00:00:32.000Just wake me up Wake me up in my life Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:49.000On the show today, we're going to be talking to Ben Peterson.
00:00:53.000We're going to be talking to Christina Tobin as well, talking to Ben about his book.
00:00:59.000Before we get into that, we're going to be talking about and trying our best to understand a very peculiar British story about a professor called Jason Arday who tragically ended his own life after media hounding.
00:01:14.000But it's a really intriguing story because it includes.
00:01:20.000DEI, it includes the culture war and media reporting and the power of contemporary media.
00:01:27.000It's actually a little bit of a confusing story.
00:01:29.000You know how there's a tendency on platforms like Rumble, maybe even across our culture generally, to preach to the choir where you know that a certain group of people are going to have one perspective and another group of people are going to have another perspective, like, i.e., if I say Trump in a certain environment, I know some people are going to go weak at the knees and start not necessarily pullulating, but maybe releasing endorphins or some kind of.
00:01:52.000Spores, some kind of genital spore like a fungus.
00:01:55.000Then, in other environments, if you mention Trump, people will become very agitated, and the trick has become in our modern culture to know which environment you're in.
00:02:03.000But how's that going to help us if we are all truly the children of one God and the baseline of our collective consciousness is shared that we're all portals to God's glory?
00:02:11.000Well, we've got to work that out, and we've got commercial breaks coming up.
00:02:14.000But before we get into any of that, let's start with the lighter side of the culture war where Royce White has the former, he's like an NBA player, is he, Jake, or a former?
00:02:25.000He's definitely an athlete of some sort.
00:03:44.000You know, I've always trusted the science, and I thought I was a man my entire life.
00:03:48.000But, you know, after further review, a strong look at my personal preferences, it would appear that I am indeed sometimes identifying as a transgender woman.
00:03:59.000And I think it's only fair I get a chance to play with some of my queens here in the twilight of my career, my athletic prime.
00:04:06.000So, there's what Royce White is doing is obviously exposing the challenges of gender fluidity and identification purely on the basis of the way you feel.
00:04:17.000Now, it says here there's a second NBA star that's declaring for the WNBA draft.
00:04:21.000So, presumably, Royce White was also NBA.
00:04:39.000Does not ban men who identify as women right now from playing in the league.
00:04:42.000Dominate the WNBA without adding an eyelash.
00:04:45.000The number one prospect in the history of the WNBA.
00:04:55.000Okay, so I suppose what we're looking at there is how the gender wars and cultural wars are open to punkin and pranking.
00:05:04.000And I wonder how we are to reconcile the idea that some people may feel desperately unhappy in their body and confused with the idea that.
00:05:16.000If you have no fixed identity, if you reject the idea, for example, that man made God in his image, identified with God there, I mean, that can't be right, surely.
00:05:28.000Elohim, God made man and woman in his image, man and female, male and female, he made them.
00:05:34.000I've always thought that's really, I've always enjoyed that, that male and female, he created them.
00:05:38.000And I always like that there's no man and woman in heaven.
00:05:42.000I like that idea because it sort of, for me, indicates that there is a space.
00:05:47.000And a philosophy that liberates us from the very restrictions that people that might not feel at ease in their body are suffering from.
00:05:57.000And on that, by the way, when I was, I don't know, 17, 18, I never would have thought, oh, the reason I'm unhappy is because of my genitals, although I did give them a lot of attention thinking about it.
00:06:20.000I guess it's interesting the information that you put into the culture, if it's not tethered to or anchored by something with some theological weight or ontological weight, some certainty, then it could be subject to all sorts of bad actors.
00:06:34.000Now, my country, the UK, have you heard of it?
00:06:37.000We invented your country, we started it, we gave you your language.
00:07:21.000So, comment on Rumble Wallet in the chat now.
00:07:25.000For a limited time, you can start your wallet with $5 in the US stable coin for tipping Rumble creators like me by entering my exclusive promo code, Brands.
00:07:32.000With questions, hot takes, stuff you really want me to react to, don't bury it in the chat, put it in Rant.
00:07:38.000Because let's be honest, regular chat flies by.
00:07:40.000But when you use Rumble Wallet, it cuts through everything.
00:07:43.000So, here's the move scan the QR code or use the link in my description, download Rumble Wallet, and try it yourself.
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00:08:21.000In my country, Professor Jason Arday, who appears to have exaggerated some of his biography.
00:08:29.000Claiming that he was pre verbal or they couldn't speak till he was three and stuff like that.
00:08:34.000But more demonstrable and corroboratable, he apparently plagiarized tracks of his PhD thesis.
00:08:44.000Now, in case you haven't worked this out, given the context of the story, Professor Jason Ade was a person of color.
00:08:51.000That color is often called black, but sort of dark brown, really, to be more specific, if you're going to sort of get nailed into pigment and all of that.
00:08:59.000And I mean, this guy killed himself because during the time when he was being held up as the youngest ever professor and a great example of diversity and diversity and strength, like someone, and I think that person might have had an agenda because I think the person was maybe a little bit racist, started investigating Jason Dardenne saying, hey, excuse me, saying, hey, this guy's qualifications aren't everything that he said they were.
00:09:23.000And all these claims, some of which, by the way, were a bit outrageous.
00:09:26.000Like he said stuff like when he was a kid, I think he maybe claimed to rescue someone from a burning building.
00:09:32.000He made some claims that were difficult to verify and potentially untrue.
00:09:36.000Nevertheless, the reason this becomes fascinating is because of its complexity.
00:09:40.000The Times newspaper in the UK, that's a News International Murdoch run newspaper, really, I think, pushed the story on Facebook Meta to people that they knew would be agitated by the story, i.e., the media wants us to hate each other.
00:09:57.000In the midst of this maelstrom, our man, God rest his eternal soul, Jason Ade, It appears he took his own life.
00:10:04.000That's not being verified at this time, but he's just died all of a sudden alone in a room.
00:10:10.000I mean, unless he's like on his umpteenth Moderna booster shot, there's no other reason.
00:10:15.000People don't die of nothing or didn't until the COVID era when the world's fittest, finest athletes suddenly started dropping dead for no reason at all.
00:10:26.000Let's put it all behind us and just focus on the glory of living in a godless world run by godless demonic forces who think they can make us happy through endlessly.
00:10:35.000Stimulating us through mindless pleasure.
00:10:37.000So that we understand this story, let's have a look at some of the aspects, and I'll do my best to explain it to you.
00:10:42.000Forgive me if I make any mistakes or if I'm insensitive.
00:11:09.000An unrelenting stream of criticism and public humiliation that was not bestowed on white colleagues accused of the same.
00:11:16.000By anonymous people, by other professors who just didn't believe that a black man should be a Cambridge professor.
00:11:29.000249 national press articles appeared about him in just 22 days, 75% of them after a resignation statement in which he said he had reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.
00:11:44.000May God rest the eternal soul of Jason R. Day.
00:11:46.000Now, I myself have been the subject of investigations, as it turns out, by that very same newspaper and been the subject of public scrutiny.
00:11:52.000And I can tell you from personal experience, it does put a lot of spiritual pressure on you.
00:11:57.000And I could see how some people might get to the point where it was unbearable.
00:12:23.000And you could see from the sort of inflection of it and some of the participants, that was very much focused on his hounding and the meanness and the bullying that doubtless took place in the media.
00:12:32.000Here is a prominent British broadcaster, James O'Brien, talking about how he feels having discovered that some of the claims made about Jason R. Day, and this is while he was still alive, of course, were bogus and untrue.
00:12:45.000Like he was being put forward like he was a, you know, like a Wunderkind academic expert.
00:12:57.000I don't feel, oh, you should have done differently or you should have done better because, I mean, who would?
00:13:02.000Who would meet a Cambridge professor and immediately start thinking, God, I wonder whether you actually deserve to be a Cambridge professor?
00:13:08.000If I was a racist and I met a black Cambridge professor, then I probably would find myself thinking, yeah, really, black guy, professor, I don't think, but I'm not a racist, so it didn't cross my mind.
00:13:19.000So, how are we going to navigate the space between an awareness that racism is a real thing, that racism and the history of our Kind of countries, countries like mine and yours, has got racial implications, imperialism, colonialism, commercialism, corporatism, the plunder of the continent of Africa, the exploitation of India, even places that you barely even think of, like archipelagos in the South Seas, bear consequences of British colonialism.
00:13:45.000And some of these things aren't that long ago.
00:13:49.000But how do we marry that together with the fact that many of the organizations, and let's just name one of them Black Lives Matter, seem to have had an agenda and motives?
00:13:58.000Beyond the aid and assistance of people of colour.
00:14:01.000And also, we seem to have a media that benefits from generating further strife, further conflict.
00:14:07.000What do we do to transcend these barriers and boundaries so that people of colour feel that their story is heard?
00:14:14.000And people that are white who might have all sorts of complex issues.
00:14:31.000Not so much from the former and a great deal from the latter.
00:14:34.000So, how are we going to ensure that we don't end up in categories, taxonomies, and tribes that continue to benefit that floating elite, that set of institutions that benefit from us all hating one another?
00:14:47.000Let me know in the comments and chat what you think about that and give us your own contributions and try not to collapse either into the simplistic, you know, Jason Narde, he's a hero, he's a hero, or DEI's gone crazy and black people are getting jobs they don't deserve and ah, try not to let them make you go mad.0.95
00:15:06.000Once you're crazy, you're out of the game.0.96
00:15:15.000I'm Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, and I'm very fortunate to be the author of Great and Unfortunate Things.
00:15:24.000I was diagnosed with autism at the age of three.
00:15:26.000I learned to speak just before the age of 12, so I was 11.
00:15:29.000I learned to read and write when I was 18 years of age.
00:15:31.000Those milestones became quite significant.
00:15:33.00012 years after learning to read and write, I gained a PhD.
00:15:37.000And then I ended up becoming one of the youngest professorial chairs in Cambridge's history.
00:15:41.000The memoir is a story of a mother who advocated for their non verbal and autistic child, who, on a spectrum of autism in terms of global development delay and other things, navigated lots of different difficulties in this journey that ended up becoming this memoir.
00:15:59.000All right, so there he is talking about his memoir.
00:16:03.000I don't want to get too blink test about this.
00:16:05.000Malcolm Gladwell's famous assertion that you can tell almost at a glance whether you're going to like a teacher or Fall in love with someone, but a glance there at Professor Jason, I sort of saw some vulnerability and tenderness there in the fella.
00:16:20.000So let's have a look at this still of details on his book, see if I can read that from there.
00:16:24.000So, this is a commentator that I guess is a little more condemnatory.
00:16:29.000We've seen some people that are very pro, dear Jason.
00:16:33.000The Atlantic has obtained a copy of Jason Arday's book.
00:16:36.000In it, he claims to have experienced locked in syndrome for several months after being hit by a car.
00:16:41.000Doctors advise his family to have the life support machine turned off, but he awakened miraculously, being struck down by testicular cancer, though this changes in the book to brain cancer.
00:16:50.000Been beaten up by a group of kids and then in court pleaded with the judge not to jail them.
00:16:54.000Coincidentally, two of the kids later became his students, and Ade became a godfather to the child of one of them.
00:17:00.000Aborted a suicide attempt on a bridge after listening to an Eagle song.
00:17:04.000I've had the exact opposite happen to me.
00:17:05.000I've listened to an Eagle song and then considered ending it.
00:17:12.000Being awarded several accolades of which no proof exists online.
00:17:16.000Being told by a shaman woman in Brazil that he would suffer greatly.
00:17:19.000Now, look, I suppose what's interesting now is we're talking about.
00:17:21.000Dead guy, we're talking about a guy who's likely, possibly, maybe ended his own life.
00:17:28.000Hmm, it's interesting and confusing, isn't it?
00:17:30.000Because I reckon this like, we're all a little bit flawed.
00:17:36.000Like, I remember when they started to do reality TV, I was of the age where I wanted to be famous at that time, huh?
00:17:43.000And I remember thinking, man, if you on camera for 24 hours, people would see such craziness in you.
00:17:48.000And what's also mad about my particular situation is I've been accused of really, really terrible things I can't talk about because I've got a trial in October.
00:17:57.000But it's very difficult, I think, to hold together your own awareness of personal fallibility, your own flaws, the times you've lied to get what you want, the times you've omitted information, the times you've manipulated people to get what you want.
00:18:13.000And now all of this is getting flung into this very unforgiving and unlovely, unbeautiful culture.
00:18:22.000Because if you elevate someone on the basis of their race or denigrate someone on the basis of their race, you're making a.
00:18:29.000The same error in some ways, isn't it?
00:18:31.000Because a principle by necessity means an unmoving and universal idea.
00:18:37.000Like when God tells us, love one another as I have loved you, or love your neighbor and your neighbor is whoever you are around, it feels to me, and this is why I love our Lord so much, that he's anticipating the various ways that the culture will get us in a muddle.
00:18:53.000It's okay to hate these people, but it's not okay to hate these people.
00:19:06.000You will make mistakes, but you can repent and you can be redeemed.
00:19:09.000That means you can find new purpose, be reactivated into a new purpose, if only you're willing to get beyond yourself.
00:19:16.000When all of us appoint ourselves as judge, say there is no God, and then ourselves occupy that throne, man, do we end up in a messy situation.
00:19:25.000That's just what I think about it, though.
00:19:26.000Let me know what you think in the comments and chat.
00:19:28.000We'll ask our audience what they think in a moment.
00:19:30.000And let's have a look what Douglas Murray has to say, my fellow countryman who.
00:19:36.000Does seem to be very articulate on many social and cultural issues.
00:19:39.000For our day to succeed, very many people had to stay silent, so very many people failed.
00:19:44.000The pursuit of excellence in education is not negated by his tragic end.
00:19:48.000The right of the best to rise, whatever their race or background, remains desirable.
00:19:52.000The necessity that the next generation of students receive the best possible education remains paramount.
00:19:57.000Icarus had only himself to blame, but in this case, there were those who encouraged him to believe his wings would not burn up.
00:20:07.000Douglas Murray, who always has an insightful thing to say.
00:20:10.000Anyone here in the audience have a perspective on this situation they'd like to share?
00:20:14.000If you do, we have got a qualified nurse who will bring you a microphone just in case you suffer from a medical lapse of some kind on the way.
00:20:23.000Don't feel embarrassed if you don't have anything to say, and don't feel shy if you do have something to say.
00:20:28.000Go with your simple, sexually enhanced instincts.
00:20:33.000While I'll tell you that She Legit is available now, and boy, is it legit.
00:20:40.000I took my first capsule just five minutes ago, and let me tell you, it's a miracle this desk isn't being tipped over.
00:20:46.000I say that with all due respect to our mix.
00:21:37.000I've only dragged you into this because I know that you are a confident man, and I remember from your handshake the first time you met, thinking that man could kill me without breaking his stride.
00:21:49.000You know, in the same way that I'm like, I get that thing off my face.
00:21:53.000What did you feel when you're watching this?
00:21:55.000And do you think that what you felt was informed by your national identity, your racial identity, your sexual identity, your identity in Christ?
00:22:04.000So, for me, as I watched that, I definitely grew up in a family where, yes, we are people of color, black, South Virginia understood where I'm from, but our family was, hey, your identity in Christ comes first.
00:24:03.000It shows, in fact, that these collapsible and temporary.
00:24:06.000Categories that relate literally to the skin, the transient tabernacle that we're passing through, oughtn't be made permanent.
00:24:14.000If we try and make this stuff permanent, then we're making an error.
00:24:18.000I love the examples of sport and the military where metrics are measurable, and also academia is meant to be one such place too.
00:24:26.000I suppose who is it that makes these final measurements?
00:24:29.000Who is it that searches us and looks inside our heart?
00:24:32.000Who is it now that's attempting to provide us with new criteria?
00:24:36.000And ever shifting categories for what's important and why it's important.
00:24:41.000Very interesting that if you take away the belief in God, it becomes impossible to make any real claims about anything permanent like that.
00:24:52.000This is an interesting way to, we're going to park it there and leave the final word to mine there.
00:24:56.000That was very insightful and conclusive.
00:24:59.000And here is the famous Ash conformity study that shows that people are willing to participate in false beliefs if enough.
00:25:07.000Other people do it, and most of us have lived through COVID, not all of us, because you know, COVID killed a lot of people, maybe not as many people as the medical measures subsequently did, but we know what it is to conform.
00:25:19.000We're a generation of people that have to understand the dangers of conformity.
00:26:13.000Most of the governments of the apparently post enlightenment Western democratic world are somehow trapped in a peculiar clinch of red versus blue and left versus right.
00:26:27.000How can we ever find freedom in that direction?
00:26:30.000Our next guest, Christina Tobin, will be talking to us about new forms of institution, system, and democracy.
00:26:36.000Before we meet her, have a look at this.
00:26:38.000The two party system is really one party, it's a business.
00:26:44.000As of now, it benefits the two party system.
00:27:21.000Particularly about free and equal elections.
00:27:24.000What is the Free and Equal Election Foundation?
00:27:26.000Tell us now that we all understand whether we're black, white, straight, gay, trans, or a new, vibrant, thrusting WNBA player with a fine set of testes.
00:27:58.000So I saw the flaws, the fundamental flaws of the electoral system as a national ballot access coordinator.
00:28:04.000I coordinated millions of signatures to get candidates on the ballot, and that was the beginning of my career in sparking free and equal elections starting in 2008.
00:28:12.000Christina, Ralph Nader, he was an independent candidate.
00:28:15.000Bobby Kennedy, Secretary Kennedy, ran, of course, as an independent candidate, and maybe no one's made so much impact as Ron Paul on the several times that he ran as an independent candidate.
00:28:25.000What is the significance of independent candidates?
00:28:27.000And when you say free and equal, what do you mean free and equal?
00:28:31.000What needs to change for it to become free and equal?
00:28:35.000We need to replace the two party system with independent candidates.
00:28:38.000They're no longer beholden to the party system.
00:28:49.000Christina, why is this idea rousing such passion?
00:28:53.000Well, I mean, the Gallup poll says there's over 45%, probably over 50% now, 50% of voters are independents, more than Democrats and Republicans combined.
00:29:02.000Our forefathers in the Constitution, there's no mention of political parties.
00:29:06.000They warned us, right, that political parties are evil.
00:29:09.000And as they become created, I've seen it within the National Libertarian Green Constitution Party, the third, fourth, fifth largest political parties.
00:29:16.000As they become larger, they inevitably become infiltrated.
00:29:19.000So in 2008, after serving as the ballot access coordinator for Ralph Nader, which takes over 900,000 signatures for an independent to get on the ballot, it's only 25 or 50,000 for D's and R's.
00:29:32.000That was the creation of free and equal elections when Free and Equal hosted the first nationally televised presidential debate.
00:29:38.000Outside of the Commission on Presidential Debates.
00:29:42.000So, mate, I was just thinking what a monumental task you've set for yourself there.
00:29:47.000And I was thinking how idiosyncratic, even once in a millennia type political figures like Trump, and I say that from a kind of, as best as I can, non partisan perspective.
00:30:00.000Like, even Trump, one suspects, after some time in office, a person who reformed the Republican Party in his image.
00:30:09.000Seems to, when it comes to very particular and very significant issues, geopolitical issues, and I mean, for example, the Iran war, seems to be conformed to a set of ideals that are extra party political.
00:30:26.000What I'm trying to say is, whoever you are, however strong you are, however unusual you are, however brilliant you are, it seems that there's something in that system that produces the same outcome and result.
00:30:38.000And I like your observation that the Constitution doesn't talk about a bipartisan system, that it really focuses.
00:30:46.000I've noticed a weird thing in our culture, and even today's story about Jason Ardegold, rest his soul, is kind of emphasizes it.
00:30:54.000But the culture seems to be able to keep us in a sort of stranglehold that wherever we go within that clinch, we're going sort of where they want.
00:31:03.000You know, when child psychologists tell you to control your kid, give it like two options who would you like to clean your teeth, me or you?
00:31:10.000Ha ha ha, either way, their teeth get cleaned.
00:31:16.000Whether you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans, you're having a war with Iran.
00:31:20.000Whether you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans, you're getting that COVID shot.
00:31:24.000So, what is this extra power and where is it coming from?
00:31:28.000I noticed something interesting when watching a documentary about our very own John Lennon with Yoko Ono living in your great city of New York that the culture war around the time of Richard Nixon was eerily reminiscent of the culture war now.
00:31:42.000You had a kind of conservative Republican movement undergirded by a sort of, it seemed to me, a somewhat shallow Christianity and a countercultural movement.
00:31:50.000With some rather brilliant orators and brave figures that are interested in compassion and stuff, but their ideology was not rooted.
00:31:59.000So, if we're going to start messing with these systems as you want to, Christina, what is the ideology that you have recourse to that's going to make it not be, I don't know, anarchic or chaotic?
00:32:09.000We elect candidates not beholden to special interests.
00:32:13.000I was out in Kentucky at Thomas Massey's home.
00:32:16.000Actually, in 2024, Representative Thomas Massey, you almost joined as well as a co moderator with me, that is, for our presidential debates.
00:32:25.000Well, in Kentucky, I saw this guy named Pete Hegseth come in and support his opponent.
00:32:31.000That was funded $35 million from APAC, knocked Representative Thomas Massey out of office.
00:32:38.000So, what we need is an independent, yeah, what we need is an independent paradigm that's larger outside of the system because the Demopublicans have rigged the system and left the independents out in the cold.
00:32:51.000And as this United We Stand tour, which Free and Equal Elections launched in 2014, simultaneously doing presidential debates every cycle since 2008, you may have seen me co moderate in 2012.
00:33:02.000Broadcast the late legend Larry King reaching tens of millions.
00:33:06.000I realized in 14 when my hero, Dr. Ron Paul, Congressman, former Congressman out of Texas, yes.
00:33:16.000And I've met him three, four times this last year.
00:33:18.000And he said, if we're ever going to bring about revolutionary changes, two things would need to be involved the youth and music, United We Stand Festival, the Ross Perot words.
00:33:29.000And so, what that does, what the tour now is breaking out to a tour.
00:33:33.000We can talk about it next week, August 26th or 28th.
00:33:37.000United We Stand is taking place at Shelter Island at the Ram's Head End, where Oppenheimer and all the physicists came together, right, around the nuclear atomic bomb.
00:35:50.000Well, someone should have stepped up.0.82
00:35:51.000I'm going to gang up with Thomas Massey, Ron Paul, all these independents, and we're going to somehow have to make it clear to you, Christina, that you've victimised us onto your own personal island of Dr Moreau, which, as far as I know, might be full of genetic freaks all running around, like that mouse with an ear on its back.
00:36:08.000Remember that from those experimentations and cloned creatures?
00:36:11.000So, when we're there, we're going to learn about free and open elections and electoral reform that's meaningful so that you don't have the sort of endless clinch of two political parties where it's fundamentally important agree with one another, i.e., where both parties agree with one another.
00:40:38.000So, like that moment there, I remember because I just then got a flash of a thing that still exists in the dynamic of our relationship and remember the theme that I've established.
00:40:46.000Or, like, was hoping to explore was that in our separation, I learned to love you more, learn to love our family more, learn to realize what it is that the family does for me, as well as allowing God to heal some of the wounds and abrasions that sometimes don't get uncovered because they're swathed in the love and distractions of family life.
00:41:04.000To have them exposed to the coruscating sun just for a moment brought to the forefront these wounds and gave them a chance to heal.
00:41:10.000When you and I first got back together there and did things like, as the crow flies, walk in a straight line, see where you end up, and we ended up in.
00:41:18.000I lived in East London then, and we would end up in the Barbican, sort of a somewhat modern cultural centre and set of controlled rent houses in London.
00:41:26.000And we ended up in places with ducks and whatnot.
00:41:28.000And one time while doing it in Chelsea, we came across the Chelsea Flower Show, which, as I recall, was not set up yet, was being set up and not went home to the public yet.
00:41:37.000Now, what I know is that you the whole time would have been going, We shouldn't be doing this, we shouldn't be doing this, this is dangerous, we shouldn't be doing this, shouldn't be doing this.
00:41:43.000And I would have, instead of being able to put my focus into the present moment, would have been assuaging continually, you're unnecessary in my view.
00:41:50.000Fears, but this is the tension within which our relationship exists and within which, praise God, our children are happily raised because they have a protective, diligent, and observant mother and a father that's like, Well, what about if we do this?
00:42:37.000I think you were a bit upset that I had a laptop in my bag.
00:42:40.000But I think I might have come from work.
00:42:43.000And it was like, you know, I do remember the whole thing, but it was magical.
00:42:46.000The point was that through these, it was a magical experience to discover this sort of.
00:42:52.000Garden, if you, you know, whatever it was, especially something like the Chelsea Flower Show, which obviously is orchestrated to look a certain way, but it was being set up.
00:43:00.000It was nighttime and it just looked stunning.
00:43:02.000And it was in these walls and fences and it was magical, I think, wouldn't you say?
00:45:31.000But God really called me to write this book.
00:45:33.000Because our younger generation has lost the identity of knowing their father.
00:45:38.000And they found an identity and a father like relationship in social media and artificial intelligence.
00:45:44.000And right now, 40% of millennials and Gen Z equate talking to AI as like talking to a pastor.
00:45:50.000And this is continuing to proliferate.
00:45:52.000And so, as we are impacting tens of thousands of our active duty service members who are using artificial intelligence every day as a part of their operations, God really called me to write this book to prepare us for this new age of AI.
00:46:06.000That's an excellent description of your motivation to write the book, and we'll talk about it further, I pray, in a second.
00:46:13.000Let's talk a little bit about how we met and your journey from the military into this.
00:46:20.000What seems to me that you're very invested in ensuring that people that have served their country and their God are taken care of in a variety of ways.
00:46:28.000You know, I'm always meeting people in airports.
00:46:31.000I don't always generally just invite them to come and share their books on the show.
00:47:04.000So in Iraq, you served as personal protection for a chaplain.
00:47:07.000And how did you go from what was it about your time in the services that led you to know that your ongoing mission was to ensure kind of an integration for service personnel in a civilian life and different forms of that?
00:47:19.000Well, I got radically saved when I was 17.
00:47:22.000The bully of our high school, his name was Jason Anderson.1.00
00:47:55.000But in another way, He's a bastard.0.99
00:47:57.000So he used to pull out his toenail and then use that as a weapon, like prison style weapon manufacturer, like a shiv, as we would call it in the UK.1.00
00:49:23.000And then, so tell me, mate, what is it that you're doing with all of these, what I'm going to call gorgeous hunks of the military that I see you with, setting them up?
00:49:37.000So, I went to combat and I saw some horrific things, and I really ran away from anyone wanting to know that I served in the military.
00:49:46.000Um, it was just a part of my past, and then I was in sales, I was making great money, and then God really put it on my heart I've called you to reach the defenders of freedom.
00:49:58.000Uh, and then the doors just began to open with our military as I began to see the suicide crisis in our active duty military right now.
00:50:06.000A service member is nine times more likely to die by suicide than by combat.
00:50:10.000And God just put this burden in the calling of my heart for a world without military suicide.
00:50:17.000And the only way that we're going to see that is through the Great Commission and through our military knowing Jesus and the freedom and the love that he brings.
00:50:24.000I mean, that's a staggering and terrifying statistic.
00:50:29.000Also, military personnel, veterans more particularly, are especially likely to be homeless and to suffer.
00:50:37.000From mental health and addiction issues.
00:50:39.000Well, one of the things, like, it's one of the litmus tests on a nation that makes me recognize something must be very wrong.
00:50:46.000Because on the way into the military, it's like, you're heroes, you're gonna get the gal, we're gonna love you, you're fantastic.
00:50:52.000And on the way out, it's like, enjoy your suicide.
00:50:58.000What does that tell us about that machine?
00:50:59.000I think it's not just about the military and the experience in the military.
00:51:04.000The majority of those who join the military have a past of physical experience.
00:51:09.000And then you come into the military, which is the most tribal environment that you're gonna find in America, and you experience this tribe and this belonging.
00:51:19.000Where you know where you're supposed to be, you know where you belong, you know what you're supposed to wear.
00:51:24.000You go on mission, you experience traumatic things, and then you leave and you enter the most socially isolated culture in the world in America.
00:51:33.000And so it is the American culture of how isolated and how independent we are.
00:51:37.000You throw, okay, but you take the white man and you put him in a tribe back in the 1700s and he would thrive.
00:51:44.000Take the Indian out of the tribe and you put him in the white man's culture and he'd fall apart.
00:51:48.000And so it is our independence that is killing us.
00:51:51.000And that's part of what I'm writing about in my book.
00:51:57.000When actually we need to be face to face, we need to be with other people.
00:52:00.000We need a place where we can belong, where we feel known, where we actually dwell with others and they see our humanity, they see our brokenness, they see our sin.
00:52:08.000And we're not trying to put on these fronts of trying to be enough for people.
00:52:11.000We're actually enough because we show up.
00:52:58.000America took the gold prize by miles of being so individual.
00:53:03.000And that is what's causing our social isolation today.
00:53:05.000How extraordinary that the defining and essential Luciferian sin is individual personal sovereignty, power apart from God, that He wants us, that the spiritual fall precedes the human fall, and that the fall in the spiritual realm is closed circuit.
00:53:28.000It's terrifying to be in charge and to know your own limitations and to live not in a kingdom, but in some sort of bizarre, endless, meaningless, chaotic morass.
00:53:36.000If you seek first the kingdom of God, what you're doing is you're recognizing there's a king in that domain.
00:53:43.000And that puts me in the right posture, a posture of righteousness.
00:53:46.000Man, I tell you this thing happened the other day.
00:53:47.000I came back from, I was in Croatia and I went via Frankfurt on my way back and I flew via Delta, real good service.
00:53:55.000And when the plane landed, you know how when your plane lands at Atlanta, you're all about, like, I'm in a race now to get off this plane and get my stuff out of that overhead.
00:55:02.000Now, on this particular flight, I, by God's grace, had some kind of service where I could get out of the plane, so pretty quickly after when it was sort of appropriate to move, that meant I was on the tarmac and I see that coffin casket, in your language, being lowered.
00:55:47.000Right now, like that's facilitating that, and because of like people like our age, I'm saying we're you know, you lot, the Vietnam War's not that long ago, the Iraq War, you know, we've had living young veterans for that kind of war, and the Second World War and the First World War is all in our collective memory.
00:56:03.000And unless people is like, oh, 20,000 people have died, 50,000 people have died, you kind of like, but when you actually saw the reality of that casket being lowered and recognizing there was a machine for it and a system for it, and that it's happening all the time, I was thinking, what war is this that we're in that's worth even.
00:56:21.000This person's life and it that experience gave me a sort of just a little bit of a prod when it comes to the nature of war, the nature of sacrifice, and what it's for.
00:56:35.000I can't help but sort of align it to what we were talking about with Christina Tobin there when it comes to the nature of democracy.
00:56:40.000But as a veteran, do you have a sense that some of the wars you participated in were not for the protection of the high values of your great country and the potential to be a great country that it still has, but instead for some set?
00:56:53.000Of guarded interests that are part of the problem of the America that you return to rather than the military experience that you still hold dear?
00:57:03.000Yeah, I've wrestled with all of that, and I've had to come to the conclusion that the military serves at the order of the President of the United States, and that's who we are, and that's our mission, and that's our job set.
00:57:16.000You can go and ask people all around this country who are going to tear down the mission and ideals of our government.
00:57:22.000I think there's enough of that rhetoric.
00:57:24.000I'm also a person who's going to stand up and say, I still believe in America.
00:57:28.000I still believe in who it is, who she is, and what it does.
00:57:31.000We are the greatest exporter of the gospel.
00:57:34.000Over 660 million people in Africa have been recorded of coming to Christ through our missionary efforts post World War II.
00:57:41.000And there is so much tearing down of our government and susceptibility around it.
00:57:46.000I still want to wave the flag for you know what?
00:57:48.000I was called to do a job because those planes flew into our buildings back in 2001.
00:57:54.000And I wanted to go and I wanted to make a difference for our country.
00:57:58.000And that war that I was there, I experienced dozens of service members coming to Christ and encountering the Lord and lives being transformed.
00:58:07.000Well, I have to ensure then that we have the order of priority correct.
00:58:12.000Because if we are first with God, then we are unlikely to attribute to a false God, whether that God comes draped in stars and stripes or draped in the logo of Sony or the logo of Ford vehicles or McDonald's or the British flag or whatever it is.
00:58:29.000It says that governments will rest upon his shoulders.
00:58:33.000It says that the nations are a drop in the bucket.
00:58:38.000I don't question and would not dare to question the bravery, valor, honor, and sacrifice of people that have served for their country.
00:58:46.000And I know that if we are to prepare for his return, that having the affinity, affection, duty, and service of men like you and the men and women that you protect is paramount and vital, a high, high priority.
00:59:01.000However, I do see that, from my perspective, Ben, the nation exploits that fealty, that loyalty, and willingness to sacrifice.
00:59:20.000But what I will come back to, and I think we as Americans, because we have so much faith in ourselves and what we can do.
00:59:28.000I was having a conversation with a guy yesterday who's navigating his marriage and going through a very difficult time, and he was putting so much pressure on his next decision.
00:59:35.000And I just felt so called to remind him, dude, you serve a God who works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
00:59:42.000So, you love God and you are called according to his purpose, but you're putting so much pressure on yourself with this decision.
00:59:56.000And we serve a God who works all things together for the good, and he's going to have the final say, and we're going to see his glory, and it's going to come.