling people racist when they opposed it. So now what you have is they're the racist. They're saying, oh, we'll hire

you because you're black. You know you want to be a surgeon. You don't know anything about medicine. That's okay, you're black. Well, you know you can do surgery, you can fly a plane. We don't care because they're trying to prop up this dead thing. The other thing that has failed is kind of anti Roosevelt conservatisms, the idea that we're somehow going to completely be the first, you know, democratic nation on earth to get rid

of our welfare state instead of reforming it and cutting it back. And so you have Donald Trump, who sounds makes all the noises of a conservative but isn't conservative at all. He is, I mean, Ben Shapiro keeps saying he's the most moderate candidate running, which is absolutely true. He's got a little left the center. He's just you know, but he's got all the gestures. So it's this empty suit and they love it. I mean, look what the way they follow him, you know. And I'm not a

hater of Trump. I don't like hate the guy. I thought he did a pretty good job for three years actually, but I do find him kind of awful in a lot of ways, and he's a bore and all this stuff. But they just love him because he sounds, he's got that, he's talking, he speaks their their anger. I sympathize with their anger. I know why they're angry. They've been insulted for fifty sixty years. But still those two things have failed. And it really is time for the right

to start thinking what do we want? What do we want? All this time we've been talking about freedom. Every possible right wing thing is the liberty this, and the liberty that, and the egle that and the all American this is liberty, liberty, American eagle and all those things. And now they're saying, and we want a king, So I know, excuse me for a little bit, just for years, right, yeah, clean,

two weeks to stop the right. That's basically what it is exactly. Okay, So you believe that it's good Friday culturally, politically, and that Easter Easter Sunday's coming. Yeah. Is that fair? Yes, not just politically and culturally. I believe it. That's the truth. I believe that. I believe that this amazing thing happened and it has changed everything. Yeah,

and the evidence is on my side. It's true. A good friend of mine who converted from he was sort of very secular jew and he converted to Catholicism and I asked him, I said, why on earth did you do that? And he looked at me and he said, well, I think it might be true. For one thing. I think it's really kind of answer. I don't know. I think it might be true. So I would not I would not have converted if I didn't think that. I truly

would not have. You know. I mean, obviously these late the layers of meaning all pan out, so you can get you know, it's okay for a while to go into one layer of meaning that's beyond the facts and is just explaining other things to you. But ultimately, if it didn't happen, as Paul says, if it didn't happen, then we're fools to believe it. But but it kind of clearly, did you know. I mean, it's kind of I keep saying. Somebody somebody said, why do you

believe this? And I said, well, there's more evidence than for the assassination of Julius Caesar. I mean, the evidence for you know, it's not like they made it up. Yes, exactly, And and I think that it really is interesting the war that I know this sounds like Fox News, but it's just true that Jesus ed, don't worry. You do not sound like news anymore. You used to just relax on that one somebody on the wars from Damascus and fell off. No, I mean the edited Jesus

out of everything. You know, there's a the book Reviews that I read a biography of Dostoevsky, and it's like when Dusty, if he's talked of Christ, he was really talking to the Russian people. I don't think so. I think that's what I've read all his books. You know, that's what he was talking about. And they and you know, if you watch like the Johnny Cash biography, there's seven seconds where he goes into a church.

That was the meaning of Cash's life, the last third of his life, you know, that was and they do it in every film except the Christian films, which are you know, kind of dopey because everything is happy and great, which is another thing that the Bible doesn't teach us at all. But the people the power that this has, that the people who want power have to silence it is evidence in its favor, you know. And and it really is remarkable. And I think that people in America have been

spoiled. You know, you have to go back and remember, like, yeah, the first people who believed in this were like used as human torches through to lions. Yeah, and like you know, so we get thrown off of Twitter, you know, or something like that, and it's like, oh my god, there's a war on Christianity. Like it's going to get a lot worse. You know. That is that is one of the weird experience of reading the Book of Acts or anything like that. I say

that sat yeah whatever, I have that say you like google it? Oh plade, Yeah good, that sounds that sounds un And I understand what they all later. They all want to go to the desert just to get away from these people. Uh so you converted. I just I just want to follow. So you convert, you went all the way to Anglicanism, why not just keep going? I mean, I know I'm want to speak to Peter here. You just one more step. I'm just still waiting. Who

moved? Like people who moved, you know, they would go, they'd move from the East coast or Chicago, l A. And they would stop and like, but you could see why there was something like them bees right there? Keep going, just keep what you walk on it right, it's been almost exactly twenty years was baptized, almost exactly twenty years ago. You were married, you you got married before your conversion. Oh, I've been married for fifty years. I mean, so what effect. I've only met

your wife twice, I think, and she's a lovely person. NIC's like the nice well she would have to be right, she's the nicest person on earth. Yeah, Christian rob is handling the interrogation here, But at some point I'd like to know the effect on your wife or what she made of all this. That is a major change to announce in the family. You know, three weeks after I was baptized, she turned to me and she said, you know, you've changed completely and I who had You know,

you don't you know, you don't notice one. It's you, you know, like, I said, what do you mean? She said? She said, it's like you're serene. You're like a totally different person. She said it to me again about three months ago, because it is true. I've gone through, and you know, you get it gets deeper and deep. You know this great C. S. Lewis line where you invite the guy in to do some carpentry and he tears down the house and builds it back up again, and you know, it has been That has been my

experience. The most exciting part of it is the it's an infinite distance. You're constantly moving towards the center, toward the light, which is just a joy. You know, like I should be I'm one hundred and twenty two years old. I should be, you know, kind of solidifying your affairs. But instead, you know, you keep moving towards this light and it's very beautiful. And yeah, I'm like nothing like what I was twenty years

ago. And I don't think it's age. I think it's God and it's an a It's been an amazing experience and h and just a it's just a joy, which is kind of like this week. Every now and again, I had a great week and a lot of wonderful things were happening, you know, just professionally and personally and all this stuff. And then every now and again I go on X and they're just be like I hete Drew. Yeah, my goodness. Yeah, like the mom is not far from your

door. So I did this. I do a little commentary issue in the public radio in LA called Martini Shot. Now I do it. Oh, Michael, Yes, you opened with the story about a certain unnamed friend who I believe was me and your life. Yeah, you were the unnamed friend. I just I did one recently. I told a story but a friend of mine had an MBA and he said, but it doesn't you know, you show himus spreadsheet. He just know, he says. My NBA did not take. But I talked about a little bit about the scariest word in

Hollywood, which was I think last week before, which is Jesus. It's just a scary word. And I don't think it's necessarily because people are anti. Really, I don't really think they have a belief that structure that keeps them from making money like that they the guy's doing the Chosen or the Sound of Freedom or the one of them movie mal Cabrini. I don't think that's what it is. I just think it's there, like this is this is

dangerous. We don't think about it. Everybody's so touchy kind I just avoid it. Could I trot out of theory for you, two old friends of mine that has just been it's half formed. I haven't and I haven't said it out loud to any So this is the first time. But since nobody listens to this podcast anyway, it's just the three of us. It's like a safe space exactly. It's a very safe space. Okay. So it

begins with a story years ago when Milton Friedman died. Bill mcgern got in touch and said his friend Jimmy Lai was coming from Hong Kong to San Francisco to pay his respects to Rose Friedman. He'll be in San you meet him, all right, So I, Jimmy Lai and I sat down for breakfast. Jimmy Lai, who is now in prison, we sat down. We had a three hour breakfast. It was one of those breakfasts that ended at lunchtime and he. I was full of questions about China, and this one

I remember in particular. The fallen Gong was in the news followon Gong, a kind of crazy small sect, and I said, why do the Chinese authorities care about the falloon Gong? It's best I can tell. It's it's tiny and it's great. And Jimmy Lai explained, oh no, no, here, this is what you need to understand. Maoze Doun eliminated Confucianism, and then Deng Xiaoping eliminated Maoism, and now you have a country of over one billion people who believe in nothing but material gain, and they know that's

not all there is. Any system of belief could take off in China, and that's why they're even worried about the fell and Gong. All right, I now have come to the conclusion. It's not a conclusion, it's tentative. It may be crazy, and the two of you may say so that something like that is true in this country. When I first came to the Hoover Institution, Milton Friedman was still very much with us, and oddly enough,

his office was just down the hall from Lin I stopped. We chatted from time to time, and he explained to me that he went into economics because he grew up during the Great Depression, and the overwhelming question of the day was how do we organize our society to meet our material needs? People needed jobs and they couldn't find them. There were people who had trouble feeding

their family. Of course, he decided the answer was free markets. But that was the question of the time when we were kids and in college. I remember long bull sessions in the dorm. The Cold War actually did matter to us, Vietnam, Matt. So how do we establish peace? How do we win in this death grip struggle with communism? Kids today have grown up in a period of immense prosperity. That's not their question, and a period of relative peace, that's not their question. Their question is what does

it all mean? And the left understands that, I think instinct. That's why Jesus is so scary. I because totally agree with this. I totally agree. Is that right? Yes, the left totally gets it. That's they speak morally. They address issues from a moral standpoint. We have had this stupid thing about you know. They transformed Reaganism into pure capitalism, you know, and neighbor, and it was never that. And and capitalism prostitution

is capitalism selling fentanyls. Capitalism obviously, it rests on top of a set of values. And people are terribly lost. We have this. I wrote about this. I have a sub stack with my son Spencer called The New Jerusalem where we discussed faith. That's all we talk about. He's actually one of the best exegutes I know, he's a brilliant guy. And I was saying, you know, there's this I can't even remember the word for it.

It's this wonderful word that I just discovered called ultra crepidarianism, which is people, which is people who think that because they're an expert in one thing, they're an expert in another. And we have these years now of scientists saying, well, there is no God, any think like, what do you know about you know, Hey, you're an astrophysicist. I respect that,

but you don't know anything about this. You know, and you read them, you read if you sit and read Richard Dawkins, a guy actually like in respect us in terms of what he's trying to do with science, you didn't know anything about theology, doesn't he doesn't know what he's talking about, you know. And and Stephen Pinker is another one. Stephen Pinker has this long thing in one of his dope His books are ridiculous, but he has where he talks about the ghost in the machine. There's no ghost in

the machine. I thought nobody's believed. That's sin State cart like, that's right, that's right, And they didn't believe it before tanke Art, you know. And so you know that we've had this long idea that the cool kids, the smart kids don't believe, and throughout history the opposite has been the case, the dopes didn't believe. And I believe that remains true today.

And I've been saying for a long time, probably a decade. I've been saying that there is going to be a rebirth, and it's going to come from the top, because what we need are some of the people who look around at the at their intellectual accomplishments and say, you know what, none of this holds up if we don't start with faith. You know, I remember reading this has to come from the top, Yes, the intellectual top let us definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, but but you

know, I think that's really true. We used to have this thing called the Great Conversation, which was the you know, Aristotle talking to Plato, talking to Shakespeare talking to aquinas you know, like across time and people. And I remember reading a book by a guy from Yale whose name escapes me, but he said, you know, this isn't essentially a secular enterprise, because once you have a religion, then a conversation stops. And I thought,

that's the very that would be Yale. It sounds and recently, and I have to track this down. I believe he actually recanted and said, no, that's not right, because I thought, like, what, you know, you make your mind up when you see that the earth is not flat, then you can't believe the earth is plat anymore. But there's still millions of things to discover, and many of the great questions remain open.

And you know, one of the things that is that I find very distressing about the Christian community, or at least a segment of it, is it's certainties about certain things. You know, the Bible is words words when you read them, or reading is an interpretive action. There are things to discuss, things to have arguments about. I believe that God has fractured the Church to make us understand that a lot of these things that seem in conflict will

actually ultimately come together and be united. And yet I have these people. I mean, when I was talking about this situation as Daily Wire last week, I was talking about my belief that I'm going to talk about again tomorrow on my show that we don't know really who God is going to welcome into the kingdom. And sometimes the people that he welcomes into the kingdom. In the Bible things he says are people who didn't know that they were serving it.

You know. He says, you fed, you fed me, and you gave me drink, and they say, huh, we didn't We didn't know we were doing that, you know. And and and always by the way, yes, yes, And all week long there's been this fury. No, you must say christis king, you must say Jesus Lord. And he says, in the Bible, many who call me lord lord are not going to be And also he also says, you don't have to make a big deal about it. Yeah, yeah, that that too, you know.

And you know, he said the one that always gets me is he says, Samaritans, you worship what you do not know and then people say, what should we be, Like, We'll be like the Samaritan because it's the funny stuff in there. Yeah, there's some funny stuff in there, right, and this only the two of you, only the two of you. Come on, there's something comic material here. There's some great material in

there, some great bial got a crack up. He's like, well, there's that great moment where U when he when he cures blind man spitting and mud and he gets in trouble like the you know, the local you know, bureaucratic rabbit says, how dare you cure somebody's blindness on the Sabbath? That was his right, Like you think you're gonna cure blindness? Yeah, I don't know. We could break we can bend the rule today. But it's just this is pretty funny stuf. Right, Even Palm Sunday's got this

great moment. It's incredible scene. Right, He's coming in and on a donkey and people are putting other cloaks in their palm fronds, and we celebrate it, you know, two thousand plus years later incredible and marches into the city and they takes a look around the temple and says, well, it's getting late and they go home. They leave. You can't read that and not do what Wait a minute, Like that was a major drum roll, because yeah, they're still here, Okay, let's go home late. I

think because the hour was late. I think like, like, what took us a little longer to get here? It's pretty funny. Hey, So I so, I uh, I want to a book to somebody who said, like, well, you know, here's why I believe that this is true because a lot of it doesn't make any sense, and if we were making it up, we would totally agree to stand off the edges, right, I mean a story, you make up a story, it's like it's

got to be integrated. So the second thing i'd ask you, Drew, because I know we're both you know, writers in the in the entertainment business. When you're not writing ex. Podcast, Yeah, when you're not writing explicitly about face, how is it? How does it fit? M hm? You know when I when I realized that I had become a Christian, which was an absolute shock to me. It was actually like a sort of a bolt, you know, one of my great fears. Took me five

months to admit that it was true. I mean, I knew it because it came into my head like bang, and then I thought, you know, I must have misheard. I must Yeah. So one of my greatest fears was that I was going to become one of these circular yellow smile smiley faces like some of these Christians that I know who, and instead of writing about hookers and gangsters, which is my milieu, you know, instead of writing about tough guys mystery stories, I was going to end up writing about

like a little girl who lost her bunny. But Jesus brought it back again and everything's great, you know. And one of the things that is really interesting is that, in a lot of ways, as I've grown more joyful within and I that's not happy, it's just vital and daffing gusto and all that stuff. As I've grown more joyful within, my perspective has grown darker. I now see, you know what they meant when they were talking about

the fall of man. You know, I look around and I think, oh, yeah, you know, like you're talking about being shocked by the anti Semitism now. And then you know, I just wrote this little piece about gone with the Wind for our sub stack, and I said, you know, it really is awful. The way they depict the slaves is happy and well treated, and you know, the Leslie Howard one says, oh,

we treated them great, you know. But but even with that awfulness, it gives you the feeling of what it was like to lose your civilization. Because it's awful that we're killing a million babies a year. But we don't sit around and think, oh, yeah, take our civilization. If they took it away, we miss it. We miss America. There's many beautiful things about it. And so suddenly the evil that we all do and that we all live with, and that we're all kind of shrug off in

some ways even though it bothers us. Somehow, I have found that it rises up and you sort of see the sulfur of smoke coming out. But at the same time, you know that everything is somehow all right. You know, it's you feel yourself moving into Flannery O'Connor territory. You know, I understand why you say that. I find that I find that my view of the in some way you're more straightforward, I think, is that right? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, and she's dealing with a different Milia

I'm kind of dealing with this. I love this kind of stories I write, and I'm writing now this series, which I've never done before, never happened before, because I never found a character that I wanted to continue for more than a couple of books. And I'm writing this series about a guy and he's not a believer, and he's walking through the world slowly realizing that everything he does believe in is dust. That nothing, Matt you know,

that that he thought mattered matters. And that's kind of the way that is working. But the one thing that it did is it freed me from this constant circular question of how can you know anything? Because ultimately they're things that you actually know. You know. There was a moment when I wrote the novel you mentioned the novel True Crime. There's a moment I think it's on the front first page where he says, you know, the Chinese philosopher says,

how do you know? He's talking about guy in death Row, and he says, the Chinese philosopher says, how do you know your or whether you're a man dreaming you're a butterfly, or you're a butterfly dreaming you're a man, and the narrator says, he you know, you know, yeah, you actually now and that ended postmodernism for me. That that moment is the moment when postmodernism died for me, you know. And I think that that has just made me. If I may say so, I think my

work has gone. I am, like I said, I'm one hundred. I think I'm one hundred and fifty seven. I may understand it before between the best work of my life. There's no question in my mind that I'm writing the best stuff of my life. I just finished a new nonfiction book, the first draft, last twenty five pages of that. I just thought, you know what, you might want to just shovel off right now. I'm not sure you know you're going to top that, you know it.

It has really deepened my perspective, darkened it to some degree, but also infused it with joy. It's an amazing experience. That's you know, I recommend it to anybody, you know, I think like, if only for the rewards, you know, the rewards are amazing. You do have to get played. But that's as I've made not so much anymore. Yeah, that's right for now. Yeah, this week, Hey Drew, Happy Eastern Happy Easter to you guys. It's really great to see you. It's too

it's too long. You know, I don't live far away from you, Rob, you know where do you live now? I live in right across from DC and right across the river from DC. Why why did you say that? Because my work is in Nashville. My grandchildren are in New York. Okay, yeah, yeah, stop there, grandchildren. I get I don't have grandchildren yet, but they may come, and I sort of I sort of understand that. One. Yes, grandchildren in the Sistine Chapel are

the only two things I've ever found are as good as people say. They are as much fun. And it's crowded, that is noisy, right, not the grandchildren. Thank you, right, Happy Easter, See sooner, hope. It's great to see it. Thanks a lot of guys, Thank you. Take care. I think I am. I I think I've known him. I mean maybe twenty years, maybe twenty years. You've known him. You've known him then since before he became a Christian. When you knew him, it was show business. That was the Yeah, he was a

scream. Was also before he was it before he was conservative, and before you were before you were out of the closet as a conservative. No, no, you were. You've been ready for Nashville for years. Written by Delia Owens, A Girl on the Trade by which was hold on for some reason, my alexis going off. Alexa stopped talking. I don't know why she she kicked it because it was listing books by Drew Alex, you say, Andrew Craven. Oh that's right. Wow, that's crazy. Okay,

that's funny. Yeah, they definitely stopped talking. I want to sell more of his books. Yeah. No, I think I met him, and I think I knew his work, and I think I met him, and then I saw him at a Friends of ABE meeting, which we used to have a big giant meetings or gatherings in southern California and Hollywood right for you know, the center right really and at that point was the center right and there he was. I was like, wait a minute, Andrew, Andrew

Claven's here, said yeah, like, what are you doing here? You're in big trouble but wonderful right, wonderful, wonderful writer, and we're thrilled to have him, and we're glad he's here. That's sort of remind me I saw excuse me, but go ahead. C. S. Lewis wrote someplace that the beginning of every friendship is always the same, and it always arises from two words, you too. That's kind of true. That's kind

of true. And since that, of course, every time we get together, it's so we usually insult each other and then disagree on certain things and then you know, have a couple of drinks and it's fine. So you have big Easter plans, Peter, Actually we have very small Easter plans. We've been through holidays, a very eventful, tumultuous holidays with all the kids coming home, and our oldest got engaged three weeks ago and and everybody is gone and we will be on our own for Easter. So we do now

have big plans. We have quite small plans. Big holiday we'll enjoy. We'll go to a restaurant and have a nice meal after Mass, and that will be our Easter. What about you, that's a pretty good Easter. Well, I'm gonna have some people in I think probably, oh really make up a big paschal lamb and uh, you just got back from so I'm gonna do, you know, be a big It'll be moye a Moroccan lamb, but we'll have be have you know, Middle Eastern Maghrebian flavors to it.

I always like to do that. I was like to I'd like to remind people and on Easter that it's not about ham, it's about lamb. Nicely yes, yes, nicely done. Uh And I guess next week we're going to be joined again. And I hope James comes back. I'm sure he's going to come back, but I'm but we're doing a day early, so we had a hard time scheduling, but he missed a good one before

we go. I should tell you this podcast was brought to you by the Ricochet Audio Network, so could you could support them and us by signing up at ricochet dot com. Please do and be and we'd love to have you join as a member. If you could take a minute and leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. I know everybody asks you to do that, but the truth is it really does move us up in an algorithm and allows

new listeners to discover us, and that helps keep this show going. And once again, ricochet dot com that's the place to be for conversation and friendship and deep conversations like the one we just had, and super light ones like the ones we have. Also here on the Ricksday Podcast, I'm Peter. See you next week. Next week, Happy Easter, everybody, Cappy Easter. Ricochet join the conversation.

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