In this special Thanksgiving special, Dr. Jonathan Paggio sits down with his good friend, Michaela Fuller, to talk about what it's like growing up the daughter of a well-known academic, and how she became a Christian, and why she believes God is real and real enough to have a relationship with Him in the present moment. It's a very special episode, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed having it. Dr. Disrespect is a writer, speaker, podcaster, and podcaster. She's also the wife of Jordan Pearson, who is a professor at the University of Southern California, and is a friend of mine. I've known her since she was a child, but I didn't know she was actually a Christian until she told me she was raised by her famous father, a famous academic, a public figure, and a public speaker. It was a fascinating conversation, and one I think you're going to want to listen to. Thank you for listening to this special episode of Awakening Wonder, and may you all be thankful this year! Thank you, Jonathan! If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be available for the first 15 minutes there, then we're available for streaming on Rumble, our home to all of our community members, starting November 15th. We'll be on YouTube for about 10 minutes, then it'll be exclusively on Rumble. And you should become an Awaken Wonder, particularly if you enjoy this conversation, because my conversation with Jonathan Poggio, which is only available on our community member, which I had a chance to be a part of the Awakened Wonder community. The Breakaway Podcast. -Jonathan Paggios, and in fact, I have an interesting conversation that I had with Jonathan, which you can listen to on our YouTube channel, and it's amazing, too. I'll be able to pull up an asset if I have a minute, so I'm going to pull it up on Awaken Wondering, and then I'll pull up another episode on our Awakening Wonder, too! - Jonathan is amazing, and he's amazing! I can't wait to see the future. In this year, you re going to see The Future, you're gonna see the Future, You're gonna go to the future, right? -Dr. Jonathan and I'll see the whole thing, you'll get to see it soon!
00:02:15.000There's some drug, isn't there, in Turkey?
00:02:16.000People always point out every Christmas season, all the reasons you fall asleep after your Thanksgiving is because Turkey's got this thing in it.
00:02:25.000Let me know in the comments and chat if that's happened to you already.
00:02:29.000Well, I'm very thankful this year that we're having a conversation with Michaela Fuller, formerly Michaela Peterson, who knows what it's like to ride the rollercoaster of being dragged into public life because of her famous father, the sort of unprecedented and peculiar professor, Jordan Pearson, who is my friend, whom I adore on a personal level, and who I admire very deeply.
00:02:57.000Now, imagine, like, when you become a famous person, you get to know famous people's kids and stuff.
00:03:04.000Like, I know some of the, like, I know people that have done really well at being the child of a famous person, and other people are destroyed by it.
00:04:05.000But when we started talking about Christianity, I really recognized that she was practicing Christianity at depth.
00:04:14.000What I mean by this is whatever it is you believe in, let me know in the comments in chat.
00:04:18.000I don't know if you're an atheist or you're a Christian or you're a Jew or you're a Muslim or you're a Scientologist.
00:04:24.000In a way, I pray for you that you become a Christian because that's what I believe in, but I also don't think I know more than you about anything.
00:04:36.000What I would say is, if it's not being practiced in the present moment, it's not being practiced at all.
00:04:41.000It's the only place you can know God is in the present moment.
00:04:43.000It's the only place that healing can take place.
00:04:45.000Someone told me yesterday, it's in the present moment.
00:04:47.000When I just talked about Christ and self-improvement, it really got to me.
00:04:50.000So listen, we'll be on YouTube for about ten minutes, then we'll be exclusively On Rumble, our home.
00:04:56.000And you should become an Awaken Wonder, particularly if you enjoy this conversation, because my conversation with Jonathan Paggio is amazing.
00:05:02.000The break bread conversation that I had there, which is only available to our Awaken Wonder community members, is fascinating and intriguing.
00:05:09.000And in fact, hold on a minute, do I have, am I going to be able to pull up an asset if I press that Stream Deck?
00:05:32.000You hadn't realized that there are side effects to what you want because you're not aiming in the right direction.
00:05:37.000So now all the side effects start to manifest themselves and you're like, well, I didn't know.
00:05:42.000Like, I didn't know that if I started, you know, like, you know, I love Elon for all intents of, you know, but Elon is hilarious because He's like, I'm going to start OpenAI, and I'm going to create the most powerful AI company in the world, but it'll be open source, and it'll be great, because it'll be open source.
00:05:57.000And then he creates OpenAI, and it's the most powerful thing in the world, and he says it's the biggest single threat to human existence.
00:06:07.000Anyway, listen, this is a great conversation with Michaela Peterson.
00:06:10.000I think you're going to love it and you're going to get sort of insights into what it's like to be a member of that family and that movement and some interesting insights into Christianity.
00:06:21.000All right, without further ado, here's Michaela Fuller.
00:06:24.000Michaela, thanks so much for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:07:01.000And also, your role within the organization that you run with your father is altered, and you're in particular responsible for what exactly now?
00:07:14.000Well, we launched Peterson Academy in August this year, and that's gone splendidly.
00:07:20.000So that's an online education platform, and we have professors from all over the world, like very interesting people teaching eight-hour courses at a university level.
00:07:30.000We have 35,000 people on the platform now enrolled.
00:07:35.000So that's been, I mean, that's what I've really been working on fully for the last three years, along with my podcast and kind of overseeing Dad's brand, although there are a lot of people involved in that now, thank goodness.
00:07:49.000Yeah, and it's sort of in a way, it's a really interesting time to be sort of coming into excellence when it comes to new media projects, because the landscape's changing so significantly.
00:08:01.000I've been very honoured and flattered to have been asked to participate in the Peterson Academy.
00:08:06.000I know it's going really, really well, and I'm right, I'm excited to do something with you guys.
00:08:11.000Will you, like, tell me how you think the landscape will change as a result of the election, in particular with what you're doing?
00:08:18.000Well, I'm hoping, and this might be a pipe dream, I'm hoping Peterson Academy can work with the Trump administration.
00:09:00.000I mean, the potential for change seems to be increasing radically and dramatically.
00:09:08.000And while, like a couple of years ago, if you'd have said, oh, maybe the Trump administration and the Peterson Academy can come to some arrangement, I'd have thought you were a lunatic.
00:09:18.000But now I feel like, well, that could happen, actually.
00:09:25.000Oh, the unlikely seems to be occurring rapidly.
00:09:32.000You know, the quality of the education we have is unparalleled, I think.
00:09:36.000I went to a number of universities, so I kind of know what a middle-end university is like, and it is...
00:09:41.000So far above that, it's not even comparable.
00:09:44.000I'm wondering, like you I'm sure, if during the next 60 days before confirmations and inauguration, whether you think there's anything likely to disrupt it.
00:09:56.000Is that something you've considered much, Michaela?
00:10:18.000On the other hand, I think that there's such a tide shifting away from wokeism that even if something happened, I don't think wokeism would necessarily win in the end.
00:10:33.000It would be a complete disaster for the world.
00:10:37.000One of the things that I feel is significant is that it's clear now that you can't censor and control the conversation.
00:10:47.000What appeared to be taking place broadly was that the role of the state and the advocates for the state's ideas in media were able to Completely control and shut down conversation around a variety of cultural and political issues, including health and war, to a degree where open discourse was impossible.
00:11:15.000I suppose one of the things we can take from the recent election result is that's over.
00:11:20.000Independent media and independent media commentators collectively have a greater reach than the legacy media.
00:11:26.000So we're seeing things like pronouns being taken out of people's bios, people that really furiously advocate for that.
00:11:41.000So in a way, like even the soft cultural symptoms of change are becoming really clear and evident, aren't they?
00:11:50.000Even, I suppose, in sporting events, seeing people doing that, like Trump YMCA, should we call it a jig, is an indicator that it's no longer taboo to be supporting that movement.
00:12:04.000I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how that's going to affect your content and how it's going to affect the kind of people that you ask to participate in particular in the Peterson Academy and the type of conversations you're likely to have going forward.
00:12:17.000Do you think, Michaela, that there has to be some ongoing reconciliation or do you think that this is going to be a time that's defined by a kind of celebration of the annihilation of enemies?
00:12:28.000Oh, you guys lost, woke lost, the Democrats lost.
00:12:33.000It's Or do you think there's going to be an ongoing conversation that might even centre around reconciliation?
00:13:38.000And I do think maybe six months into Trump's presidency, when people who are really far left realize that the country's not turning into a dictatorship, things will calm down.
00:13:51.000But do you think that, in independent media, we should be participating in that reconciliation by the kind of guests that we have on, and the kind of alliances we have?
00:14:00.000Like, do you think, for example, that you would have Don Lemon doing a course at the Peterson Academy, or Brian Stelter as a guest on your podcast.
00:14:15.000Or if MSNBC folds up, would you be getting Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough on and having conversations with them and looking to find common ground?
00:14:25.000Can you imagine personally doing that?
00:15:00.000And there's been some pushback on their side for coming onto the platform, which I think is actually going away because the platform is politically it.
00:15:12.000So for Peterson Academy, I don't think very much is going to change because we've already been trying to be kind of even-keeled.
00:15:20.000And then as for my podcast, as long as the person's interesting, I'm not going to invite anybody on I'm going to have an ideological battle with.
00:15:41.000Yeah, sometimes I don't think I have the energy for an ideological battle either.
00:15:48.000But what I do sometimes want to, I'm interested in, is reconciliation.
00:15:53.000Because I don't, like anyone I suppose, I don't know what's going to happen in the next four years.
00:15:58.000We sort of saw like a host of high profile figures saying they're going to leave.
00:16:02.000leave and I suppose if you've like continued to say that Donald Trump's Adolf Hitler bringing about some new Reich then if you believe that then you would be obligated to leave but I suppose I don't feel like that's going to happen I don't feel like that's going to happen I suppose I don't feel like that's going to happen.
00:16:18.000I don't feel like that's going to happen.
00:16:20.000I feel like you're going to have a lot of people in metropolitan areas, parts of professional media class and other comparable industries that tend to be metropolitan, having to undertake some sort of investigation into why they had such an extreme reaction and position.
00:16:36.000But then I suppose some of them might look at if Trump does say ban trans people from the military, if that happens, for example, are they going to see that as, you know, a justification and demonstration of what they were concerned about? a justification and demonstration of what they were concerned about?
00:16:55.000Before we continue with the interview, we're going to come off YouTube, okay?
00:16:58.000Not because it's particularly the sort of thing that will be censored, but because Rumble is our home, because we know there's a guarantee we can speak freely and open there.
00:17:54.000I think it's going to drop off and people are starting to see that, you know, this entire thing that's happened in the last six years has been pretty insane.
00:18:05.000Mate, you, like, I've undergone, like, it seemed like your whole family underwent a kind of period of massive trauma and tribulation, like people getting sick and stuff, your mum, your dad, you, like, and...
00:18:21.000I've, like, since the time that I've been involved with you lot, to put it in a euphemistic way, I've gone from being vegan to being, like, I'm eating meat, and eating meat quite a lot.
00:18:35.000Are you still on that whole carnivore tip, and what do you credit to that diet and way of life?
00:18:45.000Um, I mean, mostly I credit serious, serious desperation.
00:18:50.000Like, there's no way I would have started only eating meat except I was so sick that I wasn't able to function.
00:18:57.000And you can tell when you stop being able to think.
00:19:02.000And if you can normally think and you stop being able to think, it's very frustrating.
00:19:06.000And so I had periods of autoimmunity, mostly constant, where I was like, my brain's not functioning.
00:19:37.000I don't necessarily think the average person should just be eating meat.
00:19:41.000But for people who have insane autoimmunity or psychiatric issues and can't get them under control, it seems to work wonderfully.
00:19:51.000And there are finally studies coming out about it too, so I seem less like a quack, which is nice.
00:20:00.000Do you think that with Bobby Kennedy heading up the HHS and the kind of appointments that are being mooted, there could be some, it seems like certainly in the areas of Big Pharma and Big Pharma's ability to dictate policy, there's going to be significant changes.
00:20:16.000But do you envisage that there will be significant change when it comes to metabolic health and diet also?
00:20:22.000And how important do you think that is?
00:20:25.000I think, and I'm probably biased because of what I went through, but I think it's probably the most important problem America is facing right now.
00:20:36.000If you don't have a healthy population, and especially if you have a psychiatrically ill population, your country is just useless.
00:20:44.000Like, one psychiatrically ill person in a family can take out the family.
00:20:50.000And I have a lot of hope in If Bobby Kennedy can actually get in, if the Senate allows it, which it might.
00:21:00.000I know Marty Makari, who's a brilliant doctor, has been nominated to run the FDA, which would be insane.
00:21:08.000There's a lot of change coming, and I think it could be extremely positive, I hope, especially if they take a look at the food pyramid.
00:21:17.000I think a lot of the reason people are metabolically ill in America is because they're not educated properly.
00:21:24.000They don't understand that the processed foods people eat here are actually causing disease.
00:21:28.000They just think they're bad for you, but they don't know what bad for you means.
00:21:34.000It's like when people stopped smoking all the time.
00:21:37.000It wasn't because there was legislative change necessarily, although that helped.
00:21:41.000It was because their kids started bothering them because they heard that cigarettes cause lung cancer.
00:21:46.000So if people just knew that mainly these hyper-processed foods and high-grain diets were causing metabolic disease, I think people would naturally be more averse to it.
00:21:57.000But I mean, I'm unbelievably hopeful for the change Bobby Kennedy could potentially bring.
00:22:04.000It seems so unlikely that that would happen, but it seems to be happening.
00:22:11.000Just earlier today I watched Bobby Kennedy talking to Joe Scarborough 20 years ago.
00:22:16.000And in that conversation, Joe Scarborough appears to suggest that he saw a connection between his own child's autism and the vaccination program.
00:22:27.000It's pretty striking to see people that...
00:22:30.000Now operating entirely different media and ideological spheres, even having a conversation to tell you the truth.
00:22:36.000But it's also surprising that Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, those of you that don't know, morning Joe Scarborough, talking about that subject.
00:22:45.000With some, I don't know, interest at least in the possibility that the US vaccine program could be contributing to a rise in autism.
00:22:56.000He didn't make any scientific claims, but that's not something that he would say now.
00:23:00.000It's not something that would be permitted on MSNBC now.
00:23:02.000You wouldn't have RFK on MSNBC now unless to condemn him.
00:23:06.000Now, although it seems like that, Oh, yeah.
00:23:25.000Until real recently, now heading up a department that has three times the budget of the Pentagon, and probably, I hope, a better ability to pass an audit than the Pentagon, it seems pretty astonishing and surprising, and it can't but alter American life.
00:23:42.000What I'm interested in, though, is how in this interstitial period, Michaela, like that we're going to move without it being like a sort of civil war in America from one set of beliefs that seem to have been undergirded by media compliance and Pfizer's control over news media in particular to...
00:24:03.000What might be, in some ways, an entirely contrary perspective.
00:24:08.000I don't know how this country, America, because me and you, we're both anglophonic but outside of this place.
00:24:15.000I don't know how America's going to undertake That kind of change at the level of media, at the level of government, like, you know, that's going to be handled, of course, sort of, you know, within those circles.
00:24:27.000But how the culture is going to make those changes.
00:24:31.000But how is Morning Joe Scarborough going to carry on broadcasting and communicating, knowing there's been such a massive shift?
00:24:39.000How do they deal with their audiences?
00:24:42.000What kind of new spaces are likely to emerge?
00:24:48.000I think, you know what, a lot of people on the left think Bobby Kennedy is going to come in and ban vaccines.
00:24:55.000You know, I've seen this all over, like, threads, like I said, and more liberal platforms where they go, we're not going to be able to get birth control anymore, and vaccines are going to be banned, and disease is going to, you know, infectious disease is going to rise again.
00:25:09.000And I know Bobby's Bobby Kennedy's plan is to actually do research to do proper studies on vaccinations and to give people the option.
00:25:20.000So rather than forcing it on people, and I wouldn't say it's exactly forced, but it is kind of mandated if you want to go to school and things like that, give people the option to opt out.
00:25:29.000So that's what I believe he's doing rather than just removing it entirely.
00:25:34.000So I would assume people on the left will probably say, hey, we were just listening to the scientists.
00:25:41.000Now it turns out they were wrong, but we were listening to the science.
00:25:44.000Now that the science has changed, you know, we'll listen to that.
00:25:47.000I know some people who are really anti or pro-COVID, pro-COVID vaccination, that actually switched once they found out, oh, maybe the COVID vaccine isn't all its...
00:26:09.000I'm just paranoid about everything pretty much equally.
00:26:13.000I don't know enough about vaccines to say, hey, there's a link there, but obviously something has gone terribly wrong or a number of things to cause chronic disease in America.
00:26:23.000I'd probably mostly blame the food pyramid, but It would be nice to have some actual proper studies that aren't funded by the companies selling their products that we could trust.
00:26:37.000When you spoke at a Senate roundtable on the subject of health and nutrition, what in particular did you bring to the forefront, Michaela?
00:26:50.000I was talking about, mine was pretty specific, like most of the people there who were, there was a, like one of my friends was a journalist who's very well studied, a number of really good doctors, they were mostly talking about processed foods and the link that processed foods have to chronic disease.
00:27:09.000And then there was a Dr. Chris Palmer who was talking about ketogenic diets as a treatment for psychiatric illness.
00:27:14.000And I was kind of in that category of, you know, there have been so many anecdotal studies on ketogenic diets and then the diet I'm on, which is just meat, which sounds extreme, but for autoimmune and psychiatric illness that we need to get some studies done.
00:27:33.000It seems to address the problem so that people don't need medication and have no symptoms.
00:27:55.000But I mostly focused on that for like seriously, seriously ill people.
00:28:01.000How are you going to continue to deal with what must be pretty extraordinary that you've been, by a set of rather unusual and in some cases tangential circumstances, dragged into a position that you can't really have anticipated?
00:28:19.000Like, was it like, say, eight or ten years ago or whatever, you're the daughter of a professor at a university in Canada, and I guess she was, like, a lot younger then and maybe wouldn't have envisaged a future in social media or maybe any future at all, you tell me.
00:28:36.000But, like, it must have been pretty abrupt and at points exciting and at other points terrifying.
00:28:47.000How extraordinary the degree of change has been in your own life.
00:28:52.000How have you managed to ride that all out, Michaela?
00:28:56.000Because it must have been pretty crazy.
00:28:58.000And even some of the trauma that I've already alluded to within your family, with all, you know, at least members of your family that I know.
00:29:05.000Having experienced some pretty significant health problems, do you see that as something of a response to being thrust into the tornado of public life in a way that's pretty challenging, I would think, and unprecedented?
00:29:20.000Superstar academics didn't really used to be a thing.
00:29:25.000It's weird that the culture war that we've touched upon a bit earlier in our conversation has created this new dynamic And these new heroes or villains, depending on how you view that cultural conversation, how is it affecting you?
00:29:43.000And how are you coping with being in a position you can't have anticipated?
00:29:49.000I mean, I'm coping very well now that terrible things aren't happening all the time.
00:29:54.000It was harder to cope when terrible things were happening all the time.
00:29:57.000And it's hard not to link the sudden stress on my family and sudden kind of I guess.
00:30:07.000Because it was pretty negative at the beginning.
00:30:09.000It's hard not to maybe link that to the health problems.
00:30:13.000But I almost think it was coincidental that the stress from dad's first online videos and the controversy that followed that...
00:30:23.000I think that was coincidental, and it just all happened at the same time.
00:30:27.000My mom got sick, my dad got sick, everything blew up online.
00:30:31.000I think it was coincidental, and I think the way I've managed to reframe it in my mind, because for years I was just like, this is crazy.
00:30:40.000And my dad felt the same way, like, this is crazy, what's going on?
00:30:44.000Every day was just absurd, like, what's the likelihood of this day happening?
00:30:48.000It's so terrible, but there's so much opportunity.
00:30:52.000How does something so bad happen at the same time as such good things?
00:30:57.000And I think I've reframed it through a Christian perspective that, oh, reality just makes a lot more sense if we're living in a spiritual world.
00:31:07.000It was almost like a logical progression.
00:31:11.000There are way too many coincidences happening right now, and I can't make sense of it.
00:31:16.000I must not be making sense of reality in the right way.
00:32:20.000And when she was really, really ill, you know, she said she had this crazy experience where she had cancer, she was in the hospital, and she goes, I'm going to be better by my anniversary.
00:32:31.000And she was on morphine at that point, and I kind of thought, well, mom's on morphine.
00:32:36.000That's the explanation for that, because she said, I said, how do you know you're going to be better by your anniversary?
00:33:50.000And then I met my husband who's a Christian and who's grown up a Christian and was part of a Christian family.
00:33:57.000And I never met anybody like that before because I grew up in downtown Toronto and all my friends were, you know, I don't want to call them heathens, but like a little bit.
00:34:06.000And so I'd never met anybody like that before.
00:34:10.000And I started reading the Bible, and I believed, but I didn't fully believe.
00:34:15.000I don't really know how to explain that.
00:34:16.000Like, I'd read the Bible and be like, yeah, okay, I believe this, but I didn't believe down to, like, the very core of my soul until earlier this year.
00:34:52.000And I think God showed me that one day, which was like, it was almost like a shroom like experience of Basically, this is how you're sinning in the world.
00:35:04.000This is why you're a terrible person contributing to evil, and it's people like you that killed Jesus.
00:35:09.000I was in the bathroom, and I was just like, you know, but it was everything.
00:35:13.000It was like, all those tiny little things you do that are bad, they're way worse than you think they are.
00:35:19.000They're not just like tiny little bad things.
00:36:12.000I don't even know if people can be good.
00:36:15.000I don't know if people can identify what they're doing wrong to the smallest level without having the Holy Spirit.
00:36:22.000You know, I don't think we're sensitive enough to recognize when we're doing evil, those little tiny things you can do unless you have the Holy Spirit.
00:36:31.000It's been a lot and it's completely changed my view of reality in a positive way, like a very positive way, though, like things make a lot more sense to me now.
00:36:44.000I can understand the stuff you're saying about your husband and like how being exposed to literal Christians and Christianity will change you if you're open to it.
00:36:56.000I was talking at a church yesterday in Jupiter, you know, in Florida.
00:38:34.000It didn't feel like how I'm normally seeing reality.
00:38:38.000What I felt like happened was I got a zoomed out version of Of evil and good.
00:38:46.000I don't even know how to explain this.
00:38:48.000And was shown, like it wasn't from my own volition, I was shown how I was contributing to evil.
00:38:54.000And by evil I mean even the small things.
00:38:58.000So some of the examples I saw were like...
00:39:03.000At this time, I'm usually swamped with work, and I really enjoy work, but enjoy work to an addictive level, which I don't think is necessarily unhealthy, but I really like working.
00:39:20.000If somebody I'm speaking to isn't fast enough or isn't getting their point across quickly enough, then my first reaction is usually like, I don't have time for this.
00:39:45.000And I was just shown that even these small things that you do...
00:39:51.000Are way worse than you think they are And I didn't know that.
00:39:55.000I thought that you could get away with doing some kind of negative things as long as you were aiming towards good and trying to do good in the world.
00:40:05.000So I think the reason that I didn't resonate fully with the Bible for so long was because I thought of myself as a good person, which isn't how Christians think of themselves, right?
00:40:16.000They think of themselves, everybody, no matter how good you are, as somebody who needs saving and And I don't think I was thinking of myself as somebody who needed saving until March for some reason.
00:40:31.000But like you said, I've been exposed to all of this for most of my life, especially through my dad.
00:40:37.000Now, from a more psychological perspective, but I've been exposed to it.
00:40:40.000My grandma was a Christian, and I scoffed at it most of the time for most of my life, thinking those are people who don't believe in evolution and think Harry Potter is evil.
00:41:39.000I went from a completely rational explanation of reality to, oh no, spiritual reality makes more sense.
00:41:48.000In my language, what you're describing in terms of that, that you reframed from being just acceptable and normal irritation to looking at it as a kind of reprehensible sin and actually evil,
00:42:07.000in this sort of 12-step It seems to me that what you're describing, like what you literally said is you find people irritating if they're slow and in your own working environment you like to move things quickly.
00:42:48.000I've got an opinion on all of this stuff.
00:42:50.000But probably where it feels most toxic and...
00:42:54.000Contaminating Michaela is an interaction.
00:42:57.000Because I've gone through so many waves of such bloody obvious addiction, like being a literal heroin addict and crack addict and an alcoholic and then being so hedonistic and promiscuous, because those things are so easy to measure,
00:43:13.000like to go from I'll have sex with anyone who wants to, to I'm married and I'm monogamous and I do not look at pornography and I do not stare and I notice the kind of stuff that I'm thinking and watch it,
00:43:28.000you know, to then having to be as diligent and vigilant as you are plainly and watch out for am I in my interactions with people operating from a basis of non-forgiveness and those Two, it's not forgiveness like as in, you stood on my foot, I forgive you.
00:43:51.000It's like, as you said, an unexpressed kind of aggression.
00:43:56.000You said before, it's not like you're going to be, well, hurry up, I'm going to punch you in the face.
00:44:00.000It's more just like your general tone and feeling, your frequency, maybe even your essence, is like voided of the presence of Christ.
00:44:10.000Because you know, if Christ was in, you know, we think of Christ.
00:44:13.000Christ, in significant moments in our life, like, how's Christ going to cope if you think you're going to die or someone you love's going to die?
00:44:22.000But when it's like, Jesus, help me in traffic or in my dealings with my co-workers, you think, I don't need Jesus for that, I'll handle that.
00:44:32.000But I'm actually handling it in a way that you're sort of diagnosing as pretty evil.
00:44:37.000So like elevating that inner frequency up from the mire of human condemnation, which I'm increasingly thinking is worse than human.
00:44:46.000It might actually, as you said, be Luciferian, satanic, absolute evil.
00:45:15.000You know, now I'm reading, like, the Bible in one year.
00:45:19.000And all the time, it's not just the moral philosophy, but it's the impossibility of any moral philosophy if it's not undergirded by the type of universal principles that you can only have if God is real.
00:45:32.000And I know secularists and atheists will say, I don't need God to be a good person, but that's not addressing C.S. Lewis's point, that we all know when we're doing something wrong.
00:45:42.000We sort of know, and we've got a word for people that don't know, that's called a psychopath.
00:45:46.000If you can't tell that you're doing something wrong or not.
00:45:50.000And I wonder, mate, if off the top of your head, there's any verses or passages from the book that you have been struck by.
00:47:15.000And thanks for clarifying that you're not claiming to be perfect, because I was thinking probably people that are working with you are in that room right now, like, having set up this interview, going like, well, she seemed pretty pissed off this morning, let me tell you, or whatever, you know, she can't get away with that stuff.
00:47:35.000No, I just snapped at my husband about AirPods.
00:48:43.000Because you walk around assuming that every battle you have in your life is your war, but if you think about it as a spiritual battle, it's like, it's almost a relief, I think.
00:48:56.000That's Ephesians 10 to 20. Yeah, what chapter?
00:49:03.000Because I know that's the bit where you've got to put on the armour, put on the helmet of salvation and the shield of righteousness and the belt of truth and the good news on your feet.
00:49:13.000And also isn't that, is that where he talks about dark power in high places and all that stuff?
00:49:21.000This is, it was, finally be strong in the Lord and his mighty power.
00:49:26.000Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
00:49:32.000You know, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rules, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
00:49:43.000And I used to read that kind of thing and think that that sounds a little dramatic.
00:49:48.000But then you experience some evil, and it doesn't feel that dramatic anymore, you know?
00:49:57.000So I think I experienced enough, and I was like, that felt evil, you know?
00:50:03.000And if you experience enough of that, it's like, you know, maybe that's just here.
00:50:09.000Hey, one of my Bible study teachers, the great J. John, one of his prayers is kind of like a visualization, Michaela.
00:50:20.000So carrying on from where you just left us in Ephesians, it goes, you know, stand firm then with your belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
00:50:37.000In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith.
00:50:40.000With which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
00:50:44.000Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
00:50:49.000And, like, he, J. John, he, like, mimes it all out, you know?
00:50:54.000Like, sort of pretends, like, putting on that armor.
00:50:56.000And it reminded me of once, like, I used to do martial arts training, because I'm so tough, with this guy called Benny Erkides, who's, like, we used to be in Bruce Lee movies and stuff, you know?
00:51:09.000And like, he used to get me to do a visual meditation technique where he's like, you imagine yourself going and you're, you know, listening to having bedtime stories from Jordan Peterson.
00:51:20.000I guess you're going to get the image systems that he's deploying here.
00:51:41.000Then once you're in the house, see yourself putting on your uniform for the day.
00:51:46.000Are you going to dress yourself up in your mind glamorous?
00:51:48.000Are you dressing yourself up in armour?
00:51:51.000And I used to think, this is mad this guy is getting me to do this.
00:51:54.000When is it we're going to concentrate on punches or dodges or slipping or whatever?
00:52:00.000Anyway, he's pretty amazing, that guy.
00:52:02.000As a person who spent a lot of time in New Age stuff, like me, if New Age is anything, it's like you've got your own smorgasbord of the world's religions and ideas, whether it's crystals or the Bhagavad Gita.
00:52:19.000You know, like a sort of thing, or astrology, or Jesus, and you're able to pick whatever you want from it.
00:52:25.000It's really interesting for me to have committed to Jesus Christ, to have absolute faith in Jesus, respect for other people's traditions, but to know that my path is the path that He determines, for He died for our sins, that we may be forgiven and know eternal life.
00:52:41.000And then to sort of learn techniques that are a bit Like it.
00:52:46.000You know, like, you know, for example, what I told you today about Benny Oquidez.
00:52:49.000He was a Native American or Native sort of Mexican, actually.
00:52:52.000But, like, he sort of was from the tradition of, like, them kind of pantheistic Native American faiths.
00:53:00.000And now J. John, who's double-double Christian, showing me a technique that's based on scripture that has the same thing.
00:53:09.000Like, you could use that as a meditation, couldn't you, Michaela?
00:53:11.000You could go, like, right, I'm fighting against...
00:53:14.000Evil power, you know, I'm going to put on this thing.
00:53:17.000And like you said, it does sound a bit dramatic, but actually, the more you learn about how power operates, don't you start thinking, oh my God, that stuff's true.
00:53:24.000So a few of my questions are, since becoming Christian, have you had to go, like, have you had to let go of a bunch of new age stuff?
00:54:04.000I used to use psychedelics quite a bit.
00:54:08.000I always had good experiences with them, even with high doses, but I haven't used them since March, which isn't really saying a lot, because it hasn't been very long, and I didn't use them very often before that.
00:54:25.000The last time I really used them was probably 2021 or 2020 or something like that, so I didn't really have to drop that, but I did.
00:54:35.000I don't feel a need for it, but I don't know if I did previously either, so I don't know if I had to drop that or not.
00:55:12.000And I haven't even really done that in years, so I didn't really have to change much.
00:55:17.000And then since meeting my husband, this was three years ago, I had already been practicing Christianity in the way that I was reading the Bible, I was watching sermons.
00:55:53.000You know, things in my life improved, but nothing I think from the outside changed a ton, except maybe I'm not as, you know, unpleasant to be around.
00:56:02.000I don't think I was particularly unpleasant before, but I'm probably more pleasant now.
00:56:07.000So I didn't have to drop, I didn't have very many coping mechanisms.
00:56:31.000There's like a sense of calm I didn't have before.
00:56:34.000Today I was listening to Father Mike Schmitz, who I really love actually, and he was saying the importance of the Mass, in particular him being a Catholic priest, is that at the Mass you're getting tooled up for the whole rest of your life, which is also an altar before the Lord, and that your work must be dedicated to God.
00:56:55.000That God can't be, like, some sort of side dish.
00:56:59.000God's got to be at the very centre of your life always, and that your mission and ministry must be practised through your work.
00:57:05.000You know, that it can't be, do a bit of prayer, and now I'm going to get out there and be a total dick to everyone.
00:57:13.000It's got to be, like, that you carry, you, Jesus Christ is at the forefront of your conduct in all of your interactions.
00:57:19.000And so me, right, I do in the morning, I do cold plunge, and I read, like, there's a couple of devotionals, one called Jesus Calling, there's another one called Streams in the Desert, someone gave me, and I'm reading the Bible in one year.
00:57:33.000That's how I'm going through the Bible mostly, although I pick up the Bible frequently also, but that's in addition to going through it in this one-day-at-a-time manner.
00:57:44.000I also pray the rosary, and I do a lot of praying on my knees in the morning.
00:57:49.000Including a bunch of set prayers, specific prayers of intercession and praise, and also then speaking in tongues, right?
00:57:59.000I need this sort of time of worship throughout the day.
00:58:03.000But I suppose that part of it, of transitioning from the holy hour, the commencement of my day, if my children in particular, my wife sometimes don't get in my way because I find it very hard to be around anybody...
00:58:19.000You know when I'm trying to do that stuff and we bought a puppy like idiots while we're on the road not even in our home.
00:58:41.000We've got to look after her, this little creature.
00:58:44.000Now, anyway, so, like, what was difficult for me is that I feel like I'm found by the Lord and in communion with the Lord, like I feel Him and I see His face, Jesus Christ in particular, you know, the Heavenly Father being absolute.
00:58:58.000Obviously, it's a little more difficult to conceptualize.
00:59:01.000And the Holy Spirit, I invite the Holy Spirit and I pray that the Holy Spirit will enter every chamber of my heart and my being, every cell, every molecule of my beingness.
00:59:11.000Then, though, In particular, like you, I think it's work that I find hard.
00:59:40.000You know, using whatever intimacy you feel with God in prayer and meditation, and can you tell us about what your prayer and meditation in the morning is like when it comes to the hard and fast business of dealing with human beings or traffic or feeling insulted online or whatever you have to deal with?
01:00:07.000Well, when I got saved in March and had this complete shift in how I saw the world, there were a couple months where I thought, okay, what am I doing wrong?
01:00:20.000Like, what am I doing that I don't think is wrong that's wrong?
01:00:24.000And at first I thought, I thought, I thought of work, you know, pretty quickly.
01:00:30.000Like, am I too, am I obsessed with work?
01:00:39.000Like, I kind of went down every avenue of, like, what could I be doing that's, for lack of a better word, contributing the evil that I'm not aware of.
01:00:49.000And so I was kind of hyper-aware for a while.
01:00:55.000It's like, maybe God will speak to me.
01:00:57.000Maybe it'll become apparent, like, what I'm doing that's wrong.
01:01:00.000And then I talked to my husband about it, too.
01:01:04.000And I think what I figured out, and hopefully it's right, eventually was not everybody's built the same.
01:01:11.000I think I was kind of going based off of what do I think a Christian, especially a Christian woman, looks like.
01:01:16.000And I'm going based off of what you see online, where there's a lot of traditional women...
01:01:20.000And those are people that, like, they stay at home, they have kids, they read the Bible, they homeschool their kids.
01:01:25.000And I was like, I think if I do that, I don't think I can do that.
01:01:29.000Like, I think that would, not that I don't love my children, but if I don't have some sort of outlet, I think, uh...
01:01:37.000I think I'll feel terrible and it'll be very, very hard on me to make it as undramatic as possible.
01:01:43.000If I don't have an outlet, I think I'll go crazy, right?
01:01:46.000Even with Jesus, I don't think I'm built that way.
01:01:49.000And so I started to talk to more people about it, being like, is that evil or am I just a different type of person and I need to do more things?
01:02:01.000I'm talking badly about people who are more traditional because there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
01:02:06.000But I think the conclusion I've come to anyway this far is maybe God wants me to build something and I'm building it.
01:02:14.000Maybe that's why I have a year in there.
01:02:15.000And that's not necessarily bad because after...
01:02:18.000I'm kind of preying on this for, what, has it been, it's been like six months, like, is work a bad thing or not?
01:02:25.000I think, I don't think it's a bad thing.
01:02:27.000And I think what we're trying to do with Peterson Academy, too, and what I've been trying to do the whole time is like bring affordable education taught by people who aren't ideological for as low of a price as we can put it out there.
01:02:41.000You know, and to introduce like we have some it's not a Christian platform, but we have Bishop Barron teaching a course and dad has a course on Sermon on the Mount.
01:02:50.000And so we have the Christian ideas in the background.
01:02:52.000And I was like, I don't think there's anything bad about that, even if that's what I'm working on.
01:02:57.000So I guess that like maybe part partly answers one of the questions is I've decided to.
01:03:05.000I've decided that the work part isn't evil.
01:03:14.000There's nothing wrong with that just because it doesn't line up into a more traditional view of what I think a Christian woman is supposed to look like.
01:03:23.000And I could be totally wrong about what a Christian woman is supposed to look like.
01:03:34.000I tried getting one of those Bibles where you go through it day by day, but at least the version I had jumped around, so it had like a piece of the Old Testament and a piece of the New Testament, and then it would shift sections, and I was just—I couldn't keep track of where I was.
01:03:48.000So I've started—like, I've read the Bible— And I've read different sections a number of times, but I've gone through the whole thing.
01:03:54.000And so I'm usually just opening it up and reading a section, kind of randomly.
01:04:00.000So I'm doing that, and then I'm praying on my knees.
01:04:06.000Although I do, like I said, I'll have days where I kind of have to get up in a rush because of the baby or something like that, and I skip that.
01:04:16.000And And then I'll try to get to it later and things.
01:04:20.000But if I do end up missing days, I can feel it.
01:04:30.000What do you do when you're opening the Bible at random?
01:04:32.000It's in one of them bits, like say in Numbers, where it's like just a lot of listing of people's names or chronicles, or if it's the back bit of Ezekiel, or some of the bits in Kings, where they're just really describing exactly how you've got to build a temple, and it's like 20 qubits, this, 10 qubits, 10,000.
01:04:52.000Sometimes I'm like, I ain't doing that.
01:06:19.000In order, I'm trying to come to terms with all this stuff.
01:06:22.000What do you do if, you know, what do you do with them passages where it's a very, like, I bet your dad would go, well, you know, you've got to be specific when it comes to building, is it?
01:06:30.000Like, you'd say, like, you've got to read that.
01:06:32.000You're not allowed to skip over the qubit stuff.
01:06:51.000For the Old Testament, when I first went through the Bible, like the first time, I actually listened to a lot of the Old Testament through an audiobook, and that helped with that.
01:08:06.000You know, this is me when I'm tripping when I'm 16. You know, when I'm doing acid and stuff.
01:08:10.000Then he goes into this amazing bit where it's like he describes it as if he's married to Israel and Israel's been prostituted themselves and he does this sort of like actually at some points rather disgusting description of how this prostitute has behaved but it really resonated With me,
01:08:31.000because, like, in particular, because I lived, like, so hedonistically for so long, even when cleaned from drugs and alcohol, which I've been, by the grace of God, for nearly 22 years, I still carried on with the, you know, promiscuity for a pretty long time.
01:08:43.000And then, like, when it got into this bit, where he started saying this, right, um, I'm filled with fury, this is Ezekiel 16, 30, I'm filled with fury against you, declares the Sovereign Lord, when you do all these things, acting like a brazen prostitute, When you built your mounds at every street corner and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were unlike a prostitute because you scorned payment.
01:09:07.000You adulterous wife, you prefer strangers to your own husband.
01:09:10.000All prostitutes receive gifts, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favours.
01:09:17.000Anyway, it gets right into that, and at some point, so stuff you can't...
01:09:21.000I believe you're finding in the Bible, particularly when Simon and Garfunkel said, I've been slandered, libeled.
01:09:27.000I hear words I never heard in the Bible.
01:09:30.000They should check out Ezekiel because it gets dark in there.
01:09:32.000But then after all that stuff, good UFO gear, good moral stuff about promiscuity, he has more visions.
01:09:41.000I think they're cast out of Israel now.
01:09:43.000They're wandering around after Nebuchadnezzar and all that.
01:09:48.000And, like, it's so tough, I think, when it gets to this bit.
01:09:53.000Like, of how you've got to build a temple.
01:09:56.000I'm not having this, day after day, of, like, build it to this many cubits.
01:10:32.000Going in when they go and going out when they go.
01:10:35.000At the feasts and the appointed festivals, the grain offering is to be an effer with a bull, an effer with a ram, and with the lamb as much as he pleases, along with a hint of oil for each effer, right?
01:10:46.000And I'm sure, like, you know, I bet your dad could drag a 20-minute YouTube video out of that.
01:10:51.000But, like, for me, like, that's the kind of very prescriptive stuff that I'm like, ugh.
01:10:56.000You know, and then, you know, so it's a bright voyage, isn't it, leaping into scripture.
01:11:04.000Yeah, I think, and I don't remember, like, I don't want to, I think my husband might have told me this, but I can't remember, so I'm not going to give him full credit, but he might get partial credit.
01:11:14.000But I feel like, partial, yeah, I feel like part of what I got from those really descriptive parts of the Old Testament was how easy it is to have a relationship with Jesus.
01:11:27.000Now, it's still hard, and I know that coming from someone who wanted the relationship and was yearning for something and couldn't or wouldn't find it for a while until recently.
01:11:37.000But I think some of those examples in the Old Testament are like, look how complicated it was and how many rules you had to follow to do what God wanted you to do.
01:12:24.000We have to acknowledge that we're all, like you said earlier, we're all sinners, we're all broken, we all need forgiving.
01:12:29.000Second, like, you know, we're going to know eternal life because of his sacrifice.
01:12:35.000And third, there is a new intimacy because now God knows what it is to be a person and to have a body and to live down here and deal with all this stuff.
01:12:44.000Whereas before, It's like dealing with God angrily prescribing, I've told you enough times, stop sinning and building all those orders and stop worshipping false idols, you bloody idiots, and like, you know, then eventually going, here's very specific instructions on a temple, because I know that if I let you have any free reign at all, you're going to go mad with it.
01:14:54.000Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation, and I hope if you're enjoying conversations of this nature, you'll consider becoming a member of our Awaken Wonder community and watching us over on Locals, where we make break bread.
01:15:41.000We will be back tomorrow for a brilliant conversation with Dr. Robert Redfield, formerly of the CDC, who created shockwaves when he came out in public support of Bobby Kennedy.
01:15:53.000What are his thoughts on the revolution in American health?
01:15:56.000What kind of culpability does he believe he personally has for the corruption, not only of the pandemic period, but of the preceding opioid epidemic?