00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk Show, a very powerful conversation with Tim Poole, who is the most popular live streamer on YouTube.
00:00:09.000He talks about how at one point in his life, he did not believe in God, and now he knows there is a God.
00:01:10.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:35.000My mom said she wanted to do something more.
00:03:37.000She wanted to open a coffee house to actually build something she could leave to us, you know, when they're old or whatever.
00:03:42.000So there could be a chain of cafes or something, something more, you know, entrepreneurial family.
00:03:46.000So we took a lot of risks, put up the house as collateral, things like that.
00:03:50.000And then when I was working at this coffee house, I was like nine to 11 years old.
00:03:55.000It was in Wrigleyville slash Boys Town in Chicago, North Halstead.
00:04:01.000And so everything there was very, very political because it was a gay neighborhood.
00:04:05.000And I don't mean LGBTQ, like literally gay.
00:04:08.000So it's like most people live there were men who liked men, but they're talking politics all day.
00:04:14.000So if I'm making a coffee as like a 10-year-old kid or grabbing a muffin or something, there's people talking about policy, vote, things like that.
00:04:46.000Children should be involved in pride parades, right?
00:04:49.000But I mean, it's funny that like my mom is this liberal who supports gay rights, but has her kid kept inside like it's not appropriate for children.
00:04:56.000Like, hey, it's kind of like where I'm at these days where, you know, I've got friends who are LGBTQ and I don't think certain things are appropriate for children, especially what's going on in San Antonio.
00:05:05.000But I'll give you the long story short, I guess, with that is when construction started happening and my family started falling apart, my dad is unhappy with the current situation because my mom's working all the time and he, you know, he's, there's no one watching the kids.
00:05:19.000He ultimately just says, I can't do this.
00:05:54.000And eventually they're just like, we can't do this anymore.
00:05:57.000And so, but, but, you know, throughout that is what basically gets me more active in politics, I guess, the experience I had with my family's business.
00:06:28.000And then from there, that's like the trajectory into constantly being involved in some kind of political element of the world, be it activism or whatever.
00:06:37.000So by the time I was like 20, I was actually doing fundraising for nonprofits like Greenpeace, the ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, Save the Children, Children International, et cetera, et cetera, homeless shelters.
00:06:48.000So that was like me being, hey, you know, like I care about the world.
00:07:26.000And so when I'm a little kid, the Chicago fire department basically tells my family, my dad is not entitled to a promotion because he's a white man.
00:07:33.000My dad comes home upset, and I hear him talking to my mom.
00:07:37.000And he's like, I've been fighting so hard for this.
00:08:55.000He came from humble beginnings, married to a mixed race woman with mixed race kids, but they said, too bad you're white, therefore you're privileged, and we're going to give it to somebody else.
00:09:09.000Why is it that my dad, who's this progressive guy who is in an interracial relationship and me with, you know, part Asian background are being told that because he's white, he's racist or something.
00:09:20.000And that happened to me very, very early on.
00:09:21.000So when I'm getting into the activism stuff, not social justice, it was more like anti-authoritarian and more focused on, you know, when I, when I, the first company I worked for was Greenpeace.
00:09:37.000They're talking about the wanton destruction of the environment by corporations who have, who face no regulation and are unimpeded.
00:09:44.000And I'm like, I agree, that's a problem.
00:09:46.000I think centralized power too much needs to have some pushback.
00:09:50.000So at the very least, will be that pushback.
00:09:52.000And then I learned very early on, like very quickly, these companies are all basically just like, say whatever you have to say to get the money from them and then lie about it.
00:10:00.000So I'll tell you real quick what I ended up learning.
00:10:03.000All of these nonprofits run 501c3s and 501c4s so that they can collect money through the 501c4, not report it, and then donate a small fraction to the 501c3.
00:10:14.000Then the 501c3 issues its report saying we only brought in a million dollars this year.
00:10:19.000That way they could use that talking point.
00:10:44.000Then you learn a lot of these other fundraising companies are just that, for-profit enterprises that are paid a fee to fundraise on behalf of the nonprofit.
00:12:06.000Go to Virginia and hang out with my brother, have a bunch of money saved up when Occupy Wall Street starts.
00:12:11.000And I see this video on Facebook of a guy being dragged by his legs and his hands are bleeding because the cops were removing him from the park.
00:13:53.000And then once I started streaming there, within a week, I was getting 2,000 concurrents watching my live stream as I walked around.
00:14:01.000This is kind of crazy, too, because I basically created this methodology of taking a mobile phone, plugging it into an external battery, and then live streaming for extended periods.
00:14:09.000And then after about a month or two, everyone started doing it.
00:14:13.000For me, it was just the easiest thing to do.
00:14:15.000Before me, people would have a laptop and they would hold a webcam and they'd walk around with it.
00:14:22.000Yeah, but when the part got rated, I showed up, started streaming, and I streamed for 22 hours straight to, you know, it was like millions of people.
00:14:35.000On the stream itself, I think it was like 70 or 80,000 concurrent viewers at any one time.
00:14:40.000But it was being picked up by news networks and television networks around the world to rebroadcast and show.
00:14:46.000So then Time magazine puts me on the front page of their website.
00:14:49.000I get all these big media companies hitting me up, offering me jobs.
00:14:52.000And I just didn't, I was like, no, I don't want to do any of that stuff.
00:14:55.000But for about a year after that, I started just doing these streams around the country at various protests.
00:15:01.000And then after about a year and a half, I was like, okay, this is starting to dry up.
00:15:06.000Live streaming protests only works if there's big protests and there's news.
00:15:10.000And the news was shifting into other areas, especially with like, you know, election stuff coming around.
00:15:15.000So I ended up going to a couple different companies, ultimately going to Vice and being like, look what I do.
00:15:22.000Let's like, I can't do this all day every day.
00:16:57.000And then I corrected them and I was like, I'm actually a big fan of Ghost in the Shell.
00:17:02.000And having Scarlett Johansson, a white woman, play the major, the character from the show, actually makes sense because Ghost in the Shell is about transcending from your body to a different body, right?
00:17:12.000The main character lives in a prosthetic body because she was basically dead and they put her ghost in a robot body.
00:17:19.000So that actually fits the theme really well.
00:17:21.000In fact, that at the end of the movie, Scarlett Johanss, like they reveal Scarlett Johansson, this white woman, her original body was a young Asian woman.
00:17:29.000And I'm like, that's kind of the point of the sci-fi.
00:17:31.000But they were like, nope, nope, nope, it's racist.
00:17:33.000You're like, we're just going to run with it's racist.
00:19:12.000The moment I was making a little bit of money, and this is like 2017, I think I was making, I got to the point where I went from negative to making maybe like 40 or 50K a year.
00:19:23.000Granted, I was making hundreds of thousands with Disney, right?
00:19:26.000With Fusion, but I'm like running my own business, so I'm investing in myself.
00:19:32.000If I sat right here and I've got enough money to pay my rent, to buy my equipment, to travel and cover the news and do these stories, I'm good.
00:19:38.000But then like three months later, I was making the equivalent of like 100,000 a year.
00:21:41.000But it was crazy to see people from Vice who know what I do all of a sudden be like, don't go and do the thing you do for political reasons.
00:23:12.000Conservatives were rightly pointing out that crime was skyrocketing and it was partly due to failures of immigration.
00:23:19.000And so I came and kind of just refined things, said, calm down, everybody.
00:23:23.000It is still way worse in the U.S. and our cities.
00:23:25.000We should probably fix those problems.
00:23:27.000But I understand why the Swedish people are upset that crime is going up.
00:23:30.000So you actually had like Slate, Huffington Post, and a bunch of leftist outlets.
00:23:34.000All of a sudden, they were freaking out about me going.
00:23:36.000Now, all of a sudden, they're like Tim Poole, a notable journalist, finds no strong evidence of rampant crime and violence until we went to Rinkabee and got threatened by a guy screaming at us and pulling masks up.
00:25:55.000So I started shifting more into commentary and more like anchor level reporting and stuff.
00:26:01.000And then I did that for a while, started growing my channels, launched a new channel, went from doing like a 10-minute video per day to two hours per day, then launched Timcast IRL in 2020.
00:26:13.000The original plan for that was to be a vlog to like get in my van, drive somewhere, and then interview people and do a podcast on the street.
00:27:07.000How has this work, especially in the last five years, impacted what you believe?
00:27:14.000You know, it's funny is my views float between like center left libertarian and then like center like and then like left libertarian back and forth.
00:27:23.000But I don't think political views actually are what any of this is about.
00:27:26.000Like you and I clearly disagree on certain core political issues, but we get along and we have cordial conversations about it.
00:27:32.000Because I think what's really happened is, do you believe the truth or are you an occult?
00:27:53.000And like I mentioned about being a kid and seeing it happen to my dad.
00:27:56.000But 2A is probably the strongest shift for me.
00:27:59.000And that's probably the only shift, to be completely honest, is that I went from, you know, there's probably some reasonable compromises we can have on gun rights to someone commented on a video, okay, I get it, Tim, but if you can have a compromise on my rights, then I want to compromise on speech.
00:28:15.000And then I was like, well, you can't do that.
00:28:44.000Yeah, you know, but actually, I'll tell you the real things that changed my views.
00:28:49.000One was I was hanging out with this, you know, a friend of mine, this young woman in the suburbs, and her family was pro-life, conservative, Republican.
00:28:58.000And I am not, I may be arrogant, but I'm not like too stupid to where I won't listen to what someone has to say.
00:29:07.000So when I'm hanging out with my friend and I'm at her house and they've got very religious stuff, you know, I grew up Catholic for a little while.
00:29:14.000And so, you know, her mom's cooking dinner.
00:29:17.000And then something came up relating to abortion and they said they were pro-life.
00:29:20.000And I was like, oh, well, my family's always been pro-choice.
00:29:22.000But I was just like, oh, tell me what that means to you.
00:29:25.000And then I was really fascinated to discover that the arguments my family had and the arguments her family had, despite being pro-choice and pro-life, were very, very similar.
00:32:02.000So you like got an electron microscope and then started analyzing the gases and looked down at that oxygen molecule and its atoms and the electrons and all that.
00:32:55.000That's why I lean more towards I know that I'm breathing oxygen.
00:32:59.000But you made a really good point about religion and people blindly trusting people or choosing to believe things.
00:33:04.000And so that was, that was, that was bigger for me.
00:33:06.000That moment probably made me agnostic where I was just like, okay, you know what?
00:33:11.000Like just blindly assuming this stuff is probably a bad idea.
00:33:14.000And another moment happened for me where I met the skateboarder guy and he was like well known in the neighborhood, like in the community in Chicago.
00:34:03.000But to him, this like secular urban liberal guy, the only thing he thought when he saw Jesus was not organized religion, was not war, was none of the bad stuff, none of the arguments.
00:34:14.000It was simply the general idea is this guy goes around helping people.
00:34:18.000And I was like, you know, if that's what he takes from it, that's actually a really good thing because it's like inspiring him to be a better person.
00:34:25.000And that for me was another kind of inflection point where I was kind of like, maybe, maybe, maybe I'm wrong about this.
00:34:32.000Maybe people are lying to me about what this really is.
00:34:34.000Maybe the atheists, the staunch atheists who hate religion, who are making fun of all time, maybe they're not being honest.
00:34:41.000And so from there, you know, I just, I read more philosophy and read more about science.
00:34:46.000And then when I started reading about quantum physics and philosophy in when I was, I think I was like 19, I immediately was like, there's a God.
00:34:54.000I read this book on quantum physics and I read a book on life and entropy and then immediately was like the most logical conclusion, albeit I would not say I can definitively prove it, but I would say that all signs, based on what we think we know in science, as well as modern philosophical thought, I was like, there has to be a God.
00:35:16.000And so it's funny because I grew up a little kid, there's a God.
00:35:18.000Then I have this like moment where I go into secular, like liberal atheism.
00:35:23.000And then I'm 19 and I'm reading this book.
00:35:25.000And I'm reading physics and then reading physics ultimately connected with all of the religious studies and the philosophical studies.
00:35:34.000And then I was just like, yeah, there has to be a God.
00:35:36.000Like to say otherwise would just deny so much of what we think we know about science.
00:35:42.000So like going back to what that guy was talking about with oxygen, if you follow the science and you believe in it, the end conclusion is extreme probability of God.
00:35:50.000I combine that with my human experience and my general philosophy.
00:36:33.000And then I was just like, aren't you just describing like religion 101?
00:36:38.000It's like these theologians and philosophers for thousands of years have contemplated that very idea.
00:36:45.000And then one day a computer gets invented and you think to yourself, maybe.
00:36:50.000And I'm like, you should talk to a priest or an imam or a rabbi or just anybody who has any theological philosophies that they've studied.
00:36:59.000And then I'm just like, I take a look at that.
00:37:01.000Elon Musk said, the fact that we can create probably within 30 years a simulation that will be indistinguishable from the real world suggests we're already in it.
00:38:43.000When someone says those dinosaur bones and fossils were always there, and then these atheists are like, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard.
00:38:51.000But we could be living in a simulation.
00:38:53.000Okay, is it possible the person who made the simulation just dragged and dropped and clicked and put it there?
00:39:10.000And I think that you can draw the logical conclusion to, I think if you draw based on human perception, what we think we know, what we do know, you map out this course that eventually gets you to a point where you come across a keyhole.
00:39:23.000And when you look through it, the only conclusion you can make is that there is a God.
00:39:27.000But I'm not going to say definitively, I know, and I have hard proof where I'm like, I think it's more like Sudoku.
00:43:44.000I like, look, I can disagree on policy, but if we're for the people, or at least we'll have a conversation, I think it says a lot about somebody who will come on your show and talk.
00:43:54.000I think dialogue is critical to this is this is why conservatives know I'm a liberal because we talk policy and it's just like, oh, this dude's clearly liberal.
00:44:05.000But I'm not the quote-unquote left because the left is a cult of authoritarians.
00:44:09.000The left would never have me on their show.
00:44:11.000They barely, they won't come on my show.
00:44:48.000I think the new right, the right, whatever you want to call it, which is a combination of post-liberal, moderate, independent, libertarian, conservative, is the saving force of this country and the world.
00:45:01.000And I think the quote-unquote left is a cancerous, chaotic, and destructive force that is consuming and destroying everything around it.
00:45:16.000I mean, I've been saying it for a long time.
00:45:19.000The left, as we describe it, what do they want?
00:45:22.000To simulate sodomy in front of children in Texas?
00:45:25.000Well, what purpose does that serve in terms of protecting life?
00:45:29.000Let me slow down and break down for you my religious views so you can understand where I'm coming from.
00:45:34.000What brought me to the path where I said, and it's a gross oversimplification to put it this way, but when I was reading about physics and entropy, the heat death of the universe, things humans think they know, right?
00:45:46.000Like we've done these tests, we believe this to be the case, but science changes.
00:45:49.000There's something called negative entropy, and that is life.
00:45:53.000That while energy is dissipating and evening out, in a sense, certain things are coming together and forming unique complex structures.
00:46:01.000From the basic molecule, from the basic fundamental quantum element, quantum particle, you have entropy and negative entropy.
00:46:12.000Negative entropy is the gradual organization of energy into complex systems that eventually grow and grow and grow and grow to the point of humanity.
00:46:22.000You have electrons, protons, neutrons forming atoms, atoms forming elements, elements forming compounds, compounds forming proteins, et cetera, until life is created.
00:46:32.000I'm simplifying it for the sake of time.
00:46:34.000But eventually, you can see that simple organization of energy, like two atoms coming together, like fire, for instance, when oxygen and carbon dioxide or whatever slam into each other.
00:46:47.000Or I think, I could be getting it wrong.
00:46:53.000You get single cellular life creating more of itself, organizing energy into life.
00:46:58.000Then multicellular organisms are now more complicated.
00:47:01.000Then you get to the point of, say, a squirrel.
00:47:03.000A squirrel not only is itself complex energy organized in a unique way, but the fact that it buries nuts for food, and those nuts eventually grow into trees, creating this ecosystem, is another complex system.
00:47:17.000Humans do something tremendously profound and create intangible, complex systems that don't exist anywhere but within the mind.
00:48:12.000We are building things when we make families, when we build cities, when we develop technology, when we send rocket ships to the moon, we are acting forces of order in a chaotic universe.
00:50:36.000It is infecting and destroying and it's gangrenous.
00:50:40.000That's not to say that leftist policy ideas in the traditional academic sense are all wrong.
00:50:47.000It is to say that the modern left as we know it uses those ideas as weapons, misappropriates many of them and uses many of them logically as they were intended to badly and just destroys.
00:51:01.000I want a future where we're on the enterprise and we're traveling the stars and we're learning more and we're experiencing, coming closer to God, things like that.
00:51:10.000The left just wants us all to be, I don't know, what, cavemen eating moss off of it.
00:52:28.000But I'm like, I look at my leftist friends and they're entering middle age with no families, with no significant others, with little money, and they have nothing to show but partying.
00:52:40.000And I look at my conservative friends and they're like in their 20s and they're getting married.
00:52:44.000And I'm like, what do you think is going to happen?
00:52:46.000And I've said this to my friends who are like urban liberal types.
00:52:49.000What are you going to do when you're 60 or 70 years old?
00:52:51.000Are you going to go live in a home and have some stranger take care of you?
00:52:54.000Like my conservative friends, because Chicago has the more conservative suburbs, they have kids.
00:53:01.000Like they're 30 years old with two or three kids already.
00:53:04.000Like I don't even have kids because I, you know, I grew up much in a similar way to them.
00:53:08.000Granted, working on it, you know, I have family potentially coming soon because I don't want to live the way they do.
00:53:16.000I don't want to be 60 years old, just sitting there by myself being like, I had a lot of YouTube followers.
00:53:26.000So I have a lot of leftist friends who will claim they're happy and successful, but I'm like, bro, you're on antidepressants, man.
00:53:35.000My conservative friends don't have antidepressants.
00:53:37.000And it's a weird thing to say, but many of my more conservative friends, when they suffer from depression, they're just like, I go to church.
00:53:44.000Like they find some kind of inner faith, meditation, prayer, or God.
00:53:50.000Something to like, it's almost like when they have depression, they just ask someone to help them and give them something.
00:53:59.000And I'm not saying like literally every single conservative doesn't take no, but these are general approximations of what happens.
00:54:06.000I would say on average, the conservative people I know who are feeling depressed or down go and talk to a priest or a rabbi and then they work through it.
00:54:15.000And the liberal friends I have are on their third or fourth prescription.
00:55:21.000I think I'm right about a lot of things often, but this is why I don't care if a conservative or a liberal comes on the show, because if I get it wrong, I'll be like, oh.
00:55:30.000But you certainly are able to do something that I am not able to do very well: is that there are a lot of people in the middle that are not overly religious.
00:55:39.000They're not conservative, but they find something in your voice that is very genuine and authentic.
00:55:47.000I guess I just tell people, you know, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.
00:55:51.000I'm just going to tell you what I'm seeing.
00:55:52.000And I try to say, like, here's the news.
00:55:55.000And like, here's my justification for why this is true.