Woke Shaming Over Reality, and Faith Over Fame, with Konstantin Kisin and Alexa and Carlos PenaVega | Ep. 357
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 33 minutes
Words per Minute
203.80652
Summary
Konstantin Kissen is the co-host of TriggerNometry and author of the brand new book, An Immigrant s Love Letter to the West. He joins Megyn on the show to talk about his upbringing in Ukraine and his new book.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey, what am I? I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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President Biden in Israel today, where he's making gaffes about the Holocaust
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and fist bumping and handshaking world leaders despite his advisors saying he wouldn't.
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We're going to get to all the headlines with my first guest today, who I'll get to in one second.
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And then later in the show, we're going to be joined by two actors we're super excited to have on.
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The Pena Vegas are here, who were famous, still are, for movies like Spy Kids and hit shows like Big Time Rush,
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and who now have left Hollywood, have moved to a place that they believe they can raise their family
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according to their values and have a new book out about faith, family, and Hollywood.
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But first today, very happy to be joined by Konstantin Kissen.
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He is the co-host of Trigger-nometry, clever, and author of the brand new book,
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Konstantin, welcome back to the show. Great to have you here.
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Megyn, thank you so much for having me. A real pleasure to be back with you.
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Congrats on the book. So the last time you were on, we talked about Russia and Ukraine,
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and you know a lot about this because you were born in Russia and you married a woman who's from Ukraine.
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And as you tweeted out recently on the birth of your son, this is one thing that Russia and Ukraine worked on together.
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This beautiful little boy. So it's something that you know a lot about.
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But your point in this book is sort of to capitalize on that background and say,
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there's a reason my parents sent me to school in the UK.
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There's a reason they fell in love with the West and you did as well.
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And it seems to me like you've kind of had it with all the shaming of the West that is so in vogue,
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or as you point out, fashionable in today's day and age.
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Well, right. And to extrapolate on what you're saying about why my parents sent me to the West,
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this is why millions of people are desperately trying to get to the West as well, Megyn,
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because they haven't heard that we are the worst society in history,
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that we are all these bigots and racists and is and folks and whatever.
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But they actually would quite like a bit of freedom and democracy and prosperity and whatever.
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And it seems to me that the only people who no longer realize that we have those things in the West
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and most people don't have them elsewhere are the people who are born here,
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who perhaps haven't traveled much, who haven't seen many other societies,
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They think that what we have in the West just sort of fell out of the sky
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and was always like this and always will be like this.
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And the book, I think, is a celebration of the great achievements on the West,
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but also a warning, which is that if we forget how these things that we enjoy in the West were created,
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if we allow ourselves to just navel gaze endlessly and obsess about things that divide us rather than unite us,
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we will find that there are people elsewhere in the world, as we're seeing in Ukraine,
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There are people elsewhere who have a strong, cohesive ideology,
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not one we would agree with, of course, but they have a strong sense of who they are
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and they're going to challenge us for the top dog spot.
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And if we are busily dismantling our own societies, we are going to be in a lot of trouble.
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Right now, in the wake of Boris Johnson going down,
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the UK is debating who's going to be the next prime minister.
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And they're celebrating the fact that pretty much everyone on the shortlist
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And they're like, this is all, you know, this is great because
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we're not going to be able to be called racists on the conservative side, the Tory side,
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because we're definitely going to be having a new prime minister.
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Odds are, I guess, not definitely, but the odds are who's a minority.
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And you, from the moment Johnson went down and the speculation about him going down began
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to today, have been trying to disabuse people of that notion that it's pure folly
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that electing a minority is going to somehow immunize
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And by the way, Megan, you know me, I'm somewhere in the center.
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And what I've seen in the last few days is the sort of confirmation of what I said on day one,
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The reason they're calling you racist isn't that they think you're racist.
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The reason they're calling you racist is that they think it works.
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And what we've seen even today, I was having a conversation with somebody on Twitter about
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this, someone with a very prominent account who tweeted saying, well, this isn't real diversity
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You know, I'm very fond of the Eric Hoffer quote, which is every great cause begins as
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a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.
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And I don't know what the situation is like in America, you tell me.
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But here in the UK, we've got to the point where diversity, inclusion and all these other
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words that people are throwing around, it's just a racket now.
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It's a way of getting people to stop talking, to shut them down, to prevent them from speaking.
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And it's a way of smearing entire swathes of people.
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And by the way, increasing numbers of minorities are deeply, deeply disgusted with what's happening
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because they see it plain in plain sight right now.
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The moment that you have the most diverse field, and by the way, Matt Goodwin, who is
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a political analyst, a brilliant political analyst here in the UK, he mentioned recently
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that actually the number of minority candidates and female candidates in this leadership is
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greater than the total number of former people who've run for leadership of the left-wing
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Labour Party, the number of people from minority backgrounds who've been in cabinet, who've
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In other words, you've got the party that's being called racist every day, has actually
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got a really diverse field, and the other party not.
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But it doesn't matter because these brown people, these black people, these women, they're
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And so this is my point is like, you know, we need to stop talking about this.
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In my opinion, identity politics has discredited itself.
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Initially, the diversity drive I do think was important.
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People were not being given opportunities who deserve them.
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And now we've got to get to the position that Dr. King urges to get to, which is we should
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Well, Uncle Tom, apparently, is what we now call him.
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Under our current thinking, he was a racist, and his beliefs were racist, and we have to
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Yeah, so that sets me up perfectly for this clip that was all over the news yesterday,
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and we didn't get to it, but I wanted to, and so we'll get to it today.
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Ben Shapiro did a great takedown of what happened here that inspired me, too, to ask you about
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So this woman, Kiara Bridges, law professor at Berkeley, goes before the U.S. Senate,
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All right, she's, as I mentioned, law professor at Berkeley, specializes allegedly in constitutional
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law, critical legal theory, which is related to critical race theory, racial and social
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She's written books like Reproducing Race and Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization.
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The Poverty of Privacy Rights, Critical Race Theory of Primer, or Primer, if you like,
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and she's co-editor of a reproductive justice book series, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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She's got this high pedigree, valedictorian from Spelman College, JD from Columbia Law
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School, PhD in anthropology from Columbia, and so she goes before the Senate to talk about
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women's reproductive rights, but she will not say women.
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She will not go anywhere near women, and she gets offended when others try to.
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So Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri, tries to challenge her on the weird language
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And here's the clip that has now gone completely viral.
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Professor Bridges, you said several times, you've used a phrase, I want to make sure I
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You've referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy.
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Many women, cis women, have the capacity for pregnancy.
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Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy.
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There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy, as well as non-binary people who
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We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups.
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Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.
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Oh, so your view is, is that the core of this right then is about what?
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So I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic, and it opens up trans people
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Wow, you're saying that I'm opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are
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So I want to note that one out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide.
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Because of my line of questioning, so we can't talk about it?
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Because denying that trans people exist and pretending not to know that they exist is
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I'm denying that trans people exist by asking you if you're talking about women having
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Or are they also treated like this, where they're told that they're opening up people to violence
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And you do not get to redefine the questions and answer your own questions to yourself.
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Out of respect for the American people, you answer the questions that are asked.
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You don't restate the questions in the terms you want and then get snide with the questioners
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The other thing is about that clip that jumps out at me is how she she can't do it, Constantine,
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the way that you were just talking about how these people who are so focused on identity,
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they're not actually looking to win arguments or persuade you on the substance of their argument.
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They want you to shut the hell up and just accept their worldview.
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And you saw the moment that really, you know, sort of indicates it's so indicative of how the left,
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the woke left speaks today is she starts to lose and she says your rhetoric is transphobic, right?
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She's got to shut them up by saying you're transphobic.
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You're opening up trans people to violence by saying that women are the only ones who can get pregnant.
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And then drop the old trope about how one out of five transphobic or sorry, trans people have attempted suicide.
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People are going to commit suicide unless you accept our worldview that men can get pregnant.
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And what Ben was saying was, number one, a very high, unusually high rate of suicide within the LGBTQ community.
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Whether they're trans or not, whether they transition or not, there just is.
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And number two, even if you accept that rhetoric somehow is the tipping point for some trans people when it comes to suicidal ideation,
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it's not the responsibility of society to engage in the same delusion that they have about their gender and their abilities when it comes to having babies.
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If they're men to prevent that, I mean, with all due empathy to the situation they're in, we don't have to pretend we believe the same thing.
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They believe that despite the fact that they're a man, they can have a baby in order to protect them from suicidal ideations.
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This woman's probably never had anybody challenge her like that in her life.
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So she just goes to her usual trick of calling names.
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And it really puts the lie of the baselessness to her whole critical race theory life.
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Well, Megan, I don't disagree with the word you've said there, but I invite you and our listeners and viewers to take a step back for a moment and realize that your Congress is having a hearing.
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In which you're debating secondary, elementary, perhaps school biology.
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And you and I are sitting here, you're one of the most respected journalists in America, and we're having to discuss an issue on which we all know the truth.
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This is a pretend game that these people are playing.
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They're not, you mentioned respect for the American people.
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I don't think they do have respect for American people.
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I think they clearly think that most American people are bigots and are beneath contempt.
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So that's why she's not answering the question.
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And she also isn't answering the question because she knows on the argument, as you say, she's not going to win, which is why, you know, this concept that words of violence was so dangerous.
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And, you know, in my former career as a stand-up comedian, I fought so hard against this because anyone with half a brain can see that once you set it up, that words of violence, well, that's the method by which you, A, allow words to be shut down.
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And, B, by the way, and this is quite important, and I hope to God it doesn't come to this, but it did somewhat in the summer of 2020.
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If words of violence, then if you're saying something I don't like, I am entitled to, quote-unquote, defend myself.
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I'm entitled to portion off a part of an American city and create an independent area which is policed by people with guns.
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I can do all sorts of things once we decide that words of violence.
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And we have to find a way to row back from this, whether you're left or right, because I think we should all be deeply troubled by the way that we're having these conversations.
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And just the notion, you know, again, everyone's going to commit suicide.
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A high proportion of this community is going to commit suicide unless we go along with what they think about gender.
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Well, we don't have to do that, but we don't have to submit to those threats.
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She kept saying that you're denying their existence, and that's dangerous.
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Denying that a biological man can get pregnant is not denying the existence of trans people.
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It's denying that if you are born a man and then you decide to transition to female, certain biological realities will remain with you.
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And if you are born a woman and decide to transition to male, you are still a woman.
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But the reason you can do that is because you're a biological woman.
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There's only one way you can have a baby, and that is if you are a biological woman.
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So it's like they try to parlay your adherence to biology and to biological realities into bigotry and a denial of the trans community's existence.
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And I think the distinction is really important.
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I employ on Trigonometry, our YouTube show, at least two people who have gender dysphoria.
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One of them is trans, and one of them just has gender dysphoria.
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They're not the sort of people that want, you know, as we have here in London, the tube to stop saying ladies and gentlemen.
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Most trans people are quite sensible people who just want to live their lives and be left alone to live their lives in peace without violence and without being confronted by hateful bigots in the street who unfortunately do still exist.
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But they don't need this professor to be making stuff up or to be calling someone transphobic for asking simple questions.
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This is not helping trans people, just like many of the conversations we have about race don't help black people or other ethnic minorities, like the conversations we have sometimes about women's rights don't help women.
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This is about a few activists who've realized that there's a lot of money and a lot of cliques to be found in talking about this in this ridiculous way.
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And that is, excuse me, the only reason these people are doing it, because it benefits them.
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And I say this, as you know, I talk about this in the book.
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Think about how many of these activists talk about how evil and terrible the West is.
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Have you noticed, Megan, none of them ever leave?
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None of them ever go to the country which they came from or to which the country from which their parents brought them into the West from.
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Is it maybe because this is just a way to get famous and to get some money?
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You know, this self-flagellation that my country's doing, your country's doing.
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Like, could we go 10, 15, 20 years more of saying how awful we are, the refusal to celebrate July 4th?
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I know you pointed out, you know, Cori Bush here in the States, part of the squad was, you know, July 4th is a holiday for white people, white privileged people.
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And I think reasonable people like you and I should be concerned about what happens when it does swing, because every revolution is followed by an equally ugly counterrevolution.
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So we definitely got to be careful when that moment comes.
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But I've always said from day one, Megan, that the trans issue would be what broke all of this intersectionality nonsense, because people will accept, of course, historically speaking, there are communities that have been disadvantaged.
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You know, many of the black people who live in America today are the descendants of slaves and the disadvantages of that will persist.
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I think no one sensible would argue that women haven't had a difficult time and have been unfairly treated at points in history.
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And when you start to weaponize those, even moderate, sensible people will say, you know what, there's probably some truth to all of this.
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But the trans issue is different because once you start to ask people to deny the evidence in front of their eyes, basic biology.
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And by the way, probably most importantly, when you're starting to see, as you're now starting to see a wave of detransitioners who were encouraged down the path of medical intervention, taking hormone blockers, mutilating their bodies who now regret it.
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And you want to say to parents of seven-year-olds, if your kid says, well, I think I'm a girl today, you've got to go and get them on the path to transition.
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That's when you start to release normal people, Megan.
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I'm really sad that what it's probably going to take is more and more young people who have gone through the process, who've tried to transition because they were encouraged down that path and sadly ended up with a body that's mutilated or not the way they'd like and terribly, you know, in a terrible mental health situation as well.
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I'm hopeful that we can minimize the number of people that are in that position.
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We saw here in the UK, we've interviewed people from the Tavistock Clinic, whistleblowers from the clinic where a lot of this was being encouraged.
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I know there are people who are pushing back against this in the US as well.
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And I just hope that we can do get, I hope we can do that and get to a point where this is no longer happening before it's too late and before more young people have been captured by this terrible ideology.
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Hmm. Yeah. I'm next week. We're actually doing a full show on on and with the transitioners who have lived this firsthand and sorry, it's in August, the beginning of August, but who say they did not give informed consent.
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They were teenagers who were confused, who encountered a system that said, oh, affirm, affirm, affirm at every turn or you're endangering their life or you, you know, you'd rather have a dead, a dead son or I'd rather have a live daughter than a dead son.
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All the same rhetoric that we saw this so-called professor using about, you know, the high suicide rate and your language is dangerous.
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And so they got shepherded through a system that wanted their transition when they were too young to really understand it, consent to it.
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And now if you were a young woman who thought she was a man and you go through this, you're sterile.
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You're not having a baby. You can never carry a child. You can never breastfeed a child.
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These people who claim to care about trans kids, allegedly trans kids in crisis, couldn't care less.
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They care about their own agendas, their agenda pushing.
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And that's why I think your comment about in the book about like,
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what's in fashion is so telling because I do think not only is it fashionable to call your country and ours racist and sort of hang everything up on some sort of racial problem,
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but the trans thing is somewhat fashionable as well.
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It's like all these teenagers, they're not trans.
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Some small, tiny percentage of them might have gender dysphoria because it is a real thing.
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But the vast majority of these kids think it's fashionable or they feel like they don't belong or they were told like our one guest,
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if you feel uncomfortable in your body, you might be trans.
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Well, every teenager feels uncomfortable in their own body.
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Like that is not the standard by which you judge if you're trans.
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But the fashionability of it, it's an overcorrection to the demonization of it.
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And Megan, I'll add something very controversial right now, which is I'll say children can't consent.
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Children are children by virtue of the fact that they're not capable of fully understanding the consequences of their actions.
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I've actually come back from one of my sister's weddings.
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And in the process of the wedding, her husband was asked questions about her.
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And one of them was, what did Ira, Irina, your sister, what did she want to be as a child?
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Because my sister, the prettiest, loves pink, all feminine now, she, as a seven-year-old, said to my mom,
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And she went through a phase for a few months where that's what she said.
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Now she's turned out to be a perfectly normal, straight, cis, quote-unquote, woman.
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Children are not capable of understanding the consequences of their actions.
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We've got to be very, very careful that we don't make this, you know,
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children choosing their own gender at that sort of age.
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And we don't encourage them down paths that are going to be detrimental to them.
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And it is our job as adults to protect them from the consequences of things that they don't fully understand.
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It's something that we're going to live to regret.
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And I do think the real way forward is not just the detransitioners, but it's going to be the lawsuits.
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It's going to be the lawsuits from the detransitioners and families who, in earnest,
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sought care for their child's psychiatric care, amongst others,
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and instead were pushed an agenda that tends to be left-wing, that tends to be weirdly ideological.
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There's not a lot of conservatives pushing this.
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And so I remain hopeful that the courts, as they have been in so many situations,
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can be some sort of a backstop to some of this lunacy.
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And when you've got constitutional law professors like this moron out there teaching the next
00:23:43.380
Can you remember back in the day when you used to think, like, you just had a baby?
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It would be great if he wound up at Berkeley or Harvard or Yale.
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Like, wow, that would open up such doors and make such connections.
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I don't want my kids anywhere near those institutions.
00:23:58.960
And look, as you know, we just had our first child.
00:24:02.060
And this is something I've already thought about is, like, in the past, the standard
00:24:06.180
path line was, you know, you get good grades at school, then you go to college or university,
00:24:12.940
Well, if this is what's happening at colleges and universities, I don't want my child anywhere
00:24:18.300
I'd rather they were a plumber, frankly, at this point.
00:24:21.520
So this isn't, you know, and this is one of the reasons that, you know, that I talk in
00:24:26.360
Immigrants Love Letter to the West about how I really became aware of all of this stuff
00:24:30.480
where I was asked to sign a behavioral agreement contract to do a comedy gig.
00:24:35.200
And that's the point I was making at the time, which was, look, I hear these students, you
00:24:40.540
know, that are running around being a bit crazy.
00:24:47.440
The problem is who's teaching them and what are they then growing up to be?
00:24:51.180
Because we see it here, here now in the UK, a lot of these people now, now politicians,
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they're lawyers, they're judges, they're making decisions that actually impact the real world.
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And they're bringing a lot of this complete nonsense and rubbish and a lack of understanding
00:25:06.240
of the real world into political spaces, into legal spaces, and then having a genuine,
00:25:13.900
So this isn't something that's, you know, contained to college campuses.
00:25:17.460
And I'm glad people are starting to realize that.
00:25:21.580
I didn't realize it was that recently that that happened.
00:25:24.280
They wanted you to sign this pledge that you were going to, you weren't going to touch
00:25:31.840
Let me tell you, Megan, because it's worth hearing.
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Racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia,
00:25:43.300
And it also said that all jokes must be respectful and kind.
00:25:56.000
So that's the kind of thinking that some people at our universities are starting to engage in.
00:26:00.680
And I saw it in comedy and comedy is now riddled with this stuff, certainly in the UK.
00:26:05.220
And that's because comedy is downstream of culture of society in general.
00:26:09.620
So I saw the early signs of it in the comedy industry, which is why we started trigonometry
00:26:15.160
Frankly, we were just two idiot comedians who were trying to understand why is it that
00:26:19.060
people were suddenly saying, instead of, you know, make any jokes you want.
00:26:22.320
And that's the whole point of being a comedian to like jokes of violence and you mustn't
00:26:28.620
And that's kind of the journey that I've been on, which is why I wanted to write the book,
00:26:32.700
because that experience as a comedian really terrified me because of where I come from.
00:26:39.940
And I saw this sort of repression of people's ideas, repressions of people's statements,
00:26:44.080
the fact that you were restricted from making jokes or punished for making jokes.
00:26:48.340
And I was like, hey, I left Russia, the Soviet Union, because I didn't want any part of this.
00:26:56.260
So there is there is a popular British feminist and poet named Aja, and she just got banned
00:27:04.340
from Twitter because she went online to complain about a trans woman, a biological man, a trans
00:27:11.500
woman, basically trying to lecture her and others on how they and their objections to certain of the
00:27:17.740
encroachments on women's rights that the trans community or better put their activists push for.
00:27:23.440
Right. So she got out there and she did her sort of poetry like this is bullshit.
00:27:26.500
And I object. And Twitter's banned her because they don't like the way in which she expressed
00:27:31.820
herself. And it really is ironic if you think about the fact that what you really have is a
00:27:36.060
biological man lecturing a woman on how she needs to speak about women's rights and the woman saying,
00:27:44.640
I will speak about women's rights the way I want to and stand up for them the way I want to.
00:27:49.260
You and Twitter telling the woman you will shut up and the biological man will have the
00:27:54.400
last word. He can say what he wants about, quote, women, but you cannot.
00:27:58.760
Your side of the conversation will be shut down unless you agree to speak in the way he
00:28:06.320
I mean, that's the point that we are at because you kind of like out of respect for the trans
00:28:09.780
community. And I am somebody who does their pronoun.
00:28:15.780
But when you when you get to the point where you realize a trans woman is a biological man,
00:28:20.600
that's a biological man. And so it's essentially a man trying to tell you a woman how you need
00:28:25.580
to speak about women's rights. The only answer is to say, no, no, I don't consent.
00:28:31.660
I will speak about women however the hell I want.
00:28:35.460
And if you don't like it, you can listen to another channel.
00:28:38.340
You can walk away, but you cannot censor or silence me and my speech.
00:28:43.980
There's nothing feminist or pro woman about that.
00:28:48.480
Well, I agree with you and very passionately said.
00:28:50.980
And of course, if you said all that on Twitter, you'd be banned as well.
00:28:53.860
That's that's the situation we're in because you keep saying he and you're not allowed to do that.
00:28:58.880
And I come back to the point that I made earlier, which is this is about the idea that words
00:29:02.780
are violence. Once you accept that, everything else follows.
00:29:06.120
There's another thing, of course, and we've got a big problem because it's legislated for now in
00:29:10.120
many countries. You've got this idea that there are protected groups.
00:29:14.100
And once you have protected groups and by the way, not to attempt to annoy feminists,
00:29:18.520
but I do think there are portions of feminism that actually got involved in this and tried to
00:29:23.280
introduce the idea of protected groups. And it's starting to kick them in the rear now at this
00:29:28.500
point, bite them in the rear. Right. Once you introduce the idea of protected groups,
00:29:32.620
you're saying, well, not everyone is the same, not everyone's equal. Of course,
00:29:36.180
not everyone's the same, but not everyone should be treated equally.
00:29:38.620
Then you get to a position where some some, you know, some animals are better than others
00:29:43.400
and some animals deserve to be treated better than others. Of course, I'm quoting Animal Farm.
00:29:48.040
So that that's the place we're in. And we've got to get to a point where we start to unwind some of
00:29:55.280
these very, very dangerous ideas, because once, you know, once they go from the realm of just some
00:30:00.900
people talking on a campus to actual legislation, as we have in this country, where we have the
00:30:05.220
Equalities Act, which says in terms, some people deserve to be treated differently to other people.
00:30:11.720
You're always going to have this problem. You're always going to have certain groups that need
00:30:15.780
special protection. And therefore, anyone who says anything, because remember words of violence,
00:30:19.760
they've got to be punished. They've got to be struck down. They've got to be silenced.
00:30:23.800
And that is the position we're in. So there's a big job ahead of unwinding some of those policies
00:30:28.420
that we've seen in the last couple of decades. All right, Constantine, stand by. I'm going to
00:30:33.440
squeeze in a quick break. Much, much more to go over with you.
00:30:42.440
Okay, so let's talk about classism. It's something that you do talk about. And you care about income
00:30:48.880
inequality. And I do, too. I do, too. It doesn't mean you don't like capitalism, but you know,
00:30:54.760
you can see the issues with like skyrocketing rents and the and the not a skyrocketing, you
00:31:00.680
know, employment opportunity for young people in terms of salary and so on. But I've heard you talk
00:31:06.860
about recently, like in particular, these economic or these these green energy policies, which are
00:31:11.420
crushing, are crushing the working class. And how I think it was a tweet that you sent out that says
00:31:17.060
what the one thing that's becoming clear to me is whatever your view of climate change,
00:31:20.060
the pursuit of net zero by continually raising the cost of living is going to cause populist
00:31:25.680
revolts that will make Brexit and Trump look like minor blips. I agree with that. We're seeing it now
00:31:33.400
in Sri Lanka, right, in what's happening in the Netherlands with these farmers. And, you know,
00:31:39.320
in your country and mine, people have about had it with these so-called green energy policies that
00:31:43.560
come at the expense of the working class. And, you know, there are a lot of other causes for
00:31:49.500
concern economically as well. I mean, it's going to be let's let's be clear, Megan, I think the
00:31:53.920
economists I speak to all are very clear about this. A very difficult economic time is coming
00:31:58.640
anyway. So to spend the time that we have, instead of dealing with those problems, whether it's the
00:32:05.200
effect of the war in Ukraine, which is probably in terms of the global food crisis is going to cause
00:32:09.720
famine in many countries in around the world. Now, we in the West, of course, are fortunate to
00:32:14.200
probably avoid that. But we will see very high rises in the cost of living, whether that's fuel,
00:32:19.700
whether that's food, whether that's gas. And to be piling all of this stuff on top. Look,
00:32:24.380
I don't know enough. I'm not a climate scientist. I don't know what the deal with that is. I'm just
00:32:28.460
saying, I think the way we're approaching this by impoverishing the people who are already vulnerable
00:32:33.000
in our societies is not going to achieve that. And what you're going to get instead is populist
00:32:38.080
revolts of the kind that I frankly don't want to see. And I don't see how you get away from that
00:32:43.820
fact that at a time when people are already struggling, if you have a situation as we do
00:32:49.360
in the UK, where so much of our energy pricing, so much of our fuel pricing, so much of our food
00:32:54.640
particularly is the product of these levies, is the product of some of the ways that we are
00:32:59.620
approaching this idea that we must get to net zero immediately. Otherwise, we're all going to drown
00:33:03.860
and run out of food in 12 years. It's not going to have a good impact on our society. So even if
00:33:09.440
you believe that we have to tackle the issue of climate change and with urgency, this just does
00:33:14.480
not seem to me like a practical way to do it, particularly when we seem to be ignoring forms
00:33:19.560
of energy like nuclear energy that actually do help to solve the problem, but for some reason don't
00:33:24.520
seem to get the green activists excited. I don't know why.
00:33:26.960
Mm hmm. I blame Jane Fonda and that movie The China Syndrome. I blame her for a lot. But that's
00:33:33.820
one of the problems. And my guys with Chernobyl, we did not handle that well, to be fair. So that
00:33:38.000
probably didn't help either. That's true. Although that series was amazing, right? That so-called
00:33:44.480
documentary. I'm not sure if it was a true documentary. But in any event, so Joe Biden,
00:33:48.640
let's talk about him politics for a minute, because he goes over to Israel in the Middle East. He's going
00:33:52.900
to meet with the Saudis as well, the ones he said he would deem pariahs. But now he goes hat in hand.
00:33:58.040
And today, actually yesterday in Israel. I mean, you know, the one thing you're not supposed to do
00:34:03.360
when you go over to Israel, I think, is make gaffes about the Holocaust. I'm pretty sure it's the one
00:34:07.180
thing you shouldn't screw up. Here's a little bit of what happened when he was there. Soundbite 2.
00:34:13.860
I will once more return to the hollow ground of Yad Shavim
00:34:16.940
to honor six million Jewish lives who were stolen in the genocide and continue, which we must do
00:34:26.400
every, every day, continue to bear witness, to keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust,
00:34:37.900
I realize it's a stumble, the honor of the Holocaust, too. It happens, but it happens to him
00:34:43.240
all the time. He kept referring to the prime minister as the president. It was just I mean,
00:34:49.540
it was every turn. You really do have the feeling of like when he's talking. Right. And it's like
00:34:55.160
it just feeds into the lack of faith in our leaders. You guys are about to elect a new one.
00:35:00.320
I hope you do better. I do, too, Megan. I'll be honest with you. I mean, of course,
00:35:04.460
people can make partisan points here, but I'll be honest as an outsider, as someone who respects
00:35:08.860
America who thinks it's a country that has a lot of the right values. I know you're very divided at
00:35:14.460
the moment, but actually that's because you're trying to work out how to run a country, how to
00:35:17.940
run a society. That's one of the things I love about your country. Like here in Europe, we're like
00:35:22.060
we've got all this sorted out. We don't need to talk about it when actually we do. You guys,
00:35:26.920
yeah, you've got problems, but you're trying to work it out. You're trying to. I love America for
00:35:31.020
this reason. And to see that you've gone from one guy who said a lot of stuff that that was
00:35:36.840
unpleasant to listen to, to another guy who barely says anything that you can actually hear. And it
00:35:42.280
is coherent. I just think it's a bad look for your country. It's a bad look for America. It doesn't
00:35:48.480
reflect well, whether you're a Democrat or Republican or a moderate or anything. It's just
00:35:53.280
sad. It's sad to see. I'm sad that he's in a position where this continues to happen. It just
00:35:59.720
looks bad as an outside. I'll be honest with you. Yeah. The Aussies just elected somebody who's got
00:36:04.520
similar stumbling problems, though he's a much younger man. He said that when he went to the
00:36:09.600
Middle East, he wasn't going to. I mentioned this on my show yesterday and said I hadn't confirmed
00:36:14.240
it. I wasn't sure if it was fake news. No, it's real. He said he wasn't going to shake the hands
00:36:18.560
of any leaders while over there because of covid, you know, because they're very concerned. The WHO
00:36:22.560
is saying we should bring back masks, mask mandates. All right. It's like they're never going to let go
00:36:28.120
of their hand over our mouth ever. Once you give these controls to the government authorities,
00:36:33.720
they will never give them back to you. So he's saying because of covid and the rise in the Omicron
00:36:39.100
sub variants, he doesn't want to shake hands while he's over there. Most people believe that he just
00:36:43.620
doesn't want to shake the hands of the Saudi leaders who he said he would make pariahs out of
00:36:47.700
and who killed Washington Post journalist Khashoggi. Anyway, so he goes over there and what does
00:36:54.160
he do? He starts fist bumping. He's fist bumping the Israeli leaders. My God, Konstantin fist bumping.
00:37:01.340
And then and they're trying to shake his hand and then he sees Netanyahu. What does he do?
00:37:06.260
Grabs his hand, gives him the big, you know, five finger handshake and winds up seeing some
00:37:11.720
Holocaust survivors a bit later. And he's kissing them and he's hugging them, putting the lie to this
00:37:16.360
whole nonsense about his covid concerns. I don't know what to make of it other than it's more lying
00:37:21.920
from our leaders. You've written a piece recently. Was this in your book? I'm trying to remember where
00:37:26.000
I saw this, but you were pointing out how you might have some good leaders in the UK.
00:37:30.920
It's the same applies here, but there's very few who you actually find impressive.
00:37:34.860
We actually like deeply respect and more and more. We're getting that here, too.
00:37:40.160
Yeah. And this covid theater, Megan, it's one of the things it's doing. People think this is just a
00:37:45.500
playful thing that we all laugh at. Actually, it has real consequences, because the more you see
00:37:50.660
that the people who are telling you to wear a mask or to get vaccinated or to get your booster or to
00:37:55.940
socially distance or whatever, the more you see that they don't do any of this, that they don't
00:38:00.660
actually live up to the expectations that they set for you, the more I think a lot of people actually
00:38:05.000
switch off and don't take sensible precautions in situations where actually probably would be a good
00:38:10.300
idea to socially distance from people when you can, if there's a lot of virus going around.
00:38:15.380
Do you know what I mean? So we've got this point. We've got to this point where they are doing
00:38:21.240
theater and people, of course, lose trust and faith in our politicians. But the broader point,
00:38:27.740
yeah, you're right. I talk about it both in the book and on my sub stack is we've got to a position
00:38:32.220
where I think we deliberately filter out people of principle and character, because, of course,
00:38:36.380
the moment you stand up for principle, as you and I both know, the moment you stand up for what you
00:38:40.900
believe in, you do alienate some people. Some people won't like it. And in the current environment
00:38:45.940
that we have, the moment anyone doesn't like what you do, that is the end of your political career.
00:38:51.940
If you said the wrong thing, it's a gaffe. If you did the wrong thing, well, you're evil forever
00:38:56.840
and so on. And I'm afraid as a result of that, we're preventing decent people from going into
00:39:03.100
politics. And when they do, they find that it's not a place that they're going to stick around.
00:39:06.720
And so you end up with the people that we all end up with. I have a I have a glimmer of hope
00:39:12.520
on this subject to offer. I was thinking about this the other day. One upside of the younger
00:39:18.040
generation having grown up with social media and, you know, just having to worry from birth about what
00:39:23.740
they say online and the incoming attacks and bullying you get on Instagram and Facebook, whatever
00:39:28.660
it is, is we might wind up with better leaders, because I think a lot of people, a lot of sane
00:39:33.420
people right now are like, I'm not I'm not running for all. Why would I put myself and my family
00:39:36.920
through that? I don't want to be subjected to that nonsense. And I feel like the younger people are
00:39:40.740
like, I've I've never known any other. Yeah, of course, I'll do it. Yeah. Why would I let public
00:39:45.380
scorn stop me? That's I've been immersed in that toxic stew since birth. So I'm kind of hoping
00:39:51.680
it could lead to better leaders because they were neutralizing that factor. You can no longer live a
00:39:57.640
life of privacy where you're not constantly getting attacked. And so why not get out there
00:40:02.740
and try to make a difference? We'll see on the subject of covid. We were gearing back up. There's
00:40:10.280
already talk about should we be bringing bringing back more lockdowns about mask mandates returning
00:40:16.340
now to L.A. New York just brought back not mandates, but mask recommendations. I mentioned
00:40:22.680
the WHO and now Hong Kong. Hong Kong is going to electronically tag covid patients, people who have
00:40:31.860
tested positive for covid as it adopts China's health code system. This is pretty crazy where
00:40:37.220
they're going to make you wear a bracelet to track you to make sure that you're isolating
00:40:41.140
in home. And I mean, it's like one of those things where you look at it overseas and you say never
00:40:46.080
here, never here. And I wouldn't put it past our leaders to try it. No, I wouldn't either. And if
00:40:53.080
you remember, Megan, I don't know if this story made it over to the U.S. I hope it did. But Neil
00:40:57.780
Ferguson, one of the statisticians responsible for helping to introduce lockdowns here in the U.K.,
00:41:04.160
he openly said in the in in the interview in The Telegraph, I think that they had no idea that they
00:41:09.540
could do lockdowns until they saw China do it. And then they were like, oh, they can do it. So can
00:41:14.780
we. So I'm afraid this entire thing has been handled with a very Chinese line. And if you know
00:41:20.320
anything about the way the CCP controls the population, if you know anything about the Chinese
00:41:25.780
social credit system, you should be very concerned. And I think what's really, really important is
00:41:31.340
the opposition that was fermented to all of these measures during the peak of covid here in the U.K.
00:41:36.940
and of course, in the U.S. That needs those people who are part of that movement, myself included.
00:41:42.340
We need to remember this ain't over. They're going to try again. I think there's no question
00:41:46.420
that this winter there will be another wave, judging by what people are saying. And if there's
00:41:51.180
another wave, there will be another wave of authoritarianism that we're all going to have
00:41:54.260
to resist once again. Yes, we're going to have to resist. We're going to have to fight. So let's end
00:41:59.160
on this note, because as we discussed, you have a new baby. He was born in May. So you are brand new
00:42:05.420
to fatherhood and it's it's fun and it's exciting and it can be overwhelming. I'm sure if it's
00:42:10.780
anything like my experience. But you wrote a barn burner of a substack column to your son
00:42:16.540
that I absolutely loved called We Do Not Kneel, a letter to my newborn son. And the gist of this
00:42:24.580
letter, I encourage everybody to go to Constantine's substack and read it is as follows. If you want to
00:42:31.800
live a comfortable life, you can fit in. Don't ask too many questions. Keep your head down. But son,
00:42:38.160
if there's one thing I've learned, it's that comfort is overrated. You did not come into this
00:42:43.760
world to consume as much food, pleasure and entertainment as you can. A fulfilling life
00:42:48.120
is one of purpose. And the meaning of your life is to identify that purpose and pursue it
00:42:53.560
with every fiber of your being. You go on to say those who lack the courage of their convictions
00:42:58.840
will be threatened by yours. Those who lack confidence will consider you arrogant for having
00:43:03.300
it. And most of all, those who are desperate to fit in will hate and secretly admire you
00:43:10.460
for standing out. I love that you encourage him not to settle, not to settle and to pursue
00:43:19.280
a life of extraordinary nature, of an extraordinary nature. I couldn't agree with everything you've
00:43:25.600
written more. I feel like it was what I was trying to get at in my book, Settle for More as well. One
00:43:30.960
of the many reasons you and I like each other because we have similar life philosophies. And
00:43:35.720
just spend a minute speaking about that. Do not kneel.
00:43:41.180
I don't know how to say. I'm probably going to cry talking about it because it's so important to
00:43:45.540
me, Megan. You know, I come from generations of people who were in gulags in the Soviet Union
00:43:51.380
because they said the wrong thing, but they believed in it. And so they said it anyway.
00:43:55.700
I come from generations of people, as my boy does, of people who refuse to bend to authorities
00:44:01.560
like the kinds that no one in the West can imagine. So when I see people who are afraid
00:44:06.300
of speaking their mind because the mob is going to pursue them on social media or someone is going
00:44:11.240
to send them a threat or whatever, I understand. I do understand. But this is no way to live.
00:44:17.880
This is no way to live. Every single person is born to do something brilliant with their life.
00:44:23.180
And I really believe that the pursuit of that brilliance, whatever form or shape it comes in,
00:44:27.820
is the purpose of your life, is the meaning of your life. It's the only thing
00:44:30.720
that I've ever done that's made me happy. It's when I've been doing what I believe. It's when I've
00:44:35.600
been speaking my mind without muzzling myself. And that's why I encourage my son. And frankly,
00:44:40.800
anyone who wants to listen to pursue that to the best of their ability. And by the way,
00:44:45.020
I don't care if your politics are different to mine, if your views are different to mine,
00:44:49.060
it doesn't really matter to me. I just know that a world full of people who are pursuing
00:44:53.080
their purpose is a world full of happy people. And happy people don't engage in the sort of
00:44:57.760
divisive crap that we've had in our countries for the last decade or two. And if we can all be doing
00:45:04.140
something that we love, I think we'll get to a position where we hate on each other less and we
00:45:07.940
actually come together in a much more productive way, which is one of the reasons I wanted to write the
00:45:12.060
book. Because as you know, I, you know, I tried to address the book to people who would disagree
00:45:16.960
with me because I do think it's important that we reach across the aisle. It's important that we
00:45:21.480
don't demonize the other, even if we think they're silly or stupid or wherever it is,
00:45:25.740
we've got to get past that. Megan, we've had a lot of division. We will have more division,
00:45:30.040
but look, if we are to survive as the West, we're going to have to come together eventually.
00:45:36.120
Love it. Everybody should buy the book. It's called An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West.
00:45:41.860
Constantine Kissin. Those are two Ks there in case you're Googling it and check out Trigonometry
00:45:47.420
as well, because it's well worth your time. Such a pleasure. Congrats on the baby, on the book,
00:45:58.220
All right. Coming up here in just a bit, the Penovegas will be here. Very,
00:46:02.860
very popular. And Gwendolyn is very excited for them. My, my intern, big, big fan. And you will
00:46:08.100
be too. You know, these, the, the, both of these folks, whether you know it or not. Uh, don't forget
00:46:13.020
folks. In the meantime, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel 111 every
00:46:17.200
weekday at noon East, the full video show. And the clips are on our YouTube channel, youtube.com
00:46:22.160
slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, follow and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora,
00:46:28.360
Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. I read all the reviews there. There were some updates
00:46:32.380
today, which had me laughing. And I appreciate the guest suggestions too. And there you will
00:46:36.560
find our full archives with more than 350 shows. So check it out.
00:46:45.240
Our next guests have several members of my staff, extremely excited, uh, who know them as I do from
00:46:51.860
movies like spy kids and shows like big time rush, Alexa and Carlos Pena Vega were hugely successful in
00:46:59.680
the entertainment industry and still are, uh, but their success began at a very early age. Alexa
00:47:06.780
became known for her role as Carmen Cortez in the major, major hit movie franchise spy kids. And
00:47:13.820
Carlos starred in Nickelodeon's big time rush and toured the country with the band. But there is so much
00:47:20.760
more to this married couple, uh, and their story. They recently released a memoir titled what if love is
00:47:28.680
the point living for Jesus in a self-consumed world? Love that title. And it details their journey in
00:47:36.340
the industry, finding their faith, finding each other and why they decided to leave Hollywood
00:47:41.360
behind. Welcome to the show. Carlos and Alexa agreed to have you here. How's it going? Oh my God. The
00:47:49.340
pleasure is all mine. I love, love, love your backgrounds and your stories and how open you guys both
00:47:55.660
are about getting to the place you are now. And you don't pretend it was easy. You don't pretend
00:48:02.280
you've had these perfect lives to the contrary. You own all the bumps along the road. And there's
00:48:08.920
a reason you want to own them and explain to people sort of who you are now and what makes you the
00:48:14.840
glowing, happy people I see before me on the screen. Hey, we'll take you. We'll take it. Uh,
00:48:21.240
well, um, well, for us, you know, you look at just even social media today. Um, it's all filtered
00:48:28.400
veneered. Right. And the truth is like when we first kind of started growing in our faith, it wasn't
00:48:35.760
this like perfect, easy thing that I think sometimes people sell Christianity to be, they, they make it
00:48:41.680
sound like the second you become a Christian, your life's going to be perfect. And in all honesty, our
00:48:46.540
life got really, really hard after we found our faith, because this world is not set up really for
00:48:51.860
faithful people. It's not really set up for happy marriages or happy families. Um, so we really had
00:48:57.840
to navigate what that looks like in our careers, what that looks like on social media. And we were
00:49:02.860
frustrated seeing all of these kind of perfect Christians, I guess on, on social media. We're like,
00:49:08.820
no, we want to share what it, what our walk really looks like. So for us, we just wanted to be
00:49:13.740
really consistent and honest and authentic to what it looks like to actually be a Christian in
00:49:21.580
today's world. Yeah. I want to talk more about that, that this world is not set up to celebrate
00:49:25.940
happy marriages. Hollywood certainly no, but even regular world. I mean, I I've observed this even my
00:49:31.060
own life. You go out with groups of friends in certain pockets. Um, you know, we, we travel amongst
00:49:37.300
different groups of friends in different places. And in some of the groups, it's always the guys with
00:49:41.220
the, with the guys and the girls with the girls, right? Like you go out to dinner, whatever. It's
00:49:44.340
like, wait, no, I want to experience this evening with my spouse. Like I don't, I'm not looking to
00:49:49.760
separate from him at every party and every dinner. And, but that's just my own, but you've experienced
00:49:54.520
it in a, in a world that the messaging around faith around love filled well, happy marriages
00:50:05.220
Yeah. No, no. And, and, and especially like in our industry, we got married really young. I mean,
00:50:11.660
what was it? 23, 23, 24. Like, like, like that's kind of unheard of in our industry. And
00:50:17.200
I feel like people like our friends kind of, kind of disowned us because they were like, well,
00:50:23.800
they're the married couple now. And I'm like, but, but it's okay. We can still hang out. You know,
00:50:27.040
it's fine. And it was, it was really hard for us, uh, in the beginning. Cause we didn't have,
00:50:31.960
have a lot of friends, especially, yeah, especially in LA. And we, we ended up after we
00:50:37.100
had our first kid, we ended up moving to Maui. Uh, and, uh, it's been amazing. We, you know,
00:50:43.140
a lot of young Christian, uh, families and it's just, man, I really hope that like, like my goal
00:50:51.900
is that we can really show people the beauty of marriage again, you know, and the beauty of,
00:50:56.420
you know, creating that family and having a bunch of kids and, and traveling. I mean,
00:51:00.160
we're currently on tour with my band. We're coming to you live from our tour bus.
00:51:04.120
So cool. Uh, yeah. And, uh, and you know, uh, a big conversation was, are you bringing your family
00:51:10.860
on tour? And I'm like, well, yeah, I'm not going to leave my kids, my five-year-old, my three-year-old,
00:51:15.700
my one-year-old and my beautiful wife for three months while I go tour the world and play shows.
00:51:21.000
Like I want them to experience that with me. Cause those are the memories that we can create. And
00:51:25.420
we had to make a lot of sacrifices to make this happen, but man, you know, it's been three weeks
00:51:30.420
and I wouldn't change a thing. It's a good way to start distancing from one another. If you physically
00:51:35.360
distance the emotional distance inevitably will follow. So you're right. You're doing, you're
00:51:40.520
prioritizing your love, your family, but I've got to ask you why Maui, right? Cause most people,
00:51:45.600
I don't, nobody moves to Matt. Who moves to Maui? Like it's an amazing idea.
00:51:51.960
Yeah. But we always thought like, Oh, once we retire, we'll live there. Um, but what I love
00:51:56.860
about my husband is he's such a go-getter that like for us, we're like, why are we, why are you,
00:52:01.820
why are we going to wait to until retirement to go have fun? Like, why don't we just go have this
00:52:05.640
fun? Well, because we were worried about what other people would think about it. And I think over the
00:52:10.120
last, yeah, like over the last handful of years, we kind of realized like, who cares, who cares what
00:52:15.980
people think about what you're doing? It's already not going to like you.
00:52:19.040
Yeah. Like that, that doesn't matter. And, and we're all so worried about, you know,
00:52:23.800
making, making our life look like an Instagram picture, you know, so perfect with all the filters
00:52:28.680
like, man, you know what, if I feel like I want to go do this and, and, you know, it's not bad,
00:52:34.320
of course, like, let's just go do it. And who cares? You know, my, my dad, I love him to death,
00:52:39.140
but he thinks we're crazy that we moved to Maui because it's not convenient for him.
00:52:42.920
And I had to go, well, pops, like, it's really convenient for us, but he's mad about it. It's
00:52:48.640
not convenient for him. And, you know, the old me would have been like, well, maybe, you know,
00:52:52.600
maybe we shouldn't do it because it's not convenient for him. But now I'm like, no,
00:52:55.800
this is what our family needed. And we made it happen.
00:52:59.260
Well, I love the idea. Cause I know, Alexa, you grew up, was it on a ranch in Florida?
00:53:03.680
So yeah, like you're used to being outside and having a connection with nature and having lived
00:53:10.060
in New York city for a bunch of years. And I know now, and not you, me, but you were in LA,
00:53:14.580
obviously for a bunch of years, you kind of lose that, you know, you're surrounded. I realize LA
00:53:18.440
you can hike or whatever, but it's not the same as being in Maui or growing up on a ranch. Your kids
00:53:23.700
now, it sounds like the way you're raising them is they're outside. They're connected with nature and
00:53:28.900
you guys are too. You're not sitting in front of screens constantly or, you know, in New York
00:53:34.040
where the main focus is on getting drunk at some bar restaurant. Exactly. No, we just wanted to give
00:53:40.860
our kids the best upbringing we could. Cause at the end of the day, we are going to travel. We are
00:53:45.180
going to be in big cities. They have the coolest life cause they get to go experience all these
00:53:49.720
different cultures all over the world because that's where our work takes us. So we wanted to
00:53:54.320
make sure that home-based was a place that we could really root ourselves into and really create
00:53:59.940
community and a place that felt like home. And, and for us, it ended up being Maui, but I will say,
00:54:05.200
and I've, I've talked about this recently, but, um, I moved begrudgingly because I knew it. I knew
00:54:12.560
God was calling our family to move. I really felt that pull on my heart. I feel so badly for you. You had
00:54:17.780
to move to Maui. Listen, um, but, but the truth, the truth was I, I was so invested in my career,
00:54:29.380
uh, and it was really picking up and I was working a lot that it, for me, it was really taking a big
00:54:35.820
step back to focus on family and to focus on our marriage. And, you know, for the longest time,
00:54:40.280
I'd always really thought that we moved for Carlos because Carlos was really frustrated with how things
00:54:45.520
were going in the industry for him and how things were moving. So he just was like, I need to get
00:54:50.400
away or I'm going to quit. So we moved. And in the beginning, I like, it was actually a struggle for
00:54:56.460
me. Cause I just, I grew up in this industry. I started when I was four. So for me, set is home.
00:55:01.500
So the idea of leaving this place that offered me so much, it was like ripping a part of me away.
00:55:07.040
But what I realized actually ended up happening was my identity was so in the industry that I needed to
00:55:14.740
be pulled away from it to really root myself, like further into my faith, further into our
00:55:20.580
relationship, our family. And we came out stronger than ever. We've, we've taken the last five years
00:55:25.700
to really foundation build in our family and in our faith. And we are, I feel like we can conquer
00:55:31.120
anything now. We've really come out of it. Just like we got this. You're welcome. Thank you,
00:55:35.080
babe. Thank you, babe. That was such a smart choice. I mean, most people don't listen to that little
00:55:40.600
voice. You're lucky that you had Carlos to sort of pull you and say, I see the path. And you took a
00:55:47.320
leap of faith in many ways and it paid off. So let's talk about the faith because, um, it was a
00:55:53.240
journey for both of you, right? Like Carol, Carlos, you were raised Catholic. Then you tried out, uh,
00:55:59.440
the Baptist church. And then I think, as I understand it, your parents got divorced and
00:56:03.520
it didn't bring them together. So you were like, all right, that Baptist church doesn't work.
00:56:07.040
So, so how did you reconnect with God? I read, I read you writing about like Jesus and I'm trying
00:56:15.040
to remember exactly how you put it. Hold on. Cause I like it. Cause I wanted to ask you about it.
00:56:18.200
Yeah. You write how you listen to somebody talking about how he'd met Jesus, how he'd met Jesus.
00:56:27.640
So our, our, our, our best friend now, Andrew, uh, who's, who's probably listening right now,
00:56:33.240
Andrew. We love you dude so much. Um, he, he'd always been this like shining light in our lives.
00:56:39.740
And I, I never knew why, but his, his, his consistency and his faith and his, his just love
00:56:47.020
for people. It, it just like, like, you know, like, like I was attracted to his life. Right.
00:56:55.020
And I was in a really dark place in my life. I had just come off the tour. I was, uh, doing things
00:57:00.880
that I probably shouldn't have been doing. Definitely shouldn't have been doing. Uh, and
00:57:04.660
I didn't know who to call except for this one person in my life who was a consistent light in
00:57:11.300
my life. Yeah. I mean, Andrew and I were friends, you know, he was my, he was my realtor. So like,
00:57:17.060
we weren't like best friends, but like, I, you know, I, I knew him, but I thought about everybody
00:57:22.880
in my life, everybody in my family, all my friends, my coworkers. And I was like, this is the one
00:57:27.920
person that I see. I feel like he's got it all figured out altogether. So I, so I call
00:57:33.400
him up and I'm like, Andrew, I'm like, dude, nice talking to you. Got one question. Why
00:57:39.060
are you so happy? And he literally just laughed and he started talking about Jesus. And I immediately
00:57:44.800
hung up the phone. I was like, not, I'm not doing this. And after that two days go by, I
00:57:52.000
call him again. I'm like, okay, I'll listen this time. So he invites me to church and begrudging
00:57:57.840
me. I go to this church, but you know, I'm just kind of like, I'm searching. I'm like,
00:58:01.820
I'm like, I need something in my life. Cause I, I'm just miserable. So I go to this church.
00:58:06.460
It's this little black church at Inglewood, the old ladies with the big hats. Uh, they're
00:58:10.700
like, you know, clapping their hands, singing some gospel music. And I'm, I'm just feeling
00:58:14.040
it. And the Bishop goes up and he preaches this sermon about when he was 23. And I was like,
00:58:19.220
I'm, I'm 23. And he preaches all this stuff that he was doing this. He was doing that.
00:58:23.840
He was sleeping around. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is me. And it was as if he
00:58:27.160
was, God was literally speaking through him directly to me. And I, I left that church
00:58:32.380
and I was like, I, I, I want it all. Like I was on a Jesus high. I called everybody that
00:58:39.420
I'd ever wronged and I apologized. And I, and I go to Andrew and I said, Andrew, I want
00:58:45.180
more like, like, like how do I get more? And he goes, well, I have a Bible study on, you
00:58:49.680
know, Wednesday nights, you should come. And I said, okay, I'm there. So I ended up showing
00:58:54.000
up to the Bible study. Now I'm on my Jesus high. And lo and behold, Alexa shows up at
00:59:01.800
the Bible study for her first time also. And she was going through wars and it was just
00:59:06.680
literally, I, I tell people, I'm like, I, I found God and truly found God and, and, and
00:59:14.020
just like submitted myself to him and gave him my life. And my life changed within seven
00:59:19.100
days. Yeah. I mean, right away, but, but like within seven days I had met my future
00:59:24.540
wife who I was going to have three kids with and travel the world. Like I, I, I
00:59:28.980
couldn't have written that, you know? Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. We know, did you know,
00:59:33.780
Alexa, what was your history with faith, with God before that moment of meeting
00:59:40.480
It was touch and go. So, um, when I was really little, my mom really instilled a
00:59:46.100
love for God and still the love for Jesus in my heart. Um, but then, you know, as, as
00:59:51.660
seasons go by in your life, like we all have our, our seasons that we go through, um, faith
00:59:56.600
really fell off of our family. Um, so we stopped going to church when I was like 13. Now, when
01:00:01.520
I say, um, we were going to church, we were kind of doing the, like every other Sunday
01:00:06.060
type thing, very topical. Like I knew there was more to Jesus. I just didn't know like what
01:00:12.240
that depth was. I knew there was a better relationship with God, but I didn't really have
01:00:15.900
anybody with our whole family. We didn't have somebody in our life to like really guide
01:00:19.100
us and navigate us to what that was. So, um, my, my heart craved it though. And when I
01:00:24.860
was 16, I started driving and I would drive myself to church and I would drive my sisters
01:00:29.480
to church with me. Um, but again, it was this like Sunday morning thing. I knew there was
01:00:35.580
more, but I didn't know how to attain that. Like I would try to read my Bible, but the version
01:00:40.960
that I had wasn't really a version that I understood. Um, so my craving for that relationship
01:00:46.920
was always there, but it didn't really actually, I didn't deep dive until that first Bible study.
01:00:51.600
I even went through a failed marriage. Um, I learned a lot from that. I always have a cordial
01:00:56.760
relationship. Um, I even talk about it in the book a little bit. He was somebody that helped
01:01:00.860
me navigate, um, the, the outs of my, I battled the eating disorder growing up and he was there
01:01:07.660
for me for that. So I'll always be thankful for the things that I learned in that first
01:01:11.460
relationship. Um, but coming out of it, I was just really lost and I'm, I was done.
01:01:17.560
I'm like, God, I need you. And I really need to find you. And I wanted to deep dive. So I
01:01:24.220
called my friend Andrew, um, who had told me about his Bible study multiple times and I was finally
01:01:29.180
ready to go. And it was just interesting how the crossroads for us, we were both at low points
01:01:35.180
in our lives where we were really craving being rooted into something and really having that
01:01:40.220
stability. And that happened to be right when we met. So our entire foundation of our relationship
01:01:46.180
is our faith and always was our faith. It wasn't like started out our relationship. And then we
01:01:51.060
discovered this and had to try to figure out how to add it to our relationship. Like us hanging out
01:01:55.740
was going to Bible study, going to church together, talking about God, praying together. And it really
01:02:01.300
molded us as a couple. And, and I think that's why we've been able to be so successful as a couple,
01:02:08.140
as a family, because of that. Don't get it. Don't get me wrong. We had our hard times. We got
01:02:13.300
our, our hills and our valleys. Well, but that brings me to my next question, because I think
01:02:18.560
in a way you were very lucky to have such success professionally in your lives, each one of you
01:02:23.940
at a young age, right? Because that the industry that you chose, and I can relate because media is
01:02:30.780
ball of roses. But the industries that you chose are kind of toxic. And I think a lot of people go
01:02:38.740
into them thinking it's going to fill something in you. You know, if you, if you can spike that ball
01:02:42.860
in the end zone, you're going to be like, yes, I made it. I'm famous. I'm earning a great living at a
01:02:47.920
young age. I'm beautiful. Yeah. I know, Alexa, you were on, I wrote it down the vanity fair,
01:02:52.960
hottest teen celebs list, starring in movies and you're touring Carlos. So it's like, okay,
01:02:58.280
I did it. Like I, I am accomplishing all of my professional goals. Why do I feel so bad?
01:03:03.600
Why? Right. Like if you don't get to that, then you're still just chasing the false God,
01:03:09.200
right? You got to the point where you, you captured the false God and felt the emptiness that comes with it.
01:03:13.780
And listen, we still battle. I mean, we're human. We still battle, you know, finding good community,
01:03:20.320
especially when we're on the road. I mean, we haven't been home in five months. So, you know,
01:03:25.360
trying to build friendships, especially, you know, when you move to a new place. So like we've been
01:03:29.940
on Maui almost six years now, but yeah, friendship doesn't happen overnight. You have to build it.
01:03:34.320
You have to cultivate it. Right. And then for us, we've been on the road and something awesome
01:03:39.100
happened. We, um, we, I don't think we can announce it yet, but something really amazing
01:03:43.960
happened about a month ago. And we were like jumping up and down, like crying, celebrating.
01:03:49.360
And then we were also really sad. Cause we're like, we have like one person that we can call
01:03:55.180
about. We didn't have, we don't have, we don't have like this plethora of friends. Um, at least
01:04:04.500
not to that kind of depth. And, and Andrew has just always really been there for us, but it was also
01:04:08.980
this moment of kind of like pain too, because, you know, we, we love our parents. We're not very close
01:04:14.580
with our parents. Um, we're starting to develop better relationships with our siblings, which has
01:04:19.620
been amazing. Um, but again, it was just this kind of sad, lonely moment where like, thank God we had
01:04:25.720
each other. Thank God we had Andrew. And we're, we're really trying to build our community, but
01:04:29.300
we're just like, man, we don't have anybody else to celebrate with, but it was just such this moment
01:04:33.680
where like, God did not intend us to be alone. He wants you to have that community because you can't
01:04:39.580
really celebrate something alone. Like you want to celebrate with other people. And that's why I always
01:04:44.900
tell people, I'm like, if you can dig into community, if you could find your people to do it,
01:04:49.540
it's so important, especially like-minded people. Cause we have a ton of friends in this industry
01:04:53.700
who don't know God or, or who don't think like we do, or who are polar opposites in our, in our way
01:04:58.960
of thinking. Um, but like, but they're awesome. And we want to, we want to pour into each other.
01:05:03.760
We want to love on each other, but there's something so special about finding like-minded people
01:05:07.840
because they really lift you up in all the areas that you need to be lifted up and they hold you
01:05:12.300
accountable. Yeah. And that's been to go back to your question. That's probably been like way more
01:05:16.600
fulfilling than any of this other stuff that the acting, the awards that, you know, being on tour,
01:05:21.860
this is all great, but, but you're right. There's always like a sense of emptiness. And how did we
01:05:27.300
fill that? It was literally deepening our relationship with God and finding a really good
01:05:31.720
community, whether it's, you know, as small as ours or, you know, big, like just really, really having
01:05:37.220
that, um, that, that one-on-one with God and one-on-one with people. I feel like people are so topical
01:05:42.500
now. So like the friends that we do have, they really invest and we invest in them. So it's,
01:05:49.360
Here's my question for you, Carlos. Cause when I, I was reading your story and it's, it's a great
01:05:53.700
story. Cause I love that you, you had so much rejection before you actually got big time rush.
01:05:58.080
It was like, and I tried out and I did really well and no, and then I tried another one and no,
01:06:04.500
and it just kept coming, but you kept going. So you, then, then you get cast in this, you know,
01:06:08.460
hit show and the band. And, um, I was, I was expecting like a fall where it was like you were
01:06:15.520
strung out on drugs, you know, but it was actually kind of sweet to me that it, it was short of that,
01:06:21.520
that your light bulb went on. I mean, yeah, yeah. Like a lot of video games, you're talking about
01:06:27.060
eating hot pockets and ice cream every night. I'm like, it sounds pretty good, but that was part of
01:06:30.800
your love. I mean, you know, I, it's so funny when we did dancing with the stars, I told my testimony
01:06:37.340
and I said, you know, like I was smoking a lot of weed every day and I was doing this and I was
01:06:42.560
drinking and I was sleeping around. And one of the dancers, you know, he, he, he came up to me
01:06:47.500
after the show and he's like, bro, you're making us all look bad. Like that's, that was your rock
01:06:52.480
bottom. That's my life. I was like, look, I was like, at the end of the day, everybody's walk is
01:06:58.020
going to be different. And for me, like that's that, that, that I'm thankful that that's when I hit
01:07:04.180
that moment of like, I need help because if I didn't, if I didn't have Andrew in my life,
01:07:09.400
I don't know where I would have been. I mean, like I might've gone deeper, you know, you just
01:07:15.380
like never know. But, but then, you know, that being said, I've taken that to, you know, in my
01:07:20.720
heart going, I need to be that light for anyone in my life. So Andrew was this bright, consistent
01:07:27.840
light to me. That's the word we always go back to. Consistency. And I feel like our world right now,
01:07:32.300
like there's no consistency, like faith, politics, whatever you want. Everybody's just like this.
01:07:36.700
And I'm like, can we just get this one bar of consistency and people are going to just trust it
01:07:41.220
a lot more. And they're going to be way more willing to, you know, go and, you know, take,
01:07:46.460
take that advice. So, so for me, like, if I didn't have Andrew, I don't know. I don't know how far,
01:07:52.500
how, how deep I would have gone. This is reminding me of the, um, Mr. Rogers, you know,
01:07:57.660
when, when tough times come, look for the helpers, look for the helpers. Don't you think
01:08:02.360
Andrew was sent to you? Yeah. I feel like he was sent to you. Oh yeah, absolutely. 100% to so many
01:08:08.900
people. And he's a true servant. And I always tell people, if you want to be a good leader,
01:08:13.340
you have to be a really good servant. I mean, that's literally Jesus. And, and he, he walks the
01:08:18.760
walk and it's beautiful to witness. Where is Andrew? We need Andrew to call in or something.
01:08:23.780
We need like, he's listening right now. No, Andrew, he's going to be our next booking.
01:08:30.520
You, you can be a great leader, but, but if I've learned anything from Andrew is that a great leader
01:08:35.780
knows when to allow someone to lead. Right. So it's like, you can allow someone else to shine.
01:08:42.180
Well, like, you know, listen, listen, like, like you can lead all you want, but as long as you know,
01:08:47.040
when it's time to step back and let somebody else lead for a change, most leaders want to lead all the
01:08:51.440
time. And that's where you get all of these, a lot of problems, but man, if you just know,
01:08:56.360
Hey, you know what, this is my time to take one little step back so somebody else can lead.
01:09:00.560
You go. That takes a lot of confidence, which not everybody has. I feel like your background,
01:09:06.880
Alexa was, was, I don't know if I'd say more typical, but you definitely had some hardship
01:09:11.400
in your, in your childhood rise to fame. You mentioned the eating disorder, which I would
01:09:16.680
definitely like to ask you about in a minute, but, um, can we talk about the relationship with
01:09:21.300
your parents? Because as, as I'm reading about, and I watched you, I mean, I, I have three kids,
01:09:26.620
you know, I definitely watched you in spy school and, um, sleepover. And, um, I was shocked to read.
01:09:33.600
And I, by the way, I didn't realize you were in evening shade, the Burt Reynolds, like that was
01:09:37.340
really little. So you, you have your life on camera and then you get to the part of the book where
01:09:44.040
you talk about how your mom did not let you take your money when you turned 18 and left home.
01:09:50.620
What? See, okay. So I know that people see that and they think that's a big deal. Like I've never
01:09:55.680
really thought of it as a big deal because the truth is I never looked at my career as a career.
01:10:02.440
Um, for me, I was doing something that I loved and I would have done it for free. Um, and it was
01:10:07.260
something that, uh, my entire family sacrificed for me to be able to do. Now I know a lot of people hear
01:10:13.540
that and it makes them frustrated, but the truth was like, I really would have done it for free.
01:10:19.220
And, and, and I probably would still continue to do it for free. Thank God we don't because we
01:10:23.440
provided it's provided for us a great life. But, um, but yeah, so that's not, I wish, thank God that
01:10:30.640
that's not technically the reason why we we've had a rocky relationship. And I'm hoping that we're a
01:10:36.260
little bit more on the mend. Now I've been praying for it. We're so different than we were,
01:10:40.220
you know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago. So we've grown a lot. Um, but yeah, yeah, I, I walked away
01:10:47.040
and I just started over and I lived on my friend's couch for a little bit. I learned a lot there and,
01:10:53.240
um, God really provided for me. And I think that's like, that's the biggest takeaway that I hope
01:10:57.220
anybody can get, um, from the book is it's easy to get looked like lost on, or it's easy to get stuck
01:11:02.000
on like, Oh, you left with nothing. Like you had no money. But the truth was I can give everything
01:11:06.300
away right now. And I know for a fact that God is going to provide for me and the weeks to come,
01:11:11.900
like, I'm not going to be left alone, completely like broken on the side of the road. I've given
01:11:17.580
all my money away before and I was provided for greatly. And, and I think that's just kind of
01:11:23.260
the faith that I've always had. Yes, babe. Yes, babe. Oh, I mean, you are great, but I would still like
01:11:30.120
to get my residuals from spark. No, right. You really want to have to choose. You can harbor on
01:11:37.780
it and like really let that eat you alive or go. It's just money. I'll make more and move on. And
01:11:43.620
for me, the health option was just moving on. There wasn't. Okay. Let me ask you about that.
01:11:47.320
Cause you were saying the prayers and so on. Do you pray for your enemies or people who have hurt you?
01:11:52.160
Always. You have to, or else I've just started. It's very hard. I can't like it. It takes,
01:11:59.900
it takes a lot. Like when I do it, I'm like, mother. I know. Well, cause like part of you is
01:12:05.000
like, you could just send a bus, God, just send a bus. Like, no, no, no. You don't want any harm to
01:12:10.680
anybody. But, but the truth is like, I, I wasn't always that way. It took, it took learning. It took
01:12:17.640
growing and it took like, okay, what's actually going to make the difference in my heart when,
01:12:22.000
uh, when I do this and you feel so much lighter, you feel so much better when you are praying for
01:12:26.900
people who you don't really like or who are mean to you. Um, but the biggest thing I took away from
01:12:31.900
it was I was driving one day and somebody cut me off and I was just like, so annoyed by them.
01:12:38.480
And I happened to be driving with this really, this woman who was just filled with wisdom.
01:12:42.060
And she was like, how about instead of getting mad at them? Why don't you pray for that? Maybe
01:12:45.140
they've never received prayer before. I was like,
01:12:47.640
Oh my gosh, that I just got checked. I just got checked by the woman next to me. So now when
01:12:52.400
people cut me off at traffic, I pray for them. Well, when you drive like Alexa, you know,
01:12:57.600
happens a lot. Oh man. She's like, she, she needs to get from A to B in the fastest time possible
01:13:06.600
because she, because she left 20 minutes late. And I'm like, why did I leave 20 minutes late?
01:13:11.440
Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Usually I can 100% relate to her on every front. I am
01:13:17.480
exactly the same. And I do get mad. And I always, I hate when people cut me off and I'm like, Oh,
01:13:21.980
I'm sorry. Was your, was your time more important than my life and the life of my child?
01:13:26.820
No problem. Okay. It'd be great if you can have a dialogue with these people and not just with the
01:13:31.900
Lord about these people, but I am trying. I, Kathy Lee Gifford, my pal talked to me a long time about
01:13:39.020
how, um, and she's told this story to him too. So he knows what Howard Stern used to hate Kathy Lee
01:13:44.660
Gifford. And he used to rip on her all the time publicly. And she used to pray for him. And he met
01:13:49.740
her one day at the today show. He was coming through to promote something. And I guess what the way she
01:13:53.620
tells it, she went over to him and, um, he said something nice. He wasn't a jerk to her face. And
01:13:58.080
she said, I've been praying for you, you know, all this time. And, and it kind of led to a thaw.
01:14:04.000
And I think they're on good terms now, but the fact that she was able to pray for him all those
01:14:08.240
years while he was saying the terrible things is what got me kind of considering like maybe
01:14:12.260
instead of just resorting to this hatred I have in my heart for certain people, speaking of the today
01:14:17.220
show. Um, maybe, maybe I could do something else. I'm working on it. Yes. You know what?
01:14:27.300
Your heart will feel better for it. And also when you really think about it, like what do people,
01:14:33.000
what, what, what's happening in the world? Division, division. There's so much division
01:14:37.940
and you can either really lean into that division and like stir up the hate in your heart. Or you can
01:14:42.580
say like, no, I'm going to overcome it. Like I'm going to stomp out the enemy and I'm going to
01:14:46.000
overcome this division with light and love. And, and it's not easy. It's not easy. Like
01:14:51.580
God did not call us to like everybody, but he did call us to love everybody. So I love a lot of people
01:14:56.580
that I don't like, but it's cause I'm called to. We say that a lot. All right. Let me pause it there.
01:15:02.800
I'll squeeze in a quick break and then much, much more with Carlos and Alexa right after this quick
01:15:07.280
break. So fun. So fun meeting them. So Carlos, let's go back to when you've
01:15:16.000
quote, like hit, right? So you're struggling, you're getting the rejection, all that stuff,
01:15:20.020
but then you get cast in big time rush. And it was like, you guys had, you had sort of a similar
01:15:25.680
thing and you shot to superstardom. It was like, boom. You know what I mean? That show was a big
01:15:30.660
success before you know it. You've got tons of fans for people who haven't seen it. Here's just a
01:15:35.780
little clip. So people know what we're talking about. This is Sot Night.
01:15:52.780
Wow. Music video takes you back. Yes. That's the clip you show.
01:15:57.780
Oh, it's so cute. What do you mean? You brought back the boy band.
01:16:03.640
We were doing it an homage to Backstreet Boys in the airport. That was the idea.
01:16:10.340
Okay. It worked. Yeah. It was cute. It was cute. You've got the fun. I mean, you had to have had
01:16:17.160
the fawning girls everywhere. It's like a modern day version of the Beatles. Yeah. Listen, he's very
01:16:23.800
humble. He will not say this, but I'll speak for him on this behalf. We're literally sitting here
01:16:28.640
right now where he's going to be performing tonight, but they just played MSG. It was sold
01:16:33.520
out. Every, every venue that they go to, it's nearly sold out or sold out. Um, they sold out
01:16:39.360
their Mexico show in like what? Three hours or something like it's, it's amazing. The fan base
01:16:45.720
that they have is incredible. Yeah. I mean, listen, listen, we, we, I like to say that we, we did bring
01:16:50.980
the boy band back, you know, um, you did. There'd been a lot of boy bands trying to make
01:16:55.620
it, but the fact that we had a TV show that was reaching 4 million kids every single week
01:17:01.000
and then the song could be on iTunes and it, like we, you know, it wasn't as big as Hannah
01:17:06.520
Montana, but we definitely, you know, we helped reignite that love for, you know, male dudes
01:17:13.620
on stage, you know, pointing in the same direction. It actually feels so much more wholesome to
01:17:21.320
me. I'd much rather have my child watching that than listening. Even, you know, you put
01:17:25.120
on Spotify today and you just hit like today's hits and it's like F and F and F and F and N
01:17:30.380
word, N word, N word, N word, N word. You're like, Oh my God, what is today's? I don't get
01:17:34.560
it. I don't, I don't, I don't understand it at all. I mean, you're not going that
01:17:39.720
direction. No, no. And, and, and you know what we like, I, there's four guys in, in
01:17:45.980
my group and this resurgence, this comeback of ours has been so much fun and we're writing
01:17:49.860
a lot of music, but it's definitely a battle. I mean, I'm, I'm really the only believer.
01:17:55.300
Um, our lifestyle is very different from their lifestyle. I'm married with kids on our own
01:18:00.760
bus. They share one bus and they do their stuff. And it's like, you know, I, I, I love
01:18:06.160
them, but I'm very much, you know, alone in this. So I'm constantly being like, well,
01:18:11.280
can we not say this in the song, but can we say this, you know, can we not do this when
01:18:15.800
we do this? Um, so yeah, I mean, it's, uh, you know, it's, I think you've done a really
01:18:21.080
good job at balancing it though, but also keeping them in keeping the whole band in a
01:18:25.980
place that is still family friendly. Like you guys are able to grow up, but you're still
01:18:30.860
family friendly. Yeah. Well, it's like you mentioned Hannah Montana and I don't want you
01:18:34.340
to rip on Miley Cyrus, but she did sort of cross over from this beloved children's star
01:18:39.440
to like very raunchy. And I would say as somebody who is her fan at that, you know, earlier,
01:18:45.080
I was like, I don't know. I don't want to see this. I don't, you know, I'll never forget
01:18:49.240
her interview with Matt Lauer on today years ago. Right. And it was like, she was clearly
01:18:54.160
trying to be titillating and he was inappropriate too. And when it was over, I just felt kind of
01:18:59.620
skeevy. It makes me sad because as the years keep going by, I feel like the, the, the bar
01:19:08.600
of like, what is okay, just keeps getting raised. And I'm like, no, can we bring it? I mean,
01:19:13.220
the stuff that they're allowed to say on cable television, I'm like, how can they say that?
01:19:19.720
Well, I think it's hard because ultimately at the end of the day, like Miley is really
01:19:23.380
talented. She is so talented. She's a fantastic performer. Like when I see girls kind of go in
01:19:29.880
this direction, I'm like, you don't even need to do that. I don't know why, I don't know who's
01:19:33.560
pushing you to do this stuff, but you don't need to, you have talent. Like that's, that speaks for
01:19:38.380
itself. You don't even have to go down that road, but I get it. And like Carlos editing out the,
01:19:42.700
whatever the lyrics that maybe they don't have to, you don't, as the fan, you don't even know
01:19:46.580
that's been done. You don't, you know, so it's great. You just get this nice product.
01:19:50.300
And it reminded me of, um, and I were talking about this, the Superbowl show with JLo and
01:19:54.480
Shakira, right? Where it was like, I mean, I saw lady parts as I watched the Superbowl with my
01:20:00.340
then six-year-old. I did not need, I did not need to see that. I did not need my son to see that.
01:20:07.000
It's like, they're great dancers or great performers or great singers. Why, why does it
01:20:11.000
have to be truly like almost X rated? Yeah. No, because it's that bar, that bar keeps getting
01:20:17.340
raised. Like it's just, I mean, even the boundaries every year, even, even children's
01:20:21.620
programming. Now I, I, again, I'm not going to rip on anybody individually, but there are some
01:20:25.900
things out there. Like I, I can't let my kids watch. We just don't let them want, we, we have
01:20:30.640
to be so careful. Yeah. I mean, like Disney movies, you can't go to Disney, Disney movies. I mean,
01:20:35.540
even Nickelodeon. I'm like, come on guys. Like there's, there's no need to go there. It's okay.
01:20:39.500
These are babies. These are babies. We need to remember that they're just little kids and
01:20:44.840
they're still navigating life. It's so, it's, what's so crazy about our society right now is
01:20:49.860
we try to, you know, we put more, forgive me, but like there's more vag in the public square and
01:20:54.340
there's less God. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. But I will say this, you read, you read
01:21:00.820
the Bible, you're looking at the old Testament and it's not very different than what's going on today.
01:21:05.480
I mean, you had all of this stuff happening back then. It's just, we have social media
01:21:10.640
now. Like there's a faster in your brain way to get there. Um, but again, that's a great
01:21:16.520
point. I actually, I haven't yet. I've never read the Bible like beginning to end, but I
01:21:21.860
have been doing, um, father Mike's Bible in a year, which I like, everybody's been doing
01:21:25.640
this, this great podcast past. And I listen to it. I'm like, cause I also love crime podcasts.
01:21:30.780
I love dateline and 48 hours, 20, 20. I just like, I don't know, whatever, but I'm like,
01:21:34.520
this is, this is like another crime podcast, but I compare the Bible. I'm like, I'm like,
01:21:41.960
I loved the hunger games. I remember reading them and just being so enthwalled, like so
01:21:46.020
excited about it. And I felt the same way about reading the Bible through when you find
01:21:49.440
a Bible that you can understand. So make sure you find one that's easier for you to read.
01:21:53.920
Even if you have to just start with the message version, start there and then grow and like
01:21:58.460
move on to like, maybe like a more like old school version. Um, but it felt like I was
01:22:03.700
reading some crazy adventure book. It's incredible. And it's actually like, the stories
01:22:08.440
are amazing. And the fact that all of this happened, like, I don't know, I get excited
01:22:12.300
about reading the Bible and we feel a little differently. The Bible is a little harder for
01:22:17.820
Definitely harder. I'm, I'm like you, I'm more like, let me just listen to it. Let me have
01:22:23.360
Like this woman used to wake up at like four in the morning and go to this room that we
01:22:28.940
designated as like our prayer room. And she would go to the room and every morning when I felt
01:22:32.660
her get out of bed at four in the morning to go read her Bible, I was like, you go
01:22:36.320
read your Bible. Like it bothered me so much because I felt so convicted that I should be
01:22:42.200
waking up and going to read my Bible and pray with her and start on like that. And it, I
01:22:47.160
mean, she did that for like half a year until I was like, Hey, you know what? I feel guilty.
01:22:52.200
I've been hating on you for doing this, but I should be supporting you and maybe joining
01:22:56.500
I'll tell you, I have the experience where like I have it playing if I don't have the
01:23:01.460
headphones in and my kids will come into the room. Now my kids are older. Uh, I think
01:23:06.620
you said five, three and one, I've got, uh, eight, 10, eight, 11 and 12. And, uh, you
01:23:11.120
know, there's like on Sodom and Gomorrah, I'm like, pause, pause.
01:23:20.520
Very much so. Okay. So, um, let's get back to your individual story. Cause we talked a bit
01:23:25.180
about Carlos and you know, for you, it was, it was a low and it was a recognition that
01:23:29.220
there was a void that needed to be filled with something other than adulation, money,
01:23:35.140
fame, or even doing what you're great at, which is that is fulfilling doing what you're great
01:23:39.140
at is fulfilling, but it might not be as fulfilling as you, as you need, right? You needed faith.
01:23:44.980
You need a true love. And on the other side there, you were Alexa, same thing, hugely successful.
01:23:50.400
Um, wait, we do have, okay. So we have a clip of you and spy kids for people who want to
01:23:59.460
Junie, don't listen to her. You're not worthless. You figured out how to get us here. You helped
01:24:07.100
Luke realize he was good, not bad. You talked to the Fuglies and saved mom and dad. You're
01:24:15.760
I have a fun fact right here. If you look up Joseph Gordon-Levitt when he was in third round
01:24:29.400
from the sun and then, and then look up Alexa from spy kids, they look exactly the same.
01:24:37.300
They look the same hair. The face looks the same. I'm telling you.
01:24:41.420
I'm 100% dropping a split screen of that into video of this show, which we'll post on later.
01:24:47.880
That has to happen. So now, so things are going great. I'm like you, you were successful at a
01:24:52.700
level. A lot of kids were not successful as Hollywood actors. And before I ask you about where
01:24:56.320
that led, you made a point in the book that one of my good friends is Melissa Francis,
01:25:01.340
who starred in little house on the Prairie when she was a little girl, she was like,
01:25:04.780
she was with Jason Bateman as the next round of children. Once the original three aged out,
01:25:08.880
they brought in new kids, you know? And so she was one of them. And she has made this complaint
01:25:13.060
to me many times. Justine Bateman actually made this complaint to me. You said one of the
01:25:18.460
worst parts of being a child actor was the parents, the parents like on the set. Can you expand on
01:25:25.500
that? Well, okay. So the kids just want to be kids and have fun. And so like, we all want to
01:25:31.300
play together. We all want to hang out. But then when the parents don't get along for whatever reason,
01:25:35.500
they all had like beefs with one another. It really, it messed up our relationships because
01:25:40.160
then we couldn't hang out with the other kids. We couldn't just go and play basketball in between
01:25:45.520
setups or takes or anything like that. It was just very separate because the parents didn't get
01:25:50.340
along. That meant that the kids couldn't be friends. And, uh, you know, I, I will say like
01:25:55.440
for a long time in my career, my mom was not a typical stage mom. She really did try to stay
01:26:00.680
back. And something that she implemented into that, that we've taken with us is that we traveled
01:26:05.920
everywhere as a family. Cause she saw how families were being broken up in the industry. So she was
01:26:10.040
like, if you're going to do a movie, the whole family's going, we're not, we're not separate.
01:26:13.940
Like they're not being raised by somebody else and you're not being raised by a manager. You're
01:26:17.280
being raised like with your family. So I, I really appreciated that. Um, but you know,
01:26:21.820
things get trickier as you know, more of, I guess somewhat like fame comes out and, and
01:26:28.380
after spy kids, I think things just got a little, a little harder to navigate as, as anything. I was
01:26:33.300
entering my teen years. Um, but on set was just difficult because none of the parents got along
01:26:38.060
with each other. There was just always fight. Melissa said it was basically like the kids would
01:26:44.660
get along, but the parents were like, she's getting more screen time than I am. Then my kid is.
01:26:48.600
And you're trying to position the kid. Luckily it wasn't that, um, we didn't have to deal with
01:26:54.400
that. I think it was just, you know, uh, frustrations within each other. Like, I don't,
01:27:00.260
I honestly don't know, but it was not about screen time. Luckily. Okay. So as you age up in the
01:27:05.540
industry, invariably you, like every teenage girl get to the awkward teenage years and you start
01:27:11.080
thinking about more, about more of your appearance and your weight. And it happens to all of us,
01:27:14.680
but you were doing it on camp and then some lovely producer called your mother about your
01:27:20.220
quote, fluctuating weight when you were shooting sleepover, which would have no effect on any
01:27:24.800
teenage girl. I'm sure nobody would respond. No, no, no. And an eating disorder would, would soon
01:27:31.200
appear. And it, it got bad. It got really bad. And I know you say it's not something you totally get
01:27:36.440
over. Just learn how to manage it. But, um, it was to the point where, forgive me, but you said you
01:27:42.520
were vomiting almost 20 times a day in the book. And I just, your body no longer even understood
01:27:48.620
how to process food looking at you today. So vibrant and beautiful. How did you find your way
01:27:54.580
out of that? Um, well, there was years of prayer and years of just being very ashamed, like knowing
01:28:01.820
that this was not me. Like, I think that's the hardest part. And that's what I was so fearful.
01:28:06.680
That's why I was so fearful. People finding out that I had this eating disorder was that
01:28:10.020
I was still me. I was still this girl who was joyful and happy, who wanted to live life, but had
01:28:15.280
this secret, um, that I was so ashamed of that I, no one could know, or else they would think
01:28:20.060
differently of me. Um, and just trying to balance, like people want you to be skinny in this industry
01:28:25.440
and they want you to look a certain way and having no real idea of health, no idea of nutrition.
01:28:32.280
Um, because like nobody teaches you that they just say like, if you want, go eat, go eat mac and
01:28:36.260
cheese, go eat this. But when you're a teenager, you're like, well, I don't know what that's
01:28:39.720
going to do to my body, especially as you, you know, start going through puberty, like
01:28:44.620
your body's fluctuating like crazy anyway. So this was just an added layer. Um, but after
01:28:49.600
years of being in this eating disorder, um, the kind of the first step was, uh, my mom
01:28:54.780
confronted, confronted my ex-husband about it right before we got married. And when he found
01:29:00.640
out that you would think it would send anybody kind of like running in the opposite direction,
01:29:04.380
but I'll give him a lot of props. Like he really stuck with me and he's like, no, you're
01:29:08.180
going to beat this and I'm going to help you through it. Um, and in the beginning I was
01:29:11.640
mad because I wasn't making the decision for me. It was somebody else like forcing this
01:29:16.600
on me. And, uh, it was really hard and I was, I did okay for a couple of years, but, um,
01:29:23.420
that beginning my body was, didn't know how to take in food. So I wasn't, I ended up being
01:29:27.900
hospitalized. I had like insane bloating, crazy ulcers. My body couldn't handle food. I should
01:29:34.680
have been introducing it slowly, but I, we didn't know how, and doctors were not helpful
01:29:38.800
at all. Like when I would explain my story and I would say, I know I would say like, Hey,
01:29:44.120
listen, I had an eating disorder. I don't have it anymore. I'm not throwing up, but my body
01:29:48.520
can't handle it. They didn't believe me that I wasn't throwing up anymore. Instead. They
01:29:53.040
were just like, well, you're still throwing up. That's why it's happening. I'm like, no,
01:29:55.380
you don't understand. Like I've stopped and I, my body's going insane. So instead they just
01:30:00.420
want to kind of pump you with pills and send you on your way and they don't hear you out.
01:30:04.740
And it was a really frustrating couple of years that we ended up getting a divorce and I fell
01:30:11.500
right back into where I, where I left off. And, and it wasn't until I deep dove into my faith.
01:30:17.720
And I always tell people, um, when Paul in Ephesians is talking about the armor of God,
01:30:22.480
you have your helmet of salvation, your breastplate of righteousness, your belt of truth. You then have
01:30:26.420
like your shield of faith and then your sword, which is the word of God. So I had this shield
01:30:31.660
of faith, but I couldn't quite defeat this eating disorder because I didn't yet have the word of
01:30:36.080
God. And when I started diving into the word and what the word says about my temple, which is my
01:30:40.660
body with the, what God says about us and how much he loves us as his children, I suddenly just felt
01:30:46.020
this overwhelming sense of love and peace. And I felt like I could conquer everything from then on.
01:30:51.560
And one day I woke up and it was gone. Like the feeling of wanting to like overeat, to binge,
01:30:57.540
the feeling of wanting to purge. It was as if somebody had like moved out of my house and they
01:31:02.040
were gone forever. You gave me the chills. That's, that is a true miracle. It was like a hundred percent
01:31:08.900
like a helper. Um, this is, this is not a miracle, but we have to end on it. My team found the image
01:31:15.200
of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Please, we got to see this. You literally look like, yes, dude,
01:31:24.580
that is literally Alexa. I, I see where you're going, but she is much prettier with all due
01:31:31.660
to respect. At the time I looked like Joseph. Yeah. I had no interest in that spy kids girl.
01:31:39.180
No interest was not into it. You should be happy that there are middle school images of you out
01:31:46.440
there that are tolerable in any way. There is a reason I have buried all of those. And I've just
01:31:51.920
gotten rid of all my middle school colleagues. I just made sure that they they're never to be heard
01:31:55.520
from because no one needs to see that. You two are absolutely lovely. I can't like, how can people
01:32:01.280
find out how to hear you, how to watch you? Like, where should they go? Where can they find out
01:32:05.560
everything they need to know if, if they want to, uh, uh, hear, I mean, hear the whole story. Um,
01:32:10.860
our book, what if love is the point is out now you can get it anywhere where you can buy books. Uh,
01:32:15.720
and then we have Instagram. Um, mine is the real Carlos Pena and Alexa is at Vega Alexa. Uh,
01:32:22.620
and then we share a joint, uh, you know, we were reluctant, we were not super excited about joining
01:32:27.260
TikTok, but we're on TikTok and we're kind of, we just share some family fun and just, you know,
01:32:32.620
just want to put a light out there. Yes. I think I love it. You've joined together in that way.
01:32:37.620
You've joined together Pena Vega, which I like to, you didn't have to give up your last name and you,
01:32:41.400
it's sort of another symbol of your connection, your love. Uh, you guys are a great example for
01:32:45.700
young people, for Christians, for people who are struggling. Uh, and if you want to know more,
01:32:49.760
just read the book. What if love is the point? What if love is the point? What if it is? Cause it is.
01:32:57.300
Thank you both so much, Alex and Carlos, lots of love to you.
01:33:00.200
Thank you for having us. I wanted to give you a word on an important subject. We discuss a lot
01:33:04.980
here on the Megan Kelly show before we go on, that is Strudwick. My dog, get a lot of questions
01:33:09.360
about him online. He's still just as naughty as ever. He was making progress with the trainer
01:33:13.560
before we left Connecticut for the summer. And then we left Connecticut for the summer. So now he's
01:33:17.300
down here terrorizing the New Jersey shore. He he's sweet. Don't get me wrong. He's not aggressive,
01:33:21.780
but I mean, since we've gotten, we have a house guest staying with us right now.
01:33:24.920
He peed on our house guest, peed on him, not like near him on him. The other day,
01:33:31.060
ripped open these dog toys, you know, like the stuffing inside of it. It's like insulation.
01:33:34.780
Most dogs are like, that's disgusting. He ate it all. I don't even know where it came,
01:33:38.980
where it went. Didn't come out the back end. I think like in six months, it's probably going to
01:33:42.320
resurface some way. Just one of the many things I'm sure we'll be discussing when Andrew Schultz joins
01:33:47.920
the program again tomorrow. Really looking forward to it. Talk to you then. Thanks for listening to
01:33:54.020
the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.